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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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Mark Slutsky – Final Offer

An evening pause: Why do even alien lawyers get portrayed this way?

Hat tip Jim Mallamace.

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

9 comments

  • Daniel Peters

    “Why do even alien lawyers get portrayed this way?”

    Because possibly negotiation tactics are constant across universes?

  • jburn

    I’m trying to image having a name like Sluts ky — and whether or not it would have been advantageous growing up…
    (sorry, my bad)

  • Andi

    It was probably better than having a name like Dick Butkus…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Butkus

  • I don’t imagine Dick Butkus had to put up with a lot of static.

  • Alex Andrite

    DUST, my favorite sci-fi stuff.

  • Edward

    Robert asked: “Why do even alien lawyers get portrayed this way?

    “This way” must mean that the alien lawyer is willing to cheat her adversary while making it seem like she is being “fair.”

    I saw a different way that the alien lawyer was portrayed. She had a terrible job and knew it, but had a fiduciary responsibility to win for her client. She was lonely and appreciated an offer of friendship. In many ways, she was portrayed as the equivalent of her adversary, with similar problems, ambitions, and desires.

    Daniel Peters’s comment seems correct, but not just because negotiation tactics and strategies could be universal (pun intended), although come to think of it, this was not much of a negotiation. Economics is most likely universal, as in: everyone seeks to obtain the greatest amount possible while expending the least resources possible.

  • Edward: No, I didn’t mean “this way” as you first thought. I meant it in totality. They cheat, but they are unhappy with unsatisfied lives that makes them cheat more. They have no strong moral foundation, and struggle to find it even as their lives force them to flee it.

    And yes, lawyers too often are portrayed this way. It suggests something, does it not?

  • It’s fun to mock lawyers, until you need one. I will say that my experience is that lawyers are far and away the most enthusiastic imbibers, and the most open about it. Every law office I’ve been in had a stocked bar.

  • Edward

    Robert,
    You asked: “It suggests something, does it not?

    A friend of mine was an attorney. She left the field, because too many of her clients were not willing to make compromises and wanted only to win.

    For me, this makes sense. We often do not feel that we are in the wrong, and when we are in the right then we are hardly likely to compromise, or lose, to someone who has or is wronging us. For example, three months ago some guy rear ended me while I was stopped for a light and lied to his insurance company, claiming it was my fault. Why would I want to compromise on something like that?

    My friend is now a development director (fundraiser) for a charity at half the salary that she made as an attorney. From my point of view, by making compromises she was cheating her own clients, because it was hard work to continue their cases for a possible (50% chance?) loss. I think that from her point of view, her clients had a high probability (50% chance?) of loss, rather than win, anyway, and she was saving them from the problems associated with continued and expensive litigation. Mark Steyn is now almost a decade into a seemingly endless case in which his accuser, Michael Mann, seems to have so little on his side that he delays and delays for years and years.
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/14/mann-vs-steyn-likely-to-head-to-supreme-court/

    On the other hand [*** SPOILER ALERT! *** Those who have not watched the video should not read this until they have watched], Olivia from the story also had clients who wanted a win, and cheating by not telling her adversary the details of the treaty that she was working to was her way of getting an easy win.

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