Net Topics Friday September 29
Babe Hit #60 .... DX Contacts
Embedded Files
September 30, 1927
American baseball player Babe Ruth became the first player to hit 60 home runs in a single season; his record stood until Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961.
George Herman "Babe" Ruth (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948) was an American professional baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned 22 seasons, from 1914 through 1935.
DX Contacts
DXing, taken from DX, the telegraphic shorthand for "distance" or "distant", is the hobby of receiving and identifying distant radio or television signals, or making two-way radio contact with distant stations in amateur radio, citizens band radio or other two-way radio communications. Many DXers also attempt to obtain written verifications of reception or contact, sometimes referred to as "QSLs" or "veries".
Topic Questions:
1) Do you follow Baseball? Have you been to an MLB game?
2 ) Do you remember where the first DX Contact you made was located? If you received a QSL Card from them, do you still have it?
Net Topics Wednesday September 20
Red Auerbach .... TBA
Red Auerbach, byname of Arnold Jacob Auerbach, (born Sept. 20, 1917, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.—died Oct. 28, 2006, Washington, D.C.), American professional basketball coach whose National Basketball Association (NBA) Boston Celtics won nine NBA championships and 885 games against 455 losses.
Auerbach began coaching at St. Alban’s Preparatory School (1940) and Roosevelt High School (1940–43), both in Washington, D.C. During World War II he served in the U.S. Navy (1943–46), and after the war he coached the Basketball Association of America’s Washington Capitals and the NBA’s Tri-Cities Blackhawks before becoming coach of the Celtics in 1950.i
Under Auerbach the Celtics dominated the NBA, making the play-offs in each of his 16 seasons as coach of the team and winning eight straight championships from 1959 to 1966. Auerbach’s talented Celtics teams featured 11 future Hall of Famers, including Bob Cousy, John Havlicek, Bill Russell, and Bill Sharman. His trademark as a Celtics coach was lighting a “victory cigar” on the bench in the closing seconds of games, delighting Celtic fans and infuriating the fans of their opponents. Auerbach retired in 1966 as coach and became president and general manager of the Celtics. Under his management the Celtics won six additional NBA titles. He retired as general manager in 1984 but remained active in promoting the Celtics tradition. Auerbach was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1968.
Net Topics Monday September 18
Franken-Chicken .... Battle of the Sexes
Lab to table: The promise and the perils of cell-cultured chicken
Lab to table: The promise and the perils of cell-cultured chicken
SAN FRANCISCO — The chicken recently introduced at two U.S. restaurants — one in California, the other in Washington, D.C. — was not raised in a crowded barn or allowed to roam on a pasture. The meat did not come from birds packed into an 18-wheeler and trucked to a nondescript plant where they were slaughtered, cleaned and dissembled into the usual cuts.
This chicken was grown in sterile, laboratory-like facilities by Good Meat and Upside Foods, a pair of Bay Area food technology companies that have been toiling for years to reach this moment.
Their chicken started as cells, maybe taken as part of a biopsy from a living bird. The cells were cultivated in ever-larger vessels, or just plastic two-liter flasks, until enough tissue could be harvested and eventually processed into dishes at these full-service restaurants, where a select few diners are paying handsomely for the privilege to be among the first to taste chicken grown without the blood and guts of animal slaughter.
Upside Foods's cell cultivators as seen through windows from the demo kitchen in Emeryville, Calif. (Carolyn Fong for The Washington Post)
The chicken goes by a number of names — lab-grown meat, cell-cultivated meat, clean meat and, in certain agricultural circles, Franken-meat — but whatever label it adopts, the meat grown in sterile plants has also been billed as a potential savior to the troubles that plague our food system.
Proponents say cell-cultivated chicken, beef and the like could dramatically cut back the amount of land and water that goes into producing the meat that will feed a growing population along with its growing appetite for animal proteins. Cultivated meat could eliminate the inhumane treatment of animals raised for food, whose short lives are often hidden behind walls where, in some states, it is a crime for reporters or activists to access the facilities under false pretenses. They could help prevent the spread of zoonotic diseases. They could even reduce the 7.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere every year by the livestock industry, representing 14.5 percent of all human-related greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet, to date, the two companies approved in the United States to sell cultivated meat can grow only hundreds of thousands of pounds per year, a microscopic fraction of the hundreds of millions of metric tons of meat produced annually around the world. In the near future, dozens of other tech companies hope to join Good Meat and Upside, but even if they do, critics and industry executives say it’s no sure bet that cell-cultured meat can ever scale up and compete, in quantity or price, with traditional animal agriculture.
