Web links related to the Back of the Book program of November 26, 2011


It's Thursday, December 1, 2011, 09:07, and I've updated this page with the information about the next WBAI LSB meeting. More updates to come. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ We plan to get to the below topics and more on this program. We'll talk about some science topics and we also plan to get through some of the listener mail that some of you folks have sent in. Check back for updates over the next, I don't know, long period of time.

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, December 14th, 2011, at the MLK Center, Local 1199 SEIU, 330 West 42nd St. (between 8th & 9th Aves.) in the Gallery.

The LSB met on Wednesday, October 12, 2011, at the New York City Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgendered Center at 208 W. 13th St., between 7th and 8th Aves. in Manhattan. The meeting got dominated by posturing and a motion that while it had some points to it was ill-considered.

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 2:47 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!

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.

stuff turkey
A Different Kind of Stuffed Turkey

And a merry Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates the holiday!

On the left is a stuffed turkey of a different sort from what most people experienced this past Thursday. It was a display in a diner in Nassau County where Pickles of the North and I visited a couple of my cousins last week. The folks who run the diner were trying to entice customers to eat their Thanksgiving meal there as opposed to cooking at home. I'm sure that any number of people took them up on that offer, although I'm not sure that the stuffed turkey played a role in anyone's decision. My cousins told us that they were just going to get some take-out Chinese food for Thanksgiving.

Over at Castle Martin we had a Thanksgiving dinner with the Saddle pals and the Saddle Gals.

Pickles of the North invited folks over and got a whole bunch of food in. She did a little redecorating and she cooked a turkey breast and some vegetables. I passed on most of the vegetables, of course. I had the turkey and a tiny bit of potato.

Uncle Sidney Smith came over in the afternoon and later on Maxwell J, Schmid and Ratgirl of the West, aka Mr. & Mrs. Satan, came over with some gluten free lasagna which I was told was really great.

We sort of ate in shifts. Pickles, Uncle Sidney and I crowded in around our kitchen table to eat and then when Pickles and Uncle Sidney were just about done eating Mr. & Mrs. Satan showed up. Being a slow eater I just kept on slowly eating while the second shift sat down for their meal.

our version of the yule log
Our Version of a Yule Log

Uncle Sidney and I then retired to the living room where you can see our fabulous yule log that was blazing away in there. All right, it's an electric fire, with an orange light bulb and a motor turning a plastic drum that makes it look a tiny bit like a real fire's going. You can see where it's plugged in.

This thing was in the apartment when I arrived almost 40 years ago. Somewhere on it there's a date stamp from some time in 1971. We figure that was the date of manufacture, although my grandmother had one of these electric fire things in her apartment back in the '40s. The electric motor is probably on its last legs, it's making a hell of a lot of noise.

But after everyone had eaten we all were in the living room enjoying the orangy light and the sound of old electric motor gears grinding away. And we variously talked and passed out in the semi-dark and a good time was had by all.

We hope that you had a good whatever the hell you'd like to celebrate this past Thursday, and if you didn't celebrate anything special at all then at least it was another day above ground.

Okay, here's a video of our Yule Log, with comment by R. Paul and Uncle Sidney.

We plan to talk about the latest Mars Rover named Curiosity. This is a very large rover, about the size of a car, that will be explicitly looking for evidence of past life on the planet Mars.

NASA plans to launch Curiosity, the largest object that humans have ever sent to another planet, at 10:02 AM today. NASA has posted a Web page about it that you can use to follow the countdown and launch.

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. 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.

One popular list the “NewPacifica” mailing list. Founded October 31, 2000, this list is sometimes lively and as of mid-2011, has 687 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.

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

You can also send me E-mail.



WBAI related links

WBAI Listeners' Web page

WBAI Management's official Web site


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The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2011, R. Paul Martin.