You can also send me E-mail.
And now you can even reach me on Twitter
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WBAI related links
A WBAI Listeners' Web page
WBAI Management's official Web site
I crashed and I'm late getting this Web pager posted. I have more to post, but I'll get this up on the Web now. Check back for at least one more update
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday May 13, 2026, 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 night 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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Hey, did you hear about Cha 1107-7626's weight gain? It's gaining about 6.6 billion tons of matter per second!
Cha 1107-7626 is a rogue planet in the Chamaeleon I star-forming region, let's just call it cha11 from now on, anyway a rogue planet is a planet which is not gravitationally bound to a star, as all of the planets in the Solar System are. Rogue planets outnumber planets that are a part of a star system and there are a great many of them roaming all over this galaxy. Luckily space is so big that collisions of rogue planets with planets that are part of a star system are very rare. On the other hand, given how many star systems there are and how many rogue planets there are there must be some collisions.
The Earth is safe from colliding with cha11 though, which is good because that rogue planet weighs between six and ten times what the planet Jupiter weighs. The reason why the Earth is safe from colliding with it is that the rogue planet is about 620 light years away. What's interesting about it is that I saw in a recent issue of Scientific American that it's accumulating 6.6 billion tons of matter per second, which is impossible for the human mind to even imagine.
One thing about rogue planets is that we might not be able to see them coming, as can happen with a lot of asteroids and comets. But if we could there is very little likelihood that we'd be able to do anything about it. The ability of humans to deflect even a small asteroid is marginal, deflecting a planet is just beyond what we can do. And if it were between six and ten time the mass of Jupiter it wouldn't have to hit the Earth to cause problems, it would disrupt the entire Solar System. It would be the second heaviest thing in the Solar System if it got here, second only to the Sun. Even a smaller planet would be pretty much impossible for us to deal with.
A rogue planet would be extra solar like Oumuamua and Comet 3I Atlas were. I saw an estimate that when it entered the Solar System Comet 3I was traveling at 137,000 mph and then it sped up to about 153,000 mph as it got closer to the Sun. Even if a rogue planet just ran through the Solar system without physically hitting anything its gravity might disrupt planets that it passed close to, and that could disrupt things in the Solar System for the next few million years.
Sometimes it's just fun to think about astronomical topics, isn't it?
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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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