One Rough Place to Land
So we ended up talking about Trump, his excessively long speech last Tuesday night and the damage he and his henchmen are doing to the United States of America, and to the world. We talked about a bit more than that, and I plan to post some of that up here as well. So it might be worthwhile to check back here for that possible update.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday March 12, 2025, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security.
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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Another Lunar Lander has tipped over. The Athena spacecraft built by Intuitive Machines of Houston has tipped over upon landing on the Moon, just as the company's Odysseus lander did last year. It's dead now because it can't deploy its solar panels to generate more energy. The mission controllers were able to activate some of the experiments on the spacecraft before it died for lack of electrical energy. Athena's mission had been supposed to last 10 days and would have ended when lunar night fell over that part of the Moon.
Both landers were part of part of a NASA program known as Commercial Lunar Payload Services which intends to get commercial companies to do some space exploration work on the moon at a lower cost. So far it doesn't seem to be working all that well. Another lander that is part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, the Blue Ghost lander by a company named Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas, landed this past Sunday, did not tip over, and is conducting science experiments on the Moon. Athena was carrying payloads for NASA and commercial customers, including three rovers, a rocket-powered drone and a drill that was to be used to get into the lunar soil in search of water ice.
The CEO of Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, described the failure as, Any time that you ship a spacecraft to Florida for flight and end up a week later operating on the moon, I declare that a success,
which sure does sound silly.
Intuitive Machines is a publicly traded company and its stock price fell by about 20% on Thursday and was down by about 30% on Friday.
One Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission, by a company called Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, missed the moon entirely last year.
We've talked last year about the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, lunar rover that was cancelled. It cost NASA $450 Million and was almost done with testing when it was cancelled. NASA is looking for a commercial company that would pay to send the rover to the Moon and absorb future costs.
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We talked about that long, boring speech that Donnie Bonespur
Trump subjected everyone to on Tuesday night. He just lied and lied. I noticed that someone had a small sign that said, This is Not Normal
. It was only on screen for a fraction of a second, and then some guy reached across the aisle and ripped it out of her had, and it fell to the floor. It turns out that the sign was held by Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury (D) New Mexico. The guy who stole her sign was reportedly a Republican Congressman from Texas. So much for the Republican sense of free speech.
I was glad to see Congressman Al Green of Texas objecting to Trump's attack on Medicare, raising his cane and contradicting Trump on some of his lies. Congressman Green was removed removed from the chamber and then he was censured later in the week. Other Democrats sat on their hands and never applauded, which seemed to bother Trump, some held small signed that said False
on one side and things like Musk Steals
on the other. During the course of the record long speech that was full of lies and misrepresentations a number of Democrats walked out of the room, some wore clothing with legends that could be read by Trump and other Republicans.
Some of the things Trump said were downright comical, as when he apparently tried to get people to believe that the Social Security Administration actually listed people as being 160 to 300 years old. The categories that Trump was claiming showed fraud actually showed that some people who have social Security numbers do not have a date of death on their records. They are not getting paid Social Security benefits. Another part of this issue is that the Social Security Administration still uses the ancient COBOL programming language which has some difficulties with some dates.
Pickles of the North couldn't sit through the entire thing. It was too bothersome for her, especially where Trump had nasty things to say about Canada. Trump also said, My administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, and we've already started doing it.
He also talked about making Greenland a part of the United States of America.
In this long speech Trump showed what a bully he was, he also showed his ignorance on a number of topics that it would be important for a competent President to know. America is in a bad position with Trump in power.
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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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