All the fuss about 5G and what about the low frequencies?

Some people in my mostly liberal circle of friends are starting to talk about the threat of radiation from cellphone systems switching to 5G technology. I've done a bit of reading from establishment scientific circles so I tend to not be worried about that. I guess I've brushed that worry off pretty quickly. Low power microwave signals don't worry me, however there could be other consternation about 5G. Worry, itself is a health hazard.

There is the pressure and stress, felt here in USA, to keep up with China. Do we need to roll out our 5G technology before China establishes the standards, makes the equipment and runs most of the systems? What about human rights and privacy with China running things? Would there be the spying "backdoor" to "China Inc?" That's a worry.

Then one wonders what good is 5G? Do we have to always keep up with the Jones' and not let the grass grow under our wheels? That's always a worry when there is pressure to "move ahead."

What will 5G provide that we don't already have maybe too much of already? Does this mean folks can watch high definition television on mobile devices? Television while driving?

I know, there are lots of things I can't envision today; like who would have dreamed of search engines back in the 1950s? I'm a fan of progress, but I tend to shy away from pressure and rat race.

I hear that 5G is a higher frequency than today's cellphone systems. Higher frequency for more data, but one must be even closer to the service provider's antenna for it to work. Less fringe area service; from what I understand.

Does this make it harder to have the service in rural areas, behind hills, in sparsely populated areas or even in the canyons between buildings, let alone the canyons between mountains?

While thinking about these things, what about the lower frequencies? Microwave frequencies, used by cellphones, need line of sight between your device and the service provider. Yes, it does reflect off buildings and mountains, but it tends to work best with line of sight.

Lower frequencies, such as the old fashioned AM radio band, provide signals that can bend over hills. The signals travel long distance. I would guess less dropout spots.

When traveling along the road, AM radio can envelope one in a steady signal without the shadow areas of higher frequencies; such as with even the standard FM band. It can get to areas that don't have antennas nearby.

I know, lower frequencies provide lower bandwidth. Maybe they don't work for everything we want, these days. Still, these frequencies could be put to better use than just hearing Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity on the radio.

Yes, I'm putting in a dig to the deterioration of AM Radio as so many stations just carry the same network shows. Little choice beyond right wing talk. Too much redundancy on the AM radio dial. Redundancy on the FM dial as well.

Now I will digress and say some things about the current state of AM radio. AM does have more than just Rush Limbaugh. It has Country and Western music, oldies and repetitive traffic reports.

I've seen some articles hinting at suggestions for re-purposing the AM band. Use it for something else besides being locked up into almost useless radio stations (sorry Rush fans). Can't you folks listen to your national network on the internet? If all programs just come from the network, who needs local radio stations?

I forget, AM does have ethnic radio; Spanish speaking stations, Punjabi Radio.

There's Mexican music on the same radio dial as talk shows advocating the border wall. That's kind of neat, in a way. It's America. We can peacefully share the dial at least, but maybe not. The dial is still pretty crowded. There's too much redundancy on both AM and FM radio dials. Can't we open things up and allow more access to the lower end of the radio spectrum?

Yes, a lot of commercial stations seem to be just coasting. Like some property owners; quite a few stations are little more than just place holders on a dial that used to have listeners. It's time for some radical disruption.

There's also the shortwave bands. What they used to call "shortwave" back in the early days of radio. Not as short as the microwaves used by today's cellphones. These frequencies don't get much use today; from what I understand.

Shortwave was the frequencies used by international broadcast stations; Radio Moscow, BBC World Service and The Voice of America. On shortwave, one could send signals clear around the world.

During my childhood, I used to tune in stations from all over the world. Signals would bounce off a layer of ionized air that's high up in the sky. It's called the Ionosphere. The ionosphere can bounce signals clear across Oceans and continents. It was neat to be able to get signals from so far away, but often the programming was a bit boring. The bureaucratic utterances of governments. Radio Moscow was notorious. There is a lot more variety on the internet.

Ham operators would use these shortwave frequencies also. Home hobbyists could send their low power signals to another continent. Problem was, about all they would ever talk about was their antennas. It would be like listening all day to, "I'm running a T with 4 dipoles." "Then I got another over the garage." "I'm hooked to a number 5 trimmer coil." "The XYL (ham term for wife) doesn't like all the space that last installation is taking."

