Annual fund-raiser plus lower price for Genesis

11:20 pm


As this year’s birthday fund-raiser ends, I once again want to thank everyone who donated or subscribed to Behind the Black. I appreciate every penny, in ways that are hard to describe.

And though the official fund-raiser is over and this post will now slowly drop down the page like all other posts, don’t think that donations or subscriptions are no longer necessary. To repeat: If you are a regular reader and like what I do here, please consider making a contribution to help defray the costs for running this website. The tip jar on the right will allow you to make a one time contribution, or even subscribe, making monthly contributions as low as $2.

Please consider helping. Without your financial aid I am not sure I will be able to continue this website into the future.

Also, for those who missed the December sale of Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, I have good news. We have officially lowered the price of the ebook to $5.99, before discount. You can now get it at this lower price at all ebook venders. Some vendors, such as amazon.com, will discount this price even further.

2 comments

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 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

“Oh, she’s going down.”

10:05 am

Rand Paul today became the fourth senator to announce his opposition to Loretta Lynch, Barack Obama’s nominee for attorney general.

Earlier Wednesday, in his office in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, Breitbart News watched as the senator’s legal and press team briefed him final time before the interview. Sergio Gor, Paul’s communications director, his press secretary Eleanor May and attorney Brian Darling were all present.

Paul asked the team about Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) question during Lynch’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing about whether she’d oppose using a drone to kill an American citizen on American soil.

When Paul heard about her non-answer—she wouldn’t commit that the federal government does not have such authority—he was incredulous. Furthermore, Paul was appalled that Lynch came out in favor of President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty and the use of asset forfeiture—where the federal government seizes people’s property sometimes with flimsy reasoning, something even the Obama administration has offered slight opposition to—and then told his office staff he’s going to oppose her and aim to derail her nomination chances. “Oh, she’s going down,” Paul said to the room.

The video of Lynch’s non-answer to Cruz’s question is quite shocking. I dare you to watch it and tell me afterward that this administration and Democratic Party is not a threat to your freedom and rights.

Whether the Republicans in the Senate will have the courage to stand up to this threat, however, remains a very big unknown. That four senators have announced their opposition so early is a good sign, but we shall see.

1 comment

Obama: all religions the same

9:49 am

At his speech today at the National Prayer Breakfast President Obama outlined the moral equivalency between Islam and all other religions, noting that all religions have in the past been “hijacked” by evil people for “for their own murderous ends.”

This is an interesting intellectual argument that is completely meaningless in today’s world. The problem today is not Christian murderers or Jewish murderers or Buddhist murderers. It is Islamic murderers, supported by an Islamic population willing to condone violence in the name of their religion.

You don’t believe me? Then compare the large number of demonstrations in the Islamic world protesting the publication of cartoon drawings of Mohammed by Charlie Hebdo versus the complete lack of outrage in those same places for the burning alive of one prisoner and the beheading of others by the Islamic State. Even if Obama is right, which I do not believe, Islam today is murderous and running amok. We must deal with that reality, not the ivory tower delusions of college professors and incompetent Presidents living in the past.

11 comments

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.

The Russian spaceport construction still behind schedule

9:31 am

In a detailed update on the status of Russia’s new Vostochny spaceport, russianspaceweb reports that the construction continues to be behind schedule.

Whether they can meet the government imposed deadline of first Soyuz rocket launch by the end of 2015 seems very doubtful. More significant is this interesting quote:

In the meantime, various sensitive systems, which arrived to Vostochny for installation into unfinished facilities, were rusting inside their containers along railway sidings.

Obviously, without enough qualified personnel at the remote construction site, Spetsstroi had little choice but to focus on facilities with the highest profile for visiting Moscow officials. Moreover, the work had to be done in a great haste, increasing the chances for mistakes and leading to a low quality of construction.

Boy, does that sound like the Soviet Union all over again. It also reminds me of how most government agencies operate in the U.S.

0 comments

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 government as thief

4:43 pm

How civil forfeiture is used by government agencies to steal cash and property from innocent Americans.

More here, including this juicy story:

To the casual observer it appears that Virginia is run by violent psychopaths. That’s the takeaway from the recent report of an anti-poker SWAT team raid in Fairfax County, in which eight assault rifle-sporting police officers moved against ten card-playing civilians. The police possibly seized more than $200,000 from the game, of which 40 percent they eventually kept.

