If Ambrose Bierce had been a ham...

Ambrose on 20m phone in 1875

Ambrose Bierce was a Civil War veteran and a writer. His experiences at the Battle of Shiloh provided fodder and inspiration for numerous stories that would be written 25 years later, in the 1890's.

Most of these stories were written metaphorically, to capture the somber essence of war rather than its literal realities.

As such, they are dark, moody and macabre, with Bierce's writing often being compared to that of Poe.

His best-known story is Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge which, 70 years later, was made by Rod Serling into an episode of The Twilight Zone (you can watch that episode here).

Bierce's cynical wit (and refreshingly sardonic humor) can more quickly be discerned by a quick read of a few examples from his Devil's Dictionary:

• Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
• Circus: A place where horses, lions and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting foolishly.
• Conservative: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
• Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
• Egotist: A person of low taste; therefore, more interested in himself than in me.
• Funeral: A pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching their undertaker.
• Guillotine: A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders, with good reason.
• Imagination: A warehouse of facts, with Poet and Liar in joint ownership.
• Marriage: A household consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
• Noise: A stench in the ear. The chief product of civilization.
• Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

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If ham radio had existed during Bierce's time, these might have been his observations:

Ham radio operator: people of a broad range of diverse cultures, ethnicities, education levels, and socio-economic backgrounds who use radios to talk about radios.

QRPer: a radio operator who places increased difficulty of communication on the other party, then claims the bragging rights of a successful contact for himself.

QRP watering holes: Frequencies on which QRP POTA ops frequently operate in order to bring 100-watt hunters to QRP frequencies, thereby negating their intended purpose.

DXpedition: An event whereby the concept of mutual respect is suspended so that a swath of frequencies, previously occupied, can be used to provide false signal reports at a high rate of speed.

FT8: a method by which computers minimally communicate with each other via RF while human owners congratulate themselves for the "QSO".

Award chasers: people for whom a 3rd party's recognition of an accomplishment matters more than their own knowledge of the accomplishment.

Online Elmer: people who disagree with each other on whether manners and tact should be employed when explaining that you don't know what you're doing.

Pronoun confusion: not knowing whether it is the center pin or the inner ring that denotes the gender of an N-connector. 

Organ recital: conversations, usually on 2m repeaters, in which the operators describe the nonfunctionality of their liver, kidneys and intestinal tract.

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