God, I love shortwave radio.

It does tend to bring out the fringe element.

Yosemite Sam is, at least, not that creepy. What is creepy are the numbers stations, which most people seem to agree are a means of relaying coded information to international spies worldwide.

But man, shortwave is cool. We used to have a set in the 24-hour study room at my college's library. Being a night owl, I would often be sitting down to study at 10 or 11 PM. I'd sit at the shortwave carrell and work, just twiddling the station knob here and there to see what weirdness I could find. And you can find all imaginable weirdness.

And in between the stations you get that wonderful whistling, staticky, space noise that we still associate with radio even though FM doesn't do it.

My little shortwave radio kept me sane living in Indonesia last year, and now I'm moving somewhere where the BBC World Service is on FM...yawn. I'll miss having to point the antenna at the floor under the cabinets or something to get the best signal.

Always been more of a Fudd man, myself. I guess you could say I'm a bit of an anti-Yosemite.

Me too!

I was thinking about getting a set but I live in an apartment building and I don't think I'd get good signals out of the kind of portable set I could actually afford.

So for now, web radio is going to have to suffice.