Back of the Book links for the January 10, 2000 program

What a screw up! As I was desperately trying to get the first version of this page on line Sunday night I couldn't do it! My Internet Service Provider (ISP) was taken over in 1998, by the company RCN. Unfortunately, RCN, which is an AOL wanna-be, a Time-Warner wanna-be and a Bell Atlantic wanna-be all rolled into one half assed company, is mostly interested in expanding rather than in providing service and right now RCN can't handle the business it has. So even though I was trying for quite a while, the simple act of putting this and some other Web pages up here on my site proved impossible Sunday night. Sorry about that. If you have any suggestions for a new ISP for me, let me know. So at least a version of this page is up here. I'll be adding to it more over the next couple of days.

I want to state that the above was written before news of the AOL/Time-Warner merger/takeover was announced. Odd coincidence.

Merry New Year! It's still the 20^th century. Why not celebrate this special year for what it is?

I got through some of the mail backlog on the program, and I've put some of the E-mail up here.

I came through the New Year just fine, except for the big problems I've been having with my ISP (see above). Nothing much happened due to the Y2K bug, and there were not 85 million dead in the Unites States due to it, as was predicted by a self styled “expert” on WBAI's air once or twice. Maybe we ought to air this tape again, but without a credulous host. There's so little intentional comedy on WBAI these days.

What's bizarre to me is that some people are complaining that nothing much happened! They apparently wanted big disaster, as per the silly TV movies, even after billions of dollars were spent to avoid disasters due to the Y2K bug! TV, an inferior medium to radio, seems to breed a mentality that thinks that everything is entertainment. A dissociation between TV movie fantasy and “Ouch! That Hurts!” reality seems to infect a lot of people.

I talked about the political feeding frenzy swirling around this Elián González kid on the air, and my take is that he should be sent to his father in Cuba. Not to do so would completely implode all of the efforts that have been made over the years to get American born kids back from other countries. In many cases those kids have been spirited away to another country by a parent. American law considers this to be kidnapping! This González kid was spirited away by his mother, who died in the commission of this felony and now Elián's grand-uncle claims a better right to custody of him than his father has. The Immigration and Naturalization Service made the right decision here and the kid should be sent back home. Of course the latest is that the INS is not going to try and force the issue. because, in what I consider a very odd circumstance, a state court in Florida has said the kid has to stay until a March 6, custody hearing at which that state court demands the father be present! State courts cannot overrule Federal decisions. More politics.

Of course once the politicians entered the picture they brought their usual overburden of mud and muck with them. I think that both sides of the political fight over this poor kid, both the American politicians and the Cuban politicians, stink.

This idiot Congresscritter Dan Burton (R. Indiana) has used his power of subpoena to keep the kid here so he can testify before Congress. Yeah, a 6 year old who doesn't speak English is to testify. What a crock. Burton, like all the other politicians involved, just has his publicity suckers out looking to trade the blood, misery and hardships of others for his own self aggrandizement in this election year. He does seem to be an odd choice for Chairman of the House Government Reform Committee.

Burton drew some attention to himself during the White House Blowjob Witch Hunt a while back. I wonder how he'd behave if someone took a kid of his, any kid of his, and fled to another country?

Thanks to a listener, I'm now able to direct you to a Web page for those “Air Core” cooking pots and the infomercial that hawks them that I spoke about on the air. These are the ones that violate the law of conservation of energy, and the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The bottom line is that you cannot leave hot stuff lying around for hours without it cooling down, and when food is cooked it uses up the heat that cooks it. It's a scam. And do you see the price of these things? It's almost $400! It's a big scam.

I'm still trying to catch up with the mail. Below is an interesting development sent to us by North American Shirley. It does provide an alternative to the generally accepted idea that humans evolved on the savannahs of east Africa.

Subject: Lions in the Grass
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 09:57:05 -0400
From: North American Shirley
To: rpm@glib.com

... actually according to current theory we might not have evolved on the savanna learning to watch out for lions in the grass since the diet of the savanna has insufficient omega-3's to account for the rapid brain expansion of early hominids (omega-3's EPA and DHA being essential for brain development even now). Instead, we must have evolved near the seacoast with a diet higher in marine sources, at least according to current theory; references, as always, available on request;
Love,
North American Shirley
"NeuroInfoBabe"

Subject: Homo docosahexaenoicus
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 14:41:19 -0400
From: North American Shirley
To: "rpm@glib.com" <rpm@glib.com>

and .... references available withOUT request, too ...

