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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:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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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.


Stanford drops basic admissions tests for applicants

The coming dark age: Stanford University has chosen to eliminate the requirement that applicants take basic admissions tests as part of their application process.

This includes the MCAT test for medical students and the GRE for physics students. The administration made the decision because of the restrictions being imposed on society due to COVID-19.

What this means of course is that the education standards required of doctors and engineers at this school will now decline. They will simply know less about their fields, because Stanford will not require them to learn it.

However, I am sure Stanford will make sure these future doctors and physicists will be able to explain white privilege and the all-compassing existence of racial and gender bigotry in every procedure they do. Without question. What’s more important, learning how to be a good doctor or condemning the imagined past evils of America?

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

5 comments

  • Cotour

    Low standards is no standards.

    But as long as everyone is “Equal” then that makes it all OK and it will probably not make much of a difference. Not much.

    Its insane, but its all OK.

    (And once again the Zman transmits just how racist and how his elite white privilege upbringing shades his judgement)

  • Diane Wilson

    Noting that this is admission standards only. No one graduates based on MCAT or GRE.

    It would be nice to imagine that these schools still have flunk-out courses to weed out the students who shouldn’t be there. But with grade inflation, how does anyone flunk anything any more?

  • MDN

    Sad. It’s not the institution I attended in the 80s. I suppose the only thing they really care about nowadays is that they get full tuition whether they hold live in-person classes or not.

    My solution to the admissions racism hysteria would be different. I would set and adhere to legitimate quality of admission standards, but EVERYONE who met those standards would be put into a random lottery to get in.

    This way is fair, and over time the racial demographic of the student body would reflect that of the applicant pool at large, and ALL qualified applicants would have an equal shot at admission. But ALL applicants would be qualified as well, period.

  • LocalFluff

    In the early 1990s Sweden suffered a deep depression (our government’s “friend” the Soviets had just ceased to exist…) The government then multiplied the number of universities, to lower the official unemployment figures. Since then standards of higher education and research have dropped very markedly. The world can do without Sweden, but not without the USA that has had leading universities in most subjects for about 100 years now. It’s like burning the library of Alexandria.

  • Spectrum Shift

    At some point the operative phrase will become “Stupid enough to get in”

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