dcn. jquinby's scribbles

This past weekend I passed the Amateur Extra license exam, the final level of the three licenses for US amateur radio operators. I can now operate with full privileges on all bands allotted to US amateurs. Realistically, this gives me access to some portions of the bands that are reserved for Extra-class license holders and useful DX windows. I’ll be interested to see what the contest activity is like in these slots during the next on-air shindig. I can also apply for one of those Extra-only vanity callsigns, but the process looks like a giant pain and I really like the one I was issued. Incrementally, it’s not a giant leap in capabilities, but I just couldn’t stand the idea of there being an additional test out there. If nothing else, I could go on to become a volunteer examiner and help in proctoring future exams in the area.

I recently also completed a little Arduino project here at home - a replication of the Christmas light prop used during the first season of Stranger Things. If you know anything about the show, you know what I’m talking about. The lights are iconic for fans, and several DIY projects popped up online for making your own. I had wanted to do something Arduino-related, and this seemed as good a reason as any to get started by way of an actual application. In the process, I got to learn a bit about the Arduino’s programming language and addressable LEDs. It’s finished, and hanging on the wall as part of our Christmas decorations. I’m already thinking ahead to post-holiday re-tasking. There’s a handful of weather station projects that look pretty promising, as well as an AX.25 shield. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? We’ll see.

The new antenna setup is still doing yeoman work. One day on 15m, I logged FT8 contacts with the Falkland Islands, a DXpedition in the Galapagos, and my fist two Australia and New Zealand stations. During the daytime, no less. There was a 10m contest this weekend, but every time I’ve spun the dial, it’s been as dead as a doornail. That’s life.

I’m almost done with a re-read of After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre. Any extract, I think, will do a disservice to the book. It really is good and deserves carefully reading, and probably more than one. I do like this observation he makes on friendship:

‘Friendship’ has become for the most part the name of a type of emotional state rather than of a type of social and political relationship. E.M. Forester once remarked that if it came to a choice between betraying his country or betraying his friend, he hoped that he would have the courage to betray his country. In an Aristotelian perspective, anyone who can formulate such a contrast has no country, has no polis, he is a citizen of nowhere, an internal exile wherever he lives. Indeed from an Aristotelian point of view a modern liberal democratic society can appear only as a collection of citizens of nowhere who have banded together for their common protection. They possess at best that inferior form of friendship which is founded on mutual advantage. that they lack the bond of friendship is of course bound up with the self-avowed moral pluralism of such liberal societies. They have abandoned the moral unity of Aristotelianism, whether in its ancient or medieval forms.

Later on, he reiterates what Aristotle means by friendship:

Aristotle, probably responding to Plato’s discussion of friendship in the Lysis, distinguishes three kinds of friendship: that which derives from mutual utility, that which derives from mutual pleasure, and that which derives from a shared concerns for goods which are the goods of both and therefore exclusively of neither.

We live on a great piece of property with an unfortunate shape: wedge-shaped, with the fat end on the road and the house situated on the tip at the rear. This means we have a nice, expansive front yard and enough physical space for things like chickens and my poor excuse of an apiary. The one thing for which we’re not well-situated is an antenna. We’re bounded in the back of the property by power lines (and close neighbors), and it’s highly unlikely I could sell a tower in the middle of the front yard to my wife. There aren’t too many trees close to the house, which is blessing inasmuch as I don’t have to clean the gutters but it also limits my longwire antenna options.

Even so, I’ve been having a decent amount of luck with the end-fed antenna. I’ve had it sloping out of a 2nd-story window and down to a tree, in a semi-vertical configuration with the far end up in an ornamental magnolia tree, and finally in a gradual sloper from a rear corner of the house to the closest tree of consequence, a honey-locust in the very back of the yard. Copious amounts of paracord and a halyard helped me get it a decent height above ground, though nowhere near the best-practice heights. It occurred to me that if the antenna were longer, the end of it would at least be closer to the top of the tree, which might be useful. Turns out that 124.5 feet - which is an ideal length for a random wire - is just the trick.

So I ordered a bunch of Flex-weave from HRO and spent yesterday measuring and soldering. By the way: Flex-weave is a colossal pain in the ass to strip. A little tip from me to you. I had to bring an Xacto knife to bear. Anyway, I reconfigured the halyard a bit and got the whole thing up into the air. Seems to be working, too. The LDG was able to tune it for 160m, and I made a few FT8 contacts there for the first time. Worked a little DX this morning into Europe, too. It seems to really like 40m and 15m. Works decently on 80m, too. May give SSB a run later if I have some time and conditions are decent. As it is, I’m splitting time between eyeballing my inbox for 12th hour work problems and keeping watch on the smoker, which has tomorrow’s turkey in it.

