Web links related to the Back of the Book program of October 10, 2005

We're pitching tonight! Please pledge!

The next WBAI Local Station Board meeting is scheduled for Saturday, October 22^nd, 2005, at 4:00 PM somewhere in Rockland County, NY. That's all they've told us so far.

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

At the September 7^th, LSB meeting the faction made a rather meaningless change to the budget that had passed at the previous meeting. They made a change in how some money that may or may not ever show up will be dealt with. Oh well, maybe their patronage system demands this.

The faction currently in charge showed up this time and a motion from the previous meeting to censure the Chair for refusing to allow a member to make a motion was defeated.

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 were not working at 11:20 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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We're pitching tonight! If you can please call 212-209-2950 to pledge to WBAI and Back of the Book. For those who don't know about this stuff, WBAI is a non-commercial radio station and so since we don't get money from airing commercials we have to ask you the listeners for money a few times per year. This is Back of the Book's turn to beg our listeners for money. If you pledge between 1:00 AM and 3:00 AM (ET) it will count towards our pledge total, and these pledge totals are watched.

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Hey, it looks like the 10^th planet has a satellite. Interesting names for these heavenly bodies.

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We're going to be talking about evolution tonight. There are several intersecting threads of recent news items that are going to relate to this topic, both politically, scientifically and medically. We'll try to tie some of these threads together tonight as well as do other topics. Of course on a pitching program there's no telling how things will go so we can't make any promises about how much of what we'll do tonight.

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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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