Why Ham Radio Endures in a world of Tweets

[W9RAN]

Nice to see articles like this amidst the persistent (and false) rumors of amateur radio's imminent demise:

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/02/ham-radio-tweets/

I think this sentence sums it up well:

"hams talk proudly about belonging to a global “brotherhood,” with few rules and little bureaucracy and the ability to transcend language, religion and race — while never quite knowing who they might come in contact with."

73, Bob W9RAN

[steve_qix]

When the wired infrastructure fails (like during hurricane Katrina) or the big ice storm that hit this area last yeare, the only thing that stands alone is RADIO!

[WBear2GCR]

Nah... the real reason is that radio is magic!!

[flintstone mop]

Nah... the real reason is that radio is magic!!

That's IT MAGIC!!!
And adventure!!! Almost like those folks who sit in trees all night to do some hunting or sitting in a boat with some red wine and a Short Wave radio and a home made fishing line.
The last description was from a listener of WBCQ listening to one of my music shows.
Fred

[k4kyv]

I don't tweet, but I toot a lot!   

[KC2ZFA]

someone said: "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

Part of my work involves coming up with numerical schemes to solve
Maxwell's equations...so I regularly "see" electromagnetic waves running
across my computer screen, I can zoom in on them and "look" at the
wavefront of an EM pulse as it propagates in a dispersive dielectric, etc.
But I understand what I'm "seeing" is not what's actually there since
what's actually there can only be sensed by instruments which do not
sense the actual wave but rather they sense the result of the wave
interacting with the sensor.

In my opinion the magic of electromagnetic waves lies in our inability to
construct a mechanical model of its propagation in the way, say, that we
can construct a mechanical model for acoustic wave propagation and use
the construct to explain the process.

73 de Peter

[k4kyv]

someone said: "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

http://www.quoteworld.org/quotes/4158

[Steve - K4HX]

The headline is rather silly. It makes about as much sense as these headline would.

Why Radio Endures in a World of Television
Why Horse Back Riding Endures in a World of Cars
Why Landline Phones Endure in a World of Cellula Telephones
Why Stoves Endure in a World of Microwave Ovens

[k4kyv]

You forgot the most obvious one:

Why AM endures in a world of slopbucket.

[Steve - K4HX]

Yes! Endures and is growing.

[flintstone mop]

I don't tweet, but I toot a lot!   

I'm doing more of that tooo!!

Then my son copies me.....who can make the loudest

[KX5JT]

So Fred... you guys try to see who can STRAP who?