Web links related to the Back of the Book program of June 21, 2004


It's Sunday evening 7/4/2004 18:14:38 and this page is finished. This was one of the shorter Back of the Book programs ever. As you can see below there was transmitter maintenance at the Empire State Building. I'd heard that some other radio station was moving or something and they had to take things down for a while. We didn't get on the air until about 2:12 AM. I hope that we don't have to go through this sort of silliness again any time soon. It's always a drag when we only get on at some late hour. We know that most regular listeners aren't listening then. Oh well, such is late night radio.

The WBAI LSB will meet next on Wednesday, June 23, 2004, at the Harlem State Office Building, Room 8A (8th Floor), 163 West 125th Street, between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Malcolm X Boulevards. This meeting will include public comment and is wheelchair-accessible. Take the A,B,C,D or # 2 or 3 trains to the 125 St. stop. Bring photo I.D. to enter building. This is actually the continuation of the LSB's June 10th, meeting which was recessed to this date and time.

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.

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 9:04 PM last night.

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.

We have been informed that WBAI is to be off the air from midnight till 2:00 AM on June 21, for some sort of maintenance at the Empire State Building, where we have out transmitter and antenna.

There is no telling exactly what will happen. In the past these sorts of things have sometimes been canceled at the last minute and the station stayed on the air. At other times they went beyond the projected end time and sometimes they've done everything right on time.

So the official word is that tonight's Back of the Book program will only get on the air at 2:00 AM, but it could get on at its usual 1:00 AM time or not at all. So tune in and see what happens!

Hey, we did watch the transit of Venus on June 8th. Lots of people saw this event, although I don't know what people who were just wearing Sun-proof glasses saw. When pickles of the North and I wore those we didn't see Venus at all. But when we used a pair of binoculars to project an image onto a piece of paper we were able to see the transit of Venus quite easily. Interesting to see such a thing raw and in real life like that, as opposed to watching it on the Internet, which we also did.

It ain't exactly Scotty, but there's some beaming up going on.

Two different groups of scientists have managed to “teleport” the characteristics of one atom to another. This is rather a technical form of teleportation, and it's never going to be something that moves substantial objects, like people, anywhere at all. But it is an interesting curiosity of quantum physics.

I think this development is interesting for the manipulation of information more than anything else. But you never know what you're going to learn when you do experiments that are this much on the edge of human knowledge.

We got to some mail on this shortened version of the program. So here's the E-mail we read on the air. Turns out it was an all Zig-Man mail segment.

Subject: For IMMEDIATE read on air! Invasion?!?
Date: Mon, 3 May 2004 15:09:44 -0300
From: ZIG-MAN
To: rpm@glib.com

RPM,
(“Clean-up/bleep” certain words if necessary; don't want you to get F'n fined!:x)
HOLY SHIT! The fucking MORON cult is opening A GOD DAMN TEMPLE ON 86th! This is EXACTLY what we should have expected when those COMMUNIST NAZI M'ER F'ERS, G.W. Shrub, John “KOMMANDANT” Ashcroft, Dick(head) “My-daughter-isn't-a-DYKE” Cheney, & “Herr Adolf” Giuliani (and others) were pushed upon us by >:(“those” GOD-DAMNED EVANGELICALS!

I mean, did you watch “FRONTLINE” on PBS (Ch. 13) on thursday night, “The Jesus (hay-soos) Factor?” Those MF's are out out to take over the world! Let me say that again. The Evangelicals are DETERMINED to take over the world!They, like the Morons (OOPS! I mean MORMONS!), are out to supress ALL dissent and questioning. A PRIME example of the supression is that in the Texas cities of Austin, Abiline, El Paso, Galveston, Houston, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Dallas/Fort Worth, Lubbock and Odessa (serving Midland) delayed/postponed the airing of the program until the “wee hours” of the AM, due to “community pressures” (read: Evangelical cult leaders). Probably because the cult leaders were afraid PBS was going to portray the Shrub in a “bad light.” PBS stations in Galveston & Abiline haven't (won't) even aired it yet! I won't even start on Florida!

But back to the “Moron temple,” IF(!) we want to, they have an open house through June 2nd (I believe it's the 2nd, maybe the 6th) and see the instruments of their CULT and have a good laugh!

Love & Peace to you & Nurse Pickles,:-x
--ZIG-MAN

Yes, we watched that PBS program about how the current usurper in the White House (he is not the President) is all tight with the superstitious right and how he has just given himself over to them as a puppet. Interesting to see his puppet status confirmed like that.

Subject: Another(?) piece for the show? The F'n Far Right is at it again!
Date: Fri, 7 May 2004 17:23:08 -0300
From: ZIG-MAN
To: rpm@glib.com

RPM,
Here's a “quickie” from the 25 May 2004 (pg. 22) issue of The Advocate. I LOVE(!) the very end sentence!
“SATIRE LOST ON ANTI-GAY GROUP”
Members of the London, Canada-based group Simple Truths Our Priority thought they were giving school officials solid evidence that a proposed safe-schools policy was an effort by “homosexuals” to recruit children. A short time later the group also gave them an apology.
A satirical piece published in 1998 in the U.S. humor newspaper “The Onion” featured “homosexual recruitment” statistics & a mock photo of a 5th-grade teacher in front of a chalkboard drawing of two men having (anal) sex. The anti-gay Ontario group published the photo as if it were real in a booklet distributed at a London school board meeting in April. Wide-spread criticism ensued, followed by the apology. (Here's the part I love!)“Any-one who is dumb enough to have those thoughts in the first place is dumb enough to believe this article,” said Carol Kolb, Onion editor-in-chief.
R., I love that The Onion “got” some IDIOTS yet again! :-D Can't wait to see what they're believe next!
Since this “group” is from 'near the North Pole,' does Our Miss Pickles have any comments? Well, any comments that won't need a 5 second delay! ;-)(I LOVE YOU, MISS PICKLES!:-x)
All my best,
ZIG-MAN

Pickles said she'd never heard of that bunch of morons. But it's so typical of narrow minded bigots that they'd fall for The Onion's satire. Gosh, are there any radio stations where people who are paid to do radio have done exactly the same thing? Hmmm.

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.

My voice mail number at WBAI is 212-209-2996. Leave a message.

You can also send me E-mail.



WBAI related links

Free Pacifica Web site

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 © 2004, R. Paul Martin.