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little radio
Thursday, November 18 1999
During my lunch break I went out and bought a little Sony Walkman AM/FM stereo receiver. It's about the size of a pack of cigarettes and can go 40 hours on a single AA battery. I'd been wanting to listen to National Public Radio while at work and perhaps other radio programming during my morning and evening commutes, and this seemed like just the thing.
When you figure how much bother people go through just to get the internet into their homes and then compare the internet's entertainment value to that of a radio, you realize that internet technology still has a ways to go. When will we get the internet for free from a small portable device costing only $15, having an instruction sheet printed on a single of a sheet of paper and using only 30 milliwatts of power?
Which reminds me, I keep thinking about a day when digital data will be broadcast along with the radio signals, such that radio-sized digital devices will pick up printable pages of text and perhaps other forms of digital data. What exactly will be on these pages, and how this system will be supported economically is something I can't even fathom. But the continued use of the radio spectrum by analogue devices seems like a terrible waste of bandwidth.
In other things, a few days ago Kim met some young smartly-dressed Mormon gentlemen out on the streets of Ocean Beach. As a center of Godless sin in Southern California, OB is a favourite for proselytizers of all religions, and we often encounter intrepid Mormons plying the door to door circuit here. Kim is an unusually friendly person, and she struck up a conversation and found these guys agreeable, so she invited them back to her place for more discussions about the nature of the Universe. They, of course, were forbidden from going anywhere with her (Mormons are well aware of the wily ways of heathen women), but they offered to send over a couple of Mormon sisters.
Today these sisters arrived. The original plan was for a tightly-scripted half-hour discussion, but it ended up running for something more like an hour. Kim tried to inject her non-patriarchal Eastern-mystical view wherever applicable, but these women were running a tight ship of discourse and had to get through an extensive list of "truths", starting with Jesus and moving on to Joseph Smith and his thing with the golden tablets. They had no interest (or, indeed, capacity to comprehend) the chakras, past lives or the Buddah, but they were polite about it.
Kim was impressed with the zeal these women had for their work; they didn't seem to have any interests other than missionary work, frustrating though it must be. Here is what Kim wrote to me about their visit:
Had our house blessed by the Morman sisters today. They were so sweet,
mid 20's, attractive, but had not a clue that their precious Morman
founder, Joseph Smith, was not any different than any other religious
nut. I sat with them reading the bible for a half hour as they tried to
brainwash me into conversion. They left me with The Book of Mormans and
made me promise to read certain passages. No, I am not converting! I am
of the goddess faith as you know and thought a reflection of some of my
meetings with them would be interesting for my thesis. They kept
commenting on how much they liked your paintings, so much so that I
imagined you coming home and having your way with one of them. Does
this mean I am officially going to hell? I hope not.
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