Back of the Book links for the May 27, 2002 program

It's very early on Friday morning 6/7/2002 00:25:07 and this Web page is done. Of course I bribed high government officials again to give people off from work the day after this program expressly so they could listen to it. Well, you got to hear some of it. At 1:38 AM (EDT) our transmitter went off the air for about 8 minutes after which we came back on with the auxiliary transmitter at only 4% power! The auxiliary transmitter went off a couple of more times and we never got up to full power again, so this program got really messed up.

There had been no warning or notification about this at all, and it may have been done because this was early on Memorial Day and the commercial radio channels consider this time to be something they don't care about. Ironically, the tape of Bill Ferrar's Jazz Sampler program which preceded this program was from November 2001, and Bill announced that we'd go down for transmitter maintenance at one o'clock! Egad! Prophecy via tape selection!

As always there are different tenses for the verbs below because some of this was written before the program and some was written after it.

Here is the latest on the saga of Pacifica. I have updated that page with stuff about the recent meeting of the interim Pacifica National Board in Los Angeles, CA, along with a couple of other items.

As we move into the next phase of the Pacifica Crisis some listeners are more convinced than ever that only open elections will provide a long range cure for the Pacifica Crisis. Here's an election proposal.

Our colleagues from Off the Hook now have both a RealAudio streaming web cast operating, and a new MP3 stream both of which were working at about 10:16 PM last night. The MP3 feed is now the preferred feed.

Pickles of the North visited “Ground Zero” on Sunday. She'll be talking about that on the program.

Unfortunately, it was during this segment that our transmitter went down without warning. Perhaps we'll be able to get Pickles of the North to talk about this some more on a future program.

We welcomed Uncle Sidney Smith back to the air during this program. Uncle Sidney told us about his discovery of an Antarctic Web site that he's become enamored with. He's feeling fine and by now has already done his first episode of Carrier Wave since January. He says that in the near future he will have a Web site up!

I went and spent money I don't really have for a huge hard drive this past week. I'm now running a Western Digital WD1200JB as my second hard drive. At last I've got room again! I wonder how long it will take me to fill this one up with stuff?

On the last program I talked about a Supreme Court ruling that allowed the First Amendment to live a little longer. Well, another Supreme Court ruling has left the so called Child Online Protection Act (COPA) alive, but just barely.

The New York Times referred to the decision as “fractured” and “messy” because although it was an 8 to 1 decision to send the case back to the Federal Appeals Court in Philadelphia, the Justices reasons in their briefs were all over the place. The reason for sending it back was a technical legal one: they wanted that lower court to study the issue more. The good news is that from what the various Justices said it appears that the COPA hasn't made a lot of friends among them. They have also continued the injunction against enforcement of COPA.

COPA would simply smash and weaken the First Amendment of the Constitution and would actually be unworkable in practice. It would, however, mess up a lot of people's lives before it got dumped if it were to be allowed to be enforced. It's endorsed by groups like the American Center for Law and Justice, a Pat Robertson appendage.

Well, the mail got all bollixed up as well as everything else on the program by the transmitter going off the air and then only operating at 4% power. We only got to a couple of pieces of E-mail, one each from Fernando and Susan-Not-From-Lomng-Island, and here they are.

Subject: The Supermegashow
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 20:44:11 -0700 (PDT)
From: Fernando
To: rpm@glib.com

Dear R.Paul,

Recently, I appeared in public. I was talking about myself and signing and selling copies of my work to my fans. People came with their children and I looked at them and they spoke to me out loud. It went well and I made a few bucks which I really need badly. Aside from myself, there were other celebrities in attendence. Did you see Star Wars? For me, part of the fun of making these appearances is getting to look at these other stars whom I have watched on my television.

Did you watch “Batman,” R.? Julie Newmar, who played Catwoman on the 1960's television show, “Batman,” was one of the celebrities I got to look at and I am sorry to report that she has hit the wall. She's no longer as hot as she was when she was Catwoman. This was a real disappointment for me, R. I wish she had taken better care of herself. She used to be a solid broad. My memories of Catwoman filling out that tight black catsuit are the fondest of my life. In spite of this, she seemed nice.