In the early 1990s, I visited a ham operator who was sending data packets from the internet to other operators using the airwaves. He could send photos to remote places in Africa, but it would take quite a while; like a real slow modem connection.

I think some of these frequencies are still useful for things like search and rescue. Use of the ionosphere can bounce communication to places like deep ravines in the mountains where there wouldn't be cell service or wifi. Not even line of sight to a satellite that's too low on the horizon.

AM signals can bounce off the ionosphere also; especially at night. When I was growing up, I used to tune in stations from all over the country, with just a regular AM radio.


Illustration I put in high school newspaper about long distance AM radio at night

Could these lower frequencies be put to better use in today's digital age?

Rush Limbaugh fans may be among the many "rushing" to to get 5G going. It's part of keeping America on top. Like "Make America Great Again?" Don't let China beat us at this.

After commercial radio has pretty much clogged up and trashed so much of the AM band, it's good to ask, how will we plan to use 5G? Is this going to be another "vast wasteland;" like television was once described as? I am not against technological progress, however. I just like to think about these kind of questions.



Article I wrote in the Pullman High School newspaper 1972 / 73 year about long distance AM radio.

The summer of 69 when the vacuum tube gave out in our TV just before Armstrong stepped onto the moon

July 20th 1969 was part of the summer between my 8th and 9th grade years. I watched the all day coverage of the moon landing, but just before Neil Armstrong was to step down that ladder, a vacuum tube gave out in our television and the TV went dark.

We got in the car and headed across town to some friend's place that had a working TV. We got there in time for the reruns.

My two sisters were less enthused about the space program than me. They weren't planning to watch it anyway. Instead, they were driving across the state from Pullman to Seattle. When Armstrong stepped down that ladder, one of my sisters said that she took a picture of a drive-in in Ellensburg where they had stopped for dinner. That was to capture the moment.

Meanwhile, my parents and I were on our way to our friend's house with a working TV. Those friends were named, The Stevenson's. The father of that family had died earlier, but he was a big figure at WSU in Pullman. The Stevenson Dorm Complex is named for him. 3 13 story dormitory towers and a dining hall. Yes, growing up in Pullman, one can know people who have university buildings named for them.


Stevenson Dorms are the brick towers near foreground of this 2017 picture I took of Pullman Skyline during my 2017 bicycle tour.

In many ways, it was an epic summer. In the national news there was Woodstock and Stonewall. I wasn't aware of Stonewall when it was happening, tho. Leaned about that incident many years after the fact.

The moon landing was hyped as a big deal. I was fascinated in it myself tho others in my fairly liberal family were not as enthused as me. They felt the money might be better spent on poverty relief and environmental cleanup. I kept saying that pushing the progress of science could also help other things; like environmental cleanup.

The TV networks covered the moon landing all day. As they waited for the various events, such as the landing and then a few hours later the walk, there was lots of airtime to fill up. They had interviews and special features. They even interviewed folks who believed that the walk was a hoax and the whole thing was staged in Hollywood.

All day coverage had me glued to the TV as I find science a lot more interesting than things like day time soap operas. That's one reason why the TV tube went out at the critical moment, but we all took it in stride. Normally, I'm not a fan of TV. I listen more to the radio.

Back in 1969, I made a reel to reel tape with some radio coverage of the Apollo Missions. I still have that tape today. It's in good condition, but unfortunately, during my college years, I recorded over a big part of it to do a tape exchange with a pen pal about another topic.

Also related to summer of 1969, Stonewall. I wasn't aware of the Stonewall Rebellion until years later.

Sculpture I made in a college ceramics class about Stonewall. That 1969 event I didn't hear about. My first impression was the Stonewall Halfway House and Drug rehabilitation center in Seattle for gay people. The Stonewall House. I saw an article about that Seattle institution as I looked at publications that were coming into the Gay People's Alliance Office at WWU, here in Bellingham, where I hung out a bit. I was also taking ceramics. That was around 1976.

With the cone of silence, about gay issues in society, during my childhood, I wasn't aware of the Stonewall Incident till around 1976. I learned about the detox center first then the incident that it was named for sometime after that.

