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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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The Kingsmen – Louie Louie

An evening pause: Normally I don’t post videos with no visuals, but for this I will make an exception. It is probably the first time anyone has ever done the hard work necessary to translate the mumblings of the singer to find out the lyrics of this pop tune. Before now, who knew?

Hat tip Phil Berardelli.

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

  • Garry

    What a fiasco was the whole effort to decipher the lyrics. This link gives a good summary of what happened

    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150503/22075130880/fbi-spent-years-researching-lyrics-to-louie-louie-before-realizing-copyright-office-must-have-them.shtml

    In a nutshell, the band recorded the song in a single take, with the singer yelling into a microphone placed on the ceiling. The FBI took 2 years to investigate allegations of obscenity, and never interviewed the singer. It was a cover song, and the original lyrics were available.

    A head-shaking case of government overreach and incompetence.

  • Phil Berardelli

    Good comment. Our tax dollars at work.

  • Wayne

    Hey folks, interesting factoids I received from a friend in Portland, on the whole Louie Louie ‘thang, after I had forwarded him Garry’s link:
    ______________________________________________________________________________
    “The Experience Music Project in Seattle – basically Paul Allen’s memorabilia collection – has an exhibit on the Kingsmen and the investigation, etc.
    EMP features mostly Pacific NW bands (Heart, Paul Revere, and so on) – along with a lot of other cool rock & pop music interactive stuff. He has Hendrix’s childhood living room recreated, with many ‘original’ items including a copy of an old Science Fiction story having the term ‘purple haze’ which came first, before the “underground experimental medication”* – it was named after the song, not the opposite.
    One of the Kingsmen (don’t recall which) owned the bar down on the corner from where I used to live** – kind of a dive, but cold beer at a reasonable price.
    In any event, I had always thought the dirty-lyric implied, was a play on “Jamaica”, as in “You make her” which was slang at the time for coitus.”

    *d-lysergic acid diethylamide-25.
    ** NW Portland, Or.

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