Most everyone will tell you there are still huge obstacles to overcome — financial ones, scientific ones, even public resistance to the product — before most people will ever get a taste of meat that comes from bioreactors, not from an animal with legs, lungs, a heart and a brain.
Billie Jean King triumphs in
“Battle of the Sexes”
On September 20, 1973, in a highly publicized “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match, top women’s player Billie Jean King, 29, beats Bobby Riggs, 55, a former No. 1 ranked men’s player. Riggs (1918-1995), a self-proclaimed male chauvinist, had boasted that women were inferior, that they couldn’t handle the pressure of the game and that even at his age he could beat any female player.
The match was a huge media event, witnessed in person by over 30,000 spectators at the Houston Astrodome and by another 50 million TV viewers worldwide. King made a Cleopatra-style entrance on a gold litter carried by men dressed as ancient slaves, while Riggs arrived in a rickshaw pulled by female models.
Legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell called the match, in which King beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. King’s achievement not only helped legitimize women’s professional tennis and female athletes, but it was seen as a victory for women’s rights in general.
King was born Billie Jean Moffitt on November 22, 1943, in Long Beach, California. Growing up, she was a star softball player before her parents encouraged her to try tennis, which was considered more ladylike. She excelled at the sport and in 1961, at age 17, during her first outing to Wimbledon, she won the women’s doubles title. King would rack up a total of 20 Wimbledon victories, in singles, doubles and mixed doubles, over the course of her trailblazing career. In 1971, she became the first female athlete to earn more than $100,000 in prize money in a single season. However, significant pay disparities still existed between men and women athletes and King lobbied hard for change. In 1973, the U.S. Open became the first major tennis tournament to hand out the same amount of prize money to winners of both sexes.
In 1972, King became the first woman to be chosen Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsperson of the Year” and in 1973, she became the first president of the Women’s Tennis Association. King also established a sports foundation and magazine for women and a team tennis league. In 1974, as a coach of the Philadelphia Freedoms, one of the teams in the league, she became the first woman to head up a professional co-ed team.
The “mother of modern sports” retired from tennis with 39 Grand Slam career titles. She remained active as a coach, commentator and advocate for women’s sports and other causes. In 2006, the USTA National Tennis Center, home of the U.S. Open, was renamed in King’s honor. During the dedication ceremony, tennis great John McEnroe called King “the single most important person in the history of women’s sports.”
The 1973 match was the subject of a 2017 movie starring Emma Stone and Steve Carell. History.com
Net Topic Questions
Will you try "Franken-chicken" when it hits the local stores?
Are you old enough to have watched live the "Battle of the Sexes"?
Do you think the Battle of the Sexes had an effect on American sports culture and culture in general?
Net Topics Friday September 15
Papua New Guinea .... Storm Surge
(In History)
September 16, 1975
Papua New Guinea (PNG) became fully independent from Australia on September 16, 1975. The country had achieved self-government in November 1973. The natives of Papua appealed to the United Nations for oversight and independence.
The country was renamed Papua New Guinea in 1973. It became a member of the Commonwealth of Nations (CON). The British monarch continues to be the head of state.
The country's shared history with Australia has been central to the shaping of each nation. The shared history has been especially important from the Second World War until PNG's independence in 1975.
Topic Questions:
1) Have you ever traveled outside of the USA? If so, what was your favorite country you visited?
2) With the effects of Hurricane Lee approaching this weekend, are you making any special preparations?
Current Events
Bracing for storm surge
Parts of New England are also bracing for storm surge as Hurricane Lee progresses further north.
“The combination of storm surge and tide will cause normally dry areas near the coast to be flooded by rising waters moving inland from the shoreline,” the National Hurricane Center said Thursday evening.
If peak surge comes at the time of high tide, the center said water could reach one to three feet above ground in parts of Long Island Sound, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Boston Harbor, and parts of New York.
The immediate coast will see the deepest water along with powerful, dangerous waves, the center said. Surge-related flooding can vary greatly over short distances and will depend on the surge’s timing and the tidal cycle.