I grew up in a liberal family and gay rights was pretty much respected as a civil rights issue, when it did come out, but it was pretty quiet and information wasn't as available during my childhood as it is today. I must have not had the radio on when the Stonewall Rebellion was happening. It dropped out of the news pretty fast. Unlike the moon landing that was all over the news.

I would like to believe that society is still progressing today. In 1969, there were around 3 billion people on this small planet. Today, over 7 billion are struggling for it's limited resources. We do need to take a lesson from things like Gay Lib. We need to modernize our thinking about family planning and procreation. Not everyone should feel the pressure to procreate. It's okay not to procreate. We have enough people.

To deal with the difficult problems of global warming and limited space on this planet, we need the fruits of our science. Solar panels are an example of a technology pushed forward by the space program. Microchips are similar to tiny homes in my way of thinking. As society progresses, we can also miniaturize to save space on this planet. Smaller families, smaller homes, more sophistication. Our earliest computers hardly did anything compared to the Smartphones of today. They cost millions of dollars, took up entire rooms and used lots of energy. The first ones ran on vacuum tubes; the same tube technology that snatched my ability to watch Neil Armstrong step onto the moon as it was happening.

Today, we have progressed to the tiny Smartphone age tho not everyone sees this as progress. One thing about the tube going out in our TV during my 1969 experience was that it does make for a good story today. It was kind of like an unplugging at just that critical moment.

Someday, if we survive, maybe we will live beyond the confines of this planet, but in the meantime, life on this planet is made better if we look beyond our shortsightedness. Science is one of the best tools we have along with some flexibility in thinking and some patience in our demands from this planet.

Preaching to the choir on Facebook

There is a lot of preaching to the choir on Facebook; especially when people defriend folks they disagree with and then post articles providing strong evidence for things like climate change. The people who need to see such evidence have been defriended leaving only the choir behind.

Of course maybe no one, but the choir will believe such evidence, but I do find that a lot of folks do think about things in new ways when communication is given a chance. Especially when presented with ideas they haven't just seen over and over again; like the standard talking points.

Some say immigrants get better healthcare and prenatal care than American citizens.

Some of my thinking gleaned from a thread on Facebook.

American citizens should be able to access healthcare. That's why we need healthcare reform.

I sometimes have felt that disabled people and some immigrant or refugee populations had better healthcare than many low income workers or even small business owners that fell through the cracks in our system. Much of our system of healthcare and welfare was designed in an era, like the 1960s, when it was assumed that if one was working one was fairly well off and middle class. The income gap has skewed the situation. At the same time, it still is in our interest to provide prevention and a pathway to citizenship for some of the immigrants that are working in our economy. Their labor seems to be in need in our economy and the old phrase still applies, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

Yes, American citizens should be served.

The need that American citizens have for things like prenatal care is why we need healthcare reform in USA. We need to work toward a system of universal coverage with sliding scales so healthcare can be available to all Americans; especially working Americans. Many working Americans can't afford private insurance premiums and don't have employers that provide health insurance. I think the Medicaid expansion, that was part of Obamacare, was a good step for the most part. It attempts to expand coverage to more people, including people with low paying jobs. Before, a lot of those people were not eligible for Medicaid because they weren't eligible for Disability or Aid to Families with Dependent Children. It helps single lower income working adults.

But some people hate Obamacare.

Obamacare does look real bad for people who have higher incomes and good health; like the $2100 per month premium with $12000 deductible you mentioned. I think this happens because the lower end of the sliding scale gets subsidized. Someone does have to pay to subsidize the lower end. The higher end of the sliding scale pays more. Many people at the higher end do get "sticker shock" when they see what they get for their money, I guess even compared to private insurance.

One way to address this problem is to just not serve people who cost the system too much. To try and serve mostly healthy people. This can keep the costs down, but it's a problematic solution ethically. It's taking away coverage for people with preexisting conditions. Even a lot of Republicans don't wish to do this, tho they don't seem to have answers to this problem. Republicans hate taxing the more fortunate, but seems like there is no way around having to do that in order to continue providing coverage to folks with preexisting conditions; especially lower income folks in that situation.

