Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

How the Pentagon Got Its Shape

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This Memorial Day, as we solemnly remember the ultimate sacrifices made by the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces to protect our freedoms, the Washington Post runs a fascinating excerpt from Steve Vogel’s upcoming book, The Pentagon: A History. The excerpt explains how the iconic Pentagon building originated during our country’s nervous, reluctant preparations for the second world war. The design—originally driven by practicality and necessity—remains among my favorite building layouts. I have a Pentagon pass and go there two or three times each month, and—while it took some getting used to—I still love and appreciate the building’s sheer efficiency and simplistic beauty.

The HPV Vaccine

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The human papilloma virus—known as HPV—is a disease shrouded in misinformation. First off, it’s not just one disease; there are over 100 types of HPV which can cause anything from warts to cancer to cold sores to, well, nothing. Second off, it is not exclusively a sexually transmitted disease. Fewer than 40 of those 100 variants of HPV can be transmitted through sexual contact, and even those can (rarely) be transmitted through other, non-sexual physical contact. Approximately 12 of those 40 have been shown to lead to cervical cancer in women, but two of them (responsible for 70 percent of cervical cancers) can be stopped by a recently-developed HPV vaccine.

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One Choice in Iraq

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While our Congress stands on the verge of passing a resolution setting an artificial time-line for withdrawal from Iraq, an opinion piece by one of the few ‘liberal’ Congressmen still making sense appeared in the Washington Post this morning. Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who caucuses with the Democratic Party, speaks of the real—though preliminary—progress in Iraq since our troop ‘surge’ began, and points out the sheer idiocy of doing exactly what al-Qaeda wants us to do: respond to their ongoing insurgency and terrorist attacks by packing up and leaving. Our artificial withdrawal date gives al-Qaeda an exact moment they need to hold out for, after which Iraq is theirs to become the new Afghanistan.

The Fallen Church

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God is infinitely forgiving. That much is, for those of us who subscribe to the Hebrew scriptures (“Old Testament”) and/or the Christian ones (“New Testament”), pretty indisputable. In the scriptures, God ultimately forgives Israel’s people for innumerable affronts against God (Exodus 32 being an early, prominent example). The teachings of Jesus in the Christian scriptures expand upon this idea of God’s unlimited capacity for forgiveness, culminating in Jesus’s incredible prayer that the very people who were crucifying him be forgiven (Luke 23:34).

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Tragedy at Virginia Tech (Updated)

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Melissa and I have been in touch with lots of people over the last two days, and everybody we’re directly connected to at Tech is—thankfully—safe and accounted for. We do, however, have some second- and third-level connections directly affected by the tragedy. One VT student from our church lost one of his professors. A friend-of-a-friend knew Ryan Clark, the RA killed in the initial dorm shooting. It also turns out that Melissa had met/known at least two of the faculty victims during her year at Tech. There’s a lot of hurt all throughout Virginia, even here in the great suburban north (where both the killer and many of the victims came from), and it’s going to take a long time for it all to start healing up. God be with the victims, their families, and the entire extended VT community.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.