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You could think of it that way. You could also think of it as denying hundreds of thousands of Spanish-speaking New Jersey residents programming in their native

You could think of it that way. You could also think of it as denying hundreds of thousands of Spanish-speaking New Jersey residents programming in their native language in exchange for the discovery of one new type of Active Galactic Nucleus and two supernova remnants, from a telescope that only operated for ten years and which the scientific community cared so little about they didn't even bother fixing it when it eroded away in 1970.

somehnguy 6y ago
That seems like a particularly inflammatory way of looking at it.. Why couldn’t they use one of the other channels? Was there no demand for such programming? Who was denying those options, if anybody?
- causality0 6y ago
  Because of FCC rules and limitations elsewhere, the city of Paterson had no other options to bring a TV station on air other than channel 37. The fun part about this is that McVittie, who helped to set the wheels in motion for the blanket ban of channel 37 in the U.S., never learned exactly why the FCC made the decision to flip its mindset on this issue. Racism? Against Latinos in 1963? Nah, couldn't be.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    The ban was precipitated by a case that happened to be a Spanish language channel, but not all channel 37s would have been in Spanish. The result was that a channel was barred across the entire country. It's a big leap to say that the official rationale is bogus and go to "FCC is racist against Latinos and decided to bar the channel for everyone".
quink 6y ago
No one is bothering to fix Arecibo...
- causality0 6y ago
  https://www.elnuevodia.com/english/news/story/8-million-approved-to-rebuild-the-arecibo-observatory-telescope/ https://www.elnuevodia.com/english/news/story/8-million-appr... http://www.naic.edu/NGAT/NGAT_WhitePaper_v2_01022021.pdf http://www.naic.edu/NGAT/NGAT_WhitePaper_v2_01022021.pdf
  - quink 6y ago
    $8 million will go nowhere towards rebuilding it, at best that’d suffice for part of a clean-up. And from Universe Today: > If Channel 37 were ever lost to TV, the gap would mean a loss of information about the distribution of cosmic rays in the Milky Way galaxy and rapidly rotating stars called pulsars created in the wake of supernovae. Closer to home, observations in the 608-614 MHz band allow astronomers track bursts of radio energy produced by particles blasted out by solar flares traveling through the sun’s outer atmosphere. Some of these can have powerful effects on Earth. No wonder astronomers want to keep this slice of the electromagnetic spectrum quiet. For more details on how useful this sliver is to radio astronomy, click HERE. Originally the allocation may have been for that site. That doesn’t really matter.
Falling3 6y ago
Sounds like a beautiful example of a false dichotomy.

somehnguy 6y ago

That seems like a particularly inflammatory way of looking at it.. Why couldn’t they use one of the other channels? Was there no demand for such programming? Who was denying those options, if anybody?

causality0 6y ago
Because of FCC rules and limitations elsewhere, the city of Paterson had no other options to bring a TV station on air other than channel 37. The fun part about this is that McVittie, who helped to set the wheels in motion for the blanket ban of channel 37 in the U.S., never learned exactly why the FCC made the decision to flip its mindset on this issue. Racism? Against Latinos in 1963? Nah, couldn't be.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  The ban was precipitated by a case that happened to be a Spanish language channel, but not all channel 37s would have been in Spanish. The result was that a channel was barred across the entire country. It's a big leap to say that the official rationale is bogus and go to "FCC is racist against Latinos and decided to bar the channel for everyone".

quink 6y ago

No one is bothering to fix Arecibo...

causality0 6y ago
https://www.elnuevodia.com/english/news/story/8-million-approved-to-rebuild-the-arecibo-observatory-telescope/ https://www.elnuevodia.com/english/news/story/8-million-appr... http://www.naic.edu/NGAT/NGAT_WhitePaper_v2_01022021.pdf http://www.naic.edu/NGAT/NGAT_WhitePaper_v2_01022021.pdf
- quink 6y ago
  $8 million will go nowhere towards rebuilding it, at best that’d suffice for part of a clean-up. And from Universe Today: > If Channel 37 were ever lost to TV, the gap would mean a loss of information about the distribution of cosmic rays in the Milky Way galaxy and rapidly rotating stars called pulsars created in the wake of supernovae. Closer to home, observations in the 608-614 MHz band allow astronomers track bursts of radio energy produced by particles blasted out by solar flares traveling through the sun’s outer atmosphere. Some of these can have powerful effects on Earth. No wonder astronomers want to keep this slice of the electromagnetic spectrum quiet. For more details on how useful this sliver is to radio astronomy, click HERE. Originally the allocation may have been for that site. That doesn’t really matter.

Falling3 6y ago

Sounds like a beautiful example of a false dichotomy.