Back of the Book — April 17, 2021


It's Saturday morning, April 24, 2021, 05:14, and I've updated this Web page with the link to the official archive of this radio program on WBAI.ORG. I need to do more updating on this Web page. The original top of this page follows the arrow. We're back from our two weeks off. We covered the below topics and more. Pacifica has gotten some good news with regard to the big loan that it has outstanding. The wording of the official press release about it is below. I am hoping to get back to add some more stuff to this Web page very soon. Check back for updates.

You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.

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

I have also posted a whole lot of the minutes of the Pacifica National Finance Committee on this Web site. I'm a member of that committee because I'm the WBAI LSB Treasurer.

The next WBAI LSB meeting is scheduled to be held on Wednesday, May 12, 2021, it will probably be held as a teleconference meeting, as the 13 previous public meetings were because of the pandemic.

The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, April 14, 2021.

The LSB again spent quite a bit of time on a motion that became two motions, sort of, regarding something I can't talk about on the air or even on this Web site, for now. But you'll hear about it on the air at some point, just not from me - until later. Have you visited the official Pacifica Web site lately? Ahem.

Before the meeting I had put out a written Treasurer's Report for all to read.

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, 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.

Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.

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. You can take a look at it and see if I've been able to post anything on it lately. There are still some limitations, but I am assured that I can plug in the archive blurbs that were lost in the latest upgrade.

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. Yeah, it looks like they'll have some alternating program's name prominently there, but if you have the right date it'll be our program. Good luck.

Since the General Manager has banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.

Bring Back Uncle Sidney!

Our friend, fellow WBAI producer and Saddle Pal Uncle Sidney Smith has been banned from WBAI by General Manager Berthold Reimers. The General Manager will not say why. He won't even tell Sidney why he's banned! This is grossly unfair to Sidney and constitutes abuse of Staff. Why did Berthold ban Sidney?

proton quark structure
Quarks Make A Proton

There's a new paper from a subset of the Large Hadron Collider scientists theorizing that they may have found a fifth fundamental force in the universe. This new force would be carried by a new particle and that would challenge ast least some parts of what's called the standard model of the universe. Over the years there have been some odd results coming out of the Large Hadron Collider. One type of quark appeared to be decaying into leptons called muons less often than they decayed into electrons. Those particular quarks should be decaying into 50% electrons and 50% muons. They've been running tests on this topics for years and this anomaly keeps showing up. The latest and best tests run at the Large Hadron Collider are showing around 85 muon decays for every 100 electron decays, and with a smaller uncertainty than before.

The uncertainty of the result is now over three sigma which means that there is only around a one in a thousand chance that the result is a random fluke of the data. Particle physicists consider that anything over three sigma is what they call evidence. A formal declaration of a discovery or observation would require five sigma, which is one chance in 3.5 million that a random fluctuation would yield the result. For example after years of experimentation at the Large Hadron Collider scientists were able to achieve a five sigma result and declare that they had observed the famous Higgs Boson in March 2013.

There are all sorts of possibilities related to this anomaly, if it keeps showing up in more and more rigorous tests. A lot of scientists are eager to see something beyond the standard model of the universe that's been holding on for so long. One thing some people are wishing for is that a new particle will help to define dark matter. But anything new will give rise to a lot more research.

The sars_cov-2 virus
Resurging!

By the time this program airs the global death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic will have topped 3,000,000.

On Friday, when we recorded this program, the death toll in America was 566,000. In the two weeks since our last program the death toll in America has averaged 9,094 per week which is 2,015 more deaths than on the week before this past fortnight. This is not good. We're still under 10,000 dead in America per week for the fifth week in a row, but just barely.

And places are opening up, in some states they're opening everything up even as their infection and mortality numbers are climbing. Meanwhile, in New York State infection rates have dropped to where they had been in late November, before the post-Thanksgiving surge. On the program we talked a bit about how diseases just spread throughout the human species historically. It's happening here and now because people can't behave in a disciplined way.

There was a Congressional hearing the other day regarding the pandemic and Dr. Anthony Fauci had a confrontation with Trump supporter Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) who repeatedly asked when COVID-19 restrictions would be lifted so Americans could get back their liberty back. Dr. Fauci replied, We're not talking about liberties. We're talking about a pandemic that has killed 560,000 Americans. And of course the death roll figures are higher now. What fools the Republicans are.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla predicted Thursday that people who have received the company's COVID vaccine will likely need a third booster shot within a year to maintain protection against the virus. Conveniently the CDC vaccination record card that we all get after we're vaccinated has places on the back for the recording of the booster shots.

The statistics for people who've gotten vaccinated are really excellent. The percentage of people who've gotten vaccinated but who got Covid-19 anyway is only 0.008%. That eight thousandths of one percent!

Pickles of the North got her second Pfizer vaccination this past week. She told us about it.

Cash!

The Pacifica Foundation, which owns WBAI and the four other Pacifica stations, has issued the following press release, On Wednesday March 31st, 2021, the Pacifica National Board reached an agreement with the FJC Foundation, the provider of a $3.1 million dollar loan, to extend the maturity date of the loan for 18 months. The agreement was reached following a careful review of Pacifica's improving financial situation.

The dramatic improvement in Pacifica's prospects were highlighted by Pacifica's auditor who wrote, in a communication to FJC, that,
The Pacifica National Board and management of the Foundation has implemented various financial policies and directives which appear to have (or the potential to have) positive impacts to the Foundation's financial condition.
The extension of the loan agreement gives Pacifica the time required to continue the process of financial and operational reforms that so far proved effective in restoring financial and organizational stability.

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.

We like to stay interactive with our listeners. Here are the various options for you to get in touch with us.

You can also send me E-mail.

And now you can even reach me on Twitter Twitter logo


WBAI related links

A WBAI Listeners' Web page

WBAI Management's official Web site

Back to the Back of the Book page

Back to my home page.

The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2021, R. Paul Martin.
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