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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.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

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.


Parks and Recreation – “Thoughts For Your Thoughts”

An evening pause: For anyone who has ever listened to NPR, it will be hard to distinguish the satire here from reality, since the skit so well captures public radio’s often empty-headed blather disguised as profound intellectualism, framed by a strong desire to promote anything the government wants done.

Hat tip to John Harman.

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

3 comments

  • ‘but they are lesbians’. End of days, fall of Rome, it’s here and it’s now. I don’t give a freak who you sleep with, but I do care about your priorities. Far too many people are caught up in identity politics, and we’re not going to survive it. I have a theory that more civilizations are undone through decadence than natural disaster: applies to non-human civilizations, too. The clip is humor; but I can’t help but think that we’re not going to make it.

  • Matt in AZ

    But people can say that about any era. WWII was way worse than the craziness of now, and if we can make it through the MAD of the Cold War in one piece (albeit just barely, a few times), anything is possible.

  • Edward

    Matt,
    We may have just barely lived through the MADness of the Cold War, but what if we hadn’t?

    As for WWII, despite our fight against tyranny, we are in one right now. We may still be living, but the tyrannical US government is now free to direct us as to how to spend our own money. We did not make it past the Cold War as well as you seem to think.

    (Even should Obamacare be overturned, the SCOTUS ruling says that the Sixteenth Amendment allows the government to tyrannically direct us to do, against our will, anything the government wishes, just so long as they apply the concept of a tax to the law that directs us into the action. The tyranny can outlive Obamacare and can spread beyond it, too. As always: does anyone know of any other tyranny in all of history that had the temerity to directed its people as to how to spend their own money? Honest, I want to know.)

    Blair,
    We may not care who anyone sleeps with (did we ever?), but when they are free to direct us to participate — and how to participate — in their lives, whether or not it is our choice, then it matters. For them to direct us who to associate with is just as tyrannical as though we were to direct them who to sleep with. Once again, we may still be alive, but we already have not survived it.

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