>> The African savanna ecosystem of the large mammals and primates was associated with a dramatic decline in relative brain capacity associated with little docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which is required for brain structures and growth. The biochemistry implies that the expansion of the human brain required a plentiful source of preformed DHA. The richest source of DHA is the marine food chain, while the savanna environment offers very little of it. Consequently Homo sapiens could not have evolved on the savannas. Recent fossil evidence indicates that the lacustrine and marine food chain was being extensively exploited at the time cerebral expansion took place and suggests the alternative that the transition from the archaic to modern humans took place at the land/water interface. Contemporary data on tropical lakeshore dwellers reaffirm the above view with nutritional support for the vascular system, the development of which would have been a prerequisite for cerebral expansion. Both arachidonic acid and DHA would have been freely available from such habitats providing the double stimulus of preformed acyl components for the developing blood vessels and brain. The n-3 docosapentaenoic acid precursor (n-3 DPA) was the major n-3-metabolite in the savanna mammals. Despite this abundance, neither it nor the corresponding n-6 DPA was used for the photoreceptor nor the synapse. A substantial difference between DHA and other fatty acids is required to explain this high specificity. Studies on fluidity and other mechanical features of cell membranes did not reveal a difference of such magnitude between even alpha-linolenic acid and DHA sufficient to explain the exclusive use of DHA. We suggest that the evolution of the large human brain depended on a rich source of DHA from the land/water interface. We review a number of proposals for the possible influence of DHA on physical properties of the brain that are essential for its function. TITLE: Evidence for the unique function of docosahexaenoic acid during the evolution of the modern hominid brain.
AUTHORS: Crawford MA; Bloom M; Broadhurst CL; Schmidt WF; Cunnane SC; Galli C;
Gehbremeskel K; Linseisen F; Lloyd-Smith J; Parkington J
AUTHOR AFFILIATION: Institute of Brain Chemistry, London, United Kingdom.

Next we have an E-mail from a listener named Alan who covers a variety of topics, and he also has an URL he suggests you visit.

Subject: Fat, Meat, Cake and a Big White Bullet
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 18:00:04 -0500
From: A l a n.....
To: rpm@glib.com

R. Paul

I heard the Jean Shepherd show you did last week. I hope you can have a little will power, why, the horseshoe crab probably only has a little willpower and look how long it/he? has lasted.

I was in the village last weekend and walked into a nice bakery, say the black and white big cookies, yummy, but did not get any, my money is my willpower.

I think it is not a crap shoot to hear BAI on the net now. The few times I have tried, it WORKS, it's alive!

Why don't BAI sell it's fucking air rights, let the shitheads, Ford, Berry, etc. win. And make a great hard to beat website. But, then again, we will not be able to listen when outside walking or in the car. But, what a great site 90 million dollars would make.

¦Oh, and if the rulers of pacifica one day read this, I am sorry, one day, ¦ ¦in the future, I might not think of you ALL as shitheads, so don't put me ¦ ¦on your shit list, now, thanks.

Do you see anything strange about this picture? (right side)

www.earthchangestv.com/egypt/

I saw the art show at the Brooklyn Museum, you gotta go, esp. on a weekend, lots of people. The Ofili painting is beautiful.

At the entrance, when my bag was getting a quick feel, not very good, too many people on line and only one guy at a time having to look in it, so the entrance security is lax. And I did not really have to check it, they just asked hard for us to check it.

The show was more interesting that I thought it was going to be. When I was there at the front entrance, 2 guys came back after seeing the show and handed the cop their claim tickets to get back their pocket knives. Both kids were European Amer. and in their 20s. The cop checking all the bags was E.A, in his 40s, with light graying hair, high rank. Later when I was leaving, there were two chubby African Amer. cops at the door, one looking in the bags, the other just looking on.

When you get to the main painting by Ofili, there was a plain cloths guard standing next to it, he was in middle aged and in a good mood. I was talking a little to him, but he just nodded, he was not allowed to be distracted by talking. I said, they should just have a good copy of the painting, that way, you would not be needed and I mentioned that the painting is very beautiful.

The next room is very small and there are 3 other paintings by Ofili. You could if you really wanted, to touch them, put your hand behind the canvas, no big deal, but the main yellow one, there is that guy and there is a floor to ceiling Plexiglas screen in front of it.