I must have read the following quote — or something very much like it — before, because I have been noodling quite a bit on the three-way relationship of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem for a couple of weeks now. I dug around on Google to see where it might have come from and the cited collection of essays turned up. Memories, man. How do they work?

But what really gave the message its wide intellectual scope was Benedict’s way of calling to mind the foundations of European culture, not only as a Christian legacy, but as the fruitful synthesis of the pre-Christian inheritance as well: “The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome — from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical Greeks, and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe. In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and in the acknowledgement of the inviolable dignity of every human person, it has established criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history.”

Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome: they form together an overarching standard of human rationality. And it was Christianity, in fact, that made possible the creative interplay and mutual fructification of these three sources of reason: belief in God, philosophy and science, and law — and Europe grew out of this synthesis. This Europe was also the ancestral root of the secular state, and, although not immediately and directly, of the modern culture of human rights as well.

— Martin Rhonheimer, “Benedict XVI’s Address to the Bundestag from the Perspective of Legal Ethics and Democracy Theory,” Pope Benedict XVI’s Legal Thought: A Dialogue on the Foundation of Law

What prompted the noodling? Under cover of darkness, a so-called identitarian movement courageously put up some posters and stickers on a local college campus. They seem very much into European identity, though as far as I can tell, they go no further than the Rome bits. Forget about Athens. And Jerusalem? No one has time for any that. We want the Europe that looks like Skyrim. Scratch a bit of the shiny paint off, and what you find is the same old props and affectations of what used to be called “The Uptown Klan,” — the ‘Citizen’s Councils’ of the mid-to-late 1950s. There’s nothing really new here beyond social-media-driven amplification. I’d hazard a guess that some flirt with the edges of this stuff because it prompts an immediate rise out of others: internet lulz culture breaking into meatspace.

The new packaging certainly invites a closer look — community building! civic engagement! The marketing has gotten better for sure. Gone are the grotesque caricatures faded from several generations of photocopying and furtively distributed by hand. There’s a modern website, nifty photos, and all the other accoutrements of a respectable online presence. Replace the text and it might just as well be a VC firm or Bay-area startup.

Polished though it may be, the group’s racist foundation becomes evidently fairly quickly. Moreover, the group declares itself wholly secular, which neatly avoids any requirement to contend with even a third-grade understanding of the Gospels, to say nothing of sustained engagement with a transcending anthropology. In short, I’ve probably burned more calories on this than it’s worth. In light of Christian duty, however, I’ll note the following. It ought to be self-evident, but maybe not, so here we go again:

To reject another human being, or seek to divide the human family, is to deny the inherent dignity of the other as made in the image and likeness of God. It also dismisses out of hand our Lord’s prayer for unity and His direct teaching on the limits of charity (spoiler: there aren’t any). That individuals have unique gifts, talents, and weaknesses is evident on its face, but as I’ve stated previously — the human body is a perfect symbol of an invisible, immortal reality. Separate the two and you’re left not a person, but a mere object, in which case a trip down the materialist cul-de-sac is a foregone conclusion.

This path leads nowhere but to sin and death. Pray for the conversion of those who are on it.

The 2017 CQ WW DX SSB contest was a few weeks ago. On the last afternoon of the contest period, I started scanning bands and looked for interesting big-gun stations that were getting bored. With my current setup - janky antenna and nothing in the way of an amplifier - I figured it might be worthwhile giving digital modes a rest for a few hours. And hey, what do you know? I was able to log phone contacts with Bonaire, Jamaica, Italy, Cape Verde, and a few others. That the massive antenna systems on the far-end were doing lion’s share of work, no question. Still pretty nifty. I submitted my log for the hell of it and wound up with a whopping 494 points. Not at the bottom of any of the lists, so I’ve got that going for me. The aforementioned giant contest stations and dedicated single operators logged scores in the millions, by way of some relative comparisons.

Not long after the contest, I made a voice contact with CO8LY on 17m, a ham in Cuba that I’ve actually logged before on other bands with digital modes. It was nice to hear his voice. Finally got the Azores in my book, too. My antenna is now running to a tree out back, thanks to quite a bit of rope+paracord setup as a halyard and a wrist-rocket slingshot to get the whole thing started. Quite the Wile E. Coyote afternoon, I don’t mind saying. The current configuration is something of a proof-of-concept, and while the system’s still not at an ideal height, it sure feels like I’m getting out a little better.

