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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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Yale students demand that the school stop teaching English literature

The coming dark age: Students at Yale University have issued a petition demanding that the English Department stop teaching the poetry and literature of straight, white, wealthy males.

Their reasons have nothing to do with the quality of literature, only the race, gender, or economic status of the writers. In fact, the demands express a complete disinterest in learning anything about the work of these authors, people like Shakespeare and Yeats and Pope and Hemingway. Instead, these fascists add that if their demands are not met, the university could face some violent protests.

As noted here, “The students … seem to think they’re not at college to be educated,” he wrote, but that “they are at college to educate everyone else.” As a result, they come to college with closed-minds, unwilling to learn anything. And they will leave college just as ignorant, but they will leave holding a degree from a Ivy League college that will guarantee them access to future positions of power.

The future does not look good.

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

8 comments

  • Wayne

    One of those evil, dead, white guys: William Butler Yeats

    “Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.”

  • Ben K

    “straight, white, wealthy males.”

    Might not be true of Shakespeare. 57th sonnet.

  • ORION341

    Stupid people never know they are stupid….

  • Gary

    Why fools are endowed by nature with voices so much louder than sensible people possess is a mystery.

  • “Stupid people never know they are stupid….”

    The problem is that our society is no longer willing to tell them they are stupid. Instead, we give them Ivy League college degrees and put them in charge of society.

  • PeterF

    So a liberal arts degree from Yale will be worth even less than it was before. I’m not sure that a degree from an Ivy League college will be an automatic ticket to a power position for very much longer.

  • Edward

    Isn’t it nice how “inclusiveness” has turned into the practice of excluding certain people?

    From the article: “It is your responsibility as educators to listen to student voices.”

    The danger is that the inmates are demanding to run the asylum.

    Mr. Zimmerman wrote: “And they will leave college just as ignorant, but they will leave holding a degree from a Ivy League college that will guarantee them access to future positions of power.”

    I agree with PeterF. Universities need to be careful. It does not take much to lose a reputation that was decades or centuries in the making. Queens college in New York is a good example. I once worked with someone who got his degree from Queens, back when it was reputable. Queens chose to let in lower-achieving students, and its reputation was quickly lost.

    The article’s post script tells us the direction that Yale is taking, so it’s reputation will suffer: “In tangentially related news, Nicholas and Erika Christakis—who declined to protect students from offensive Halloween costumes—have finally resigned their positions at Yale.”

  • TheMightyTarkus

    Just wondering, that if they do stop teaching old white poetry, such as John Skelton. That should put an end to Skeltonic Verse, which is pretty much what all rap music is. Call me a cross eyed optimist, but I’m seeing upside to this.

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