His Birthday Nears!
So we're back from a one week hiatus and it's only two days until Isaac Newton's birthday! The whole world celebrates his birthday on December 25. And everyone obeys his laws of gravity. On this program Pickles of the North talked about some holiday traditions, and superstitions, and we noted that the CDC Web site has resumed tracking the COVID-19 death rate. We talked about the Winter Solstice and the beautiful December twilights we've been seeing. We also talked about Donnie Bonespur
trump wriggling around trying to get his way by delaying everything that's arrayed against him. We'll have a little more to add after the program, and we'll be trying to update this page and some other, recent Web pages about the program on this site too, so check back for the updates.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday January 10, 2024, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security.
We held the first meeting of the 13th WBAI LSB on December 10. It didn't go that badly but it did feature one bad actor who disrupted the meeting by complaining about how the agenda was being handled, even though it's been handled that way for just short of 17 years. That LSB member and her faction had voted to make the process happen this way at the LSB meeting held on February 7, 2007. In the course of the LSB setting the agenda she got to make a small change in the agenda without that even getting voted on.
We held officer elections at this meeting and that same person complained about the LSB using an on-line service to count the votes for LSB officers. She's still complaining about it after the meeting. We then had the nominations for LSB officers. Some very unqualified people, including one person who used to stalk Staff at WBAI, got nominated for some positions. I was nominated for Treasurer again. Someone from that same faction as the person who was trying to stall the agenda nominated someone else, but that person was not at the meeting just at that moment. Two days later when he found out that he'd been nominated he declined the nomination. So I'm Treasurer again as the only candidate. Now that faction is complaining that there's no provision for write-in candidates on the service that's handling the voting. Some of them claim that the Pacifica bylaws require write-in votes. But they can't say where you can find that in the bylaws; I don't think there is a provision requiring write-in ballots in the Pacifica bylaws. Some of those faction operatives are always making claims about the bylaws that aren't true. This 13th WBAI LSB is going to be quite, um, interesting.
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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This program is airing only two days before Isaac Newton's birthday on December 25. On that day the entire world celebrates the birth of this great man and we all obey his laws of gravity that day and every other day of our lives.
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The CDC is putting out information about the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic again. They say that as of December 16, 2023, the death toll in America from COVID-19 was 1,161,602. That works out to 10,167 dead since our November 4, program and that averages to about 1,695 people dying from COVID-19 every week over those six weeks. Yeah, it's still here.
The pandemic is clearly not over. Pickles of the North and I are still keeping our masks on. We've both gotten our new vaccinations; we don't want to catch this disease.
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Program note: We were supposed to have been preempted last week, as per the schedule we'd gotten from the General Manager of WBAI. imagine my surprise when I tuned in shortly after five o'clock last Saturday morning and heard one of our previous programs airing! Apparently Management had forgotten that we were preempted and so the Ops person on duty had no choice but to put on that program. I'll note that the program that aired last week does not show up in the WBAI archives. I usually remind Management that we're preempted some days before the program would have aired. I'll have to make sure to always do that no matter how busy I am from now on.
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The Winter Solstice occurred this past Thursday night at 10:27 PM (ET). The Sun will set today, Saturday December 23, 2023, at 4:33 PM (ET), a full five minutes later than it had set on the afternoon of our last program. I have a chart showing the seasons and sub-seasons on my Web site.
We've been treated to some very nice December twilights this year.
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The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled in a 4-3 decision that Donnie Bonespur
Trump must be removed from the ballots for the Republican primary election in that state because of his violation of the Constitution's Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause.
The case is going to the Supreme Court of the United States and I bet they'll find a way to keep their benefactor in the race. Sure sounds like he should be disqualified though.
Predictably, Republicans are saying that they're going to remove Biden from the presidential ballots in the states that they control. Well, Biden didn't cause an insurrection, so they can't claim to exclude him on the basis of that part of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. This is like their impeachment of Biden. The Republicans in the House of Representatives can't name any high crimes or misdemeanors that he's committed, but they're impeaching him anyway.
Meanwhile The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to fast-track a decision on Trump's crazy claim of blanket immunity from all charges, and that decision will probably delay the scheduled March 3, start of his federal election interference trial. The appeal will instead go to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has agreed to expedite consideration and has set a hearing for January 9, 2024.
In something that was breaking news just as we started to record this program the Detroit News is reporting that Donnie Bonespur
Trump is on tape bullying Detroit election officials in an effort to get them to refuse to certify the vote count during the 2020, election. According to the Detroit News Trump said to the election officials, How can anyone sign something when you have more votes than people?
And then Trump reportedly said, We've got to fight for our country we can't let these people take our country away from us.
The entire world needs for this guy to go to prison, and stay there.
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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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