It's Sunday morning, January 27, 2019, 02:28, and I've updated this Web page with the new information about the WBAI archives. I plan to do some more updates on this Web page. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Yesterday Donnie Bonespur
Trump blinked. So the entire government is reopening, and will stay opened for the next three weeks. We'll talk about that, about a very cold total lunar eclipse, about various political things going on and about some science topics as well. We are hoping to squeeze in an entire segment on the ice that's melting in antarctica and how it may result in a big sea level rise. We hope to update this Web page some day.
Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of some of the WBAI LSB meetings?
The LSB tried to meet on Wednesday, August 8, 2018, but it failed to achieve a quorum. I made a written Treasurer's Report for that meeting, but was not able to actually give a verbal one as well. You can read the written Treasurer's Report for August 8, 2018.
I have also posted a whole lot of the minutes of the Pacifica National Finance Committee. I'm a member of that committee because I'm the WBAI LSB Treasurer.
At this time there are elections going on in Pacifica. Also, a number of people have either resigned from the WBAI LSB or have reached the six consecutive year term limit for being on the LSB. So the WBAI LSB is much reduced. For a number of reasons, some due to incompetence, the 2018, Pacifica elections, which are to repopulate the LSBs, are running very late. In all likelihood the WBAI LSB will not meet again until March 2019, at the earliest. We'll see how that works out.
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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Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
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WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, but I've found that after this program I was finally able to do so, but only for this morning's program. I still can't go back and plug in any archive blurbs for the programs that are missing from the archive. We'll see how this works out.
This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says “Display,” and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click “GO” and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. I expect that after next Saturday they'll have the pre-recorded program that's alternating with us now showing up there too.
For programs before January 26, 2019, you'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says “Display,” and find Specify Date
, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click “GO” and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For instance, the previous program will be under January 12, 2019. You'll just need to scroll to the 5 AM to 6 AM slot to get to us. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Yeah, it looks like they'll have the alternating program's name prominently there, but if you have the right date it'll be our program. Good luck.
Since the General Manager has banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of last week, there's a regular, pre-recorded, program in the alternate week's time slot.
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Things have improved this year on the PNB. I'll be trying to update my pages about all of this in the near future.
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Our friend, fellow WBAI producer and Saddle Pal Uncle Sidney Smith has been banned from WBAI by General Manager Berthold Reimers. The General Manager will not say why. He won't even tell Sidney why he's banned! This is grossly unfair to Sidney and constitutes abuse of Staff. Why did Berthold ban Sidney?
There's a posting here about it. More to come.
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Donnie Bonespur
Trump has blinked! Yes, the record setting government shutdown was ended after 35 days when Trump caved to the pressure and signed the bill into law that had been passed by both houses of congress that reopened the entire government for three weeks. And he did not get his stupid border wall. Yeah, we're going to talk about that, all right!
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We're hoping to get to some listener mail on this program.
I'm also hoping to get to talk about an E-mail scam that I've been receiving for a couple of weeks now. Whether we get to it on this program or not, here's a link to a Web page about this scam, which you might have gotten yourself. Don't worry, the link goes to another page on this site and it's the usual, old static Web page with nothing nefarious on it.
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There was a total lunar eclipse on the night/morning of January 20/21, 2019. Pickles of the North and i went out to look at it during the totality of the event. This is the best photograph we could get of it. This is actually a still taken from a very short video that I was able to shoot of it. The still photographs just didn't show anything other than the light pole.
So we obviously went out onto the streets of Brooklyn to see this lunar eclipse. in the photograph the very tiny, fully eclipsed Moon is indicated by the arrow.
And it was cold out there! I used an anemometer to measure the slightly sheltered place where we stood, and it was 14° F. with 45% relative humidity. When we moved from that spot and the wind could get us full force it felt a lot colder.
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Pickles of the North plans to have a thing or three to say about the current IRS forms that we have to deal with this tax season.
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The exact minute of Winter will occur on Monday, February 4, 2019, at 5:10 AM (ET). After that point we'll be in the second half of Winter and will be looking forward to Spring. Oh, I want to get out of the cold! For more on the seasons and sub-seasons look here.
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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 open list is the 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. The bleepin' blue board had to add a step for folks to get onto it because it was 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
UPDATE: In of June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I'm the moderator on it now.
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 Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.
One formerly popular mailing list is the “NewPacifica” mailing list. Founded October 31, 2000, this list has been moribund for a couple of years due to de facto censorship by the group owner. As of February 2019, it had 696 subscribers coast to coast, but postings on it are very infrequent now.
Back in the day it sometimes also got a bit nasty. All sorts of things used to happen on this list and official announcements were 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.
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