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Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. I keep the website clean from pop-ups and annoying demands. Instead, I depend entirely on my readers to support me. Though this means I am sacrificing some income, it also means that I remain entirely independent from outside pressure. By depending solely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, no one can threaten me with censorship. You don't like what I write, you can simply go elsewhere.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. 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.
 

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5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.

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 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.

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 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

Obamacare and the unstoppable project.

Obamacare and the unstoppable project.

On multiple occasions over the past 18 years, I have been that IT consultant yelling “Stop!” to a client (sometimes a software developer, sometimes a customer) who very much does not want to hear that. In one instance, the executive vice-president in the charge of the project I had just spent a few months reviewing walked out of the meeting in which I was presenting my findings in order to track down and destroy all copies of the report containing those findings. Likewise, I’ve had a few engagements that have ended abruptly due to my insistence on honesty and reality, but I sleep well at night, so the trade-off is excellent.

Stick around till the end, because the Dilbert cartoon there encapsulates everything we know about how today’s federal government operates: “You should buy twice as much.”

Leaving Earth cover

There are now only 3 copies left of the now out-of-print hardback of Leaving Earth. The price for an autographed copy of this rare collector's item is now $150 (plus $5 shipping).

 

To get your copy while the getting is good, please send a $155 check (which includes $5 shipping) payable to Robert Zimmerman to
 

Behind The Black, c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

Leaving Earth is also available as an inexpensive ebook!

 

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 Obama administration has had to issue 254 corrections to its own Obamacare regulations.

You think their website is bad? The Obama administration has had to issue 254 corrections to its own Obamacare regulations.

The damage wasn’t limited to little-used regulatory language that needed to be fixed of careless mistakes. The medical loss ratio requirement has been hotly debated as a tool to limit insurance companies’ profitability. Billed by The Washington Post as the “provision that terrifies insurers,” the policy forces insurance companies to spend a mandated percentage of patient premiums on patient care in order to keep premiums artificially low. Twenty-four corrections were issued to the Medical Loss Ratio rule alone. Some parts of the regulations were “technically inaccurate and [conflicted] with language elsewhere,” according to Batkins. Some corrections had to be corrected again later on.

The report pointed to the real-world effects of mistakes in the dense regulations, specifically federal officials’ assumption that it would take 28 minutes to complete an online application via the federal exchange, which turned out to be drastically wrong. [emphasis mine]

Remember, the word “regulation” is really about control and power. One entity, the government, gets to regulate the behavior of others. The problem is that this particular government, whether run by Democrats or Republicans, is wholly incompetent.

President Obama’s new big lie.

President Obama’s new big lie.

The article, which outlines why Obama’s claim that all those canceled insurance plans are “substandard” is an outright lie, also had these two paragraphs scream out at me:

Cancer patients whose plans are cancelled are getting whacked the hardest. They are losing access to the specialized cancer hospitals and oncologists treating them. And they will get meager help, if any, paying for innovative cancer drugs that cost thousands of dollars.

The most troubling provision in Obamacare’s Section 1311 gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services blanket authority to control how doctors and hospitals treat patients. This is all in the name of improving “quality.” This could mean everything in medicine.

Ain’t it great how the Democrats have stood by this law from day one?

A Republican bill to allow insurance companies to continue to offer their old policies is gaining Democratic support.

A Republican bill to allow insurance companies to continue to offer their old policies is gaining Democratic support.

This bill once again proves that the Republicans are the stupid party. This bill is a travesty. It will not solve any problems, but will transfer the disaster to the federal budget. Under Obamacare the insurance companies can’t afford those old health plans since Obamacare now requires them to give insurance to everyone, even the sick who do not have insurance. Thus, they need to charge more to pay for those sick customers. If the old plans are forced on them, they will need significant subsidies from somewhere to stay in business, and this bill gives it to them out of the U.S. treasury. Moreover, the bill only adds more complexity and confusion to the whole mess.

If the Republicans had any brains, they would simply demand repeal at this moment. Repeal is the only real solution, so that we can start over and deal intelligently with the problems of the health insurance industry. It is also the smart political move. If the Democrats refuse to cooperate, they once again will be forced to endorse Obamacare as it collapses. If they go along, the Republicans get what the country needs, while winning politically.

And there’s this: It’s a trap!

China reveals its space station plans.

China reveals its space station plans.

“China Space Station (CSS) will operate in orbit from 2022 to 2032. This period will provide much more opportunities to scientists in China and all of the world after the international space station,” Gu Yidong, president of the China Society of Space Research, said at the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research conference here Nov. 3 – 8. The station’s core module is slated to launch in 2018, followed by two laboratory modules in 2020 and 2022. The outpost will be located in an orbit ranging from 350 kilometers to 450 kilometers above Earth and inclined 42 degrees relative to the planet’s equator.

The article describes in detail their research plans on their station, which sound much the same as the kind of research done on ISS. I suspect this is a bit of misdirection. Their station is clearly designed as a prototype interplanetary station, much like Mir. I believe that any research they do on it will be focused around that fact, which will make that research significantly different that the work done on ISS, which is often not very effective and poorly focused.

