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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. 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.

Obama press chief said today that they have no plans to take John McCain’s advice and replace Joe Biden as vice president.

1:58 pm

Obama’s press chief said today that they have no plans to take John McCain’s advice and replace Joe Biden as vice president.

This public suggestion by John McCain might actually have been the best thing he has ever done for the conservative movement. As Biden has piled on the stupid gaffes in the past few weeks it seemed to me that to fire him and replace him with someone more respectable (and more intelligent) this close to the election would be a very smart political move. Having a Republican suggest it, however, has made the Obama administration decide they can’t do it. Truly wonderful.

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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 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

It appears the Obama Justice Department is not going to prosecute Obama fundraiser and former Democratic Governor Jon Corzine for the embezzlement of customer funds at MF Global.

12:52 pm

The law is such an inconvenient thing: It appears the Obama Justice Department is not going to prosecute Obama fundraiser and former Democratic Governor/Senator Jon Corzine for the embezzlement of customer funds at MF Global.

What Corzine and MF Global did was the equivalent of a bank president digging into his customer’s private bank accounts in order to fund their own private investments. That is called embezzlement. It is a felony. That the Obama Justice Department is going to let Corzine off the hook is more evidence that this administration doesn’t believe in enforcing the law, but in using the power of government for its own ends. Disgraceful.

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On the Road

12:35 pm

Posting might be light today, as I am flying from Tucson to Newark with my 94-year-old mother, who is joining my brother and sister-in-law in their move to Israel to be closer to her four grandchildren and now eleven great-grandchildren. (As Diane says, “The most powerful attractive force in the universe is grandchildren.)

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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

It now appears confirmed that the man arrested for shooting a guard at the Family Research Council in DC apparently did so because he disagreed with the Council’s conservative positions.

3:58 pm

Leftwing debate: It now appears confirmed that the man arrested for shooting a guard at the Family Research Council in DC apparently did so at least in part because he disagreed with the Council’s conservative positions.

Since the Tucson shootings in January 2011, the left has gone out of its way to try to pin every madman’s violent terror spree on conservatives and their willingness to aggressively disagree with the left. “If only the right wasn’t so hateful in its rhetoric these acts of violence wouldn’t happen.” Or to put it more honestly, Shut up!

In every case the charges by the left have proven false. In every case, politics had little to do with the murders. In fact, the only political violence we have seen since the rise of the tea party movement in 2009 has come from leftwing protesters trying to shut that movement down.

Now we do have a case where political rhetoric can be directly tied to violence. And it has come from the left, which has been completely over the top in the anger and hate they have expressed for those who disagree with them on the subject of gay marriage.

Sadly, I do not expect Barack Obama to go on the public airwaves and call for civility. To do so would show us that he can rise above partisanship, something I do not think he is capable of doing.

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A test flight of an Air Force hypersonic aircraft failed yesterday when it went out of control before its experimental scramjet engine could be started

12:45 pm

A test flight of an Air Force hypersonic aircraft failed yesterday when it went out of control before its experimental scramjet engine could be started.

Though failures during engineering tests are not really failures, as the goal is to find out if the engineering works or doesn’t, this particular failure is a bit more like a real failure. They never got to test the scramjet engine, which was the point of the entire flight. Instead, they had a failure of a control fin on the aircraft, and it appears that this fin was “faulty.” Not a good sign, especially as the previous flight in June 2011 also failed prematurely.

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Contrasting Paul Ryan with Barack Obama.

12:18 pm

Contrasting Paul Ryan with Barack Obama.

The next month, both [budget] plans came to a vote in the Senate. Ryan’s budget lost on a party-line vote; Obama’s lost 0-97. Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton, and Obama’s own appointee to the deficit-control panel whose recommendations Obama completely ignored in that budget proposal, told a University of North Carolina audience in September 2011 that Ryan had proposed “a sensible, straightforward, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit by $4 trillion.” In contrast, Bowles told the audience, “I don’t think anyone took [Obama’s] budget very seriously.”

In February 2012, Obama proposed yet another unserious budget that ignored all of the realities of our short- and long-term fiscal shortfalls, with yet another trillion-dollar deficit. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tried to tell Ryan and the House Budget Committee that Obama’s budget proposal would “stabilize” the deficits. This time, Ryan only needed four minutes to dismantle that argument, showing that Obama’s long-term budget only “stabilized” deficits for a decade, after which they escalated out of control — unlike Ryan’s long-term budget reforms, which solved the problem of escalating costs. “We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem,” Geithner finally exclaimed. “What we do know is we don’t like yours.”

Bluntly put, Obama has never been willing to propose anything that might solve the federal budget disaster, while Ryan has at least made an attempt.

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The mysterious dark streaks on Vesta

11:25 am

dark material on Vesta

In a preprint paper published today at the Los Alamos astro-ph website, scientists have taken a detailed look at the mysterious dark streaks seen by Dawn on the surface of the asteroid Vesta and have concluded that the material comes from impacts, not from volcanic activity.

The scientists also concluded that

the majority of the spectra of [dark material] are similar to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites mixed with materials indigenous to Vesta.

Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are considered to be the most primeval material in the solar system. This means that Vesta has the potential to give scientists a convenient laboratory for studying that primeval material and the early formation of the solar system. Ideally, the best way to do this would of course be to go there.

The scientists also theorize that much of this material was brought to Vesta by a single large impact.
» Read more

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“inadequate oversight, lax bookkeeping, sloppy paperwork, haphazard performance agreements and missing financial documentation.”

10:00 am

An inspector general’s report of the State Department’s climate change office has uncovered “inadequate oversight, lax bookkeeping, sloppy paperwork, haphazard performance agreements and missing financial documentation.”

Other than that, the Obama administration’s management of its climate research budget is just fine.

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The test of Coperhagen Suborbital’s capsule launch abort system failed spectacularly on Sunday.

8:47 pm

The test of Coperhagen Suborbital’s capsule launch abort system failed spectacularly on Sunday. With pictures.

“We had perfect launch, but quickly the entire configuration began to tumble,” said Kristian von Bengtson, co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals. “The main chutes clearly did not have complete deployment and the capsule hit water in high speed, buckling the bottom shield.”

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The Obamacare Quagmire

1:33 pm

“The Obamacare quagmire.”

Faced with these unappetizing choices [offered by Obamacare], the federal government has chosen to adopt a course of action that I have previously called, in a National Affairs article, “government by waiver.” Quite simply, the federal government has already told key plan operators—more democratic than republican, more labor than business—that they need not meet these requirements. These waivers have already been offered to more than 1,000 employers covering over three million employees. It could well be that the path of least resistance in these cases is to continue a waiver policy to avoid a massive institutional breakdown.

None of this should come as a surprise. The ACA was sold with a set of promises that were not sustainable.

Any law that can be “waived” at the whim of a politician isn’t a law but a ticket to corruption, blackmail, and payoffs. And that the Obama administration has played favorites (labor and Democrats) in who it has given its waivers illustrates this point.

No politician should have this power. Obamacare has got to be repealed.

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One of Dawn’s reaction wheels, used to orient the spacecraft, shut down last week.

9:16 am

Uh-oh: One of Dawn’s reaction wheels, used to orient the spacecraft, shut down last week.

During a planned communications pass on Aug. 9, the team learned that the reaction wheel had been powered off. Telemetry data from the spacecraft suggest the wheel developed excessive friction, similar to the experience with another Dawn reaction wheel in June 2010. The Dawn team demonstrated during the cruise to Vesta in 2011 that, if necessary, they could complete the cruise to Ceres without the use of reaction wheels.

That the spacecraft can get to Ceres without reaction wheels is good. However, can it be oriented precisely to do science without these wheels? The JPL press release does not say.

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“Obama lauds NASA for Mars landing, pledges continued investment.”

11:15 pm

“Obama lauds NASA for Mars landing, pledges continued investment.”

What a joke. This Reuters’ article is so busy campaigning for Barack Obama that it fails to note one fundamental fact: It is the Obama administration that gutted NASA’s science program so that there is little likelihood of any missions to Mars, or elsewhere, in the foreseeable future. As noted correctly in this Science article describing the same Obama telephone call to JPL,

The president’s sweeping endorsement of research, however, carefully avoids the fact that his 2013 budget would cut funding for NASA’s Mars exploration program by nearly one-third and end the country’s role in two Mars missions planned jointly with the European Space Agency for later in the decade. Both the House of Representatives and a Senate spending panel have added back money for Mars exploration, although Congress is unlikely to settle on a final budget for the agency until next spring.

Look, I freely admit the federal budget has to be cut. And I am freely willing to have those cuts occur in NASA. What I can’t abide is the kind of junk journalism seen in the Reuters piece above, selling Obama as a big supporter of space research when he clearly has not been.

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The Wall

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Fifty-one years ago today the Soviet Union and East Germany — in the name of ideology and communism — cut Berlin in half, putting a wall between neighbors, friends, and families. The documentary below was made in 1962 and will give you a sense of the evil of that wall, as felt by the people who were oppressed by it.

I think it a reasonable thing to remind ourselves again and again that the use of force in the name of any ideology, no matter how well intentioned, is always wrong.

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July’s violence against pro-live protesters.

5:20 pm

Leftwing civility: July’s violence against pro-live protesters.

  • An pro-life activist’s home was vandalized, including having a rock thrown through the front door in the middle of the night.
  • A 69-year-old pro-life volunteer was attacked while collecting petition signatures, fracturing his hip.
  • Another protester was shoved and injured while passing out fliers.
  • A homemade fire bomb was thrown at pro-life protesters praying in front of an abortion clinic.
  • Other pro-life protesters were threatened by the owner of an abortion clinic owner with a loaded gun.

I am not arguing for or against abortion. I am pointing out that there is increasing violence in the political arena, and it is almost all coming from the liberal and leftwing side. Worse, this violence is increasingly reminiscent of the brownshirts in Germany before World War II, attacking Jews and vandalizing their homes and businesses, in order to instill fear and wield power over others.

The article above focuses on how the media is not covering these attacks. I think it is even more important to call them for that they are: bigoted, hateful acts of violence intended to oppress those who disagree with them.

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