Amateur Radio Today - Free and Open Source Software

NEVER SAY DIE
Continued from page 4-
repair. II coeso't take much 10 screw up
the DNA replication process. which is
going on constantly as new cells are
buill and old ones phased out The
sharp wave fronts of CW square waves.
which go lrom a lew hertz on "" into
II1e miaa-aves, can't lfTvOYe how OU'
cells replicate and could help explain
why hams have about double the
deaths due 10 cancer as the general
publiC. It might be worthwhile to find out
if hams are any more susceptlble to
IcIng-range loesses than other people.
When you mess up cells, you don't
know whafs going to break ecen. II
could be 1TIOf8 than cancer.
If you have a need for a reference
guide to the publlshed research papers
In this lield there are 21 pages of refererces
on the 73 BBS . . . so lar.
Cellular radios and cancer? I'll be
amazed If there isn1 a oomection.
Me1 A Bord
Forsoothl Well, I can be when laced
with a contact with someone who Just
rafuses to talk. Is it residual mike hight
which has persisted l or decades?
Some of these non-talkers have some
lairty old callsigns. Is it that they've revet
done any1hing? Never read anything
much? Never gone anywhere? Never
realty thoughl? No, I'm sure that if I
could sit down With Ihem I could pry
some interesting stories out 01 them.
Many of the OX ops 1 talk with are
bitterly critical of American operators.
AD Americans seem to want Is a aSL
card! Many AmeriCan ops seem 10 have
had !heir C'OItacl. forrnlAa spiels frozen
at wound thlI time of !her first oontacl
Well, it's a 101easier than having to
thi nk. Thi nking, apparently, is hard
work. Well, I suppose so. It's something
which is battered out 01 us In school,
where a thinking student is a teacher's
worst nightmare. irs almost i~sible
kI beat a habit rnert:iIessIy poooded into
us 0YeI16 years 01 school.
CM whole society is buill arOl.Rl not
having to think. TV provides us with
endless semi-entertainment that seldom
demands a ny actual thinking.
Movies are geared to entertainment,
not Ihinking. Most business Is routine
and thinking is punished when it 11\e1­
rupts the routine. Talk wilh friends Is
mostly blathlIt, wiIIl no Sign 01 thnUlg
and
irMlIved. Gossip. The reason US
People magazines were started is because
too few people could cope with
TImfJ and Newsweek. The news maga­
Zines lended to call for some Ihinking,
somelhing Donahue, Oprah, and US
don'
A Cultul1ll Straitjacket
The wonder is that a lew American
hams have managed to break free of
this educationally and culturally buill
stra~acket and are able to conduel Interesting,
Inteligent conversatioos over
the iW. The one-way nallxe ol 0lI" con-
Tal 'em you II1ir* I'm stupid and Ig-
noranl lor suggesting that our public
schools are destro)Tlg 0lI" kid's mirds.
Tell 'em what a lousy Ihing I did when r
tacts which, despite improvements in
comm..nie:a1iOnS 1echnoIogy, we fieroaty
refu:se to drop. makes it much more
diltiCl.JlI to talk than a normal two-way
60 73 Amateur Radio Today-June , 1993
QSt.. of the Month
To enter your OSl., maillt 11 an erwelope to 73, Wayne Green Inc.. 70 Route 202-N,
Peterborough. NH 03458. Attn: OSt. of Ihe Month. Wnners receive a one-year Slbsaiption
(or exter\Sion) to 73. Entries not In envelopes caroot be accepted.
conversation. I sure hope a few hams
will start working on some practical duplex
systems so we can make talking
_.
we can do this ~ frequency separation,
so we can both transmit at Ihe
same time, 01 we might do it via time
splitting, where we share a frequency
but send sound samples several mcusand
times a seoond. This would allow
us to have as many as six or seven
people al talking on Ihe same frequency
at Ihe same time 10 eactI other, with
ewryoo& hear1ng the others.
In ee meanwhile, If those of us who
are looking lor more than a aSL card
out of a contact can make a serious ef·
fort to gat others 10 actually talk, perhaps
in anolhef generation we'll begin
., see some reeots. We might estabish
some special frequencies for actual
non-OSl oontacts. Do you thInK there is
any poIentiallor conversalionaf nets?
CfiPple-ism, a wide range 01 religious
fundamentalisms, a lew politieal-iSms.
Oh yes, racism. SO if we can't have Intelligent
conversations over the air, perhaps
we can at least vent our bigotries
and non·ltlinldng prejudices, perhaps
bulding ..., more sleam than we can let
"". The ''P''ide 01 this is thai wtlen peeple
get angry they louse up their immune
system and are open to an sorts
01both long· and Short-range illnesses.
Short-tempered people tend to be sick·
er and shorter·tived, so we don't have
., 0Bal with them lor as long.
'When you II.I'l into an angry, secastic
person over Ihe air you can sign 011
and change frequencies. But pity his
family and business acquaintances who
have to live with this poison! I ~t letters
from angry people. Not many, but a few.
That's natural because I write what I
think •.• afways with the provtso that It
you disagree I want to hear why you
disagree. Angry pecpe don' have any
whys, just vehemerce. I ohen waste my
IQle trying to answer their angry Ienel'S,
explaining why I've come to Ihe concIustarted
pushing lor a no-code license a
few years ago and how amateur radio
has gone to hall In a hanlI::rasket as a
resul 01 ttjs acetned .-- license. Tel
'em how repeate" have screwed up
hamming and I never shoukl have pr0­
moted 'em back In 1969.
If you're short of mud 10 throw at me,
I'll be glad to wet down your adobe hacienda
so you can have more ammun~
lion. Half 01 you will absolutely hale my
pro-choice thoughts. The religiously
overwrought wi. go bananas over my
Ideas on retigion and have enough to
talk abouIlo kee9 them going lor a generation.
But hey, you've never asked
me about God, Christ, Mohammed, Sri
Krishna , Smith, Moroni, an d Amee
Semple McPherson. Thefe are whole
new fields of