Wed. 03/17 - Why Doesn't Channel 37 Exist?

Cool Stuff Ride Home

Reggie Risseeuw and Marques Pfaff

News, Tech News, Science, Society & Culture

4.6 • 732 Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2021

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Why analog TVs never had channel 37. Spoiler: the answer includes aliens. The rise of bitcoin ATMs. And the pretty amusing self-reported symptoms from the AstraZeneca vaccine. And all the latest breaking marine mammal news. Sponsors: Skillshare, Get a free trial of Premium Membership at skillshare.com/kottke StartMail, Get 50% off your first year at StartMail.com/kottke Links: Why You Generally Can't Find TV Stations on Channel 37 (Tedium) This Month in Physics History (APS News) Bitcoin ATMs are coming to a gas station near you (Reuters) Dogecoin Will Be Available in Bitcoin ATMs Across America (Crypto Briefing) What are AstraZeneca's self-reported side effects? (Quartz) There's a whale in the San Francisco Bay right now, something never before seen in March (SF Gate) ‘Putrid’ stench of rotting whale carcass on Australian beach leaves locals retching (The Guardian) Exploding Whale 50th Anniversary, Remastered! (KATU News, YouTube) Thu. 07/02 - The Exploding Whale Memorial Park (is a real thing) (Kottke Ride Home) Arctic walrus takes a nap on an iceberg, wakes up in Ireland (LiveScience) Kottke.Org Jackson Bird on Twitter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:22.9	entrepreneurs like you sign up for your one dollar a month trial at shopify dot com slash setup
0:28.7	welcome to the khaki ride home for Wednesday, March 17th, 2021.
0:40.7	I'm Jackson Bird.
0:42.6	Why analog TVs never had Channel 37.
0:47.8	Spoiler, the answer includes aliens.
0:51.6	The rise of Bitcoin ATMs. And a selection of self-reported side effects from the
0:59.4	AstraZeneca vaccine. Here are some of the cool things from the news today.
1:07.0	So back when we actually used analog TVs and ultra-high frequency or UHF signals to supply
1:13.9	our hundreds of TV channels, there was one channel missing, Channel 37. In the analog era,
1:21.9	Channel 37 was never used in most of North America. Why? Well, unlike buildings that skip floor 13, it wasn't a
1:31.4	matter of superstition, but rather aliens. Okay, not exactly aliens, but like, kind of, maybe.
1:39.6	So as Ernie Smith reported over at TDM, back in 1931, a radio engineer at Bell Laboratories
1:45.9	named Carl Jansky was trying to figure out the source of some staticy radio interference.
1:52.0	Quoting APS News, it was a challenging assignment.
1:55.1	Jansky had to design and build special instruments for that purpose.
1:58.5	Most notably, a large directional antenna system mounted on a motor-driven
2:02.6	turntable that rotated through 360 degrees about a central vertical axis, riding on a circular track of the wheels of a Model T. Ford.
2:11.6	It was dubbed Jansky's Merry Go Round.
	...

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