Web links related to the Back of the Book program of March 9, 2009


It's Sunday night, March 22, 2009 20:26, and this Web page is finished. Got entanglement? Well, we're just glad that Asteroid 2009DD45 missed us. We got to the below stuff and more, including some mail, on this program.

Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of many of the WBAI LSB meetings? Well, I do.

The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Thursday, March 26, 2009, at 7:00 PM, at the 6th Street Community Center, 638 East 6th St. between Ave. B & C, in Manhattan.

There was a meeting of the WBAI LSB held on Wednesday, February 18, 2009, at the Cathedral Parkway Towers Community Room, 125 W. 109th Street in Manhattan.

A large part of the meeting was taken up with the elections of people to the various committees of the Pacifica National Board (PNB). We also elected four people to the WBAI management Evaluation Committee. If this committee actually functions the WBAI LSB may do its first real evaluation of WBAI in the five years that the LSB has existed. The LSB is supposed to do these evaluations annually. The faction that had been in charge for years faked an evaluation a couple of years ago.

I gave the Treasurer's Report, and things are not looking so good. All around the Pacifica network on-air fund raising goals are being missed by an average of 20%. KPFA reported missing their goal by 15%. WBAI's plan to sub-let half our space and so reduce our rent by half starting in a couple of months looks like it's not going to happen. So we're going to have to raise more money than we'd planned. on behalf of the Finance Committee I brought the following motion to the LSB, “The finance committee recommends that the LSB establish a working group to investigate potential changes to the lease and possible new locations/spaces to move to.” Unfortunately, we ran out of time before we could get to vote on that motion. Next meeting I'm sure we'll pass it though.

The General Manager gave a report and said that the current 'thon was not going so well. Also, WBAI has not paid its January and February rent yet. I asked if this could cause a problem and he said that we're paying soon enough that the landlord isn't going to cause problems over the late rent payments. Well, I guess there are some up sides to a down economy.

Faction operatives fulminated and attacked some of us during the public comment section of the meeting. That faction sycophant whom I've mentioned before was in the midst of another of his vituperative rants against me when the Chair told him that he couldn't be so nasty. This ended up with my defending the faction sycophant's right to say whatever he wanted, within legal limits. in the end I moved to appeal the ruling of the chair and the LSB voted that the Chair couldn't stop this sort of speech. The faction sycophant picked right back up and continued attacking me, of course.

The LSB has voted to hold the rest of its meetings for 2009, on the following dates:

All of these meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.

WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.

WBAI has an official Web stream of what's on the air at any time! You can go here and pick which type of stream you want! If this stream isn't working let me know. The stream was working at 9:39 PM last night.

WBAI is archiving the programs! Just go here and you'll be able to listen to the program any time for the next couple of months. When you first go to the Web page you'll only see the WBAI programs for the past 7 days. If you want to see older programs you can click on one of the “See ALL Shows” buttons.

Back of the Book is now one of the programs that you can download, as well as listen to on line.

I'm glad to announce that with a new person doing the archives there have been some positive changes. In the table on that Web page Back of the Book and Carrier Wave are both in the Show column. The “Date and Category” column shows the date of the program. After the program I go in and write the details of the program and say which program it is. Of course I'd recommend that you just listen to both programs in this time slot!

We're going to talk about something called quantum entanglement on tonight's program. It's what Albert Einstein derisively referred to as “spooky action at a distance.” It's quite bizarre and runs counter to the way we think things work. But there's so much evidence that it's really there.

I plan to talk about it a little bit tonight and bring up some recent experiments that have involved quantum entanglement. What we think of as reality may just be an artifact of something larger, or much smaller.

There are a lot of links I can give you about quantum entanglement. There's really no telling which one might make sense to any one person though. So here are a few:

There are a lot more out there. Unfortunately quantum entanglement also attracts kooks. We'll try to avoid them tonight.

We're in late Winter now. Spring will begin with the Vernal Equinox on Friday, March 20th, 2009, at 7:44 AM (EDT). For more on the seasons and sub-seasons look at this. I'm really looking forward to some Spring weather.

Asteroid 2009DD45 came somewhat close to us over the past fortnight. Had it hit the Earth it would probably have blown up in the atmosphere and had much the same impact as the asteroid that exploded over Tunguska one hundred one years ago. They estimate that it would have hit over the Pacific Ocean. If it had blown up over a populated portion of it there would have been tragic consequences.

We talked about watching the launch of the Kepler Telescope, which is going to look for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.

The planet Saturn is at opposition right about now. Here's a Web page that tell you all about it and gives information about how to observe Saturn.

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even now that the gag rule has been lifted. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.

Probably the most popular 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 and official announcements are frequently posted there.

You can look at the NewPacifica list here, and you can join the list from that Web page too. If you subscribe to the “NewPacifica” mailing list you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list.

There is the option to receive a “digest” version of the list, which means that a bunch of messages are bundled into one E-mail and sent to you at regular intervals, this cuts down on the number of E-mails you get from the list. You will also be able to send messages to the list.

This list also has a Web based interface where you can read messages and from which you can post your own messages.

There is also the more WBAI specific “Goodlight” Web based message board. It is sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as “the bleepin' blue board,” owing to the blue background used on its Web pages. This one has many people posting anonymously and there's also an ancillary “WBAI people” board that's just totally out of hand. UPDATE: The bleepin' blue board has had to add a step for folks to get onto it because it's under attack by spambots. When you click on the above link you may be asked for a username and password. Type in Username: poster Password: enternow

When the computer in Master Control is working we sometimes have live interaction with people posting on the “Goodlight Board” during the program.

Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Carrier Wave alternates with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.

My voice mail number at WBAI is 212-209-2996. Leave a message.

You can also send me E-mail.



WBAI related links

WBAI Listeners' Web page

WBAI Management's official Web site


Back to the Back of the Book page

Back to my home page.

The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2009, R. Paul Martin.