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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Nature Is Healing

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Full disclosure: I've been on the kiss cam. As it turns out, it was with my wife. We were in San Diego for a Padres game. Between innings the Diamond Vision 1 was showing a live montage of couples kissing in the stands, with a graphic of pink hearts framing the images. A camera operator with a shoulder-mounted camera took a few seconds to set up the shot, pointing his lens in our general direction and gesturing that it was his intent that we be the next couple featured. Like actors on a set, we hit our marks while the operator moved his camera into a proper shooting position. A final hand gesture from the operator and a red light atop the camera let us know we were on, the disembodied voice of some imagined director in both of our minds shouting "Action!" It would be inaccurate to say the moment was staged—thirty seconds before the red light came on we had no idea a camera operator was even in our section of the stands—but we were knowing and willing participants in the ...
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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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