Back of the Book — March 3, 2012


It's Sunday evening, March 4, 2012, 19:14, and I've updated this Web page with the list of program Web pages of the past that I've updated since the last program. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Well, we're back from our little hiatus. We'll try to cover a bunch of topics on this program as well as dig into the mail backlog. We're also updating old Web pages lately. So check back for the updates to this one!

Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of some of the WBAI LSB meetings? Well, I do, and I've recently updated all of that.

The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday, March 14th, 2012, at the “Brooklyn Commons” 388 Atlantic Avenue, 2nd floor between Hoyt & Bond Streets in Brooklyn.

At a previous meeting the WBAI LSB voted to hold its meetings on the second Wednesday of every month and/or the last Thursday of that month, subject to change by the LSB, which gives us the following schedule:

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. And you can see the status of the streams at any time by clicking here. The stream was working at 02:47 this morning. The station has a Flash stream here, make sure you enable Javascript so it can work for you.

New WBAI stream! WBAI has just put up an experimental stream for the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. This is a brand new, experimental stream. So if you have one of those devices you might try the link out. And let us know how it works for you one way or the other. That way the folks implementing it can iron out any kinks in the system.

WBAI is archiving the programs! Just go here and you'll be able to listen to this program any time for the next couple of months. You may need to scroll up one line to see the audio archive. Let me know if you find this feature useful.

If you want to listen to any part of the WBAI archive click here to go right to the archives. 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. Or to see only the two shows in this time slot click here.

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

In the table on the archive Web page Back of the Book and Saturday Morning With the Radio On 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!

In the Summer of 2009, there was a Pacifica National Board meeting held in New York. Here's the Web page I did about this PNB meeting and the amazing things that went on at it.

And the PNB has also met in Houston from Friday October 9th, through Sunday October 11th, 2009. The official audio archive of that meeting is here. It was not disrupted as the New York meeting was, although some of the same miscreants got out there to say stupid things.

The Pacifica National Board (PNB) met in Manhattan the weekend of October 1-3, 2010. The audio has been posted for the first day of the meeting, the second day of the meeting and the third day of the meeting.

ci_20120302_01 (17K)
Burlap along the railing around the Coney Island beach

Hello! Pickles of the North here. This is a picture I took Friday morning on the Coney Island boardwalk. It was a blustery morning that only got colder as the day wore on. The burlap and picket fencing wasn't up last December when R.Paul and I last visited the beach. We figure it was put there to keep the sand from blowing up onto the boardwalk. The dunes on the the walk were much smaller, so I guess it's been working.

Even on such a gray morning there were people strolling, jogging and pushing babies in strollers. And there were workers at many of the boardwalk concessions and the two amusement parks, getting things ready for the spring opening of Coney Island in April. There were also at least three people feeding the gulls, so there was a lot of noise and movement on the otherwise deserted beach. I really love the beach in wintertime, but I must admit I was missing R.Paul, who wasn't feeling tippy top and so wasn't with me on this outing. But we'll be back there together soon!

It's late Winter. Daylight Saving Time will resume next weekend, at 2:00 AM on Sunday, March 11, 2012. At that point the Sun will set an hour later than it has been. The Vernal Equinox will occur on Tuesday March 20, 2012, at 1:14 AM (ET). So not only will the Sun set later, but the days will be longer than the nights. Oh, I am looking forward to that! More about the season dates here.

There's a new plan for saving Pacifica.

This one has the following potentially troubling section: “Every station will engage in social networking training for all programmers (in most cases this is available via volunteer trainers as NY has already found). This should be required to maintain an on-air Pacifica presence. Programming played on the full-power stations will be required to maintain either a Facebook page or web-blog, announce programs via Twitter, and post audio archives with Google tag words. As station websites are redone to work better, programmer content will be integrated directly onto station websites.”

Jeez, I've been avoiding making being a part of that Zuckerberg guy's operation for quite a while now. I don't feel the need to make him even richer by participating. Facebook is about getting the users' personal information and selling it to companies for the purpose of spamming them with targeted messages. Mark Zuckerberg's company makes Facebook users into spam bait in a barrel. Does the Pacifica Foundation really want to do this?

Over the weeks since the last program I've updated some of the older program Web pages. Here's the list of those updated Web pages:

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. 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.

One popular list the “NewPacifica” mailing list. Founded October 31, 2000, this list is sometimes lively and as of mid-2011, has 687 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 Saturday Morning With the Radio On 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 © 2012, R. Paul Martin.