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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
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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.


Russ Roberts – It’s a Wonderful Loaf

An evening pause:

We know there’s order built into the fabric of the world
Of nature. Flocks of geese! Schools of fish! And every boy and girl
Delights in how the stars shine down in all their constellations
And the planets stay on track and keep the most sublime relations

With each other. Order’s everywhere. Yet we humans too create it
It emerges. No one intends it. No one has to orchestrate it.
It’s the product of our actions but no single mind’s designed it
There’s magic without wizards if you just know how to find it

I suspect that readers of Behind the Black will know the answer to this mystery.

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

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

6 comments

  • wayne

    Edward-
    Great selection.

    Professor Roberts is also responsible for the Keynes Vs. Hayek rap-videos, and can be found weekly on his podcast “Econ Talk,” at http://econtalk.org/

  • Joe

    Very nice Edward, brings to mind “I Pencil ” and Adam Smiths invisible hand. Too bad dictators don’t want free market economics over very fallible command economics.

  • ken anthony

    Here we have an obvious truth. So the natural choice is to ignore it.

    The problem with I Pencil is it leads to a false conclusion because it shows the visible and ignores the invisible alternatives. The alternative being that if any of the world’s supply line stopped, we’d still have pencils because…

    “Economics is the study of scarce resources that have alternate uses.” Which can only be understood when you also realize that everything is scarce and all have alternate uses. So if you only had the access of the resources in a limited area you’d still have writing instruments.

    The false conclusion of some that watch I Pencil is it has to be done as described or more to the point, requires that which is described, when the actual point is it doesn’t.

  • wayne

    ken- interesting point.

    Brand new from the professor, with a bit on spontaneous & emergent order.

    “Leaving things alone: The Secret Lessons of the Economic Way of Thinking”
    Russ Roberts at Friedberg Economics Institute
    May 2017
    https://youtu.be/y6uHsMnBLNw
    (1:22:15)

  • wayne

    Russ Roberts:
    “Washington Is The Real Source of The Problem, Not Wall Street”
    Congressional testimony from 2009
    https://youtu.be/GqnhtrgGQPI
    (5:08)

    “We are what we do, not what we wish to be, not what we say we are, but what we do. And what we do here in Washington is rescue large Companies, large financial institutions, and rich people, from the consequences of their mistakes. When mistakes don’t cost you anything, you do more of them.”

  • wayne

    Watch this (and its predecessor, and you’ll know more about Economics than most elected officials or professional Economists.

    “Fight of the Century”:
    Keynes vs. Hayek Rap Battle Round Two
    EconStories
    https://youtu.be/GTQnarzmTOc
    (10:09)

    This should have 50 million views, the Production values on this are amazingly well done
    The left owns Hollywood and Big Media and they spare no expense endlessly producing anti American and anti-Capitalism propaganda, in all formats, on all platforms, 24/7/365.

    When someone like a Dinesh D’Souza or a Russ Robert’s produces high-quality “stories,” I think it would behoove us all, to at least look at it.

    btw– Robert’s educational outreach efforts are funded in part by the very nice people at:
    https://www.libertyfund.org/

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