Web links related to the Back of the Book program of December 24, 2011


It's Saturday morning, January 7, 2012, 00:52, and I've updated this Web page with some photographs taken during our last program when we had a party on the air. Preciously I'd added more information about the location of the next Delegates' Assembly and LSB meeting. I'd also updated this page with the tragic news about Lynn Samuels' death. Before that I'd updated it with a piece about our on-air party during this program and a video of our “Yule Log.” I've also posted the answer to the question about what that crane was doing two weeks ago. There will be more updates, and I hope that I can get them up here soon. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ And a merry Bah! Humbug! once again. We'll be celebrating the eve of Isaac Newton's birthday on this program. We should have some Saddle pals on with us. We'll also try to cover some other topics on this program. Check back for the updates.

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

The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday, January 11th, 2012, at “The Commons” in Brooklyn — 388 Atlantic Avenue, between Hoyt & Bond Sts. As per the official announcement this meeting will be, “... to review, discuss and vote on the report from the LSB's Management Search Committee concerning selection of a pool of candidates for the position of Program Director at WBAI. At 6:30 PM there will be a Delegates' Assembly to elect the Pacifica directors from WBAI for 2012, the executive session LSB meeting will begin right after that.

It will start immediately following the conclusion of the Delegates Assembly meeting, where delegates will vote for Directors from WBAI to the Pacifica National Board for 2012. This election occurs every year. All those serving on the Local Station Board (except the GM) are ‘delegates’ under the bylaws and may take part in that vote.

The LSB has invited all members of the Management Search Committee, whether on the LSB or not, to attend and participate in the Executive Session meeting.

The Delegate Assembly is called for 6:30 pm and should take no longer than one hour, possibly less. The LSB meeting will begin immediately after the Delegate Assembly ends.”

The LSB met on Wednesday, December 14, 2011, at the MLK Center, Local 1199 SEIU, 330 West 43rd St. in Manhattan. We elected the officers of the LSB for the next year. Yeah, they're, we're, the same officers as last year.

Here are the Officers elected for 2012

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 03:18 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.

Back of the Book is again 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 Saturday Morning With the Radio On 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.

R. Paul at Nathan's
R. Paul Gobbling Away at a Hot Dog at Nathan's

So Pickles of the North and I had to so some stuff in southern Brooklyn yesterday. After that we were so far south that we went to Coney Island. We go there in the Winter all the time. And this was the first full day of this Winter season.

We got there as the Sun was setting and we took some photographs, some of which actually came out, and of course we went to Nathan's to chow down on stuff that we don't usually get to eat.

Here's a photograph that Pickles took of me sitting in the corner of Nathan's having a good time eating a hot dog. Oh yeah, it's been months since we last got to indulge like this. Even in the Winter, life can be good.

North Korean Flag

Yeah, North Korean Communist Dictator Kim Jong-il croaked the other day. This filthy bastard did so much damage to so many people, and yet he gets to die from a heart attack.

Well, life is not fair. Much better people have died young and in worse ways.

But the ruling elite in north Korea aren't stepping away from either their extremely repressive, inhuman system, nor are they abandoning their Communist dynasty. The next dictator will be Kim Jong-il's youngest son Kim Jong-un.

Dead North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-il
We're Really Glad This Creep Is Dead

Weren't the so-called Communists supposed to be against hereditary rulers like kings and czars? Well, looks like yet another “principle” of theirs is a victim of convenience.

Well, on this program we'll have something to say about this guy, his dynasty and the entire insane bunch behind him who have killed so many North Koreans, and others, over the decades.

We may even have some graphical updates on the Web page.

Painting of Isaac Newton circa 1689, by Sir Godfrey Kneller
Isaac Newton

Pickles of the North and I went to a couple of holiday parties over the past fortnight. One was a Solstice Party we had at our apartment in Brooklyn. The other was a general holiday party at the home of a WBAI producer whom we've known for years and years. There were a a number of WBAI producers at each of the parties.

This radio program was, in a way, yet another holiday party. And it was populated exclusively by WBAI producers! We celebrated Isaac Newton's birthday on this program. We had some cookies and candies at this on-air party, yeah real hard stuff. And Pickles of the North brought in some of those holiday crackers that she likes so much for us all to pop on the air.

And on this program I again stated the reason for the season. Yes, the reason for the season is that the axis of rotation of the planet Earth is inclined by approximately 23½° to the plane of its orbit around the Sun. That value does change a little bit because the Earth wobbles on its axis somewhat.

