Learning the NATO Phonetic Alphabet

2026-03-12T21:19:18.662+00:00

A while back, I was on a phone call with a tech support person. I forget why, but he needed to read me a code over the phone. When he did this, he did, “A as in alpha, X as in x-ray, F as in foxtrot,” etc.</p>

So, when I had to read one to him, I did the same thing, but I was embarrassed to discover that I sometimes couldn’t think of a good word for a given letter. My mind went straight for longer or weirder words – “B as in botulism, V as in vicarious…” My inner filter knew that would be weird, so I just seemed like an idiot who can’t think of a word that starts with B.</p>

Therefore, I thought it would be a good idea to learn the NATO Phonetic Alphabet – the standard words used for each letter by radio operators. Here’s the list, copied from the wikipedia page</a>:</p>

Alfa</td>	November</td></tr>
Bravo</td>	Oscar</td></tr>
Charlie</td>	Papa</td></tr>
Delta</td>	Quebec</td></tr>
Echo</td>	Romeo</td></tr>
Foxtrot</td>	Sierra</td></tr>
Golf</td>	Tango</td></tr>
Hotel</td>	Uniform</td></tr>
India</td>	Victor</td></tr>
Juliett</td>	Whiskey</td></tr>
Kilo</td>	Xray</td></tr>
Lima</td>	Yankee</td></tr>
Mike</td>	Zulu </td></tr> </table> I ~~built</s> vibe coded a tool for practicing these. Once you think you know them, check it out:</p>~~ ~~NATO Phonetic Alphabet Practice Tool</a></p>~~ ~~It shows you 6 random letters, and you think of how to say them with the NATO alphabet, then click/tap to see the answer. Kind of fun, if you have a particularly nerdy sense of fun!</p>~~ Deeply Nested Quotes 2026-03-03T14:11:44.326+00:00 For some reason, I like coming across places in literature where the author has to nest quotes a bunch. I noticed the other day that if you were writing something where you needed to quote Genesis 32:4 (just that one verse!), you would need 4 levels of quotation marks.</p> Jacob is sending some messengers to Esau. Quoting from verse 4: “He also commanded [the messengers] saying, ‘Thus you shall say to my lord Esau: “Thus says your servant Jacob, ‘I have sojourned with Laban…’”’”</p> Of course, if you quote this blog post, you’d need 5 levels!</p> P.S.</a> I googled for examples of deeply nested quotes and found this one, also from the Bible, which is 5 levels deep (copied from here</a>):</p> </a> Also, in my Genesis quote above, the browser initially mangled which quotation marks are opening and which are closing. I had to carefully edit the quote using HTML entities (`“</code> for a left double quote, etc.) to get it to look right. Which was totally worth it for this extremely consequential blog post!</p> </div> </div>` Sneeze History: 2025 2026-01-01T23:08:24.427+00:00 On December 31, 2024, my daughter and I decided that we would count our sneezes in 2025. We installed an app called Counter Tally Count</a>, which makes it easy to count things. I have a counter called “Sneezes,” and every time I tap it, the number increments. Behind the scenes, it is stored with a timestamp, so I can see the exact time of every sneeze throughout the year.</p> My daughter did the same. Today, we both exported our results from the year, and now you can see the results on our 2025 Sneeze Dashboard!</a></p> She sneezed nearly four times</em> as much as I did, and her biggest single day was over sixty</em> sneezes! Mine was a mere 23.</p> Throughout the year, when I told people we were tracking sneezes, they invariably said something like, “Oh, that way you can tell when your allergies are worst.” No. We did it because it was fun. We know when our allergies are bad without an app.</p> I won’t be counting my sneezes again this year, but I’m glad we did it in 2025!</p> P.S.</a> After writing this, I came across Sneezes, Ranked</a>. I recognize most of these, especially:</p> 2. The Double</b> One to loosen the debris, one to eject it. It follows a logical arc. You pay your taxes. You rotate your tires. You are boring, but you are necessary. </blockquote> I am definitely a double sneezer.</p> Also, if I come out of a dark area (like a movie theater) into the bright sunlight, I often sneeze. In college, my friend Jennifer informed me that not everyone does that. In fact, she said, this phenomena has been given a name: Autosomal-dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst syndrome… ACHOO! Aka the photic sneeze reflex</a>, although that’s not as fun.</p> Some people sneeze when they feel full after a big meal. This is called… Snatiation</a>. I guess you have to have a weird sense of humor to study sneezing.</p> </div> </div> A.I. Family Photos 2025-12-19T21:33:22.854+00:00 Earlier this year, my daughter painted little watercolor avatars of everyone in our family:</p> </a> Messing around today, I moved them into a group arrangement, then used Google Gemini to add this watercolor background:</p> </a> That worked out well, so I wondered what would happen if I used A.I. to make the image more detailed. Here’s what we would look like in a low-budget YouTube animation (made by robots! No smiling!):</p> </a> This is the higher budget version, I guess. Although, to me, this image screams “A.I. generated!” more than the others:</p> </a> And finally, doesn’t this look like a TV drama about a family… with a terrible secret?</p> </a> If that’s who they’re casting to play us on TV, not bad! However, call me sentimental, but I still prefer the watercolor version…</p> Éarendel and Advent 2025-12-11T12:23:04.212+00:00 As I write this, it is the second week of Advent, so here is an interesting connection I just read about between the Advent hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel</em> and the writing of J. R. R. Tolkien. It’s a bit of a journey.</p> Going back to the 8th century, the Church has sung the “O Antiphons” during Vespers services in the final days of Advent leading up to Christmas. Antiphon</em> means “sung responsively,” and each “O Antiphon” is just a short chant that the congregation historically sang before and after the Magnificat</em>.