Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Vacation Day 3: Bonneville, Dufur, and Timberline

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On the third full day of our Pacific Northwest vacation, Melissa and I joined my parents, sister, sister’s boyfriend, and my grandfather to visit Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River; the town of Dufur, Oregon; and the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood.

The Bonneville Dam is an impressive structure that spans the Columbia River (between Oregon and Washington). It is made up of two locks, two power stations, a ‘fish ladder,’ and a spillway. The visitor center is located on Bradford Island, which we say is the ‘family island’ even though, in fact, it has nothing to do with us. Also located on the island is the Bonneville fish ladder, a mechanism that allows fish to make it up and down-stream past the dam for spawning and migration.

We then went to The Dalles, Oregon, for some lunch and a quick visit to a rock fort on the Columbia where the Lewis and Clark expedition set up camp for a night in the early 1800s before proceeding up to the small town of Dufur, Oregon (pronounced doo-fir). My grandfather spent much of his childhood in Dufur, and my great great grandparents are buried in a small cemetery on the outskirts of the town.

Finally we drove up the mountain to the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood. Unfortunately the weather was very foggy and the supposedly-gorgeous view of the peak was entirely obscured, but it was still worth the diversion. one of Timberline Lodge’s claims to fame is that it was used for the exterior shots of the fictional Overlook Hotel in the classic Stanley Kubrick horror film The Shining, which was based (loosely) on the Stephen King novel by the same name.

A bunch of photos are included below; enjoy!

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Vacation Day 2: Mount St. Helens

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On the second day of our Pacific Northwest, Melissa and I—along with my parents, my sister, and my sister’s boyfriend—made the three hour drive from the house in Hood River, Oregon, to Mount St. Helens in Skamania County, Washington.

Mount St. Helens is a volcano that underwent a massive eruption in 1980. That eruption left the mountain scarred by a massive crater, caused huge landslides, and reduced hundreds of square miles to barren wasteland. Even more than thirty years later, the whole area bears the mark of the catastrophe.

Here are my photos from our excursion to Mount St. Helens:

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Vacation Day 1: Columbia River Gorge

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Melissa and I (and many members of my extended family) have gathered at a rented vacation house in Hood River, Oregon, for a Bradford family reunion. Obviously the main purpose of the trip is to catch up with family we haven’t seen in many years, but we also have ample opportunity to travel around the area and see the sights. Hood River is nestled in the Columbia River Gorge about sixty miles east of Portland, and the whole area is rich with natural beauty.

We arrived on Monday and had a good night’s sleep. Then Melissa and I spent much of Tuesday traveling the Historic Columbia River Highway and stopping at the various sights along the way, including a number of waterfalls, the Vista House, and the Bonneville Fish Hatchery. Enjoy the photos below:

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TSA Prohibited Items: Idiocy

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In preparation for air travel tomorrow, I’m reviewing the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) prohibited items list . . . and I am absolutely flabbergasted.

The list of items prohibited in your carry-on luggage when you pass through security includes hammers, baseball bats, razors, golf clubs, drill bits, realistic replicas of explosives (whatever that means), gel shoe inserts, and snow globes. Now, these are all absurd prohibitions—as are well-known prohibitions on small knives and liquids over three ounces. It’s all another annoying part of the unnecessary security theater we get exposed to now every time we fly.

But I was even more flabbergasted by the things that are permitted. Among the items explicitly allowed in your carry-on luggage are scissors under four inches, ice skates, tennis rackets, tools and screwdrivers under seven inches, lighters (without fuel), and up-to one book of matches (as long as they are not strike-anywhere matches).

So, according to the TSA, a traveler with a two inch pocket knife, drill bit, and gel shoe insert is a serious national security risk, but a traveler with four inch scissors, a seven inch screwdriver, and a book of matches is a-okay. It seems to me that out here in the real world, the second traveler is probably a bigger potential risk. A four inch scissor blade and a sharpened seven inch screwdriver could do a lot more harm than any pocket knife, and a single match could easily cause more damage to a plane than, say, a drill bit.

Of course I don’t intend to bring any of these things, so it’s not really an issue, but you have to wonder about the critical thinking skills of the people establishing our transportation security policies . . . if you didn’t have enough reason to do so already.

Romney Now the Presumptive Republican Nominee

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Former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) has won a majority of available delegates for the Republican presidential nomination and is now the presumptive Republican nominee. He will face incumbent President Barack Obama (D), who became the presumptive Democratic nominee in April, in the November general election.

This ends an especially contentious and volatile Republican primary battle. Tracking polls have showed Romney, Governor Rick Perry (R-TX), Herman Cain (R), former Representative Newt Gingrich (R-GA 6th), and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) in the lead at different times. But with a solid win in today’s Texas Republican primary, Romney is now all-but certain to receive his party’s formal nomination at the Republican National Convention in August.

Romney is generally regarded as a ‘moderate’ or even ‘liberal’ Republican. He served one term as Governor of Massachusetts and plotted a very centrist, bipartisan course in nearly all of his policy initiatives there. He presided over the implementation of a sweeping health care reform law now colloquially referred to as ‘RomneyCare,’ elements of which (including the controversial individual mandate) were later implemented at the federal level as part of Obama’s health care reform efforts, now similarly christened ‘ObamaCare.’ ‘RomneyCare’ received the full support of then Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and other prominent Democrats, and passed with strong bipartisan support in the Massachusetts legislature.

Although the ‘ObamaCare’ itself is very similar to ‘RomneyCare,’ Romney has opposed the federal version because the Constitution does not grant the federal government the same breadth of authority that it does to the states (cf., the Tenth Amendment). Writing in March, Romney said, “When I was governor of Massachusetts, we instituted a plan that got our citizens insured without raising taxes and without a government takeover. Other states will choose to go in different directions. It is the genius of federalism that it encourages experimentation, with each state pursuing what works best for them. ObamaCare’s disregard for this core aspect of U.S. tradition is one of its most egregious failings.”

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.