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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by donations by established companies or political movements. 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.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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.

 

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It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World – Then & Now

An evening pause: A fun look at the outdoor locations shot for the 1963 movie, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World and how they look today. It is actually surprising how little change has occurred at so many of these places.

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. 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

6 comments

  • Kevin R.

    We saw that in a theater just a couple of years ago. It really is a fun movie.

  • MDN

    The static wind turbines in the modern Palm Springs clip are a hilarious reflection on today’s green movement.
    : )

    The loss of the big “W” palms is very sad, with just an angled stump remaining.
    : (

  • Jay

    No one calls it 29 Palms, it’s 29 Stumps.

  • born01930

    Every location was much more verdant than in the past.

  • wayne

    Kevin-
    Good deal!
    It’s sorta the “The Longest Day,” for comedy films. (in that it has a “cast of thousands.”)

    MDN–
    I noticed both those things myself, excellent eye!

    born01930–
    Great word!
    I’m going to incorporate that (“verdant”) into my daily speech!

    This is worth a view– focuses on “Hogan’s Heroes,” but gives a good overview of the “40 acre’s back-lot,” home of Mayberry RFD, Gomer Pyle, and the Andy Griffith show. Not to mention the outside scenes from the Star Trek episode “Miri.”
    Sold in 1976 and turned into office building’s.

    Culver City; Desilu Studios “40 Acre’s back-lot”
    https://youtu.be/_wDJZrmxCNQ
    8:46

  • janyuary

    BORN01930 … I noticed that too! I’m first-hand familiar with pretty much every place in that video and a whole lot of the state where it was filmed … I finally recognized that the reasons those places were so much more verdant (other than the mature trees) is because the later pictures were taken in the spring!

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