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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:

 

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Obamacare requirements to employers arrive in 2015

Finding out what’s in it: Beginning in 2015 employers of more than fifty employees will begin to pay penalties if they do not provide healthcare in precisely the amount and quality as required by Obamacare.

I challenge anyone who reads the article above to tell me exactly what those Obamacare requirements are. They are so complicated and obtuse that no one can easily decipher them. In other words, employers are going to be under increasing pressure — pressure they have already been under for the past four years — to reduce their workforce below 50 to avoid Obamacare.

Should do wonders for the economy, eh?

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

3 comments

  • D K Rögnvald Williams

    In academia, no one is sure how to calculate course loads to keep adjunct faculty under 30 hours either.

  • ted

    Harvard’s brilliant ivory tower economists and public policy wonks know precisely how to fix the world… as long as said fix never applies to them.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/us/health-care-fixes-backed-by-harvards-experts-now-roil-its-faculty.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=3

  • Edward

    I would say that what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, but the gander has it so much easier. The Harvard professors’s plan is at least four times better than the plans that they “advised presidents and Congress on how to provide,” the only plans that We the Rabble can now get out in the real world, away from their ivory towers and privileged healthcare plans. Maybe next time they will advise the government a little better. (I doubt it, too.)

    However, they seem to only now be discovering that if they like their plan they can’t keep their plan. (It seems that the president thought that the “apostrophe-t” was silent, all those times that he said that phrase. Kind of like his pronunciation of “corpse-man.”) Plus, those professors who like their doctors are willing to give up their doctors so that they pay even less than 1/4 of what the rest of us pay.

    Hmm… what is the definition of greed, again? A desire to have more than one’s share? In this case, they desire to pay less than their share.

    So, if the highly educated, super smart, elite, Harvard professorial intelligentsia didn’t see this coming, just how smart can they be? Apparently, they didn’t read the bill even after Pelosi, et al., passed it. Did they forget Pericles’s advice? “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” Perhaps they mistook Pelosi and her cronies for friends.

    I weep at the plight of those poor, poor professors; not for them, but for the rest of us, who don’t have it as good.

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.

 

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