Lots to see in the show and if you go, try to spend some time on the 3rd floor in the Ancient Egypt Art wings, great classic things there.

Alan

It turned out that the security at the “Sensations” exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum was not as good as it needed to be, since some old religious bigot got to smear the painting with some white paint of his own.

And, no, I do not think that the picture he refers to is a rocket ship. There's just too much evidence that humans evolved here on Earth, whether inland or along some shore. The pointy white thing in the picture is some piece of statuary, I think. And if the ancient Egyptians were space travelers then why did they only have Bronze Age technology? Why have no engines or any sort of advanced machinery been found among their artifacts? Why did they have to be introduced to the horse by the Hyksos (the hard way)? And why did they get invaded by the Hittites, who introduced them to the Iron Age (the hard way)? Nah, piece of statuary or something.

And, finally, we have this E-mail from a listener regarding the program I did about my memories of the late Jean Shepherd.

Subject: Your take on Jean Shepherd
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 04:04:28 EDT
From: EZutrax
To: rpm@glib.com

Talk about hitting the nail on the head. You make accurate observations about Shepherd as regards that period when he appeared live at the “Limelight” on 7th Avenue South (not some other venue). I was there several times. In fact, one night, I witnessed an episode in the life of Jimi Hendrix. He was there, not on a night when Shep appeared, and was accompanied by a number of his friends and old sidemen from the Isley Brothers (who come from Newark, NJ anyway and were tunnel rats just like I was- well, not just like, they had Mercedes cars and I took the PATH train. So, almost.....). They all sat at a big booth/table with some, let us say, AUTHORITATIVE white gents. In one Hendrix biography, they say this is the night that Jimi got his pink slip as an artist and human being signed over to the mob. It may have led to his ultimate death, who knows? In any case, Hendrix never had much luck when he came back to the US from England. After he got out of the paratroopers (Army), he should just have stayed across the Atlantic. Alas. But that's just more irresponsible conspiracy drivel-despite the fact that I was an eyewitness. Back to Shepherd. Some years ago, it seems, his real beloved, that lady, Lee, passed away and Shep got hit with a ton of bricks. If you remember, he always used to talk to his producer, and it was, “Lee, this...” and “Lee, that...” and so on. That was the only one of his engineers/producers he ever called by name, to my (now non-conspiratorial) recollection. He lived in Bucks County, PA for many years in the 1980s and 1990s. I suppose he moved to Florida after Lee's death. As you may know, Shepherd was a crack amateur pilot in small planes, just as he was a ham radio buff and even, for a few years, a Citizens' Band maven in his EastCentral Pennsylvania neighborhood. I forget his “handle” but I talked to him once or twice. His association with NJ Public TV was nothing short of fantastic for NJPTV, his fans and honestly, for Shepherd himself. He did a show about the little byways and museums, the antique spots and interesting historical places that functioned in Jersey and some of which still functioned to his (1980s at least) day. I missed him when he left the old, fabled WOR-AM, home of the Gamblings, the Fitzgeralds (Ed & Pegeen) and so many other truly legendary broadcasters. Though he kept it up on NJTV, it was never enough. When I was a kid (born 11/16/51), I used to go to bed (ostensibly), but then listen to Shepherd from 10:15 to 11:00 PM--OR--from 11:15 to 12:00. He was on at both those times over the years. I had one of those little Japanese transistor radios with an earphone jack--how primitive that seems today. But how many nights did I fall asleep before shutting it off and find the batteries dead next morning. My dad knew what it was about, he would only bring it up when he really wanted to punish me. He'd say “No radio for 2 weeks”--But we both knew he meant “No Shepherd.” He was a fan, too. We used to go to the beach with all the uncles and aunts when Shep was on WOR on Sunday afternoons. They were all hip to it, and laughed at me and my brother for our thinking that we could dig it, too. Well, the joke was on them-my Dad used to look at me and wink when that stuff happened. He knew I was way before my time and loved it. Anyway, R.P.M., I've gotten wound up way too much on this topic. Could you do one thing? Please print this out and give a copy to Maxwell J. His treatment of Shepherd and “old-time” radio in general is worthy of nothing but respect, compliments and criticism of some of that “punko beyondo” music he must tape at neo-3rd Reich meetings in the heart of the Fatherland. Oy! I've got lots more stream of consciousness which I save you from. Keep up the good, glib work. Best Regards,
(EZutrax)

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.