I remember before we had a TV. Some people still just had radio. A lot of the radios were the big, old console models, with glowing vacuum tubes in the guts. They could often receive short wave through an outside antenna. You could turn the dial and pick up foreign language and funny music along with eerie howling noises and static. Sometimes you could guess where the signal was coming from and sometimes not but you knew it was far away. For me, it was exciting.
Blogging can be like short wave signals in the old days. I never get a lot of hits but I get them from all over. They aren't all from huge population centers but they tend to be from relatively developed areas because that's where they weave the interwebs.
I got a hit a couple days ago from Ulan Bator. I remember reading a National Geographic article about Mongolia and Ulan Bator fifty years ago. It was pretty bleak but definitely the farthest place you could get away to and still be on Earth, except for maybe the Poles. The people seemed more alien than exotic, the streets were mud and there were yurts and herds of ponies, right in the middle of town. The People all looked like Korean dwarfs and dressed like Robinson Crusoe. I'm sure it's more developed now, almost everywhere is. It's still about as far away from here as you can get, in every imaginable way.
Somebody from Ulan Bator looked at my words. Cool.
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