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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.

 

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Joni Mitchell – Big Yellow Taxi

An evening pause: This was I think the song that made her career. Its shallow environmentalism, from the still naive 1960s, seems appropriate today on Labor Day.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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

4 comments

  • MDN

    Bob:

    I’m not so sure that environmentalism was all that naive back in the 60s. I remember how bad air pollution was really becoming, the press to clear cut all of the remaining old growth redwoods left (which wasn’t many), the stench of a local paper mill whenever you got within 5 miles of it, open landfills that were equally pungent, and river pollution that was so bad one even caught on fire. So in general the initial environmental movement was necessary and a good thing imho.

    The problem of course is the nature of any bureaucracy to grow and expand and continually justify its existence which has led to ever more stringent regulations well past the point of reasonableness. For example, in California we now live under particulate air pollution standards that are so strict that a dust storm in the Gobi desert today can trigger Spare the Air alerts in a few weeks time if the jet stream happens to align correctly. Protecting us from harmful emissions is one thing, but to define that such that even Mother Nature cannot meet the standard is quite another, and THAT is our problem.

  • judd

    i liked it because of her voice and the accompanying music.

    The line “Don’t it always seem to go?
    You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” applies to many more things in life.

  • judd: I did to, which is why I posted it. It is a nice song, with some very clever lyrics, performed well, all reasons why it made her career.

  • Col Beausabre

    God, I absolutely HATE her, her whiny voice and this song!

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