Do you like Star Wars, R? For me, one of the biggest thrills of this entire three-day event was meeting C-3PO who played C-3PO in all of the Star Wars movies. I am a HUGE Star Wars fan and for me this was a MAJOR event. I think I embarrassed myself gushing all over him but he was always a hero to me. I bought an autographed photo from him for twenty-five dollars and I asked him to sign it. I told him I was very ambivalent to meet him and afterwards I proudly told everyone I am incontinent. I also saw the elderly midget who plays R2-D2 but I did NOT talk to him.

On another note, R, in a recent broadcast, I was disturbed to hear you and Pickles call me a troller. I believe this is an attempt to undermine my credibility and the validity of my political viewpoints. In spite of this, you do have the decency to answer my questions and tolerate and hear out some of my opinions and for this I thank you. You may not believe my sincerity but at least you listen to me and that means a lot to me. It is unfortunate, though, that we are not as close as I thought we were. Please appreciate the effort I put into listening to your show. I stay up very late and that causes me to fall asleep alot during the daytime. Plus, the radio is in my mother's room so I have to fight with her because she keeps waking up, but soon I will have my own radio. I'm saving up.

Tomorrow, I plan on attending a horror convention. I won't be appearing as a guest, but I will be there as a fan. I will report to you on that show in a later missive.

Thank you,
Fernando
Florham Park, NJ

Subject: Just Keeping in Touch
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 10:58:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: Susan
To: "R. Paul Martin" rpm@glib.com

Hi R. Paul -

So, what's up with your eye? Is the pressure too low something under 5 or so, and what test are they doing in 4 months? Eye stuff shouldn't be delayed that long. Even the U.S. Government should have figured that out by now.

As far as Pacifica and WBAI politics go. I give up. Listeners will likely have to sue again. Maybe I'll go back to the 20 year cycle of dis-involvement and then becoming active again. Another 20 year break may help me forget how frustrating this all is like it did last time. But. the California plan to sell BAI may just happen first. Sorry, those are the sentiments I was kicked out of the Movement for. Yes, I'm being sarcastic again - the real reason why I was kicked out.

I was very sorry to hear of North American Shirley's death. Of course, I never met her either, but it does feel like I've lost a member of the WBAI family. A lot of people I know are going to miss her wonderful sense of humor as I used to forward many of the very humorous e-mails she sent you. They were well appreciated outside of the WBAI/Back of the Book community. One of the research articles she sent you actually led me to become a subscriber to Medscape where I've obtained some invaluable info about opthalmology issues and even read some stuff about reverse SAD! I'm sure I'm not the only listener who feels this loss.

We're having another beautiful Spring here in Virginia. Things are going fairly well. But, of course since the days got longer and the weather warmer, I'm feeling more and more depressed. Oh well, it's past time to go back to sleep.

Happy Tax Day!

Susan

There are a lot of issues that we can't talk about on the air at WBAI. But there is an Internet list called “Free Pacifica!” which you can subscribe to, and these issues are discussed there. If you subscribe to it you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list. You will also be able to send messages to the list.

The above list has occasionally produced a high volume of E-mail because of the attention that these issues have drawn. If you would prefer to subscribe to a low volume list that only provides announcements of events related to these issues then subscribe to the FreePac mailing list.

Another list that's sprung up is the “NewPacifica” mailing list. This one is very lively and currently includes over 400 subscribers coast to coast. Being lively, of course, it sometimes also gets a bit nasty. All sorts of things are happening on this list. With that warning in mind, you can look at the NewPacifica list here, and you can join the list from that Web page too, although you'll have to deal with Yahoo! to do so.

There is also the more WBAI specific “Goodlight” Web based message board. This one has a great many people posting anonymously and there's also an ancillary board that's just totally out of hand.

The “Goodlight” Web based message board has expanded to cover all Pacifica stations.