Back of the Book links for the September 16, 2002 program

Here is the latest on the saga of Pacifica. There will be the big meeting of the interim Pacifica National Board September 20-22, in Houston, TX. It's going to be wild and I suspect that we'll see another hijacking there!

As we move into the next phase of the Pacifica Crisis there are various elements that would like to simply replace the previous group of hijackers with themselves and/or their pals. But some of us are more convinced than ever that only open elections will provide a long range cure for the Pacifica Crisis. Here's a link to the various election proposals.

Here's the WBAI schedule. Don't blame me if it's not accurate, I didn't make it up I'm only relaying it. Here's a schedule made by a listener who has Web links for various programs and producers.

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 about 8:41 PM last night. The MP3 feed is now the preferred feed.

The Autumnal Equinox will occur on Monday, September 23^rd, 2002, at 12:56 AM (EST), this will be just four minutes before Uncle Sidney goes on the air with his program Carrier Wave. For more about seasons look at this.

Of course U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft, Bush (he is not the President!), and their pals are getting off on the rapid erosion of civil liberties. People are having cameras and film confiscated if they take photographs of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and other bridges in America.

This is so stupid. If someone really wanted the details they could just have someone with an artistic talent go look, and then sketch it for them minutes later. This technique worked for millennia before photography was invented. and there are lots of places where one can get information about bridges and such. It's probably just a way for some guys to grab expensive cameras for themselves for free.

Our own Maxwell J. Schmid brought up to me an item he'd heard on the BBC about a “third Moon” of the Earth, designated J002E3. Hell, I hadn't known there was a second Moon.

Turns out that the “third Moon” is probably just space junk, probably a third stage rocket from the Apollo 12 mission, launched on 14 November 1969.

As for the “second Moon,” it's really just an asteroid caught in an orbit in resonance with Earth. It's not a Moon. If it were to be designated a Moon then we'd have hundreds or maybe thousands of Moons by now. Jeez!

We got through all of the E-mail we had, although we still have a small backlog of paper based mail. We start off with something wacky from Fernando. If he wants to think that space aliens or something are making crop circles rather than mere jokesters, let him.

Subject: Crop Circle Corrections
Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2002 23:14:41 -0700 (PDT)
From: Fernando
To: rpm@glib.com

Dear R.Paul,

As I type this, I am listening to your broadcast of August 19th and your flawed defammation of cerealogists and your misinformed dismissal of the crop circle phenomenon. Unfortunately, it is blatantly obvious that your knowledge of crop circles is very limited and you are trying to cover yourself with meaningless terms like “Originally..” and “Back when they first started..” in place of actual dates. You give yourself away entirely when you claim that this phenomenon started in 1978. Do you like Led Zeppellin?

In fact, crop circles have been reported world wide as far back as the 1940's and it is suspected that they were most likely appearing even earlier but they were not being widely reported until the 40's. You can go into any music store and find an early 70's Led Zepelin record that sports a crop circle photograph on it's cover. This certainly pre-dates YOUR starting date of 1978!

Too many people dismiss the crop circle phenomenon due to the confessions of those two drunk pub-crawlers, Doug Bowers and David Chorley, who starting in 1976, began to fake their own crop circles. In '78, they came forward and confessed their prank. Most people take this confession as meaning that these two men faked the first crop circles and initiated the entire phenomenon. They in fact got started when they were discussing the crop circle mystery (WHICH WAS ALREADY ONGOING!)in a bar one night and decided to prove to themselves that crop circles could easily be faked. While they, and their imitators, certainly are responsible for MANY of the crop circles that have formed since 1976, all those prior remain UNEXPLAINED!

I am not necessarily tying crop circles into the UFO phenomenon. I choose to remain open-minded about their origins. It is important to note a couple of significant factors of which you many not be aware.

1. Faked crop circles are usually easy to recognize because they lack the precision of unexplained crop formations. The faked ones also try to be much more ornate than the unexplained ones.

2. Crop circles are not exclusive to England. They have been appearing world-wide including in the US as far back as the 40's.

3. True crop circles have an altered electromagnetic field and the stalks are bent in a way that is different from their falsified counterparts.