Net Topics Wednesday September 13
GM Diesel..... The Straw Hat Riot
Today in History: GM Makes Diesel a Dirty Word
Introduced today in 1977
We're reasonably certain that if we try hard enough, we can remember the Seventies for many great things. But we're just as certain that no amount of trying can make Oldsmobile's harebrained diesel engine one of them. Introduced today in 1977, the LF9 5.7-liter V-8 (optional on the Delta 88, Custom Cruiser, and Ninety-Eight models) proved sluggish despite GM's effusive claims of gasoline engine-like refinement and efficiency They were noisy, smelly, and almost comically unreliable. GM euthanized this world-class spewer of soot after the 1985 model year though not before it found its way under the hoods of Chevrolet and Cadillac models. From Oldsmobile's 1978 full-line brochure:
"As you move out, you're aware of a smooth response and quickness diesel cars traditionally weren't known for. Merging into expressway traffic, you can accelerate easily into an opening. And you cruise along in unexpected quietness, for a diesel."
The diesel engine was the brainchild of Rudolf Diesel, a brilliant German engineer born in 1858. Diesel was determined to produce a more efficient powerplant than the then-dominant steam engine and received a patent for his “rational heat engine” in 1892.
While the steamer was an external combustion engine that burned its fuel outside the engine, the diesel, like the fledgling gasoline engine, burned it inside the cylinders. But unlike a gasoline engine, which ignited its fuel with a spark plug, diesel combustion occurred by injecting the fuel into the cylinder where it was ignited by the heat of a very high compression ratio. The diesel is therefore called a compression-ignition engine.
Although a despondent Diesel committed suicide in 1913 by jumping overboard into the English Channel, others carried on his work and the diesel gradually evolved into the most efficient stationary engine available. In the 1920s, experiments were conducted with diesel cars, and in the 1930s diesels appeared in large mobile applications such as locomotives and line-haul trucks.
While Europe eagerly embraced diesel cars, cheap gasoline kept them off the North American scene. There were some early disciples, however. In 1930 Clessie Cummins, a diesel engine manufacturer in Columbus, Indiana, installed one in a 1925 Packard, the first such U.S. application. Cummins demonstrated its economy by driving from Columbus to the New York Auto Show on $1.38 worth of fuel oil!
Auburn Automobile Co., of Auburn, Indiana, considered offering a Cummins diesel option in 1935, but the company’s demise ended the plan. It would be more than 40 years before an American manufacturer would offer the first diesel-powered car.
The impetus for an American diesel was the energy crisis of 1973-’74. The resulting Corporate Average Fuel Economy legislation required auto manufacturers to achieve a sales-weighted fleet average of 18 mpg (U.S.) in 1978 models, rising to 27.5 in 1985.
General Motors saw diesel as a major contributor to meeting this requirement, and in 1978 Oldsmobile offered the first American diesel-powered car. Other large GM cars got them in 1979.
To create the diesel, Oldsmobile converted its 5.7-litre gasoline V-8. Since a diesel’s internal pressures are much higher — compression ratio was typically twice as high — the V-8 components such as bearings, pistons, connecting rods, crankshaft and cylinder block were strengthened. The higher internal pressures make diesels more expensive to build than gasoline engines.
Cylinder heads were fitted with glow plugs to aid starting. A pre-chamber-initiated combustion with a richer fuel-air mixture, then ignited a leaner charge in the main combustion chamber.
Unfortunately, when it reached the public, problems surfaced. Head gaskets blew, oil leaked and there were even crankshaft and piston failures. The conversion from gasoline to diesel had not been wholly successful, and in the early 1980s Consumer Reports magazine consistently advised readers to avoid GM diesels.
The GM diesel was gradually brought to a higher level of reliability. When it was running perfectly it was, as Car & Driver magazine said in December 1977, “the only way to haul six people 600 non-stop miles in shameless comfort on sixteen bucks’ worth of fuel.”
But although it was economical, performance was modest. C&D reported its 120 horsepower took 14.9 seconds to haul the 1,887-kg Delta 88 sedan to 60 mph. Top speed was only 95 mph.
In mid-1981, General Motors introduced a 1.8-litre Isuzu four-cylinder diesel in its sub-compact Chevrolet Chevette/Pontiac Acadian. For 1982, Oldsmobile built a 4.3-litre V-6 diesel, a three-quarter version of the 5.7 V-8. Ford offered diesel in its small Ford Escort/Mercury Lynx. In addition to the American nameplates, diesels were offered by Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Peugeot, Volkswagen, and Volvo.
By the mid-1980s, fuel concerns were gone, and diesel cars faded in North America. Only Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen carried on, and the M-B diesel was temporarily discontinued here in 1999. Mercedes and Volkswagen still lead the compression ignition parade, although others have joined.
Modern automobile diesels have vastly improved refinement, performance, and cleanliness, but the relatively low price of gasoline still leaves them as a minor player in the North American market, a situation that is almost certainly destined to change.
