On Friday Democracy Now! did an interview with Lynn Chadwick, Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation, which owns WBAI, and some others. Topics covered included the current insanity of the Pacifica Foundation and the way it's spending listener-sponsors' money on things like busting Unions and such. I'm going to comment on this and read some of the transcript of it on the air. You can read a transcript of that program, or listen to a Real Audio recording of it.

For more on this rapidly unravelling mess go to my Pacifica Theft Menu, which I update every time something new happens.

I was prepared to talk a bit about the new star system that was discovered over the past fortnight, but the above reading of excerpts from the Friday, April 16, 1999, Democracy Now! program sort of pushed that out of the lineup. I will definitely try to get to this topic on the next program.

I've spoken on the program before about the “end of millennium” nuttiness that's been manifesting itself for the past few years, and promises to keep doing so for another decade or so. We're seeing more “perpetual motion machines” being offered up these days. There's really not a lot that's new with these things because all of these goofy ideas have been thought of before. On the Web site I link to above, you'll notice that the balls seem to be falling up.

All of these schemes violate the laws of thermodynamics, which are really all one has to remember when confronted with a fast talking perpetual motion machine vendor. And if the three or four Laws of Thermodynamics are a bit daunting, just remember that all of these schemes center around getting something for nothing, and the universe just doesn't give that out.

It should also be pointed out that very few folks, whether con artists or deluded true believers, call their gimmicks “perpetual motion machines” anymore because people have learned to laugh off such machines, after hundreds of years. Most of these silly non-inventions are touted as “energy saving” or “energy creating” devices, or some similar bit of verbiage. But they're all the same, whether they're the 300+ year old overbalanced wheel or “cold fusion” or any other wacky variant.

There's a guy in England, who claims to be an engineer of 30 years experience, who says that he's in pursuit of the secret of a “free energy,” machine of a type that was offered for sale in 1712. He's self published a book about this. If you don't want to buy this revelatory tome, and have a lot of time and patience, you might want to read his theory about this machine he's hoping to discover the secrets of. Oh yes, as an added benefit this perpetual motion machine, when operated in reverse, becomes an anti-gravity machine. Every home should have one!

You might also be interested in a Web site devoted to John Worrell Keely (1827-1898), who's the one I spoke about on the program who used compressed air in order to make his perpetual motion machine work. This guy really was perpetrating a hoax, as opposed to the poor, deluded souls who actually thought that they had discovered something new. While you're at this site you might consider looking over the gravity-control and electronic-health bullshit “information.”

Here's a Web site that debunks a lot of the perpetual motion machine schemes and also provides some historical examples of people deluding themselves into this dead end, including one very famous scientist!

I couldn't resist this short Web page which clues us in to the Sanitation Engineer's Laws of Thermodynamics. Of course I couldn't read this one on the air because the FCC says that you're not allowed to hear such words.

And, finally, here's a little thing about the thermodynamics of Hell. Who cares if this truly happened or not? It's an amusing read.

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.

If you want to subscribe to the “Free Pacifica!” list just click on this link and fill out the form, and you'll be subscribed. Could open your eyes a little bit.

The above list has occasionally produced a high volume of E-mail because of the attention that the 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.