Deaths in America Remain Steady
It's Wednesday afternoon, August 31, 2022 14:41, and this Web page is finished. We added the stuff that Pickles of the North was talking about regarding the Artemis 1 Moon mission. We have updated the update for its launch date. We also put in a bit about Trump's perverted treatment of national secrets that he kept in his basement. We talked on the air about the late Fred Hershkowitz and we have a bit of what we talked about on this page. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Oh, I have more work left to do on this Web page. I lost more than an hour when I had a small medical issue going on in the wee hours. I will do my best to get this Web page updates soon.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of some of the WBAI LSB meetings? Well, I do, and I've recently updated some of that.
I have also posted a whole lot of the minutes of the Pacifica National Finance Committee on this Web site. I'm a member of that committee because I'm the WBAI LSB Treasurer.
The next regular LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday September 14, at 7:00 PM on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. This meeting will be held as a teleconference meeting, as the 39 previous public meetings were because of the pandemic.
The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, August 10, 2022. At times it was a bit comical. There was a lot of disagreement over the agenda, and then we did not get to that part of the agenda.
Before the August 10, meeting I had put out a written Treasurer's Report for all to read.
Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:
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.
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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, then I could, and then I couldn't again. You can take a look at it and see if I've been able to post anything on it lately. There are still some limitations, but I am assured that I can plug in the archive blurbs that were lost in the latest upgrade.
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. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.
For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. 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 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 some 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 November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
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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?
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According to the Johns-Hopkins Web site COVID-19 cases in the whole world reached 599,897,310 on Friday, and global deaths reached 6,483,902. In America the number of cases as of Friday was 94,119,931 and the death toll in America was 1,043,686, so 3,560 people have died of COVID-19 in America since our last program one week ago. That's a couple of hundred higher than the death rate than we'd had for the previous weeks. The pandemic is not over, even though a lot of people are behaving as if it were, including the CDC.
By the time this program airs on Saturday morning all of those figures we quoted will be higher of course. This was all mostly preventable.
A guy named Scott Eli Harris, of Aubrey, Texas has been sentenced to six months in federal prison for sending a threatening and racist message to a Maryland medical doctor who publicly advocated for the COVID-19 vaccine. Among Mr. Harris' messages to the doctor was Never going to take your wonder drug. My 12 gauge promises I won't,
and I'm a 5th generation U.S. Army veteran and a sniper … I can't wait for the shooting to start.
The threats also referenced the doctor's east Asian ethnicity. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clark said that Members of our Asian American Pacific Islander communities should never have to live in fear of violence because of their race or national origin,
adding that, threats of violence, especially those driven by racial animus and misguided beliefs concerning the COVID-19 pandemic will not be tolerated.
After his six months in federal prison Harris is sentenced to three years of supervised release.
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In Michigan Oakland County Judge Jacob Cunningham has issued a preliminary injunction that blocks county prosecutors from enforcing Michigan's 1931, law that bans abortion. In his ruling the judge said that allowing the 91 year old law to come into effect would, Send the health care system into crisis, the extreme costs of which would then be put on the women of our great state and, not lost on the court, without any repercussion for the men who, without a doubt, are a necessary component to create a pregnancy.
The Michigan law bans abortions without any exceptions for cases of rape or incest. The judge's ruling also said, The harm to the body of women and people capable of pregnancy in not issuing the injunction could not be more real, clear, present and dangerous to the court. As currently applied, the court finds [the law] is chilling and dangerous to our state's population of childbearing people and the medical professionals who care for them.
Michigan's Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer said, The sad reality is that a number of leaders in the state are actively looking for ways to make sure Michigan's draconian 1931 law … is the law of the land. I am proud of my team today, but our work continues.
Two Republican county prosecutors, are apparently planning an appeal of the judge's ruling. There is the possibility of a ballot initiative regarding abortion in the Fall. There is some hope that it would be as successful as the one in Kansas was earlier this year.
Speaking of Kansas, there's going to be a recount of the ballots for that measure. One Melissa Leavitt, a resident of Colby, Kansas made the recount request just before the deadline for such a request and, after fundraising for the recount, posted a $200,000 bond to cover the cost of it. Given that it was a landslide vote to not ban abortions in Kansas this recount will mostly be a waste of time. Maybe some of those who are opposed to a woman's right to choose figure that their god will change the votes during the recount. State Elections Director for the Kansas Secretary of State's office Bryan Caskey said that, Recounts normally reinforce the Election Day results. We stand by the results and will do the recount.
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Pickles of the North here: R.Paul and I talked about the new moonshot. The Artemis 1 mission was due to commence on August 29 but was scrubbed when one of the RS 25 rocket engines couldn't reach the proper temperature range in sync with the other three engines in order to take off. If they can correct this problem in time, the next launch window will be September 2*. It's more important to postpone and fix things - safety first is paramount for all human missions! You don't want to have to use the Launch Abort System (it pops the Orion space capsule with the crew away from the rocket at 0 to 500 mph in two seconds!) because things didn't get fixed at the real use testing stage, which is the whole purpose of this mission.
This is the first test launch of a rocket capable of carrying astronauts to the moon since the Apollo Program last landed astronauts on the moon in December 1972. The Orion space capsule will carry three moonikins
which will stand in for human astronauts and provide data on how the trip will affect a living crew. One moonikin
testing the mission spacesuit is named after Arturo Campos, a key engineer who helped bring the Apollo 13 astronauts home during their life threatening mission in 1970.
The Orion space capsule sits atop the world's most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS, which although shorter in height than the mighty Saturn V rocket used in all previous moon shots (322 feet as opposed to 362 feet) is more powerful, blasting out 8.8 million pounds of thrust at take off!
We are really looking forward to the next launch window and seeing a successful liftoff. When finally en route to the Moon the Artemis 1 mission will deploy several miniature satellites called Cubesats, one of which will be carrying yeast to help determine the effects of radiation on living things as they travel in deep space beyond the Moon. Others will look for evidence of water on the lunar surface.
During the mission the Orion space capsule will orbit the Moon at one point some 38,000 nautical miles above its surface and perform technical maneuvers. It will then gradually descend to an orbit of 60 miles above the lunar surface. The 60 mile orbit is the one used by the Apollo Lunar Landers in their descent to the lunar surface.
Future Artemis missions will involve lunar surface exploration and the construction of the Lunar Gateway, which will be the biggest collaborative space project since the International Space Station. The Lunar Gateway space station will orbit the Moon and provide support for future lunar and eventually, Mars missions.
* The postponement has now been pushed to September 3.
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The redacted Trump affidavit has been released. Wow, just from what they're showing he has to be indicted. I suspect that the Russians and the Chinese Communist Party have had operatives go through all of that material, with or without Trump's active participation. I mean, both countries are exceptionally good at spying. Surely they would have had operatives posing as workers at Trump's golf course and they would have found their way to that unlocked basement and had a nice look, and probably also a photograph session, through all of those documents. On the other hand, maybe Trump showed the documents off to the foreign operatives and so they had no need to send in their spies. We can only hope that the damage done by Trump in this instance wasn't too severe.
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We talked a bit about former WBAI show host Fred Hershkowitz whom we were told had passed away in the days before this radio program. Fred did a live radio program and mostly focused on music and humor. Long ago WBAI used to have different days dedicated to single subjects. I believe that Fred Hershkowitz ran some of the Laugh Days
that we had which were dedicated to humor. The ranks of the old live radio hosts are thinning.
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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 that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight
Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board,
owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people
board that was just totally out of hand.
In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.
Sometimes we used to 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.
There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.
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