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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.

 

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School district dumps To Kill a Mockingbird because of complaints

The coming dark age: A Mississippi school district has removed To Kill a Mockingbird from its reading list because it “makes people uncomfortable.”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” has a long history atop banned books lists, but here’s a new reason: the 20th century classic about racism in small-town Alabama “makes people uncomfortable.”

The Biloxi School District in Mississippi removed the novel by Harper Lee from an eighth-grade reading list after receiving complaints about the book’s language, the Biloxi Sun Herald reported. “There were complaints about it. There is some language in the book that makes people uncomfortable, and we can teach the same lesson with other books,” school board vice president Kenny Holloway told the paper.

I suspect the complaints were because the book used the slang for blacks common at the time and historically correct but absolutely banned from use today. The people complaining probably never read the book, and also likely haven’t the faintest idea what it is about. Worse, for the school board VP to go along with this ignorance is shameful.

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

7 comments

  • Joe

    Educated does not mean smart!

  • School boards are elected positions. Just sayin’.

  • Cotour

    Figures, that’s my favorite book, beautifully written, I probably read it at least 3 times.

    Nothing wrong with me, never made me “uncomfortable”, but I do make others uncomfortable, maybe there’s a correlation? Nah.

  • eddie willers

    but absolutely banned from use today

    Rap music shows that it is selective outrage.

  • Tommy Donohue

    Mr. Halloway’s comment, ..”and we can teach the same lesson with other books” ought to scare the heck out of anyone who has read Fahrenheit 451. He may not be throwing the match but he is surely enabling the ones who will.

  • wayne

    Tommy-
    excellent cultural reference!
    (He is throwing the match.)

    Fahrenheit 451
    opening intro
    https://youtu.be/x9iyKI2pJbE
    5:33

  • Chris

    This is what I expect (but not hope for) when I hear the phrase
    “We need to discuss race relations” What I have found to be the reality of this phrase is that only the discussion desired by one side is acceptable.
    As with To Kill a Mocking Bird the discussion is uncomfortable – it should be. Everyone should be uncomfortable in these discussions but should face the subject matter. We should confront it with open, honest and true discussion – not with effective censorship.

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