Web links related to the Back of the Book program of March 1, 2004

It's Sunday night, 3/14/2004 21:50:26 and this page is done. Something's always happening before a radio program. Tonight my HTML editor went nuts and I lost all of my settings. It took a while to get things back to where they should be, and I'm not 100% certain that things are actually all right. So of course this delayed my getting this Web page done. but there's some stuff here. We'll get through the below topics, and some more, tonight. We also did some of the mail. Don't worry about the verbs below changing tense, different parts of this page are written at different times so tense changes happen.

The Pacifica Foundation, which owns WBAI and four other radio stations, has started to re-make itself. WBAI has already had its first Local Station Board meeting. The next WBAI LSB meeting will be held this Thursday, March 4, 2004, stating at 6:30 PM at 75 Varick Street, 14^th Floor (North of Canal Street; trains: 1, A or C to Canal Street) New York, New York Wheelchair-accessible. The public is invited to attend, and you can even record the proceedings if you want.

WBAI now 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 both of which were working at 11:10 PM last night. The MP3 feed is now the preferred feed.

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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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We'll be wishing a merry birthday to regular WBAI listener Sanda, who will have turned 16 the day before the program. Yes, Sanda was born on February 29, 1940.

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Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane. No it's an asteroid! Uh oh.

An event with a name that would have been thought bizarre a few years ago, the “2004 Planetary Defense Conference” has concluded. Astronomy magazine has coverage of it.

Apparently there was a little bit of a scare in January when some very slight errors made it appear that a newly discovered asteroid was about to plow into the Earth! Luckily life imitated neither art nor some movies from a previous decade, and nothing happened.

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We read some more from that 1898, book named The Mistakes we Make edited by Nathan Haskell Dole.

This next citation from the book seems to have a bit to do with that “battle of the sexes” thing. I'm a neutral in it so I don't pay much attention to that sort of stuff. It does, however relate to some things that folks thought they knew about the human brain 106 years ago. And since we occasionally cover brain stuff on Back of the Book this fits right in.

And 106 years later we still aren't sure how to measure intelligence, or even if there's any such thing as a single entity that could be called intelligence. We do know, however, that weight of the brain has very little to do with it. Of course if the brain is below a certain minimal weight there's a problem, but in the average range there's no correlation between brain size and intelligence, whatever that is.

Men's and women's brains are very slightly differently wired, but those are differences, not one gender's brain being better than another's. And we're also learned over the years that some parts of women's brains are bigger than some parts of men's brains, and vice versa, so that battle of the sexes stuff just doesn't enter into the science anymore. Of course I personally have a lot of trouble which is caused by a tiny fragment of brain lodged in my skull.

This entry was probably a pretty good revelation in 1898. The germ theory of disease was still in its infancy.

Basically, this entry still holds true all these years later. But these days we do have a lot of chemicals in the water that the activated charcoal can remove. This generally improves the taste. More importantly, some things that are suspended in water are now known to be bad news so filtering water is not so dumb.

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And of course we got to some of the mail on this program. We got something from Sanda, who by coincidence turned 16 for this program, but that was hard copy, which we don't post on the Web site. But we also read some E-mails and here they are.

We start with a postponed missive from regular listener and correspondent Neal.

Regarding the Winters, why when I was a kid I had to walk 8½ miles through a blizzard to and from school every day, and it was uphill both ways! But, seriously, the 1990s, was the hottest decade on record. We are getting milder Winters more often than we used to.

The elections got done, and I think that Neal unfortunately didn't get a ballot. The rocket scientists who ran the election sent all of the ballots third class bulk mail from California with a deadline of one month to get the ballots returned. Many people couldn't get the ballots back in time and many appear not to have gotten ballots at all!

As for WBAI needing to stop the hate programming, the racial stereotyping and the generally boring stuff, I agree. Maybe the changes that will be brought about by the elections will alleviate those problems. Or maybe we'll continue to make a mess of things. I hope it's the former.

Of course it's a double standard. I've spoken about it a bit on the air, but I don't think I'm going to devote an entire radio program to it. maybe WBAI ought to devote a radio program or two to this topic, but we'll just have to see.

Bill's talking about some questions I had while reading from The Mistakes we Make on a previous program, about how camels couldn't go all that long without water, although the amount of time they can go without water is longer than what humans could do under the same circumstances.

I can see why Neal is more pessimistic here. I think some aspects of the Pacifica elections were run badly. But I hope he doesn't get too bound to his pessimism. It's possible that WBAI could be better in the future. I hiope so, anyway.

One of the things that happens when you're a bit behind in reading the mail is that events really catch up to and go past the stuff people talk about in the mail. This is such a case.

The elections are over, the results have been posted, and I'm one of the people on the WBAI LSB. There's a lot more to come on this topic.

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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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