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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.

 

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Fernando Ortega – Just As I Am

An evening pause: A Christian’s prayer, set to beautiful music and performed live 2011. I post a lot of hard rock celebrating sex, drugs, and rock & roll, because the music and performance is great. I post this for the same reason. I wonder how many of my non-Christian readers will be open to listening and enjoying it.

Hat tip James Street.

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

5 comments

  • Gary

    Untold numbers (including me) have answered the call to salvation with these words in their ears!

  • Richard Reese

    If my life had a soundtrack, there would be quite a few songs by Fernando.

  • Mark Sizer

    I can’t decide if I believe the universe supports miracles, but I definitely believe that it is blasphemy – or at least definition-breaking – to limit the power of G*d. That leads to tension, so I’m a deist on odd numbered days and a theist, usually Christian, on even numbered days. G*d and I have an interesting relationship.

    I LOVE these posts for the variety (the one a day or so back with that weird tube was, well, weird, but I didn’t find it comment worthy), so I took up the challenge.

    It’s a bit mellow for my taste. I find it impossible to count. I’m pretty sure the melody is 1-2-and-3-and-4-and. That missing beat is usually syncopation on the 3 count, but I can’t count it that way because of the left-hand beat is feels like it is starting on that right-hand beat. I’m terrible at music, so it’s probably just me.

  • “I can’t decide if I believe the universe supports miracles, . . .”

    Well, you’re here.

    Interesting that the lyrics were mounted on the scoreboard, but not the score. I looked it up.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_as_I_Am_(hymn)#/media/File:Elliott_Bradbury_Just_as_I_am.jpg

    As suspected, being a hymn, odd timing and lots of flats. Singing is not a gift, and I struggle with hymns. Playing them is slightly easier.

  • Mark Sizer

    Well, you’re here.

    There is that, but so is everyone else. That’s a very slow miracle – 14 billion years – and arguably deist, so it doesn’t really fit the category I have in mind. I’m thinking more the Red Sea parting or walls of Jericho falling type of thing.

    It gets mind-bending rather quickly. If one stipulates that G*d _can_ do such things, the question becomes “what happens when it does?”

    Is G*d working the butterfly effect backward? For example, 20 years earlier said butterfly landed in the mortar of the keystone of Jericho’s gate, weakening it just enough that it resonates with the trumpets and collapses. Or are the after-effect butterfly effects countered? For example, a minor earthquake where there is no fault line and any aquifer issues that might cause are fixed up without anyone noticing. Or does G*d just ignore physics entirely and there are no butterfly effects?

    I find the first option the most plausible, but incredibly terrifying, which, by all accounts, G*d is. It’s the 10th, so God Bless.

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