A quick note on a change to the site. If you’ve been paying attention to the events of the last year in American politics, you have probably noticed that there has been a highly contentious atmosphere. I’m someone who follows news, politics, and current events quite closely, and I have strong opinions about nearly every subject. However, I don’t want any of that to bleed into this blog, which is supposed to be primarily about radio. I’ve dropped a handful of ham bloggers out of my Google Reader in the last few months because I can’t take the blatant political content that appears regularly. A tiny bit of it on occasion does not bother me, but when the majority of the content is about politics or puts a political spin on ham radio, I don’t want to read it any more. I enjoy radio because it’s time away from bitter, divisive topics such as these.
Therefore, in order to enforce a more strict firewall between my personal political feelings and this blog, I’m removing the Twitter sidebar. I do have a bit of a loud political mouth on Twitter, and I don’t want to completely take that outlet away from myself. I’m sure that some of my strongly worded opinions can be a turn-off to those who come to the blog for technical content. I’ll still use Twitter to chat about whatever topics interest me, but I’m going to do my best to keep Ripples in the Ether as apolitical as I possibly can.
For those of you who have stuck around, thank you sincerely for being a regular reader of the blog. Lately, the content has been light because much of what I have been working on are things that I can’t currently discuss. As Dayton approaches, I expect the content level to pick up again. I’m excited to blog about my FDIM 2010 QRP Challenge entry, which is shaping up to be a neat little rig. Stay tuned…
I’m never bothered by your political comments on Twitter but understand your reasons for separating your Twitter account from your blog. The only comment that I would make is that the nature of Twitter means that your politically oriented tweets don’t have much detail and sometimes leave me curious to know more about what is behind some of your posted opinions (possibly the reason I sometimes take the bait and reply to them.)
Although on the surface we may appear different, I think we have quite a bit in common politically. In some ways I’m something of a libertarian, but in practice, accept that big government is here to stay, regardless of who is at the reins.
Here’s to your continued interest in current events and politics and of course, building a superhet transceiver with 72 parts or less!
Yes, Twitter is definitely not an ideal medium for the propagation of complex ideas such as political theories. I would love to get into further detail about my beliefs, but I don’t want to do it here and I don’t have it in me to start another blog, so I’m not sure what to do.
I enjoy that you “take the bait” and challenge me in a respectful way. If our ideas can’t stand up to scrutiny, then they are pretty worthless. 🙂