Radio, Amateurishly

  On July 6, 2019, I took the exam for the amateur radio Technician class license. I knew right away that I had passed, but I had to wait more than a week until on July 15, 2019, I looked at the FCC call sign database and found my name listed with call sign KN6DBC. My reasons for taking the exam were twofold. First, as a former shortwave listener (SWL), I was looking for ways to rekindle the enjoyment of using radio as a hobby in what is now, for all practical purposes, a post-shortwave world. Second, as a recent empty-nester, I was looking for opportunities to do some volunteer work. I'm a sailor, and have been around the water my entire life. The United States Coast Guard Auxiliary looked like it might be a good place to give something back to the community. Since I don't own a boat that would make a suitable Auxiliary facility, I thought that having the radio amateur license would give me a useful skillset that I could bring to the Auxiliary. Much has happened over the ens

  What makes unoriginal ideas unoriginal One in a series that probably ends here   About a year and a half ago I wrote an article in which I tried to break down some things that I thought made a couple rock music recordings sound particularly good. Inspired by the liner notes from jazz albums of the 1960s, I wrote the article in a way that assumed the audience had more than a rudimentary understanding of music, but I stayed away from diving too deeply into music theory. Instead I looked at the subtle things musicians do to take the chord changes and the melodies that they already have and make them sound more interesting, what musicians refer to as musicality , or, more informally, feel . At the time, I promised that the piece would be one in an occasional series on what makes good music good. That series never materialized. When I wrote the article, framing it as part of an occasional series was intended to be a reference to a column that would sometimes appear in Harper's about