Scroll down to read this post.

 

Readers!

 

The time has come for my annual short Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:

 

4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

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.


Enrollment decline continues in urban public schools

Some good news: In reporting today that the Chicago public school system this year lost 10,000 students, the Associated Press story also said this:

The enrollment decline, which has been happening each year for the past decade, comes as other big city districts including New York and Los Angeles have seen enrollment declines this year as well. … The enrollment drop this academic year is due to students moving elsewhere, going to private schools or homeschooling, according to recent district data.

The story also noted that this declines appears to be occurring among all ethnic groups, since the school demographics remained unchanged.

Finally, being the Associated Press and thus married to supporting governments run by Democrats, the story had to allow the final word to the city’s Democratic Party mayor as well as the unions that have routinely backed her:

Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the drop a “minor miracle,” saying she was surprised enrollment didn’t decline even more considering the COVID-19 pandemic. “We had to quickly transition to remote learning. We know that didn’t work for a lot of families. There’s been a lot of challenges and struggles that have been revealed throughout the course of this pandemic that hit our most vulnerable residents the hardest, many of whom” have children attending CPS, Lightfoot said.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Teachers Union blamed underfunded schools, particularly in largely Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, as a major driver.

That parents might have finally gotten disgusted with the government’s utter failure to teach reading, writing, or arithmetic does not occur to these political geniuses. Nor does it occur to them that their passion for forcing masks and racial indoctrination on little children might have also contributed to the decline in enrollment.

No, for leftists their failures are always explained by either a lack of funding or circumstances beyond their control. Give us more money and all will be well! We promise!

It appears however that an increasing number of parents are no longer buying these arguments. Thank goodness.

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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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

  • Jeff Wright

    Then too, the parents might teach the planet being flat, 6,000 years old and how we never went to the Moon.

    Do a search for
    “Testing Standards compared to the 8th Grade test of 1895”
    —-and let me know how you do.

    Wow, have we fallen.

    This is why I have grudging respect for China. Don’t they cane you if you get the answers wrong?

    Compare that to how lil’ gangsta’ terrifies our public schools. The Chinese jackboot would stamp that out right quick—-to their credit.

  • Jeff Wright commented: “Then too, the parents might teach the planet being flat, 6,000 years old and how we never went to the Moon.”

    Well, they’re involved enough to teach their kids *something*.

    “Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the drop a “minor miracle,” saying she was surprised enrollment didn’t decline even more considering the COVID-19 pandemic.”

    That is hilarious. If enrollment had declined further, where did she think those kids were going to go? The same places they went anyway; meaning she is apparently grateful that more parents didn’t ditch the system. That is about as bald-faced admission of failure as you will see from Government.

  • Planet being flat? We have contemporary and historical evidence to the contrary.

    Never went to the moon? You mean to say that there was a conspiracy involving 400,000 people who worked on Apollo with airtight security? Unreasonable to believe, given human nature. Plus, such a theory can be quickly disproven independently, with the proper imaging means … and the conspirators know it.

    6000 year old earth? I do believe that the earth may be that young, or a little older; if death entered the world through man’s raising his middle finger to God, dead dinosaurs before the appearance of man does not make sense. However, I also state that I believe this on the basis of my faith, not contemporary/historical evidence.

    OTOH, how much faith (aka assumption) – particularly the assumption that the dominant physical processes are time-invariant – underwrites the idea that the earth is billions of years old and not the product of intelligent intervention … in the face of the natural progression of physical/chemical/nuclear forces to lower-energy forms … or as I refer to their most obvious manifestations, rust and dust.

    Just as with the Climate Change Cult, our professional educators conflate their tenets of faith, and their accepted theories, with conclusively-proven fact. Parental involvement, as the gatekeepers at the child/educator interface, acts as a check-and-balance on that.

  • wayne

    Roger Penrose
    “Twistors, Reality and Quantum Non Locality”
    Summer School on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics dedicated to John Bell
    Sesto, Italy 2014
    https://youtu.be/zQ8Bm33o0uI
    1:03:12

  • John Fisher

    This is today’s good news. The sooner public school enrollment crashes, the better.

  • wayne

    this somehow feels appropriate…

    The Outer Limits
    Season 1 Episode 3 (1963)
    “The Architects Of Fear”
    https://youtu.be/uHUt8eczxpg
    4:26

    “A secret group of scientists decide to surgically alter one of their members into an ‘alien’, in order to convince the world that an alien invasion is imminent. They hope that such a threat will force all governments to make peace with one another. However such a complex plan has many vulnerabilities… including the wife of the volunteer.”

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

However, name-calling and obscenities will not be tolerated. First time offenders who are new to the site will be warned. Second time offenders or first time offenders who have been here awhile will be suspended for a week. After that, I will ban you. Period.

 

Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *