Hey, you. Pssst! Please sign up! Our club show-and-tell is coming soon. It won’t be a fun meeting this September 4th if you just wait and watch…plan to participate instead!

The contest calendar offers some great QSO parties for your enjoyment this weekend. The Hawaii QSO Party ends tomorrow evening; the islands are divided into 14 multiplier zones. There are lots of stations and locations to work. The Ohio QSO Party ends at 11 pm Dallas time today, so get moving.

And last but not at all least: the Kansas QSO Party is one of the most elaborate special events I’ve ever seen: it’s their 10th anniversary, and so there are special rules and tons of prizes, including t-shirts, sweaters, and antique radio postage stamps. Some of these prizes are not hard to earn at all, and they encourage “stamp collecting.” They have put 61 1×1 special event stations on the air this weekend, leaving me just a little bit amazed. Check them out and get working! Your time will be up at 3:00 pm tomorrow.

In ham radio news:

There is a special event station on the air this year marking the 250th anniversary of the voyage of Captain Cook. This was one of the great exploratory voyages of the 18th century, and it was begun with astronomy as it’s main goal. Check out the event QRZ page: https://www.qrz.com/db/gb250cc.

Amateur radio concerns are rising over plans to shut down WWV, WWVH, and WWVB. If you’re worried, please check out the story at arrl.org for more information.

In the world of science:

Don’t embarrass a macaw, you’ll hurt its feelings. Or maybe it’s not embarrassed, but it does want you to pay attention. No one is quite sure. At any rate, scientists are working to understand why birds blush.

And don’t forget: we’re in a drought. Put out some water for your neighborhood birds!

Evidence reported this month suggests that Egyptian mummies are older than, well, Egypt.

And if you like to eat, you’ll be impressed to know that the fiendishly complex genome of wheat has finally been sequenced. If you think having two copies of each chromosome is confusing, you should try out life with six. You’ll be seeing triple…or not seeing at all. The wheat genome is five times larger than the human genome, and understanding all the information from this new reference genome will take many years.