Denial Is Not Protection
We talked about the climate crisis and the very energetic storms that have hit Florida over the past couple of weeks on this program. We also talked about scientists mapping the entire genome of a wooly mammoth that had died about 52,000 years ago. I think there's a little bit more to add to this Web page, so check back for updates.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday November 13, 2024, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. That will be the final meeting of the 13th WBAI LSB, and it will be my final LSB meeting as a member. I term out this December.
We had a LSB meeting this past Wednesday night. After the usual gang wasted a bunch of time at the start of the meeting with objections to routine things and then played some other time wasting games we got to the real meeting wherein the WBAI interim General Manager said that he would not come to local Finance Committee meetings as long as the former WBAI General Manager was a member of the committee. Well, we have to see about this because it creates a bit of a crisis in Pacifica governance. It should not be proper for Management to be able able to refuse to cooperate with governance, in this case the WBAI local Finance Committee. Hell, anyone might show up at one of those meetings. So I don't know what's going to happen with regard to the WBAI draft FY25 budget now.
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. Good luck.
Since the former General Manager 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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Program Note:According to FCC regulations §399. Support of political candidates is prohibited on WBAI, No noncommercial educational broadcasting station may support or oppose any candidate for political office.
Yeah, this is a problem, and that's why we are not able to mention things like the political conventions that have gotten a ton of attention all over the world. We can't even suggest that certain politicians should go to jail. If we're still around on November 9, 2024, we'll be able to mention all of this political stuff again.
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Climate Crisis in action: Hurricane Helene and then Hurricane Milton. We can't prove that these storms are the result of Climate change and global warming, but it sure does look like that. I personally suspect that in years ahead these current weather patterns will indeed be found to have been caused by the extra energy put into the atmosphere and ocean by anthropogenic global warning. I wonder if some people in those places where politicians are calling global warming and the climate crisis hoaxes and which are getting hit with extreme weather events on a repeating basis are reconsidering their positions? Nah. Those people who live in those states and who have been swallowing this disinformation have to choose between either the climate crisis not being a hoax and the conclusion that their god doesn't like them.
Certain people whom I may not name due to §399 are spreading the lie that the current presidential administration is not responding to disasters in Republican dominated areas. And of course they blame it on immigration. The immigration situation has been a mess in the United States of America for decades. I recall seeing a TV documentary on the situation in the '90s where they showed people coming into the United States with no visa, no passport, no identification and getting given a ticket to show up for a court hearing in something like 10 months or more. And then they show this guy whom they've been following walking out of the airport with his luggage and going no one knows where. Too bad certain people whom I can't name due to §399 prevented an agreed upon solution from being passed in Congress.
Meanwhile, another right-wing Congress critter whom I cannot name due to §399 has claimed that an unspecified THEY
are causing these big storms. This is the same one who only a couple of years ago was talking about the wild fires in the west being caused by Jewish space lasers. If, say 30 years or more ago, you had written a novel with all of these things going on in it you wouldn't have been able to get that novel published because the editor would have said the story was too far fetched.
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I talked on the air about reading in the October 2024, issue of Scientific American about a Mammoth genome being mapped. Getting all of the mammoth's DNA mapped was a pretty complex operation. Most ancient DNA is nothing but tiny fragments, or else it's nothing at all. In this case the scientists say that the wooly mammoth was pretty much freeze dried very fast at the time of its death about 52,000 years ago under extremely dry and cold conditions. It sounds sort of like a science fiction movie I saw a long time ago where a cave man gets frozen very quickly but then he comes back to life when he's thawed out. The real life mammoth did not come back to life.
There were a lot of scientific hurdles that had to be overcome to get the entire genome of this mammoth mapped out. One thing that the scientists learned from the mammoth's DNA was that it had what resembled a mullet haircut on top of its head. The scientists will probably learn a lot more from this mammoth's DNA and the scientific progress made during the process of completely mapping this extinct animal's DNA might also allow the genomes of other ancient creatures to be sequenced.
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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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