Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black., 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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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.

Scientists Steer Car With the Power of Thought

5:15 pm

What could go wrong? Scientists have developed technology allowing someone to steer a car by thought alone. Key quote:

“In our test runs, a driver equipped with EEG sensors was able to control the car with no problem — there was only a slight delay between the envisaged commands and the response of the car,” said Prof. Raúl Rojas, who heads the AutoNOMOS project at Freie Universität Berlin.

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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, 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 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

Why the Democrats might be making the wrong assumptions about a government shutdown

1:52 pm

Why the Democrats might be making the wrong assumptions about a government shutdown. Key quote:

In many ways, 1995 was the last year of the old media world. It was the year before the launch of FOX News and the year before the Internet exploded into American life. The three broadcast television networks and the major newspapers still had a stranglehold on political news in 1995. Shaping the public narrative would be much harder for Democrats in today’s more diffuse and more balanced media world.

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

Dem Congressman tells unions that they “need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody”

12:03 pm

Why have I been highlighting recent examples of liberal “incivility” and calls to violence? Ed Morrissey at hotair explains it all in this piece about a Democratic Congressman who yesterday told union supporters that they “need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody.”

It isn’t that these vicious statements are only being made by the left. I have never said that. It’s that the press is only willing to condemn the right for it, while leftwing violent rhetoric is either ignored or made light of.

Vicious and violent statements by anyone are wrong, and should never be defended or excused. Ever.

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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

 

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

The high priests of science and how they bar the door to skeptics

9:54 pm

The high priests of science and how they bar the door to skeptics. A paper is published in Nature claiming that Antarctica is warming as predicted by global warming advocates.

The indefatigable Steve McIntyre started to scrutinize [this paper] along with Nicholas Lewis. They found several flaws: Steig et al had used too few data sequences to speak for an entire continent, and had processed the data in a very questionable way. But when they wanted to correct him, in another journal, they quickly ran into an inconvenient truth about global warming: the high priests do not like refutation. To have their critique (initial submission here [pdf], final version here [pdf]) of Steig’s work published, they needed to assuage the many demands of an anonymous ‘Reviewer A’ – whom they later found out to be Steig himself. [emphasis mine]

It is unconscionable for any science journal to have allowed Steig, the author of the paper under attack, to act one of the anonymous reviewers. But hey, what do I know? I’m only a simple science writer.

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The Massive February 15, 2011 X Flare on the Sun

8:02 pm

An evening pause: On February 15, 2011, the Sun emitted its strongest flare in four years. Though the Sun continues to act relatively wimpy as it ramps up towards solar maximum, this flare was spectacular, mostly because we now have some amazing instruments in space to image and study it. This video does an excellent job explaining what was happening, as it happened. Watch, and enjoy.

And note, as powerful as this flare was, and despite the fact that it was pointed right at the Earth, it represented a relatively minor threat to our technological society, despite what some doomsayers might be claiming. A very active Sun can cause us problems, especially with power systems and electrical grids, but based on past experience during previous solar maximums, most power companies have taken careful steps to protect themselves from this risk. And with the Sun as weakly active as it is, the risks are further reduced. The doomsayers are simply shilling for more government research dollars.

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How leftwing journalists lie

6:28 pm

Oink! The Washington editor for Bloomberg today demonstrated to all the dishonest way liberal journalists like to cover the budget debates in Congress.

In an opinion piece for Bloomberg, editor Albert Hunt says that the Republican cuts to the budget threaten the American lead in science. According to him, “House Republicans want to cut NIH funding for the current year by more than $1 billion, to $29.5 billion.” Because of this cut would “future advances in areas like brain science are especially threatened.”
» Read more

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The blunder in Wisconsin

5:33 pm

Did Obama and the Democrats blunder in Wisconsin? This man thinks so:

The Wisconsin political blitzkrieg on Gov. Walker was not a spontaneous eruption. It is now clear that it was a highly organized operation planned in Washington, D.C., to unleash a national counterattack on the gains made by Republicans and Tea Party activists. Getting [Organizing for America] and the president to act in close coordination was itself no small feat. The plan included busing in thousands of government employees, arranging for Democratic lawmakers to flee to an adjoining state, flying speakers and political organizers into Madison, organizing thousands to leave their jobs in public safety and in classrooms, and staging rallies inside and outside the statehouse. They even enticed sympathetic doctors to draft bogus doctor excuses for government workers.

It all worked like a charm. Except that it struck all the wrong notes and portrayed all the wrong images. There is nothing more unseemly that to see a president serve as healer in Tucson and a political hack in Madison.

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The Worst Generation’s war in Wisconsin

4:52 pm

The worst generation’s war in Wisconsin.

In the past 10 years, says the Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds, taxpayers paid more than $8 billion for state workers’ health care coverage, while the workers put in only $398 million. And from 2000 to 2009, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, taxpayers spent about $12.6 billion on public employee pensions while the employees contributed only $8 million. [emphasis in original]

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From both the Washington Times and Washington Post: No pet projects are safe!

10:23 pm

Hell has frozen over! Today, from both the Washington Times and the Washington Post: No pet projects are safe! Key quote from the Post:

Yet in last week’s feverish scramble to shrink government, House Republicans also ran the budgetary buzz saw through costly defense and homeland security programs that their party had historically protected. They left no sacred cows. “We held no program harmless from our spending cuts, and virtually no area of government escaped this process unscathed,” Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee said in a statement.

And from the Times:

House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, watched lawmakers vote to defund a military project that pumps millions of dollars into his district, and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, saw her colleagues vote to end federal funding for a park in her San Francisco congressional district.

Read the Times article especially, as it lays out in great detail many of the pet projects that got cut. I especially like the elimination of the project to fix the sewers in Tijuana, Mexico.

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The Wisconsin protests as seen by a self-described “independent”

8:21 pm

The Wisconsin protests, both for and against, as seen by a self-described “independent,” with video. Key quote:

That experience has led to these two independent voters, who have been fiscally conservative but socially divided on many issues, to a new understanding of how politics, unions, and the media work. I’m glad I didn’t rely on the descriptions and information from others about this issue. I saw the reality for myself, and we have both decided to stay actively involved. We will not trust or rely on any media to deliver primary information or facts. It really is true: there is biased reporting and organized, liberal oppression and hostility for all other viewpoints. I’m just little nobody wife, mom, and teacher in small town Wisconsin, and I experienced it.

The video clip shows the Tea Party rally begin its demonstration with the Pledge of Allegience, even as teacher union protesters blow whistles to try to drown it out. Is this how they perform the pledge in school?

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