I do think there does need to be more incentive for healthy living, but not all bad health comes from lifestyle. Much of it is luck and genetics.

Our society does need more of a focus on healthy living, but other things get in the way. Some of it is people's stupidity, of course. Also a lot of bad things are pushed on the populous; such as liquor sales, tobacco and sugar. Then there is the whole problem of sedentary lifestyles. Our transportation system, our town planning, even our lack of sidewalks in some areas. Also the problem of being over stressed and over worked. Also over medicated in some cases. The way many doctors practice medicine.

When someone said, "what about the better system that our religious organization provides?"

I guess systems, like your church system, can cut out much of the middle man (middle person) bureaucracy. That helps. I would guess they also tend to serve folks who try and live more healthy lifestyles. Also I think some of those systems have caps on their coverage so real serious, costly illnesses remain outside the cap. There is still the problem of American citizens who incur much higher medical cost than average; often due to no fault of their own, tho lifestyle is a big factor.

The US an oligarchy? Still has freedom of expression. China could use more freedom, but it can get things done, so I hear. Benevolent dictatorship?

Freedom of thought and freedom of expression are cherished virtues that we still have here in USA, for the most part. At the same time, I've heard our country described as an oligarchy instead of a democracy. It does seem like it's definitely a tainted democracy at best, if not an oligarchy. Things like gerrymandering of political districts comes to mind. How much money influences politics these days also comes to mind. We have serious problems related to the very running of our society which make it hard to do things like adapt to climate change or even build high speed rail. Gridlock and nimby ism come to mind. Lobbying and our inability to pass moderate gun legislation also comes to mind.

I gather that some people, in China, think they have a better system than we do. They can get things done, like high speed rail. On the other hand, maybe high speed rail isn't the best answer, but that's another topic. China may have an easier time adapting to climate change.

I would guess some of Chinese folks feel like one needs a bit more control when dealing with 1.3 billion people. Someone, I know, who has lives part of the time in China, describes it as a "benevolent dictatorship." He's spent time in China, Hong Kong and USA.

As for the internet, in China, it is pretty closed behind what is called "the Great Firewall of China," but my acquaintance says a lot of Chinese people figure out how to "climb the firewall."

Still, I appreciate the freedom of thought that we have (or at least I think we have) here in USA. We may be kind of gridlocked, but at least we can still entertain ourselves by talking it to death while we sit in that gridlock.

I think about this all while hearing the news from Hong Kong about demonstrators sacking the Hong Kong Parliament building. The yearning to preserve and expand freedom of thought remains powerful. I hope things don't get so chaotic that authorities, like Chinese authorities, come in with something like martial law and shut everything down. Social change often has to happen incrementally. If it gets too chaotic, crackdowns do occur. It takes both patience and innovation to move the cause of freedom forward.

I realize that I have lots of ideas and opinions, but admit I've only been to two countries in my life, so far. I've only been to USA and Canada. I do keep up with world news quite obsessively, however.

Cruising in the age of consent. Me Too may apply differently to gay people versus heterosexual situations.

Interesting article, Cruising in the age of consent. It's a bit long with lots of ideas, but here's just one of many concepts I gleaned.

As is talked about in the article; issues of the Me Too movement tend to apply much differently in a gay setting than in mainstream heterosexual settings. In the latter, there is more of a strength and power imbalance between men and women. That doesn't necessarily apply in the gay world. I especially like this one statement about the concept of safety being somewhat different in the gay world versus the heterosexual world.

"Gay men’s classic sources of trauma and violence stem less from being hit on than from being literally hit by homophobes. Safety hasn’t typically meant freedom from carnal pursuit; safety has meant the possibility of it."

Abuse of the passing lane?

I hear that in Europe, the left lane on freeways, like the Autobahn, is used for passing only. People mostly drive in the right lane. Supposedly, that is the way freeways are intended to work. People ask why that isn't done in America. I think it's because there must be so much more traffic in America that all the lanes are full to a slow crawl. They are all full, at least around urban centers; especially during rush hour. Too many people drive, here in USA. I would guess that in Europe, more people use transit so even the freeways that they do have work better. Maybe they aren't so clogged with traffic. Just my guess, but I've never been to Europe. Yes, mass transit, walking and bicycling does help overall mobility.