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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.
 

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Behind The Black
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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.


Chuck Jones on Getting Started

An evening pause: “It costs money to die poor.”

For those who don’t know, Chuck Jones directed some of the best Bugs Bunny cartoons that Warner Brothers ever produced.

Hat tip Wayne DeVette.

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

  • Mark

    You might also be interested in his interview on the Archive of American Television. Three hours of the life and times of Chuck Jones. (Note: I haven’t watched this particular interview yet, but I have no doubt it will be excellent. Everything else I’ve watched on there has been just that.)

    http://emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/chuck-jones

    And here is a link to the last comic that Chuck Jones created, “Thomas Timberwolf”. This was a Warner Brothers Online creation that had the unfortunate luck of being released right after the first Dot Com bubble popped. That led to the series’ cancellation. Sad, since these are excellent cartoons. Highly recommended you give them a view.

    http://frededison.free.fr

  • LocalFluff

    Non-electric automatons as rovers on Venus’ surface, since electronics can’t stand the heat. NASA sponsors a NIAC investigation of the concept. I think readers here will find it entertaining this recent lecture at KISSCaltech by the two young mechatronics and mechanics researchers Dr. Sauder and Hilgemann. They make a little review of the history of the automaton concept. Like calculators and clocks still during most of the last century and the beginning of the space age.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU51JY6DWlE

    NIAC is normally futuristic, but this is retro! An intelligent civilization in a sea planet might have difficulties making use of fire and electricity. But there are mechanic possibilities. And if one works on it for millions of years one might achieve many things with it.

  • wayne

    Mark–
    Good stuff!
    [A modest man, Jones neglects to say he was advanced 3 grades in junior high school.]
    Have not seen the TVlegends interview, but they generally do a good job.

    One of the nicer, longer-form, informal-esque interviews, of Chuck Jones. Lots of drawing, talking, and animation clips. (From a Dayton PBS station)

    World Of Cartooning 1985
    Mike Peters & Chuck Jones (Part 1 of 2)
    https://youtu.be/oLra7kJun1k
    22:52

    One of the Warner brothers, is noted by Jones to have remarked to him, “The only thing I know about our animation division is, we draw the Mouse.”

  • wayne

    not a yuge Disney fan myself, but Iwerks was as well, an “Acme super-genius,” in the realm of sequential visual story telling.

    “The Hand Behind The Mouse:
    The Ub Iwerks Story” (Trailer)
    https://youtu.be/M3MFIa71y_8
    2:00

  • wayne

    LocalFluff-
    interesting video, I will watch the whole thing.

    Q: you guys have any beloved, indigenous, National cartoon character’s, in your homeland?

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