Straw Hat Riot
The riot itself began on September 13, 1922…
The Straw Hat Riot of 1922 was a riot that occurred in New York City at the end of the summer as a result of unwritten rules in men's fashions at the time, and a tradition of taunting people who had failed to stop wearing straw hats after autumn began. Originating as a series of minor riots, it spread due to men wearing straw hats past the unofficial date that was deemed socially acceptable, September 15. It lasted eight days, leading to many arrests and some injuries.
Background
Straw hats had appeared in the 19th century as summertime wear, usually in connection to summer sporting events such as boating (hence the name boater). Soft Panama hats were likewise derived from tropical attire but began to be worn as informal summer attire. Initially it was not considered good form for men to wear these in big cities even at the height of summer (women's hats were different). By the early 20th century, straw boaters were considered acceptable day attire in North American cities at the height of summer even for businessmen, but there was an unwritten rule that one was not supposed to wear a straw hat past September 15 (which was known as "Felt Hat Day").
This date was arbitrary; earlier it had been September 1, but it eventually shifted to mid-month. It was socially acceptable for stockbrokers to destroy each other's hats, because they were “companions”, but it was not acceptable for total strangers. If any man was seen wearing a straw hat, he was, at minimum, subjecting himself to ridicule, and it was a tradition for youths to knock straw hats off wearers' heads and stomp on them. This tradition became well established, and newspapers of the day would often warn people of the impending approach of the fifteenth, when men would have to switch to felt or silk hats. Hat bashing was only socially acceptable after September 15, but there were multiple occasions leading up to this date where the police had to intervene and stop teenagers.
Riot
The riot itself began on September 13, 1922, two days before the supposed unspoken date, when a group of youths decided to get an early jump on the tradition. This group began in the former "Mulberry Bend" area of Manhattan by removing and stomping hats worn by factory workers who were employed in the area. The more innocuous stomping turned into a brawl when the youths tried to stomp a group of dock workers' hats, and the dock workers fought back. The brawl soon stopped traffic on the Manhattan Bridge and was eventually broken up by police, leading to some arrests.
Although the initial brawl was broken up by police, the fights continued to escalate the next evening. Gangs of teenagers prowled the streets wielding large sticks, sometimes with a nail driven through the top for hooking hats, looking for pedestrians wearing straw hats and beating those who resisted. One man claimed that his hat was taken and the group who had taken his hat joined a mob of about 1,000 that was snatching hats all along Amsterdam Avenue.
Several men were hospitalized from the beatings they received after resisting having their hats taken, and many arrests were made. Police were slow to respond to the riots, although several off-duty police officers found themselves caught up in the brawl when rioters attempted to snatch their hats. Two or three boys were accosted by pedestrians who said that their straw hats had been smashed; the boys were arrested.
Aftermath
Many of those taken to court following arrests related to the hat-snatching frenzy opted to be fined rather than serve time in jail. The longest recorded time one of the teens was sent to jail was three days served by an "A. Silverman", who was sentenced by Magistrate Peter A. Hatting during night court.
In one incident, a group of boys armed with sticks attacked people near 109th Street. Seven youths brought to the East 104th Street police station were under 15 and were not arrested. Their parents were summoned to administer corporal punishment. After the station dealt with the original riot, all stations were told to keep an eye out for hat-snatching teenagers. E.C. Jones claimed to have seen around 1,000 teenagers in a mob roaming around Amsterdam Avenue. One victim, Harry Gerber, was kicked so badly he had to be hospitalized.
The tradition of hat smashing continued for some time after the riots of 1922. In 1924, a man was murdered for wearing a straw hat. 1925 also saw arrests made in New York.
That the activity died out is probably connected with the disappearance of the tradition of the seasonal switch from straw to felt hats. While Panama hats remained in fashion during the 1930s, the straw boater became less fashionable.
Straw hats for men continued to be manufactured but they were more similar to hats such as the Panama, trilby or fedora in shape. By the 1950s the classic straw boater was virtually extinct as a garment, except in specialized circumstances such as the uniform of certain English public schools or university and college sportswear.
Net Discussion Points to Ponder:
Have you ever owned a diesel-powered car?
Men’s hats…are you a hat wearer and what kind do you sport?
Net Topics Friday September 8
Star Trek and..... FT-8 and Digital Modes
September 8, 1966 - Star Trek Premiere
New show boldly goes where no show has gone before
Gene Roddenberry pitched his story of 23rd-century interstellar exploration as a sort of outer space Western, and tonight 'Star Trek' makes its TV debut. The series will be cancelled just three seasons in, but reruns in syndication prove that the show will live long and prosper.
