Web links related to the Back of the Book program of July 7, 2003

Here is the latest on the saga of Pacifica. The big meeting of the interim Pacifica National Board (iPNB) in June in New York City, was postponed until August. The iPNB had a telephone meeting in June to finally approve the bylaws for Pacifica. Once again the usual obstructionist factions stopped the bylaws from being approved, even though two thirds of the iPNB members present and voting voted in favor of them. However, iPNB Secretary Carol Spooner has filed a motion with the judge to declare the bylaws passed and get on with this process already!

The previous iPNB meeting was held March 7-9, in Los Angeles, CA, to discuss and possibly even pass the new bylaws for the Pacifica Foundation. Well, it was a big flop, the various schemers sank the bylaws again. I'll be updating this link one of these days.

WBAI now 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. Here's a schedule made by a listener who has Web links for various programs and producers.

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Our colleagues from Off the Hook now have both a RealAudio streaming web cast operating, and a new MP3 stream both of which were working at about 8:49 PM last night. The MP3 feed is now the preferred feed.

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The Pacifica Foundation, which owns WBAI, has revamped its Web site and now has something called the Pacifica Lounge where you can post messages about Pacifica, WBAI and other Pacifica radio stations. This may be a good thing, and of course there are other, long term fora in which to participate.

WBAI also has a forum on its Web site now. You have to register to post messages, but anyone may read the messages.

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I was able to figure out what sort of new video card to get, since the old one isn't made anymore, and I bought a new card. This new video card is nice, but the drivers are screwing up my system a lot. Various programs are crashing from conflicts with the video drivers and other software associated with the new card that I haven't been able to resolve yet.

So I installed the new video card, but I was concerned about how much heat it was going to put out, especially during the heat wave. I felt in back of my computer, where the exhaust fans are, to see if the air coming out felt particularly hot. That's when i noticed that I was only feeling the exhaust from one of the three fans. After some more examination I found that two of my fans weren't doing anything!

The graphic above shows what I ended up doing after a lot of trial and error. I decided that the system would burn out quickly if I didn't cool it down, so I left the side of the machine off and placed an ordinary ten inch table fan up against it, actually partially inside of it.

As it turned out this cooled things off quite well, even during the heat wave, although I could only use the computer for a while before I had to turn it off to cool it down.

I got some new fans, but it turned out that the 12 volt sockets that the old fans had been attached to were dead! Luckily, there were two other 12 volt sockets on the motherboard and the fans are currently running off them. And if they go bad my computer is going to just fry.

I only got all of this done, including waiting for the fans to be delivered, on Saturday night. What a mess. I can only hope that even more stuff doesn't go wrong.

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The Supreme Court has struck down the Texas sodomy law, and with it all other state sodomy laws.

On the program I went on about some history of all of this. The Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) had mounted a couple of challenges to the new York State sodomy laws, §130.38 of the New York State Penal Law, back in the '70s. I recall then GAA President David Thorstad personally challenging them by holding a press conference before and after having violated those laws. Eventually, the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund challenged §130.38 and the case went to the New York State Supreme Court. That court ruled the section unconstitutional and the Governor at the time didn't try to pursue it to the federal level. In 1986, of course, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of anti-gay sodomy laws, this decision reverses that one.

This decision is a big victory for gay/lesbian/bisexual and trans activists. Many of us have been aiming for this for decades. And of course the decision was handed down days before the major pride marches around the country. The cause of what we old, gay dinosaurs used to call “gay liberation” has been pushed forward, and there is now a new base to work from.

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One pretty immediate result of the Supreme Court ruling was that they released a gay teenager from a long prison term that he only got because he was gay.

This is pretty miserable treatment. What idiots thought to treat a developmentally disabled kid this way? This case really is an example of the hatred visited upon powerless gay people of any age by some of those in positions of power.

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Of course Pickles of the North and I marched in the annual New York City Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Trans Pride March on June 29^th. I'm glad to report that Heritage of Pride, the group which runs these events, has decided to start calling it a “march” again. We always called it that when I was involved with setting these things up; we knew that it was an event opposed by various orders of anti-gay bigots.

And they even had the march order on line this year! Congratulations to Heritage of Pride for getting this right!

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As promised, here is the E-mail we read on the air for the June 9 & 23, and July 7, programs. On the air I had to skip some on one program to read on the next program owing to time constraints. I'm not going to list there in the order in which they were read because I think that would be silly. I'm just going to list the E-mails here in the chronological order in which they were sent.

We start out with something from this guy Keith who apparently has a politically correct bug up his ass.

As we all know now, of course, the curators of the museum were lying when they said that everything had been looted. They had stored most of the collections away before the war started. in fact one whole, bit part of their collection of ancient stuff had been hidden in a flooded sub-basement since the 1991 Gulf War! Maybe Keith would like to endorse the torture and murder of the Saddam Hussein regime?

Yes, the word “scabrous” can apply, but it just didn't work for me at that time in that context. oh well, words.

As usual, the army covered up for that filthy sky pilot we talked about on a previous program.

As we've pointed out recently, we have listeners all over the world now who are listening via the Internet. Given the late hour of the program it's possible that at some time we might have more listeners outside the listening area than inside it. It's on at a much more convenient time in other parts of the world.

What truly amazes me is that when I got this E-mail I was actually able to read it! I last took a class in French in high school 40 years ago! Of course it took me a while and when i tried to do it again on the air I stumbled a little bit, but the fact that I remembered any French at all amazed me.

Yes, my computer problems continue, as outlined above. I've been using Spybot, as Raymond suggested, and also Ad Aware, who have been updating their Web site of late.

As for tech support, a lot of folks are just thrust into those positions without really having any depth of knowledge about the area in which they're supposed to be helpful to people. lousy tech support is one of the main gripes computer users have with the companies that sell them everything from Internet access to the computer itself.

Unfortunately, I don't know of anywhere that has the CBC doomsday broadcast posted at this time. It's pretty sobering stuff though. I'm also not sure if it could be posted without violating a copyright, whereas on the radio we're reporting about it and it's okay to broadcast some of it. Yeah, the laws are bizarre these days.

Actually, that chronological incident only occurs at 12:34 PM on that date each century. Those of us who are sticklers insist that 12:34 AM is really just 00:34.

But I remember that in 1978! Yeah, this is one of those things which forms the fabric of my various obsessional observations. Unfortunately, although I'd made a note of it I'd forgotten to announce in advance when the Julian date achieved the very round number of 2,450,000.0 at 8:00 PM on October 8, 1995. Yeah, I screw up the big ones sometimes. Nobody else covered this momentous, er, moment either.

Next we have Fernando, who had been laying low after having posted some really nasty things about me on the Pacifica listener forums. He's as much a misogynist as ever. I played a certain instrumental version of a song while reading the following on the air.

Next we have some rapid fire E-mails from a cell phone user who's talking about something I did on the RIAA losing a court case.

Next we have someone who's referring to a story I read from the Associated Press wire about the fictional language Klingon being allowed for in some mental institutions.

Well, not quite, Dan. The media basher whom you link to apparently has a reading comprehension problem. He even quotes on his page that this is something that would be used if needed. By the way, Klingon is part of Star Trek, not Star Wars; it's spelled with a capital “K”, and even the media basher doesn't claim it's old. It certainly doesn't seem to qualify as an “urban legend,” given the truth behind it.

Yes, sometimes we'll play things for laughs on the program. A good laugh every now and again is healthy, no?

Yes, an interesting story, thanks. I still have a couple of old “copying pencils” around, which were sold as “indelible pencils” when I bought them many years ago.

Heather is referring to a topic I covered on a program some time back. Lots of listeners still remember that one.

Next we hear from Seth, who's a long time listener, contributor and correspondent.

Well, Uncle Sidney pitched but WBAI Management didn't have me pitching, as it turned out. One listener did send in $100 though! So my fulfillment rate for this marathon was 100%, and I didn't even pitch!

Seth has helped us out during the marathons for many years, and we thank him for that.

Fernando again. 'Nuff Said, the comic book show, was never the lead in to Back of the Book.

Uncle Sidney Smith does a very good radio program, which alternates with Back of the Book. As for UFO Desk I said what I had to say about that when it was still on the air.

Art Bell is not going to come to WBAI. I think everyone but Fernando can see that. I don't know that we'd want Art Bell around anyway, we've already filled our quota of conspiracy nuts and people spouting ridiculous claims.

Nah, I didn't pitch this marathon.

This next missive contains a bunch of photographs, the provenance of which I am not totally certain about. I couldn't read this stuff on the air because of the FCC rules. Yeah, I know, some people just violate the FCC rules and say the hell with it. I'd rather not be the one who gets the station's license revoked, however.

The Coney Island Parachute Jump got a bit of publicity right after we did something about it on a program. It's in an odd state right now, and I don't mean New York.

Yes, they've gotten it back together, but it's still encased in some sort of shroud. We'll be doing more on this in the future.

Thanks for the good wishes. Pickles of the North is definitely good for me.

I looked at Digital Audio Tape (DAT) and in my opinion it's just not robust enough over the long haul. Unless you're getting the heads and other mechanical parts adjusted after every 75 hours of use they start getting misaligned and you're liable to get a DAT tape mangled, which is the end of that tape and whatever was on it. DAT is also pretty expensive.

I'm looking at some other alternatives now. Hell, maybe I'll even get my old cassette recorder fixed. But I'd sure like to get real digital audio happening for the air.

Oh, jeez, now my whining about my medical stuff is even annoying the doctors! I think I've lessened the emphasis on my new medical, um, situation over the past number of programs. But it was predictably going to be a big part of the program once I found that my life had changed because I have diabetes. Hell, I talk about my life, I'm certainly going to talk about how it's suddenly changing. This new medical stuff gets my attention, all right.

I wonder if my last few programs where I'm kvetching about my computer has gotten the other computer professionals pissed off at me too?

I try to avoid putting listeners' names and E-mail addresses on the Web site. You'll get spammed like mad if I do that. Also, do you really want the Office of Homeland Security to know that you're listening to a subversive like me? Egad!

As for Fernando, you can see that he's back.

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There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI. But there is an Internet list called “Free Pacifica!” which you can subscribe to, and these issues are discussed there. If you subscribe to it you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list. You will also be able to send messages to the list.

If you want to subscribe to the “Free Pacifica!” list just click on this link and follow the instructions, and you'll be subscribed. Could open your eyes a little bit.

The above list has occasionally produced a high volume of E-mail because of the attention that these issues have drawn. If you would prefer to subscribe to a low volume list that only provides announcements of events related to these issues then subscribe to the FreePac mailing list.

Another list that's sprung up is the “NewPacifica” mailing list. This one is very lively and currently includes over 400 subscribers coast to coast. Being lively, of course, it sometimes also gets a bit nasty. All sorts of things are happening on this list. With that warning in mind, you can look at the NewPacifica list here, and you can join the list from that Web page too, although you'll have to deal with Yahoo! to do so.

There is also the more WBAI specific “Goodlight” Web based message board. This one has a great many people posting anonymously and there's also an ancillary board that's just totally out of hand.

The “Goodlight” Web based message board has expanded to cover all Pacifica stations.

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