</p> They are called “O” Antiphons because they address Christ as “O Something</em>”. They are:</p> 17 December: O Sapientia (O Wisdom)</li> 18 December: O Adonai</li> 19 December: O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse)</li> 20 December: O Clavis David (O Key of David)</li> 21 December: O Oriens (O Dawn of the East)</li> 22 December: O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations)</li> 23 December: O Emmanuel</li> </ul> (Reading the first letters of these titles up from the bottom, they form a Latin acrostic, Ero cras</em>, meaning “Tomorrow, I will be [there]” – a fitting theme for Advent!)</p> I want to point out two works that were derived from these ancient O Antiphons. One is a 10th century Anglo-Saxon poem called Crist</em>, and the other is the hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel</em>.</p> In the 10th century, a poet (traditionally Cynewulf) wrote Crist</em>, an Advent poem based on the O Antiphons. This is part of a larger work known as the Exeter Book</em></a>, which also includes Crist II</em> (about the Ascension) and Crist III</em> (about the final judgement). Anyway, Crist</em> will come up again in a moment.</p> Likewise, in the 12th century, the antiphons were paraphrased into the hymn Veni, Veni, Emmanuel</em>. In 1851, this was translated into English by John Mason Neale as the hymn, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel</em>.</p> So, keeping all that in mind: in the fall of 1914, J. R. R. Tolkien was visiting his aunt at a farmhouse in Gedling, Nottinghamshire. Naturally, he had brought along some ancient Anglo-Saxon poetry to read (this is what people did before TV and smartphones). Sitting in the farmhouse, he came across this line, which gave him “a curious thrill, as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep”:</p> </a> Reading from the fifth word in that top line, this is:</p> Eala earendel, engla beorhtast, ofer middangeard monnum sended</i></p> Hail Éarendel, brightest of angels, Sent to men over middle-earth…</p> Tolkien wrote</a>, “There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English.”</p> “With hints like these in the back of his mind – though without conscious Christian intent, since it was mainly the sound of the words that enchanted him – Tolkien composed a poem, The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star</em>, in which Éarendel steers his ship of burning light across the sky in pursuit of the sun, in endless round, until cold and age end his quest.”1</a></sup></p> </a> This one line from Crist</em> was the imaginative seed for all of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth myths and stories, including The Lord of the Rings</em>.</p> So, can we find this line about Éarendel in O Come, O Come, Emmanuel</em>? Indeed we can!</p> In Old English, Éarendel means something like “radiant morning light,” “dawn-star,” or “shining one.” This passage of Crist</em> is based on the fifth of the O Antiphons, “O Oriens”:</p> O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae et sol iustitiae:</em> O Rising Dawn, brightness of eternal light and sun of justice…</p> </a> And this “O Oriens” antiphon comes through in verse 3 of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel</em> as:</p> O come, Thou Dayspring</strong> from on high, And cheer us by Thy drawing nigh; Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, And death’s dark shadows put to flight.</p> Oriens, from the Latin orier</em>, to appear, to arise. The Morning Star, the Dayspring, Éarendel!</p> In my church, we sing the first verse of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel</em> during the first week of Advent, then we add a verse each Sunday leading up to Christmas. So this coming Sunday, when we sing “O come, Thou Dayspring…”, I’ll be picturing Christ, the dawning light, “sent to men over middle-earth.”</p> P.S.</a> In The Fellowship</em>, the authors ask, “who is Éarendel?” Typically, the “rising sun” is Christ, but there are 10th century homilies which use that term to refer to John the Baptist. He is the “morning star” (i.e., Venus), the forerunner of the dawn. “Tolkien thought he could see, in these associations, the baptized version of an astral myth.”</li> </ol> Not to over-exegete this (not my forte!), but if Éarendel is rightly understood as “rising sun,” I think it only makes sense that the term refers to Christ. See this part of the Song of Zachariah (Luke 1:76-79), in which “rising sun” is clearly refering to Christ:</p> And you, my child [i.e., John], will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun</strong> will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.</p> In the KJV, that “rising sun” is “dayspring”!</p> The “O Oriens” antiphon is sung on December 21, which is my anniversary! I could take this further and start calling my wife “Elwing” (Earendel’s wife and the mother of Elrond in the Silmarillion – not that I’ve read that, but I Googled it). Not sure that would go over, though…</li> </ol> </div> </div>Notes</h4> ^{1</sup> The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings</em>, 2015. Zeleski and Zeleski. This is where I first read about Tolkien, Éarendel, and the connection to the O Antiphons</em>.</p> </div>} Nikolai Gogol's Big Adventure 2025-12-03T01:50:16.261+00:00

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Learning the NATO Phonetic Alphabet

Deeply Nested Quotes

Sneeze History: 2025

A.I. Family Photos

Éarendel and Advent

Notes</h4> 1</sup> The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings</em>, 2015. Zeleski and Zeleski. This is where I first read about Tolkien, Éarendel, and the connection to the O Antiphons</em>.</p> </div>

Nikolai Gogol's Big Adventure

Notes</h4>
^{1</sup>
The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings</em>, 2015. Zeleski and Zeleski. This is where I first read about Tolkien, Éarendel, and the connection to the O Antiphons</em>.</p>
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