Confirmation bias? Or effective way? shrug The longer term plan is to switch out the 54' wire with one just about 125', which should put the far end closer to the top of the tree and get it higher still. I’d love to give a doublet or G5RV a try, but the vertical portions of either would wind up dangling down in the middle of the backyard, and there’s no point in tempting the dog or kids with something like that. Long term, some sort of vertical is probably in my future, but I still want to wring everything I can out of what I’ve got.

Switching gears to theology: parts of JP2’s TOB that I’m still sort of getting my head around - well some of many, anyhow:

• Man only comes into the fullness of self-knowledge through community
• The second creation account in Genesis shows Man understanding what he is not (by encountering the animals) and what he finally is (through his encounter with Eve).
• The other is simultaneously different (at an obvious somatic level) and the same (in shared humanity)
• Man only knows the other through the giving in totality of himself as a gift to the Other.
• As a gift, the physical embodiment of Man is the visible and perfect symbol of the invisible reality, namely, that he is also Spirit, much the same way that any physical gift that we give to someone is an outward sign of something else.
• In receipt by the Other as a gift, Man comes to know himself as a gift. There must be a giver, a thing given, and a receiver. The gift must be given and received in its totality, not under terms or rejected, in right relationship.
• Absent this anthropological understanding, the physical body becomes a thing to be treated like any other material object, used, possessed, discarded.

I can’t recommend Prof. Mary Stanford’s 3-part podcast, Theology of the Body 101, highly enough. It only seems to be available via iTunes, unfortunately. It’s engaging and quick (I could have listened to 2-3 more hours' worth of the material as she presents it). Our parish’s confirmation preparation group (of which I’m a part) is doing double-duty with a series of TOB evenings for the confirmandi and their parents. This is probably the sort of material we all ought to be listening to by way of an introduction to the main ideas.

The Signalink arrived and is performing great. Good signal reports, zero ALC, very precise control over outputs. I can warble and drone with confidence. In other radio news: have moved the end-fed into something of a vertical/sloper situation using the one good tree that’s near the house. It seems to be working pretty well this way. I’m working DX from Alaska well into South America and have logged quite a few contacts in Europe, too. All using FT8 or PSK31 running 10-15 watts at most. Most of the heavy lifting, I am sure, is on the far end. Even so it feels like my success rate has gone up and bodes well for a more permanent vertical antenna setup at some point in the future. For now, this is getting the job done.

The weather should be good for the half-marathon this weekend. I think I’m ready. Everything feels pretty good and I’ll spend the week doing some carb-loading.

Theology of the Body continues apace, as does my studying for the Amateur Extra exam.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been training for a half-marathon which takes place in mid-October. The training plan I’m using is 12 weeks long. As of today, I’m halfway through week 8. Several early AM runs are scheduled during the week, sandwiched in between rest days on Mondays and Fridays. I do the long runs on Saturday and cycling on Sunday for cross-training. Most of my running has been on a local greenway system. It’s beautifully wooded, following the local river, and generally has a decent number of other folks running, walking or biking.

My goal is to finish strong, so I’m not likely to be breaking any speed records. My long runs are well over an hour at this point, with walking breaks for water and occasional chewy gummy runner snack things. My next long run is 10 miles and it was high time to add music to the routine.

Herewith my workout playlist. Healthy amount of 80s and 90s pop on there. Some of the more recent stuff comes courtesy of having teens and pre-teens in the house. For better or worse, this lets me keep track of the latest hot hits. You could probably take a pretty good guess at my age from the list below.

