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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.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

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Behind The Black
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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.


Clemson administrator proposes that candidates be prescreened for ideology

Fascist: An administrator at Clemson University has proposed the student government consider prescreening candidates for the proper multicultural ideology prior to elections to prevent the wrong candidates from reaching office.

“So when it comes to this whole idea of intercultural competence, what would it look like to have a standard for if you’re going to be elected as an officer, or hold a seat within CUSG [Clemson University Student Government], that you have to demonstrate that you have a certain level of intercultural competence, before you’re allowed to take that office, or that seat,” Richardson stated, according to CUSG Senate’s public livestream.

The administrator, Altheia Richardson, Director of Clemson’s Gantt Multicultural Center, suggested that the student government could either prescreen the candidates, or demand that they be properly educated after winning, though she added that “I will say, once you’re in, it’s harder to hold people accountable for those things if it hasn’t been set as a standard before.”

In other words, this fascist doesn’t like the opinions of some people who have been freely and fairly elected to student government office, and wants to establish a system whereby she can prevent such people from ever obtaining office. How nice.

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

6 comments

  • LocalFluff

    Producing anything massive in space that is worth bringing down to Earth, that has a hard time covering the shipping costs. Unless if what’s produced up there is digital! And thus can skip the delta-V import tariff.

    Like this guy, Mark Dice’s youtube channel! He goes angry on my behalf so that I can instead laugh at it. He could do that from a tin can in orbit. Unless he actually has to hit someone, anyone, after each daily episode. I would.

    Bill Nye, who for some incomprehensible reason is CEO of The Planetary Society, used Earth Day to launch his new “science show”:
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzUV5283-l5c0oKRtyenj6Q

  • Please fill out this field

    Yeah, LocalFluff, I bet you’re right; that will become the McGuffinite of space: freedom.

  • mpthompson

    “Bill Nye, who for some incomprehensible reason is CEO of The Planetary Society”

    I couldn’t believe it when that happened. I let my membership lapse and haven’t looked back since. I’m certain Carl Sagan and I would have many differences politically, but it in no way diminishes my respect for Carl and his efforts to reach out to common folks regarding the wonders of the universe revealed through the eyes of science. Bill Nye is a creepy shill for the left-wing establishment, nothing more.

  • wodun

    They already do this for prospective professors and other employees at most colleges.

  • My American passport is official recognition that I’m ‘interculturally competent’.

  • D.K. Williams

    As an alum, I am appalled that the State pays six-figure salaries for people to spout such nonsense. Sadly, this happens at colleges all over the country, although it’s generally done with more subtlety.

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