de Tocqueville's First Editor

 My first go at cartooning.




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Amateur Radio is Dying - And Why You Shouldn't Care Less

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  The past couple weeks have seen not one but at least two entries into the ham radio YouTube discourse on how amateur radio is dying. The second references the first, and in some ways is a rehash of the first. Neither video presents any empirical evidence, like number of licenses or number of QSOs logged in various databases; in fact, the second video's presenter actively rejects such measures. You might find this hard to believe, but I'm going to give the two YouTubers a free pass on that one. Ad hoc social criticism needn't be subjected to the pedantic sort of methodological rigor as, say, an academic paper. It's okay to make qualitative observations, as long as you don't get too carried away with rejecting scientific evidence that doesn't quite match your feelings. My criticism of the two videos and of the larger ham-radio-is-dying subgenre of blog articles and YouTube videos is in three parts: (1) the evidence supporting the two videos' conclusions re...
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Eight Reasons POTA Is the Best Thing Ever to Happen to Amateur Radio Ever

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  On my first Parks on the Air (POTA) activation, in April of 2021, I logged eighteen contacts. Seven of those were on satellite, which is only slightly better than I do on a typical satellite pass. If it had been an HF-only activation, as many POTA activations are, it would barely have been a success. In September of the same year, just five short months later, I activated Crystal Cove State Park , K-1141. Technically, I activated it twice, since midnight UTC rolled around partway through the afternoon (US Pacific time) that I spent there. On that visit to the park, I logged 104 contacts. I'd like to think that the increased success in completing QSOs can be attributed to the great strides I've made in my skills as an operator. I'd like to think that. More likely is that the activity itself is growing, and with that growth comes ever-increasing opportunities to make contacts. On-air activity for POTA has spent the last two years growing by leaps and bounds. We hear anecdo...
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John Mellencamp Ordered to Change "Little Pink Houses" Lyrics

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WASHINGTON—A newly signed executive order will require John Mellencamp to release a revised version of his 1983 hit single "Little Pink Houses" with the reference to "vacation[ing] down at the Gulf of Mexico" removed from the song's penultimate verse, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced today. "When President Donald J. Trump acted decisively to right an historical wrong," Ms. Leavitt said, visibly fighting back tears, "by ordering that the waters between the Florida and Yucatán Peninsulas be renamed to Mare Nos —I mean the Gulf of America, he knew there would be some loose ends. This order merely ties up one of those loose ends." When asked by a reporter from the Bloomington Herald-Times about the appropriateness of a President directing a singer-songwriter's artistic expression by legal fiat, an angry Leavitt replied, "Look. If Billy Mack can change the words to 'Love Is All Around' in a delibe...
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