The reason for the season can't be any events associated with some mythological character from a couple of thousand years ago because Solstice festivals are documented from quite a few thousands of years before then. And the Winter Solstice is the event that started people doing these celebrations around this time of year.

Our Yule Log

There was a time when I had other ideas about this time of year. But I've changed a bit since then.

As usual I've taken the occasion of this holiday season to go off my diet. What fun. Right after the season's over though it's back onto the strict diet. Yeah, on the one hand that diet is probably keeping me alive and lessening the severity of my medical issues, on the other hand one must live a little.

I have opened up a YouTube account at last. And my first video is on the left. I'm still figuring it all out.

This video was actually shot when Uncle Sidney was over here for Thanksgiving. But it's good for the entire end of year holiday season, or maybe even just any time someone wants to get warm by watching those crackling flames. Yeah, those crackling plastic flames. Of course an old electric motor grinding away might make some folks feel good too. Well, if anything in this mercifully short video makes anyone feel better that's good, whatever it is.

Here's our Yule Log! Merry Isaac Newton's Birthday to all!

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Simon and R. Paul

Here are a couple of photographs that Pickles of the North took during the on-air party we had during this radio program. I'm wearing one of those paper crowns that come as a “prize” in the crackers.


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Maxwell and Uncle Sidney

Here we see Max and Uncle Sidney having a good time on the air. And here's to many more of these for all of us.

We plan to talk about the discovery of two planets that are not much different in size from the Earth, although we will leaven the discovery with the reality that neither we nor any other species is ever going to live on those planets.

We also plan to talk about an astrophysical phenomenon that will be happening over the next several years which should be very enlightening for scientists. Yeah, some of our favorite degenerate matter will be involved.

Lynn Samuels
1942-2011

It was with great sadness that we learned the day after this program aired that our WBAI colleague from years ago, producer and personal friend Lynn Samuels had passed away on December 24th. Lynn was a great person as well as a wonderful radio talent and we were really hit hard by this sudden news.

On our next program we'll have more to say about Lynn and her life at and beyond WBAI.

Crane in front of 55 Water St.
Say, What's This Crane Doing?

This is a photograph I took after our last program on December 10th. We couldn't see the lunar eclipse that morning, but later on we were walking down Water St. and saw this crane doing something in front of 55 Water St.

It was hard at first to figure out what they were doing, but then we saw that they were dangling something way up next to the Emblem Health building at 55 Water St. As the crane moved around we could see that it was slowly lifting a couple of large diameter pipes, and guys were at an open window ready to pull the pipes inside. We had seen trucks loaded with these pipes down on Water St. as we'd approached the scene of this operation. The pipes looked to be about 12 inches in diameter, and they looked like they were about 20 feet long. There were a number of those trucks and each had a whole bunch of pipes identical to the ones we saw being loaded in through that window, so this operation must have sent quite a lot of pipes up to that window and it must have taken hours, given that they could only send two pipes up at a time and it took something like five or ten minutes for each load.

Big pipes being loaded in through a window
It's Loading Big Pipes in Through a Window

The folks involved in this operation couldn't have been superstitious, they appear to be loading these pipes in at what should be the 13th floor of the building! Of course I can't guarantee that 55 Water St. has a 13th floor at all. Quite a number of Manhattan buildings fudge around naming a floor #13 due to superstition. Some buildings number their floors so that the 14th floor follows the 12th floor. Some building have their building operations on the 13th floor and they just don't have that floor accessible via the elevators that the tenants use. I think that's all pretty stupid stuff to be doing in the 21st Century.

In the past we've seen even larger cranes down on Water St. But exactly what they were doing we never found out because they were so huge that the crews were not done assembling them by the time we walked down that street on a Saturday morning. It looks like they had to assemble at least a part of this crane as well because there were other cranes around that would have been used in the assembly process. I suspect that the white ironwork at the end of the crane was an extension that they put on just before start to load those pipes in.

We prudently crossed the street to continue our journey to Battery Park rather than risk one of those pipes falling down anywhere near us.

I've been updating older program Web pages. Here's a link to the latest program Web page that I'd updated before this program aired.

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 popular list the “NewPacifica” mailing list. Founded October 31, 2000, this list is sometimes lively and as of mid-2011, has 687 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 Saturday Morning With the Radio On 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.



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

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