Judgment Day + 5
Web links related to the Back of the Book program of May 28, 2011
Since the world has not ended we're going to pitch again this morning! Check back for updates.
Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of some of the WBAI LSB meetings? Well, I do.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday, June 8, 2011, at Brooklyn Commons, 388 Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn.
The May 11, 2011, LSB meeting was held at “Brooklyn Commons” at 388, Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn. It started an hour and ten minutes late! And then faction operatives got all hypocritical about the station's finances.
At a previous meeting the WBAI LSB voted to hold its meetings on the second Wednesday of every month and/or the last Thursday of that month, subject to change by the LSB, which gives us the following schedule:
All of these meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.
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.
WBAI has an official Web stream of what's on the air at any time! You can go here and pick which type of stream you want! If this stream isn't working let me know. And you can see the status of the streams at any time by clicking here. The stream was working at 1:07 this morning. The station has a Flash stream here, make sure you enable Javascript so it can work for you.
WBAI is archiving the programs! Just go here and you'll be able to listen to this program any time for the next couple of months. You may need to scroll up one line to see the audio archive. Let me know if you find this feature useful.
If you want to listen to any part of the WBAI archive click here to go right to the archives. When you first go to the Web page you'll only see the WBAI programs for the past 7 days. If you want to see older programs you can click on one of the “See ALL Shows” buttons. Or to see only the two shows in this time slot click here.
Back of the Book is again one of the programs that you can download, as well as listen to on line.
In the table on the archive Web page Back of the Book and Saturday Morning With the Radio On are both in the “Show” column. The “Date and Category” column shows the date of the program. After the program I go in and write the details of the program and say which program it is. Of course I'd recommend that you just listen to both programs in this time slot!
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In the Summer of 2009, there was a Pacifica National Board meeting held in New York. Here's the Web page I did about this PNB meeting and the amazing things that went on at it.
And the PNB has also met in Houston from Friday October 9th, through Sunday October 11th, 2009. The official audio archive of that meeting is here. It was not disrupted as the New York meeting was, although some of the same miscreants got out there to say stupid things.
The Pacifica National Board (PNB) met in Manhattan the weekend of October 1-3, 2010. The audio has been posted for the first day of the meeting, the second day of the meeting and the third day of the meeting.
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We are pitching on this radio program! If you can please call 1-212-209-2950 during the radio program and pledge some amount of money to help keep Back of the Book on WBAI and help keep WBAI on the air.
If you want to pledge to the program via the Web you need to do so while we're on the air, and you also need to go here and be sure to pick Back of the Book as the favorite show. Otherwise your pledge won't be counted towards the program.
I should also point out that WBAI always needs help answering the phones. In order to answer the phones you'll have to get into the building. The building Management requires that you get your name added to a list so you can enter 120 Wall St. So if you want to volunteer to answer phones for this 'thon you should call the WBAI switchboard at 1-212-209-2800 during business hours and let the folks in charge know you want to volunteer so they can put your name on the list. We always need more folks to answer the phones so if you want to volunteer to answer the phones for another program during this 'thon the above procedure is the way to do it.
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The Mars rover Spirit was officially retired this past fortnight. NASA's attempts to communicate with Spirit were last successful on March 22, 2010. Spirit had landed on Mars on January 3, 2004. It had been supposed to function for three months. It lasted for more than six years.
The other Mars probe, named Opportunity, is still functioning.
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Well, the world did not end on May 21. We were not surprised. Some, however, were.
Here we see a car parked in Brooklyn with placards on top of it letting us all know what was coming, except this photograph was taken on May 26, five days after the world was supposed to have ended. I wonder how the true believers who won the car feel?
Dopey sky pilot Harold Camping has since claimed that the Rapture really did happen when he said it would, it was just invisible. He hasn't explained what happened to the earthquakes he claimed would accompany his righteous followers into Heaven.
Undaunted by yet another failure to accurately predict the end of the world Mr. Camping has declared that on October 21, 2011, we'll really see things end.
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The MTA has revealed its plans to force people to use credit or debit cards to purchase self-refilling MetroCards. This will allow them, and anyone else who has access to the records, to track where people go and when.
This also gives the MTA, which has a record of financial dishonesty, access to your credit card or bank account. A few years ago when they wanted to hike fares and also not give employees a raise the MTA claimed it was broke, but the second set of books showed that it had a surplus of hundreds of million of dollars.
Calling this plan the “EasyPayXpress” the MTA will charge your credit or debit card $30 and when the balance on it falls below $20 they'll charge you again. So you are permanently lending the MTA some amount of money this way. Nice.
If you want an unlimited MetroCard the MTA will require that you give them two credit cards and a valid E-mail address. The pay-per-ride MetroCrad under this plan will just require one credit card.
And they'll make it attractive enough that people will go for it, and we'll all end up getting tracked by anyone in government who feels like finding out where we tend to go.
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Pickles of the North and I went to Coney Island on May 17, right after a big storm. The surf was a lot rougher than usual. Some people think that Coney Island is a beach on the Atlantic Ocean. Actually, it's a beach on the lower New York Harbor. But if you look in the right direction you can see the Atlantic Ocean from the beach at Coney Island. It was not a day to go out swimming, especially since the life guards weren't on duty yet.
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It being Spring I like to post photographs of flowers, even if it's an overcast, gloomy day when we go to see the flowers. Here's a bunch of flowers valiantly blossoming amid unfavorable weather.
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. UPDATE: The bleepin' blue board has had to add a step for folks to get onto it because it's under attack by spambots. When you click on the above link you may be asked for a username and password. Type in Username: poster Password: enternow
When the computer in Master Control is working we sometimes have live interaction with people posting on the “Goodlight Board” during the program.
Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Carrier Wave alternates with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.
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