FT8 Digital Mode
FT8 or Franke & Taylor 8 is a frequency shift keying digital mode of radio communication used by amateur radio Operators worldwide. Following release on June 29, 2017, by its creators Joe Taylor, K1JT, and Steve Franke, K9AN, along with the software package WSJT,[1] FT8 was adopted rapidly and, in little over two years, it became the most popular digital mode recorded by automatic spotting networks such as PSK Reporter.
Topic Questions:
1) Have you watched the Star Trek Series? Do you have a favorite character or episode?
2) Have you used the FT8 Digital mode? Do you have a favorite Digital mode you use on Ham Radio?
Net Topics Wednesday September 6
Sir Edward Victor Appleton and...... National Read A Book Day
Sir Edward Victor Appleton
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1947
Established that the “Ionosphere” was reflecting radio waves
Born: 6 September 1892, Bradford, United Kingdom
Died: 21 April 1965, Edinburgh, Scotland
Affiliation at the time of the award: Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, London, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: “for his investigations of the physics of the upper atmosphere especially for the discovery of the so-called Appleton layer”
Work
When radio signals were sent across the Atlantic at the beginning of the 20th century, it became apparent that the radio waves followed the earth’s curvature. Physicists assumed that the radio waves were being reflected from a layer in the atmosphere where the sun’s ultraviolet light had liberated electrons from their atoms. By studying the superposition, or interference, of radio waves that had taken different paths, Edward Appleton established the existence of this layer—the ionosphere—in 1924. In 1927 he demonstrated that an additional layer existed outside the one discovered previously. Appleton’s methods also came to have implications for the development of radar.
At night the F layer is the only layer of significant ionization present, while the ionization in the E and D layers is extremely low. During the day, the D and E layers become much more heavily ionized, as does the F layer, which develops an additional, weaker region of ionization known as the F1 layer. The F2 layer persists by day and night and is the main region responsible for the refraction and reflection of radio waves.
F layer
The F layer or region, also known as the Appleton–Barnett layer, extends from about 93 miles to more than 310 miles above the surface of Earth. It is the layer with the highest electron density, which implies signals penetrating this layer will escape into space. Electron production is dominated by extreme ultraviolet (UV, 10–100 nm) radiation ionizing atomic oxygen. The F layer consists of one layer (F2) at night, but during the day, a secondary peak (labelled F1) often forms in the electron density profile. Because the F2 layer remains by day and night, it is responsible for most skywave propagation of radio waves and long distance high frequency (HF, or shortwave) radio communications.
Above the F layer, the number of oxygen ions decreases and lighter ions such as hydrogen and helium become dominant. This region above the F layer peak and below the plasmasphere is called the topside ionosphere.
From 1972 to 1975 NASA launched the AEROS and AEROS B satellites to study the F region.
National Read A Book Day
When was the last time you read a book? Too many of us shy away from books these days, instead getting our information and entertainment from our screens. Celebrating National Read A Book Day is easy; pick up a book or a kindle if you really must, and read it!
Net Discussion Questions
Did you know about Sir Edward Victor Appleton?
Are you a reader?
What kind of books do you prefer, fiction / non-fiction / biographies, etc.
Net Topics Friday September 1
Labor Day in U.S. Celebrated Next Monday ........... What's Going On With Women's Sports?
Before it was a federal holiday, Labor Day was recognized by labor activists and individual states. After municipal ordinances were passed in 1885 and 1886, a movement developed to secure state legislation. New York was the first state to introduce a bill, but Oregon was the first to pass a law recognizing Labor Day, on February 21, 1887. During 1887, four more states – Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York – passed laws creating a Labor Day holiday. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 more states had adopted the holiday, and on June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska’s fight song begins, “There is no place like Nebraska.” When it comes to volleyball, those words never rang more true than Wednesday night.
The Cornhuskers laid claim to the world record for largest attendance at a women’s sporting event with 92,003 filling Memorial Stadium for their volleyball match against Omaha.
Last May, the record for largest attendance at a single match for a women's team was broken when 91,553 fans filled Camp Nou for FC Barcelona's UEFA Women's Champions League match against rival Real Madrid.
Net Questions
Has American Labor Day lost its meaning?
a. Do you have a Labor Day Tradition? b. What about this Labor Day?
Will U.S. women's sports ever be a popular as men's?
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse