Web links related to the Back of the Book program of January 22, 2011


It's Friday, December 9, 2011, 23:32, and this Web page is finished. I've updated this Web page with information and links about the rescue of a pirated ship and the determination that the Sun is not to blame for the global warming that's been observed over the past decades, previously I'd updated this page with information about the news that we're preempted on February 5th, a link to the explanation about why Back of the Book didn't air on February 5th, and I've put in the information about the location of the next LSB meeting. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Oh, this is one frozen night! The wind chill may be below zero for this radio program. Always fun getting to the radio station in these conditions.

Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of many of the WBAI LSB meetings? Well, I do.

The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday, February 9, 2011, at 388 Atlantic Ave. between Bond & Hoyt Sts., Brooklyn. The LSB Chair says, “Note: this meeting will take place on the 2nd floor, not in the 1st floor space we had been using. (I've been told to inform people not to use the elevator unless they need to for physical reasons.)”

The regular LSB meeting scheduled for Wednesday, January 12, 2011, was cancelled due to yet another impending Winter storm, and the venue problems. There was, however, a Delegates' Assembly, which is different from the LSB meeting in several ways, many of which might seem pretty esoteric to a casual observer. This Delegates' Assembly was not done in-person but as a teleconference. And, what joy, I got to be Secretary pro tem for it.

People had already been nominated in December, I told you this could be somewhat esoteric, and during this teleconference people declared if they accepted nomination or not. One faction operative accepted and then declined nomination when his turn to speak came. I suspect that the other faction operatives told him to knock it off.

The ballots were done by E-mail and were sent off to some PNB members in California to be counted. Faction operatives tried to prevent the voting from happening, but the assembled Delegates passed the motion to do it by one vote. Below is the official announcement of the results of the balloting:

Good morning.

Please forward this to all the members of the WBAI local station board and any list-servs or bulletin boards of interest.

Here are the results of the WBAI Pacifica National Board Representative Election

Ballots were received from 23 of 24 members of the WBAI Local Station Board. All ballots were received from authorized email addresses.

Listener Election:
Nia Bediako - 10 votes - Elected in 1st round
Alex Steinberg - 7 votes - Elected in 1st round
Carolyn Birden - 6 votes - Elected in 1st round

Ray LaForest - 0 votes - Eliminated in 1st round

*Manijeh Saba - (1) Write-in vote for 3rd place

Staff Election:
Kathy Davis - 13 votes - Elected in 1st round
Bob Lederer - 10 votes - Eliminated in 1st round

*R. Paul Martin - (1) Write-in vote for 2nd place
*Shawn Rhodes - (1) Write-in vote for 3rd place

All ballots and counting sheets are on file at the National Office with Christine Niera

On behalf of the PNB Coordinating Committee,

Tracy Rosenberg

At a previous meeting the WBAI LSB voted to hold its meetings on the second Wednesday of every month and/or the last Thursday of that month, subject to change by the LSB, which gives us the following schedule:

All of 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.

WBAI has an official Web stream of what's on the air at any time! You can go here and pick which type of stream you want! If this stream isn't working let me know. And you can see the status of the streams at any time by clicking here. The stream was working at 1:09 AM this morning. The station has a Flash stream here, make sure you enable Javascript so it can work for you.

WBAI is archiving the programs! Just go here and you'll be able to listen to this program any time for the next couple of months. You may need to scroll up one line to see the audio archive. Let me know if you find this feature useful.

If you want to listen to any part of the WBAI archive click here to go right to the archives. When you first go to the Web page you'll only see the WBAI programs for the past 7 days. If you want to see older programs you can click on one of the “See ALL Shows” buttons. Or to see only the two shows in this time slot click here. The archives of our programs in our previous time slot are here.

Back of the Book is one of the programs that you can download, as well as listen to on line.

In the table on the archive Web page Back of the Book and Carrier Wave are both in the “Show” column. The “Date and Category” column shows the date of the program. After the program I go in and write the details of the program and say which program it is. Of course I'd recommend that you just listen to both programs in this time slot!

In the Summer of 2009, there was a Pacifica National Board meeting held in New York. Here's the Web page I did about this PNB meeting and the amazing things that went on at it.

And the PNB has also met in Houston from Friday October 9th, through Sunday October 11th, 2009. The official audio archive of that meeting is here. It was not disrupted as the New York meeting was, although some of the same miscreants got out there to say stupid things.

The Pacifica National Board (PNB) met in Manhattan the weekend of October 1-3, 2010. The audio has been posted for the first day of the meeting, the second day of the meeting and the third day of the meeting.

Subject: [WBAI-LSB-PUBLIC] Announcement: Berthold Reimers appointed GM of WBAI

Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2010 16:43:09 -0500

From: Mitchel Cohen

To: wbai-lsb-public@yahoogroups.com


I've just received word from Arlene Engelhardt, Executive Director of Pacifica, that she's appointed Berthold Reimers as the General Manager of WBAI.

Mitchel Cohen
Chair, WBAI Local Station Board

We've Sort of Moved

Back of the Book has been moved to this time slot. We'll see how this move works.

The interim Program Director has issued notice of program changes. The evolving, relevant documents are below. We are hearing from other producers who have been told they are being moved to other time slots and having their time cut in half. One producer has been told he's off the air entirely and another producer has decided that he would rather resign than be treated in a way that he can't abide.

Some producers are lobbying heavily to retain their current time slots, and some have lobbied to get better time slots amid the chaos of this sudden program shakeup. One producer got moved, accepted it, and then got pushed out of the new time slot by another producer who had publicly quit and then successfully lobbied the interim Program Director, with the aid of four supporters, for a better time slot. The producer who got pushed out has quit WBAI.

We got a call on our answering machine from WBAI interim Program Director Tony Bates at 5:17 in the afternoon on November 1st. He said that the grid was changing and that Back of the Book would be affected. When I called back at 7:15 that evening I got his voice mail and the voice mail was full so I couldn't leave a message.

I called the interim Program Director about this again the next day. He told me that he was moving Back of the Book to 5:00 AM on Saturdays! And in this new time slot the program is only one hour long. Let's just say that we are not jumping for joy about this change in the program. It's quite a change for us, and for our listeners. And, yes, Uncle Sidney has moved his program Carrier Wave, or whatever he's calling it lately, to this same time slot and will continue alternating with us.

Here are the latest documents from Management about the programming shakeup:

Management's Original FormatsWeb Friendly Formats
First letter from WBAI ManagementFirst letter from WBAI Management
Second letter from WBAI ManagementSecond letter from WBAI Management
The new WBAI program gridThe new WBAI program grid
 The new WBAI program grid in HTML format
 Updated schedule as of 11/15/10
 Updated schedule as of 1/5/11

In the grid I do not know whose picture that is to the right of the data. Even now I don't know that these program changes are fully settled.

Of course I've had something to say about all of this. I sent this out as an E-mail on November 11th. If we don't get more listeners soon WBAI will cease to exist.

What Happened to the February 5th Program?

We've been informed that we are preempted on February 5th, for an Al Jazeera special. We'll still need your help in raising money on the next program. This will be our first pitching shift in this new time slot.

UPDATE: In fact we were not supposed to have been preempted! For the explanation of what happened click here.

We are scheduled to be on the air, and pitching, on Saturday morning, February 19th. We hope you'll tune in then, and it wouldn't hurt if listeners could contribute then too.

On our next program, on February 19, Back of the Book will be participating in the WBAI 2011, Winter 'thon.

These Winter months are the thinnest, financially, for WBAI every year, and this year is no exception. WBAI has to raise enough money to pay debts and to get to the Spring 'thon. Also, Back of the Book is going to be scrutinized by Management to see how much money we raise in this new time slot.

We hope that you'll pledge to WBAI while Back of the Book is on the air from 5:00 to 6:00 AM on February 19.

If you listen to the radio program on your own recording or via the archives you probably won't be able to pledge during the program, but you can send us a check ahead of time. A regular one year membership is $25. If you want to send more than $25 that would be great. So, if you can, please send a check made payable to “Pacifica/WBAI” and send it to:

R. Paul Martin
% WBAI
120 Wall St. 10th floor
New York, NY 10005

And we hope that everyone who listens pledges or sends in a check.

I should also point out that we'll need help answering the phones. In order to answer the phones you'll have to get into the building. The building Management requires that you get your name added to a list so you can enter 120 Wall St. So if you want to volunteer to answer phones for this 'thon you should call the WBAI switchboard at 1-212-209-2800 during business hours and let the folks in charge know you want to volunteer so they can put your name on the list. We always need more folks to answer the phones so if you want to volunteer to answer the phones for another program during this 'thon the above procedure is the way to do it.

Our Fifth Weddding Anniversary cake
Pickles of the North and R. Paul's Anniversary Cake

On Tuesday January 18, 2011, Pickles of the North and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary.

Here you can see the cake that Pickles baked for the occasion. Yeah, I went off my diet a little bit to eat some of it. And, yes, the lighting in our kitchen isn't exactly great.

The plastic heart decoration is from our original cake that Pickles baked a week after we got married.

Pickles of the North had proposed marriage to me on the air a little over five years ago, and we got married later that month.

The choice of mid-January wasn't a coincidence. We had originally gotten together on January 22, 1997. And so this program marks the 14th anniversary of our having gotten together, which I think is really the more important date.

So January is a month of good memories for us, even though this January is so cold!

On this program we talked about scientists having recently used satellite data from the Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM) instrument on the NASA Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) spacecraft to make a new determination of the total amount of energy which the sun pumps into the Earth's atmosphere.

From the new studies it seems that the total solar irradiance is lower than had been previously measured.

Scientists using this new, most accurate data have estimated that the variability of the Sun contributes only about 0.18° F. to global warming over the 11 year solar cycle, and so the Sun is not the main cause of the global warming seen over the past three decades.

So the bottom line here is that this shows rather convincingly that we are the main cause of global warming.

We talked about South Korean special forces rescuing the crew of the 11,500 ton chemical carrier Samho Jewelry after the ship and crew of 21 was hijacked by Somali pirates in the Arabian Sea. One crew member was wounded, eight pirates were killed and five were captured.

Well, at least this pirate adventure got thwarted.

When is the international community going to go after the guys on shore who fund these pirate raids, and who reap most of the money from the ransoms that are paid for the hostages and ships? If the people who supply the means for these pirate raids were taken out of the equation in such a way that no one wanted to replace them this piracy problem would either be reduced greatly or go away entirely.

Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier showed up in earthquake ravaged Haiti this past fortnight. He said he wanted to help. He's been charged with corruption. He ought to have been charged with numerous counts of murder into the bargain. Yeah, some help that guy would be.

Winter in Battery Park
Winter Scene in Battery Park

After the last program Pickles of the North and I went out to Battery park, even though is was dreadfully cold and the wind chill was brutal.

The park was covered with snow, but still there were some tourists there huddling by the front of Castle Clinton, waiting for it to open up so they could buy tickets that would allow them to freeze their asses off even more on a boat out to Liberty Island.

I took this photograph of a snow burdened tree with a couple of classic buildings, and a new eyesore, in the background.

After the program this morning it's supposed to be even worse out, with a wind chill down below zero degrees Fahrenheit! We haven't decided yet if we're going to brave the elements quite so much as to go walking around in Battery Park again, we already have to go through the coldest weather just to get to the radio station for the program.

And as of 10:32 AM (ET) on Thursday, January 20, 2011, we are in mid-Winter. I have a chart of the dates of seasons, sub-seasons and similar stuff here.

And this coming Tuesday night we will probably see yet another Winter storm. Oh, I can't wait for the Middle Third to begin in May!

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even now that the gag rule has been lifted. 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.

Probably the most popular 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 and official announcements are frequently posted there.

You can look at the NewPacifica list here, and you can join the list from that Web page too. If you subscribe to the “NewPacifica” mailing list you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list.

There is the option to receive a “digest” version of the list, which means that a bunch of messages are bundled into one E-mail and sent to you at regular intervals, this cuts down on the number of E-mails you get from the list. You will also be able to send messages to the list.

This list also has a Web based interface where you can read messages and from which you can post your own messages.

There is also the more WBAI specific “Goodlight” Web based message board. It is sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as “the bleepin' blue board,” owing to the blue background used on its Web pages. This one has many people posting anonymously and there's also an ancillary “WBAI people” board that's just totally out of hand. UPDATE: The bleepin' blue board has had to add a step for folks to get onto it because it's under attack by spambots. When you click on the above link you may be asked for a username and password. Type in Username: poster Password: enternow

When the computer in Master Control is working we sometimes have live interaction with people posting on the “Goodlight Board” during the program.

Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Carrier Wave alternates with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.

My voice mail number at WBAI is 212-209-2996. Leave a message.

You can also send me E-mail.



WBAI related links

WBAI Listeners' Web page

WBAI Management's official Web site


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The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2011, R. Paul Martin.