4. Footage of an actual crop circle being formed was aired on FOX's Sightings programn (currently being rerun on the Sci-Fi channel) and it showed the stalks being bent by an unseen force while a small mysterious silver orb hovered above. No explanation has been given for this footage but it stands as conclussive evidence of this phenomenon. I highly recommend that you watch this special, R, as it is obvious that you do not know much about this area that you are so casually dismissing. Do not remain ignorant. I read abut this all the time and I know. I'll be listening for your reply.

Fondly,
Fernando
Florham Park, NJ

Next we have a missive from a listener who caught me in a mistake. Yep, it's Eratosthenes, not Archimedes. As regular listeners will know I've been having problems with names for a while. The old brain just got flatulent.

Subject: Sieve of WHOM???
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 02:19:54 -0400
From: Heather
To: rpm@glib.com

Oh, come now, R Paul. Everyone who's anyone knows that what you described is the Sieve of Eratosthenes (of Cynea, I think), and not Archimedes. Circa 1982 it was a fair measure of how fast your computer was.

Eratosthenes not only proved that the world was round, but came up with a fairly close approximation of its size, using the angles of the sun's shadow at different places on the same date.

Do try to be more careful in future

Subject: Radio Show.
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 03:50:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: DanielS
To: rpm@glib.com

Hello there, I just wanted to let you know that i listened to your radio program on WBAI for the first time last sunday, hopefully it'll be something I look foward to listening to every sunday

anyway, I just wanted to give you a big kudos for useing the word “theif” to describe people who steal creditcard numbers rather then calling them hackers

I'm sure you know the difference, and i'm glad that there are other members of the media who *do* get it “right”

`Daniel

Subject: back of the book....in Texas
Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2002 15:08:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Andrew
To: rpm@glib.com

Dear RPM,

I recently went to visit family in Longview, TX. and I was down there on a Back of the Book Sunday - 8/18. I did NOT miss the show, I logged onto the WBAI website and listened, so Back of the Book was heard down in the great South (even though it was only herd by me).

Andrew

Subject: fmu job search
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2002 22:13:50 -0400
From: Lewis
To: rpm@glib.com

rpm, I was just looking at the wfmu web site (wfmu.org) and noticed that there is an opening for an assistant general manager. You or other bai staffers might be interested (but just don't tell Valerie.) best wishes, lewis
p.s. The geek code is taken from www.geekcode.com.
----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GSS d- s-:+ !a C+ UL-- P L E- W+ N++ o-- K? w-- !O M-- V-- PS+ PE- Y+
PGP t-- 5? X? R* !tv b++ DI? D? G e++ h r-- y?
----END GEEK CODE BLOCK----

Subject: Neanderthal
Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2002 03:00:01 -0700
From: Richard
To: rpm@glib.com

R. Paul -

You were talking about some scientists who claim that Neanderthal and other pre-FOXP2 nonlinguistic hominids disappeared from the species some 50 to 100 thousand years ago. Possibly they did not know of the previous WBAI management, whose putative communicative and other behavioral disorders were in fact merely expressions of a genetic line heretofore deemed extinct, objections of the racial homogeneticists notwithstanding.

That settled, I would like you to talk about an issue you have mentioned several times: your hostility towards the Catholic Church. You've noted its rejection of your lifestyle, and the misbehavior of clergy in educational and various other settings -- not to mention the current scandal -- but do you believe that the theology of the Church is orthogonal to the behavior of its practitioners, and if so, what is your opinion of its theology?

No WBAI Management has ever been very different from Richard's characterization. The Catholic Church has not walked the walk it talks since its beginning a couple of millennia ago. What superstition really does?

Subject: free speech
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 17:53:12 EDT
From: Joash
To: rpm@glib.com

Heard yr last show, checked out your home page,i uh think its groovy man.Lets keep in touch.
joash

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to 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.

Another 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. With that warning in mind, you can look at the NewPacifica list here, and you can join the list from that Web page too, although you'll have to deal with Yahoo! to do so.

There is also the more WBAI specific “Goodlight” Web based message board. This one has a great many people posting anonymously and there's also an ancillary board that's just totally out of hand.

The “Goodlight” Web based message board has expanded to cover all Pacifica stations.