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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


The college teacher who went on an anti-Republican tirade in class and even threatened a student who disagreed has been suspended for the rest of the semester.

The college teacher who went on an anti-Republican tirade in class and even threatened a student who disagreed has been suspended for the rest of the semester.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • wodun

    Doesn’t say whether or not he still gets paid.

    Creative Writing is one of those fields so far removed from politics that the subject should never arise unless in the context of something a student has submitted for peer review or to illustrate the pitfalls of political evangelism in literature.

  • Publius 2

    Reprehensible and ridiculous as I find the teacher’s remarks, I do not support the suspension. Our colleges and universities should be well-defended bastions of free speech and the free exchange of ideas. A more appropriate response might have been a mass walkout by his students, or at least a spontaneous verbal protest. In a related instance, this teacher reportedly scolded a female student that she had better stop frowning at his remarks, lest she receive a poor grade. If true, the student should have stood up and asked him for whom he was working and who was paying his salary.

    The arrogance and ignorance of academy have grown so profound that serious pushback is required. I recently heard a caller to a local talk radio show that he opened his college biology textbook and found on the first page a tirade against global warming skeptics. Another isolated incident, but an indication that education in many institutions has been replaced by indoctrination.

    It is time for parents to consider, seriously, whether paying outrageous fees to colleges and universities, and hence to support the bloated salaries of individuals such as the man mentioned above, is worth it. Colman McCarthy, the former Washington Post columnist, once said he would like to see students required to pay for their individual classes in cash, so they would be instilled with a sense of how much money they were being charged and how much value they were receiving in return.

    I would take that suggestion further. I would dare academia to allow students to pay for each of their classes, in cash, at the end of each session — Pay as You Exit. I cannot think of a more effective strategy to promote hard and honest work by college instructors that is also compatible with free speech ideals.

    Is there an academic institution in this country that is confident enough in the value of its education to accept such a challenge?

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