A detailed update on the status of spacesuit repairs on ISS, following the July water leak during a spacewalk.

A detailed update on the status of spacesuit repairs on ISS, following the July water leak during a spacewalk.

After additional tools and parts were sent up on both Progress and Cygnus freighters, astronauts on ISS pinpointed the problem and replaced the failed the “fan/pump/separator”. The faulty unit was brought back to Earth for further analysis in the manned Soyuz craft yesterday.

Of the four U.S. spacesuits on ISS, one is still considered faulty and needs to be replaced, which will happen with the next Dragon flight expected sometime in February 2014.

The same software guy who refused to certify the Obamacare website as secure is also the same guy who now says the website’s security problems are “limitless.”

The same software guy who refused to certify the Obamacare website as secure is also the same guy who now says the website’s security problems are “limitless.”

He is also the same guy the Obama administration forced out of his job for saying so. As noted at the story above, the House should “subpoena this man.” He will have some very interesting things to say in public.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Obamacare contraceptive mandate cannot be imposed on either religious or private organizations.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Obamacare contraceptive mandate cannot be imposed on either religious or private organizations.

It offends me deeply, as someone who is not religious, that the Obama administration has tried to force its political opinions on religious individuals against their will or beliefs.

A fourth engine burn has put India’s Mangalyaan probe back on course.

A fourth engine burn has put India’s Mangalyaan probe back on course.

The unexpected abort during the previous burn occurred because engineers were testing the primary and secondary electrical coils that operate the engine’s valves.

During the firing on Monday morning, the team was trying to use both the primary and the redundant coils together as part of a trial. However, there was no fuel flow in this mode and the orbiter could not pick up the required velocity or reach the desired higher orbit. … A senior engineer involved in the process said, “Both the coils are working independently (but not if they are switched on together.)

Today’s burn demonstrated that nothing on the spacecraft has actually failed. As expected, simultaneous use of the two coils will no longer be attempted.

It is time to start considering the worst case scenario for Obamacare.

It is time to start considering the worst case scenario for Obamacare,

that the exchanges continue to malfunction, that plan cancellations go into effect, that insurers see the political winds shifting and stop playing nice with the administration, and that significant numbers of people are left stranded without coverage as a result. Rather than reforming the individual market, which was flawed but did work for some people, Obamacare will have destroyed it and left only dysfunction and chaos in its wake.

The article looks hard at the situation, and sees nothing but disaster. The policies that have been cancelled cannot be reinstated easily, if at all. The people whose policies have been cancelled cannot enroll in a new plan because of the failure of the Obamacare website. The result: Come January large numbers of Americans who once had catastrophic health insurance — to protect themselves against a sudden health emergency — will no longer have that insurance and will be exposed.

The Democrats wanted this, they created this, they demanded this, and now they have given us this. And in a sane world there would be no doubt that come November they would be fired for this. Sadly, I have doubts it is a sane world.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter inaugurates a new website of its images of the landing or impact sites of every human vehicle to arrive or crash on the Moon.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter inaugurates a new website of its images of the landing or impact sites of every human vehicle to arrive or crash on the Moon.

I found the site because they have a new release of images of the impact crater produced when Ranger 7 hit the Moon on July 28, 1964.

72 absurd items Obamacare requires your health insurance to cover.

72 absurd items Obamacare requires your health insurance to cover.

Want to know why Obamacare has forced premiums to skyrocket? Besides forcing insurance companies to provide insurance to those already sick, the law also requires everyone to get the services listed in the article above, most of which no one wants.

I am so glad the Democrats forced this law upon us, and then shut the government down so that it would go into effect on time!

Two Baptist chaplains are suing the Veterans Administration for demanding they stop naming “Jesus” in their prayers.

Freedom in Modern America: Two Baptist chaplains are suing the Veterans Administration for demanding they stop naming “Jesus” in their prayers.

Two Baptist chaplains said they were forced out of a Veterans Affairs chaplain training program after they refused orders to stop quoting the Bible and to stop praying in the name of Jesus. When the men objected to those demands they were subjected to ridicule and harassment that led to one of the chaplains leaving the program and the other being ejected, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday.

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission experienced its first technical problem during an engine burn today.

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission experienced its first technical problem during an engine burn today.

As scientists tried to increase the speed of the satellite as it orbited Earth Monday, the flow of fuel to the craft’s main engine stopped. Backup thruster engines kicked in to keep the speed up and help raise the spacecraft’s orbit, but the satellite’s incremental velocity dipped, the Indian Space Research Organisation said.

The spacecraft was unable to reach the desired orbiting height of 100,000 kilometers. The satellite is currently orbiting at just over 78,000 km above Earth and scientists have now altered the mission plan to include an additional engine firing Tuesday to help it reach the correct height and incremental velocity of 130 meters a second.

Engineers seem confident that the spacecraft’s back up systems will be able to pick up the slack.

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