To read this post please scroll down.

 

Readers!

 

My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

No matter. I am here, and here I intend to stay. If you like what I do and have not yet donated or subscribed, 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.


First dinosaur tail found, preserved in amber

Paleontologists have discovered the first completely preserved dinosaur tail, feathers and all, preserved in amber.

Inside the lump of resin is a 1.4-inch appendage covered in delicate feathers, described as chestnut brown with a pale or white underside. CT scans and microscopic analysis of the sample revealed eight vertebrae from the middle or end of a long, thin tail that may have been originally made up of more than 25 vertebrae. Based on the structure of the tail, researchers believe it belongs to a juvenile coelurosaur, part of a group of theropod dinosaurs that includes everything from tyrannosaurs to modern birds.

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

2 comments

  • Jwing

    Feathers…..it’s amazing! Birds really are the vestiges of dinosaurs in many ways. It figures. The way I see it, when the small mammals appeared, they were able to eat the eggs of most of the large dinos. The only way to adapt was to make those feathers fly and build their nests in trees away from those ground dwelling mammals. Who knows if it’s true, but I like the idea.

  • LocalFluff

    Jwing, cute idea! Since so little is known for sure, it is wide open for speculations and new hypotheses. Sounds feasible and there’s nothing to falsify it, so it could be true.

    Spinning further on the feathered dinosaurs and speculative hypotheses, it has been suggested that birds learned humans how to talk. Language is really The thing which separates us from the animals, it allows for specialization and economy and teaching. So the idea is that birds make a lot of noise, other animals are generally silent to avoid attention from predators or scaring their pray (birds in the sky are easily visible anyway and can’t hide by shutting up, so why not sing and shout). To coordinate hunting, groups of apes shout to each other (“nothing here”, “tracks here heading north”). By imitating birds, they could camouflage their presence for their pray. Such spoken signals then evolved into words and grammar. Our language, with which even computer programming has fused, could basically be bird imitation.

    Language must’ve evolved together with the tongue and the vocal cord. The history of human society needs to go a million years back, into evolutionary time scales, to cover the whole story of how animals became humans. The depth of time and richness of events probably makes it impossible to understand what has happened using any single theory.

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 *