A Crummy Commercial

Jose Simon Molina, 82, listening to AM radio I often check The New Yorker site on Monday morning for the cartoons from the latest issue.  Yesterday the cartoons from the new issue weren't up yet though.  So I scrolled back and noticed this article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/10/19/the-first-social-network It was a really interesting article.  For one thing they had an audio version READ BY A REAL PERSON !!  AI voiced audio narration is good but it pales compared to a reading by a good actor / announcer.  Anyway, I thought the article itself was really interesting.  Folks in rural Argentina "off the grid" will listen to AM stations they can catch - at certain times the stations will have the announcers read messages from these folks, for lost animals, sickness in the family, birthday greetings - those kinds of things.  People like to listen even though they aren't expecting a message for themselves.  Something like this isn't strictly...

I saw this one page article in the March 1966 issue of Electronics Illustrated: source:  https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Electronics-Illustrated/Electronics-Illustrated-1966-03.pdf Here's a more scholarly exploration of the diode as meter protector in the November 1966 issue of Electronics World: https://w4npn.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Diode-Meter-Protectors.pdf Now with mechanical meters becoming either expensive or unobtanium, this simple mod is something I will have to try on my various meters. If only there was as simple way to prevent this: source:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/267722861557 I know: just be careful, Chuck !! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HBIUJiqWao This is one reason why I prefer black and white, you never have to worry about your colors changing to living red and white !  Black and white is basically silver particles coated on the film stock.  Here's Don with the flower gal both ways: Color film is complicated, three layers of dyes that can obviously fade :( But I never knew that grown men raced go-karts !  I remember the neighbors in Fox Point, the B family, had a cart.  It even had a seat belt but as I recall I was too fat for it to fit :(  Mr. B. was a mechanical genius though.  In addition to their go-kart he had built his sons a fort above the breezeway between the house and the garage.  He also had a very cool '57 Chevy.  He also had rigged up an electric motor to wind up kit string when the boys were flying kites really high.  Far before I had ever seen a mechanical shaker for harvesting fruit I can remember seeing Mr. B....

I saw this photo: and a simple search found this: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8EoO55-kOY Not only those four but Charo, too !   Sometimes the internet still functions and amazes !  I love it. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

It was amazing !  The Brewers swept the Dodgers in 4 - the exact opposite of last year.  The Dodgers played pretty well, Shohei finally hit a homer.  Their pitcher, Tyler Glasnow, was unhittable for the first time through the order but then cracks started to appear.  The Brewers never gave up and nibbled away while shutting down the Dodgers after the 2nd inning. I listened to the game on the radio, Jeff Levering made an amazing call at the end:   https://x.com/620wtmj/status/2110935208094535974     source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVjnWhgxzjM Not coincidentally (thanks Youtube algorithm) I watched the documentary:  Ueck earlier in the day: source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoSwFGeVn7E The Brewers have been so close the last few years, now they finally made it to the World Serious  :)  Ueck woulda loved it.  I think this is the year. Update afternoon: Pat Murphy after the win:   So he got a ...

Katahdin Camps is a book by C. A. Stephens about a trip to the environs around Katahdin, the tallest mountain in Maine.  Not sure if it's considered fiction or non-fiction, probably both.  Stephens was born in 1844 so I assume this trip was set before the advent of the Boy Scouts in the USA (1910).  One of the guides, Louis, has a Winchester carbine so it must at least have been after the Civil War.  One camper went on to be a gold miner in the Klondike, so this Katahdin trip must have been taken before 1896.  The trip was taken by Stephens along with a cook and guides and 17 boys.  So basically a bunch of city kids, although with a dozen guns, taking on the Maine wilderness.  The author had this dedication:   https://dn721602.ca.archive.org/0/items/katahdincamps00step/katahdincamps00step.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._A._Stephens As usual the internet proved useful for finding references that I didn't know, for example: Hannah Duston (aka ...

I was listening to the Jean Shepherd (K2ORS) show on WOR from October 1, 1962 (about the last 45 minutes) found here (Thanks Max!) : https://wbai.org/archive/program/episode/?id=67285 As Shep often did, he touched and bounced around on zillions of topics but in this clip: you can hear him recommend a John Cheever story called A Vision Of The World , published in the September 29th 1962 issue of The New Yorker .  So I whipped out my copy of The Complete New Yorker and found it - only difficulty was that Jean got the title wrong but close enough :)  The story is also online: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1962/09/29/a-vision-of-the-world It's an unusual story, the inner monologue of a man who sees the world from a loftier perch than the rest of us.  But he appears to be noticing that there is something wrong inside himself.  Kind of an intellectual meander of a someone who has no earthly cares other than his health and internal feelings - a modern man of the 20th ...