Back of the Book — April 13, 2013


All right, it's Friday night, April 26, 2013, 23:25, and I've updated this Web page with more about the NASA plan to tow a small asteroid into an orbit near Earth, and added a nifty graphic, and I've updated the information about the location of the next LSB meeting. More to come. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Well, here's this one. Running out the door now. Check back for updates.

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

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

The next regular WBAI LSB meeting is scheduled to happen on Wednesday, May 8, 2013, at 7:00 PM at Alwan-for-the-arts, 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor, in downtown Manhattan.

The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, April 10, 2013, at Alwan-for-the-arts, 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor, in downtown Manhattan.

I got to give a Treasurer's Report for the second meeting in a row. I had posted a written Treasurer's Report the night before because the LSB had passed a motion at the previous meeting saying that I had to post one before every meeting. And I got interrupted while I delivered it. After I delivered it one faction operative was asking for numbers. Jeez, I'd just read the numbers, and she then said that she wished it were in writing. She obviously hadn't read the report as posted, and she hadn't been listening well enough to hear me read the report aloud a minute earlier. So I read the numbers again.

The big thing that happened was that the faction cheated in this meeting. They had made a motion and time was running out and one faction operative, who's been banned from the radio station for, among other things, multiple instances of assault and battery on people, moved to extend the agenda item till the last five people got to speak. Well, the non-faction members like to bend over backwards to accommodate others, so that got passed. When the time came for all of that to be done that faction operative claimed that she'd meant that the meeting would continue indefinitely. What a liar she is! Yeah, she lies a lot. The Chair rightly ruled that the meeting was over unless the LSB passed a motion to extend again. Well, to extend the time for the meeting requires a two thirds vote, and the faction didn't have enough people there to pass that, even though some non-faction members had left, thinking that the meeting was about to end in another couple of minutes. But the faction operative appealed the ruling of the Chair and overturning the ruling only takes a majority. And they did have a majority, with people having left. The faction then spent about another hour and a half passing everything they could think of. They call their little political party the “Justice & Unity Campaign,” but it's the most divisive and unjust bunch I've seen.

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 newly revamped Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.

Because WBAI was forced out of its studios by the flood waters' destruction of the building's electrical system we still have this alternate, temporary stream for the radio station! I do not know how long this emergency stream will be up for. If this stream isn't working let me know.

New WBAI stream! WBAI has put up an experimental stream for the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. This is a brand new, experimental stream. So if you have one of those devices you might try the link out. And let us know how it works for you one way or the other. That way the folks implementing it can iron out any kinks in the system.

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. There is also another version of the archive here.

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 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.

towing an asteroid
NASA Wants to Tow an Asteroid

We talked about NASA's plans to tow an asteroid into an orbit around the Moon in the next few years. That's going to require quite the long haul tow truck.

The Obama administration has appropriated $100 million in “planning money” to figure out how to find a suitable asteroid, maybe 20 to 30 feet wide, and figure out just how to get it back near Earth.

Once the target asteroid is identified, and the means of getting it are determined, the real mission will begin.

The plan is to have the asteroid towed back to an orbit either around the Earth or around the Moon. The plan will then be to send astronauts to the asteroid to explore it.

The original plan had been to send astronauts to an asteroid that was in its own orbit in 2015, but the new plan would allow for astronauts to visit an asteroid that's much closer, and easier to get to, years earlier.

The asteroid that will be captured will be smaller than what might have been explored in the original plan, but the mission will happen sooner and will not preclude a longer visit to a larger asteroid in the future. It'll probably also be safer to go to a closer asteriod.

Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who is himself an ex-astronaut, says that this mission will be a sort of training mission that will contribute to an eventual mission to the planet Mars by U.S. astronauts.

Part of what's motivating this is the big bolide that blew up over Russia last month. Suddenly people are taking rocks from space more seriously. That's probably a good idea.

Elevated Riverside Drive from Broadway
We Walked Along This Elevated Part of Riverside Drive For a While

So we're in this new studio at CCNY, and we are continuing our tradition of wandering about in the local neighborhood after the radio program. We did that for years when we were at 120 Wall St., and posted quite a number of photographs of things going on in lower Manhattan and Battery Park.

Now that we're way uptown, we figured that we should see what's in the area that's interesting to visit quite early on a Saturday morning.

Grant's Tomb
Nobody Was shaking Their Ass Here That Morning

And we made our way to Grant's Tomb. Oh, but it was cold that morning, and there was quite a wind blowing. We hardly stayed there any longer than it took to take this photograph. On some future morning when the weather is less taxing, assuming we're doing a radio program on that future morning, we'll investigate that area more.

We did not notice anyone dancing on the tomb that morning.

Yea, I'm still going on about that singer Beyoncé doing a show where she danced around on Grant's Tomb. I do not understand why anyone would want to dance on a tomb. Did neither she nor anyone connected with her organization understand that two people are buried there, thus the word “Tomb” in the name of the place?

Pickles of the North waiting for a train
Pickles of the North

And here's a shot of Pickles of the North waiting for the train at the elevated #1 IRT line station at 125th St.

Yeah, and the trains are crowded at that time on a Saturday morning. We're used to the crowds emptying out at the South Ferry IRT station, where we used to end up at about the same time on Saturday morning's after we'd wandered around lower Manhattan for a while.

Pickles is holding my bag in this photograph, so I can use both cold, ungloved hands on the camera. She is also a bit concerned about how close to the edge of the platform I'm getting.

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.



WBAI related links

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 © 2013, R. Paul Martin.
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