There was no indication that any of the players was armed. As a matter of fact, it appears that a gambler is more likely to be shot without provocation by the Fairfax Police than the other way around. The heavy firepower at the Fairfax raid was apparently motivated by the fact that “at times, illegal weapons are present” at such poker games, and that “Asian gangs” have allegedly targeted such events in the past. This is, then, a novel approach to law enforcement: as a matter of policy, Fairfax police now attempt to rob and steal from people before street gangs get around to doing it.

As the article notes, gambling is not against the law in Virginia, merely regulated. It appears that this regulation was used as a very flimsy excuse by the Virginia state government to rob these citizens and pocket the cash.

1 comment

The rockets of the world

4:36 pm

Link here.

Inspired by a book and poster from 1995, titled “Rockets of the World,” graphic artist Tyler Skrabek has provided a new and updated “clean” look for his latest work. “The ‘Rockets of the World’ poster emulates a 1960 style of drawing,” he said, “employing a consistent pallet across all rockets allowing for a distraction-free look at the size and power of the world’s greatest machines.”

A link to the poster itself can be found here. It is fascinating to compare rockets that no longer exist with those flying today.

3 comments

New Pluto images from New Horizons

4:02 pm

Pluto from 126 million miles

The New Horizons science team has finally released the navigation image of Pluto and Charon that the spacecraft took on January 25.

A cropped version is on the right. The image shows Pluto and its biggest moon Charon, with both appearing somewhat elongated in shape. Why this is so is not explained by the press release, but I suspect it is because the goal of the image was not sharpness but to locate the planet for navigation purposes.

1 comment

Obamacare website allows commercial companies access to personal data

10:12 am

Finding out what’s in it: The Obamacare website allows the personal data of users to be gathered by commercial advertising companies like Google, Twitter, and Yahoo.

I should add that this is only a minor invasion of privacy. Much worse is the federal government’s insistence that your actual medical record, required on Obamacare to be digitized, shall be made available to scientists for research purposes, without asking your permission.

0 comments

Republicans to stand firm on blocking Obama’s illegal over-reach on immigration?

10:01 am

“There is no plan B”

The Republicans, including Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), are vowing to hold the line on tying funding for the Homeland Security Department to language reversing Obama’s executive actions on immigration — even after Senate Democrats blocked their bill from being considered in the upper chamber. “There’s not a Plan B, because this is the plan,” Scalise said minutes after the Senate vote, according to Fox News’s Chad Pergram. Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) echoed that message, saying “many of us agree that we should stand behind the one bill that we sent over there.” “Most of us feel that way,” he said just before the Senate vote. “Anything less than that, we’re not going to get any better result anyway. So why not just go for what’s really right?”

Tuesday’s Senate vote was 51-48 to end debate on the House-passed Homeland Security bill — far shy of the 60 supporters GOP leaders needed to move to a vote on final passage. Every Senate Democrat voted against proceeding to the package, as did Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.).

If no agreement is reached than funds for Homeland Security run out on February 28. And I say amen! Homeland Security provides us no safety or security in the war against violent Islam, and has instead worked to destroy the very things that make us different from the dictators of the Old World: freedom and the power of the individual over the power of the state. Let it shut down. We had no shut KGB-type agency for the country’s first 225 years and we don’t need it now.

Whether the Republicans will have the courage to actually let Homeland Security shut down, however, is the real question. Since the government shutdowns in the 1990s they have shown themselves to be very fearful of the blowback from any government shutdown, even though there is no evidence in recent years that these shutdowns have hurt them. The liberal press might scream that the public blames the Republicans only, but that is ridiculous, since every shutdown was a team effort by both parties.

In fact, the shutdown two years ago probably contributed to the Republican midterm election triumph in November. If anything, it certainly did them no harm.

1 comment

Life found that hasn’t changed in 2 billion years

6:00 pm

Scientists have discovered a micro-organism that has not evolved in more than 2 billion years.

Schopf and his colleagues used a variety of spectroscopic imaging techniques to study sulfur bacteria fossils embedded in deep sea rocks of varying ages. Analysis of the microorganisms from 1.8 billion-year-old rocks from Western Australia and 2.3 billion-year-old rocks collect off the coast of Chile showed that ancient sulfur bacteria looks the exact same now as it has for more than two billion years.

1 comment

Paul introduces bill to rein in government property seizures

8:51 am

Good news: A new bill introduced this week by Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) would put strict limits on the use of civil forfeiture by both state and federal agencies.

I normally don’t post links to stories about bills that have merely been introduced, not passed, but I think the trend that this bill indicates is important. It was only a short time ago that politicians ran around touting their achievements in establishing civil forfeiture laws. Now the cool place for politicians to be is to show how they are acting to end this practice.

2 comments
1 … 1,180 1,181 1,182 1,183 1,184 … 1,772