Web links related to the Back of the Book program of January 16, 2006

Good grief, we're getting married! We'll be covering the below topics and more, plus mail and a voice mail message on the program tonight. One day I'm sure that I'll be updating all of these Web pages!

The next WBAI Local Station Board meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, February 15^th, 2006. Location to be announced.

Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of some of the WBAI LSB meetings? Well, I do. And I'll be updating it soon.

The January 10^th, Delegates' and LSB meetings were held in Brooklyn. The faction currently in charge showed up en masse very late and so the first of the two meetings began three quarters of an hour late! The very predictable elections for Pacifica Foundation Directors took place and the faction sent its choices in and the rest of us sent Patty Heffley.

We also still have the issue of the member whom the faction has illegally suspended. The faction allowed him to vote in the Delegates' meeting, which they'd denied him in the past, but they wanted him to go away for the LSB meeting. A number of us pointed out that his six month suspension was in its eleventh month, but the faction likes to use their majority to exact revenge on people for their faction boss so the faction refused to allow him to be a participating member.

The guy who always denounces me denounced me, along with another Staff member who's demanding fiscal accountability at WBAI. He seems to have backed off some of his charges since the last Finance Committee meeting. Perhaps he's starting to realize that I'm telling the truth about the faction.

I have written a statement about the constructive removal of a LSB member and sent it to the PNB, the WBAI LSB and various public mailing lists and bulletin boards.

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.

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Our colleagues from Off the Hook now have both a RealAudio streaming web cast operating, and a new MP3 stream. The MP3 feed is now the preferred feed. Both feeds were working at 10:02 PM last night.

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The Pacifica Foundation, which owns WBAI, has revamped its Web site and now has something called the Pacifica Lounge where you can post messages about Pacifica, WBAI and other Pacifica radio stations. This may be a good thing, and of course there are other, long term fora in which to participate.

WBAI also has a forum on its Web site now. You have to register to post messages, but anyone may read the messages.

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WBAI is now archiving the programs! Just go here and you'll be able to listen to the program any time for the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, Back of the Book is not one of the programs that you can download, you can only listen to it on line. But maybe someone will change that at some point.

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Well, I guess that it'll be mandatory that Pickles of the North and I talk about our upcoming wedding. Pickles proposed to me live on the air during the last program. I accepted.

We'll be telling about what's happened since then in this area, and what will be happening in the future. We'll also speculate on whether this will make us Mr. & Mrs. North, or Mr. & Mrs. Of The North.

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We're going to discuss the NASA Stardust project. Pickles and I watched the return capsule land on Earth in the wee hours of Sunday morning. We watched over the Internet as they tracked it coming in and there were some anxious moments when it was uncertain whether or not the drogue parachute had opened to slow it down properly. But it did and Stardust landed!

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I'll also talk a little bit about Martin Luther King Jr. on the official observance of his birthday, he was actually born on the 15^th. WBAI will be doing an all day special on King's life and accomplishments beginning after Back of the Book and the station will also be asking for money for a special one-day 'thon.

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The marathon has been pushed back by two weeks! We will not pitch on the next program as we'd previously said.

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In on-line and freedom of speech news Microsoft has shut down the blog of a Mr. Zhao Jing who is sometimes critical of the totalitarian jerks who run China. He's been getting readers so the Chinese government asked Microsoft to shut him down and they did. Ah, Microsoft. Their software stinks, their browser is a public menace, but they sure know how to stifle dissent for a client.

CNet is reporting that annoyance could be against the law now. Oh, hell, WBAI could be in trouble. We're about annoyance! Just ask that moron in the White House.

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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.

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

And then there is the historic “Free Pacifica!” list, which has been used to help organize resistance to Pacifica Management hijackers since the mid-90s. It's become a low volume mailing list because it's been eclipsed by some of the newer, more technologically advanced, lists. Just click on this link and follow the instructions, and you'll be subscribed. This is a mailing list only, it doesn't have a digest option nor does it have a web interface.

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