From: "John Smith" on Sat 2 Jul 2005 13:24

Len:

You are right, they do look like a little like a dutch boy with his
finger stuck in a dyke.

Tsk, clever wordplay in this heavily-homophobic group of PCTA
extras isn't going to be noticed much...:-)

The only part which amazes me is that they fail to see or feel the
flood waters which have already risen above their heads. This is all
going on and no law, person or group even slows it a bit. Progress
has a life of it owns, it waits for no man, no group, no law...

Well, my take on THIS group of worshippers at the Church
of St. Hiram is that they are (unconsciously) try to hold
back the time. They seem to long for an earlier time when
they got started in ham radio, at least three decades past.
By holding onto those "early days" they feel they can stave
off encroaching age.

Three decades and more ago were a "simpler time" in radio.
Most radios were analog. Only a few high-end models had
things like digital readout of frequency, for example. DSP
was a thing for the future. These old timers could barely
understand basic analog circuits in "radio." Give them a
digital thing and they were lost. ["whuzzat? a lil bug?
we don' need no stinkin' digital! give us "radio!"]

Claude Shannon gave the entire communications world his laws
in 1947. Trouble is, Claude's landmark paper used a Teletype
as an example. Olde-fahrt morsemen didn't pay attention,
thought it didn't apply to their beloved "code." It did, and
the ARRL Handbook early on had the (unreferenced) statement of
noise versus bandwidth (of filters) and never went much farther.
Few hams had teleprinters in 1948. They had beloved MORSE
CODE! Supposedly morse code information "does not apply" to
Shannon's Laws...and has been argued as such in here in the
past (mainly by a now-SK Missourian). Sheesh. (to be polite)

As Yogi Berra said, "The future ain't what it usta' be..."

Funny thing is, amateur radio was implemented with the idea these
"experimenters" would give back to the community in advances in the
field--somewhere this got totally reversed and now they cry for more
laws and regulations to halt progress--now I have never seen a better
display of insanity!

It's the antithesis of experimentation. A "fill in the blanks"
kind of rote work that pleases those who just want to play in
a sandbox and pretend to be "pioneers advancing the state of
the (merchandising) art." They know NOT of what is behind their
front panels but they take emotional sustenance in feeling the
nice knobs and admiring the glowing digital displays. They
READ of experimentation once in a while in QST, learn the buzz-
words (from the ads therein) and pretend to know state-of-the-
art. Shrug.

But, somehow they think they can argue this as a "service" to their
fellow citizens. Krist, the egyptian high priests who held their whole
nation hostage were more progressive! At least they made good durable
mummies...

Tut, Tut! :-)