1. Hey Ya! – Radio Mix, OutKast
2. Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now), C+C Music Factory
3. Call Me, Blondie
4. I’m Still Standing, Elton John
5. Black Betty, Ram Jam
6. Hungry Like The Wolf – 2009 Remix, Duran Duran
7. Cradle of Love, Billy Idol
8. I Ran, Flock of Seagulls
9. Pump It, The Black Eyed Peas
10. Pumped Up Kicks, Foster The People
11. Sonnentanz – Sun Don’t Shine, Klankarussell & Will Heard
12. You Spin Me Round (Like a Record), Dead Or Alive
13. Tainted Love, Soft Cell
14. She Drives Me Crazy, Fine Young Cannibals
15. Walking On Sunshine, Katrina & The Waves
16. Beds Are Burning – Remastered, Midnight Oil
17. Smooth Criminal, Alien Ant Farm
18. Land of Confusion, Disturbed
19. Girls On Film, Duran Duran
20. Turning Japanese, The Vapors
21. Waka Waka (This Time For Africa), Shakira/Freshlyground
22. I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles, The Proclaimers
23. Tarzan Boy, Baltimora
24. Mexican Radio, Wall Of Voodoo
25. She Sells Sanctuary, The Cure
26. Higher Ground, Red Hot Chili Peppers
27. Wild Wild West, The Escape Club
28. Rebel Yell, Billy Idol
29. Enjoy The Silence, Depeche Mode
30. Message In A Bottle, The Police
31. Psycho Killer, Talking Heads
32. A View To A Kill, Duran Duran
33. Uma Thurman, Fall Out Boy
34. Thrift Shop (feat. Wanz), Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
35. Bad Moon Rising, Credence Clearwater Revival
36. Suffragette City, David Bowie
37. Paint It, Black, The Rolling Stones
38. Weapon Of Choice, Fatboy Slim
39. The Rockafeller Skank, Fatboy Slim
40. Bad Romance, Lady Gaga
41. The Power (7” Version), SNAP!
42. Sandstorm, Darude
43. Come Out And Play, The Offspring
44. Can You Dig It (Iron Man 3 Main Theme), Brian Taylor
45. Main Theme (from Superman), John Williams
46. I’m Shipping Up To Boston, Dropkick Murphys
47. Derezzed, Daft Punk
48. Rio, Duran Duran
49. Mama Said Knock You Out, LL Cool J
50. Jai Ho, A. R. Rahman
51. Mundian To Bach Ke, Panjabi MC
52. How To Be A Millionaire, ABC
53. 100% Pure Love, Crystal Waters
54. Turn Down For What, DJ Snake & Lil Jon
55. Animals, Maroon 5
56. Crazy, Gnarls Barkley
57. Forever Man, Eric Clapton
58. Dirty Laundry, Don Henley
59. Higher Love, Steve Winwood
60. What is Love, Haddaway
61. Crazy, Seal
62. Groove Is In The Heart, Deee-Lite
63. Unbelievable, EMF
64. Jump Around, House of Pain
65. Things That Make You Go Hmm, C+C Music Factory
66. Pretty Fly (For A White Guy), The Offspring
67. Pause, Run DMC
68. Mortal Kombat Theme, Utah Saints
69. The Sign, Ace of Base
70. Finally, CeCe Peniston
71. Two Princes, Spin Doctors
72. Cotton Eye Joe, Rednex
73. Ready To Go, Republica

I was running a WSPR beacon the other day and another ham hit me up on email with a screenshot that shows my badly overdriven signal cluttering up the band. I thanked him, pulled the plug, and started troubleshooting stuff. The wall I’m hitting, I think, is the audio-in levels going into the data port on the radio.

I bit the bullet and ordered a Tigertronics Signalink USB for amateur digital modes. One of the shortcomings of the DIY cable I made is that there isn’t a good way to control audio levels into the rig except for the sound mixers in the operating system. They work fine, but the data input pin on the Yaesu is really, really sensitive and I need more control over the voltage. I can keep audio level very low, and end up operating QRP (according to the meter on the radio), or I can move the slider a millimeter and then blow the levels out again. There’s no middle ground, even with CLI controls.

A divider circuit or pot would probably do the trick, but I’m not confident enough in my abilities to try either and the purpose of the exercise is to eliminate as many unknowns as I can while I clean up my signal. They seem to be the de facto standard digital modes gadget, which has to count for something.

The devices aren’t particularly expensive and I had a nice email exchange with a guy in customer service wherein a couple of my questions were answered and some suggestions offered out. The service was great, which bodes well for any future questions I might have.

Bookwise: I just finished Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil, which was featured on a recent 99% Invisible podcast. Very good stuff there. It was written by a former academic mathematician-turned-Wall Street quant who grew increasingly uneasy by the level of control that badly written algorithms are claiming over our lives. Black box approaches to difficult problems (such as determining which teachers are effective and which aren’t) seem to offer an unbiased, scientific pathway. They sometimes fail spectacularly (to wit: when Google’s Photos app identified African-Americans as gorillas back in 2015), but more often fail subtly. The subtle failures are arguably worse.

