Many Cells Together
It's Saturday afternoon, June 24, 2023, 15:35, and this Web page is finished. I've added more of what we'd talked about on this program, and I've put in the link to the archive so you can still listen to this program if you want to. I've also corrected a broken link to an image. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ This one's late because Microsoft once again updated
my operating system. Once again my upload speed was so slow that by the time the program would have gotten posted to WBAI no one would have been there to put the file into the queue. And I'd forgotten what the fix is for this problem. Maybe I should post the fix up here for anyone to find. We talked about multicellularity and a scientist's experiment that showed how it can come about in a laboratory. We also talked about the bizarre tale that's going around about how the CIA is going to try to assassinate some WBAI producers. We talked about the pandemic too.
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.
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 WBAI Local Station Board meeting will be held on Wednesday July 12, 2023, at 7:00 PM on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. This meeting will be held as a teleconference meeting, as the 46 previous public meetings were because of the pandemic.
The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, June 14, 2023. Someone continues to cause chaos. People waste time and then complain that there's no time left and not everybody will indulge them with more time to waste. I gave a Treasurer's Report and the written version is here.
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. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
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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Program note: We are preempted next week. We're scheduled to be back on July 1. Our on-air schedule, as far as we're allowed to know it, is here.
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We talked quite a bit on this program about multicellularity. We're made of cells, but most cells in the world are single cells. We talked about recent research on how living things made up of many cells can come about. We talked about multicellularity happening at least 20 times on planet Earth. All of our listeners are eukaryotes.
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The CDC Web site isn't giving us lot of up-to-date information about COVID-19 in America, although they're saying that Total Deaths are at 1,132,206 which means that 767 people have died of COVID-19 since our last program one week ago. The CDC says that there's been a 7.7% down tick in COVID-19 deaths in the past week. That's not as much of a down tick as the previous week.
The pandemic is not over. Pickles of the North and I are still keeping our masks on. We've both gotten our bivalent vaccinations, and our bivalent booster shots. When the new boosters are put out in the Autumn I'm sure we'll get those as soon as we can too.
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Candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for President Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is saying that he's aware
that the CIA may kill him and he lives lives accordingly. He has no chance, of course. He might do better running as a Republican, since he's such a conspiracy nut.
And we've been seeing E-mail allegations that The CIA is out to assassinate some WBAI producers. The first E-mail I got about this came from someone who claimed that there was a Web site that was run by the CIA which shows a Kill-List
funded by the CIA. That E-mail said that the site proudly identifies itself — right on its home page (and in English) — as a CIA project.
So the secretive CIA is posting on-line, and in English just to make it easier, that they are going to kill an American citizen on American soil? Gosh, why does this sound implausible to me? Why doesn't it sound implausible to the people who are pushing this assassination scare? Do people not realize that anyone can put up a Web site and write anything on it, including claims that they're the CIA? The people pushing this have not shown any proof that this is real.
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We will welcome the 2023, Summer Solstice this coming Wednesday June 21, at 10:58 AM. Summer is my favorite season of the year. I have a chart of the seasons and sub-seasons on this Web site.
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Siberia is breaking its temperature records during its worst heat wave in history.
It's being reported that the temperature hit 100 degrees F. in Jalturovosk last Saturday, the hottest day ever for that city. Last Wednesday in the city of Baevo it hit 103.3 F. and in the city of Barnaul it was 101.3 F.
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GLAAD, [Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation] has released a survey that says 8 in 10 non-LGBT+∞ people in United States of America support equal rights for members of the LGBT+∞ community. The organization says that the survey shows that 84% of adults in America believe sexual and gender minorities should have the same rights as heterosexual and cisgender (non-transgender) people, while a large majority of U.S. adults, 7 in 10, agreed that businesses should publicly support the LGBT+∞ community. Sarah Kate Ellis, the organization's president and CEO, said in a statement that, While these results are a clear demonstration that fair and accurate representation in media and journalism have a powerful and measurable effect on the lives of LGBTQ people, America is at a critical juncture when it comes to LGBTQ acceptance and safety.
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So the Trump indictment was for 37 felony counts of violations of the Espionage Act and obstructing justice. He's out, but others who've been charged with fewer counts did not get to wait for trial on the outside. Reality Winner just went right to jail for one page. Trump hoarded hundreds of documents, and reportedly showed off some to people who have no security clearance. And Trump has not been made to hand over his passports, I think he has several of them.
And the indictment has given Trump a bump in the polls for the Republican primary race. Trump had 61% support of GOP voters compared to just 23% for DeSantis in a CBS News poll. The Republican Party has really metamorphosed into something very strange.
That poll also revealed that only 7% of Republican voters say the 49 page indictment makes them think less highly of Trump, while about 14% say it makes them support him more strongly. Oh yeah, strange indeed.
It's being reported that after the indictment Trump went to a local Cuban restaurant and said, Food for everyone!
twice. The people there sang Happy Birthday
to Trump. And then he left and didn't pay for the food. Some people thought he was treating them, but the stalwart Trumpoids said that Trump had only said that there'd be food for everyone at the restaurant - not that he was buying it. Trump is known for not paying his bills.
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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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