The last column I wrote several issues back, was occasioned by Ensign Bailey's distracting preparations for his wedding. This time, I am happy to report, our Electronic Winchell has completed the circuit of his affections and is now enjoying a leave-honeymoon.

Thus, once again I stir from the obscurity of the "behind-the-scenes" life which is a Yeoman's fate, and take up my eager quill. All stray feathers resulting therefrom may be returned to the Navy Office.

Overexposed

For a long time I have been exposed to the various technical and electronic expressions thrown so carelessly about in conversation by our modern Marconis. Once foreign words like "oscillator", "impedance", and "curve" (this last foreign only in the professional sense) are now familiar jargon to me, though I must confess a slight haze still obscures their true meaning. My first contact with these "cathodic terms" produced some strange reactions.

For example, take the expression "inverse feedback". Upon hearing this term used for the first time I could not help but conjure up the idea that it referred to a designing female who, intent upon her prey, cajoles an unsuspecting officer into accepting a home-cooked dinner date and then on the pretext of "ration coupons, you know" drags him off to the luxuriant confines of some expensive restaurant, there to prove herself to be an "inverse feedback--or feedbag"--depending upon your mood and your pronunciation.

Just a Headache

To me, "capacitive reactance" will always be another way of expressing a hangover. For just as the amount of capacitive reactance depends on the value of capacitance and the frequency, so does the resultant morning-after depend upon the same factors in a similar manner--the only difference being in the former we are discussing electric currents, in the latter liquid currents.

* * *

An outing for the wives of the officers and staff of the Electronics Schools and Soil Engineers will be held on Wednesday, July 7 at the home of Mrs. Phillip J. Finnegan, Preston Beach, Swampscott. If the weather is bad it will be delayed till Friday. Final arrangements will be made at the regular meeting of the wives next Tuesday.