First, despite any claimed objectivity, algorithms written by fallible human beings often encode the assumptions and biases of their creators. Second, in many of the most egregious cases O’Neil explores, there is no apparent feedback into the algorithm for correction and optimization. Finally, bad outcomes tend to reinforce the flawed assumptions that went into their creation, so the cycle continues. Did we mention that creation of these algorithms is Big Business, that they tend to be jealously guarded intellectual property, and are thus even further removed from any sort of public scrutiny?

Also still working my way through Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body audiences. The TOB has been called something of a theological time bomb, and it’s hard to disagree, even only partway through it. More later.

Finished up the 20th Aubrey/Maturin novel (The Hundred Days) on a recent trip to the Florida panhandle. This leaves one complete novel (Blue at the Mizzen). Then I guess I’ll go finish out the all of the Richard Sharpe books and then go for an O’Brian re-read.

Radio’s back and good as new. Having quite a bit of fun with the new FT8 digital mode. Also seemed to have finally ironed out some uncertainty around audio out levels to the radio from the PC, ALC, and so on. On the hunt for the next book to tackle. Something on the Theology of the Body, I’m thinking, to help get ready for the confirmation class I’m teaching this fall.

I finished Josef Pieper’s The Four Cardinal Virtues and liked it very much. I foresee going back to it frequently for refresh and review. Also thoroughly enjoyed Frank Sheed’s Theology for Beginners, so much so that I have another of his books, Theology and Sanity, ready to go for some upcoming travel. In the meanwhile, I’ve (slowly) begun working my way through the Summa Contra Gentiles. You can get it for the Kindle for a buck.

Looking ahead I can see a pivot into deeper scriptural study. I was perusing the reading lists at the Dominican House of Studies and a book on the Wisdom literature by Richard Clifford caught my eye. Apropos, I started re-reading Job last night, making it as far as Elihu’s appearance.

The HF rig is headed back to Yaesu. Something is wonky with the transmit circuit and it’s still under warranty, so off it goes. Bummer, too - the new FT8 digital mode is taking off and and I had just dipped my toe in it before everything went ahoo. Such is life.

All just order in the world is based on this: that man give man what is his due. On the other hand, everything unjust implies that what belongs to a man is withheld or taken away from him - and, once more, not by misfortune, failure of crops, fire or earthquake, but by man. \ — Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues

And if anyone would reduce it to the proper form of a definition, he might say that “justice is a habit whereby a man renders to each one his due by a constant and perpetual will”: and this is about the same definition as that given by the Philosopher (Ethic. v, 5) who says that “justice is a habit whereby a man is said to be capable of doing just actions in accordance with his choice.” \ — St. Thomas Aquinas, S.T., II II Q. 58

Justice is the moral virtue that consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor. Justice toward God is called the “virtue of religion.” Justice toward men disposes one to respect the rights of each and to establish in human relationships the harmony that promotes equity with regard to persons and to the common good. \ — Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1807

I was asked recently about God’s justice and mercy and specifically, how to reconcile the two. The question caught me off-guard, so I asked for a bit of time to think before giving an answer.

If justice lies in giving someone what they deserve, then mercy is giving someone something that they don’t deserve. God is infinitely just, yes. This ought to catch our attention like nothing else, for what would that mean for most of us, if we’re being completely honest with ourselves? In the face of something so awesome, despair and existential paralysis are the only reasonable responses. Who among us could be saved?

But He is also infinitely merciful, and we can - and should - draw comfort from this. This doesn’t mean we algebraically balance both sides of the equation and then go about our lives. Balancing the two isn’t a puzzle for us to be solved: with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

Or in Catholic-speak: this is a mystery. Let it go.

If we want to try to wrap our minds around it, we have no better example than the parable of the prodigal son. A wastrel son asks for his inheritance early, a request tantamount to announcing to his father “I really would rather not wait until you’re dead,” and takes his leave of his family and home to go out into the world. Finding himself destitute and alone in the midst of famine, he comes to his senses - returning to right reason - and makes his way home. The father would have been completely justified in sending him away again. Who would have blamed him for it? Sorry you spent everything, but we’re done here. Go figure it out elsewhere. Instead, incredibly, the exact opposite happens: he is welcomed home and restored to his place. He desires our restoration and reconciliation. He will run to meet us on the road like the father in the parable.

Neither can truly exist without the other. Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution, says the Angelic Doctor. Justice without mercy, he continues, is cruelty. These two find their nexus in the person of Christ, Emmanuel, who made his dwelling among us and told us to be merciful as our Father is merciful.