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c/o Robert Zimmerman
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Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

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According to FBI statistics released last week, violent crime has declined for the fifth year in a row, the 18th time in the last 20 years.

5:11 pm

More guns, less crime: According to FBI statistics released last week, violent crime has declined for the fifth year in a row, the 18th time it has declined in the last 20 years.

Facts are hard things. You can claim that more guns will cause more violent crime, but the facts remain what they are: Wherever there are gun control laws, crime is higher. Wherever people are allowed to own guns, crime goes down.

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The pork of Obamacare

3:00 pm

The Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), created by Obamacare, announced its first round of grants today, part of a funding program of fifty “pilot projects” totaling $30 million.

It didn’t take much research for me to conclude that, while some of this work might be useful, most of it sounds like bureaucratic claptrap. For example, consider the description Nature gives for these three grants:
» Read more

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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 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.

NBC has been caught again, for the third time this year, of selectively editing news footage to create a false scenario.

2:27 pm

NBC has been caught again, for the third time this year, of selectively editing news footage to create a false scenario.

In all three cases the false scenario aided Democratic leftwing politics.

I mention this story only to emphasis how completely unreliable NBC is as a source of news information. Sadly, none of the other media networks are much better.

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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

A Virginia dog receives a voter registration form in the mail, asking him to register to vote.

10:15 am

A Virginia dog that died two years ago received a voter registration form in the mail last week, asking it to register to vote.

The organization that sent out the form is called “the non-profit Voter Participation Center,” which is working to get “groups like young people, minorities, and unmarried women” to vote. Which suggests strongly that this center is a leftwing political activist group working to win future elections for Democrats, by any means necessary. A close look at their website confirms this, as they have many ties to liberal organizations and think tanks. More here.

This is further evidence that when Democrats scream about “the suppress the vote” efforts of Republicans, they are really worried about is the possibility that voter fraud will be eliminated, preventing them garnering fake votes.

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Spending money on silliness at the NSF and NIH

9:43 am

Your tax dollars at work: Spending money on silliness at the NSF and NIH.

Coburn’s report identified a number of projects that will make most Americans—scientists and nonscientists alike—shake their heads. They include studies of: how to ride a bike; when dogs became man’s best friend; whether political views are genetically predetermined; whether parents choose trendy baby names; and when the best time is to buy a ticket to a sold-out sporting event. And it noted that “only politicians appear to benefit from other NSF studies, such as research on what motivates individuals to make political donations, how politicians can benefit from Internet town halls…and how politicians use the Internet.”

Read the whole thing, as it gives a scientist’s perspective of this waste, which is sometimes not as obvious as the examples above.

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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

The Beatles – All You Need Is Love

6:01 pm

An evening pause: From a 1967 live television performance, one of the first ever broadcast by satellite around the world. Though this version has been colorized, the synch is off in the original. Also, in doing the colorization they cleaned up the recording, making it much clearer.

It is especially fascinating to watch Lennon and McCartney work together, chewing gum as they sing. And keep your eye out for Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and other rock performers in the audience.

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Global warming: Second thoughts by an environmentalist.

5:53 pm

Global warming: Second thoughts by an environmentalist.

For many years, I was an active supporter of the IPCC and its CO2 theory. Recent experience with the UN’s climate panel, however, forced me to reassess my position. In February 2010, I was invited as a reviewer for the IPCC report on renewable energy. I realised that the drafting of the report was done in anything but a scientific manner. The report was littered with errors and a member of Greenpeace edited the final version. These developments shocked me. I thought, if such things can happen in this report, then they might happen in other IPCC reports too.

He then very clearly outlines what we do and do not know about the Earth’s climate, and pinpoints the important uncertainties that presently exist.

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A Wyoming think tank is suing the Federal Election Commission in behalf of three Wyoming residents who were denied the right to run a political ad hostile to Barack Obama.

4:17 pm

A Wyoming think tank is suing the Federal Election Commission in behalf of three Wyoming residents who were denied the right to run a political ad hostile to Barack Obama.

What was that language again? I think the words are “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

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The FAA and NASA have worked out their differences concerning their regulation of private commercial space.

4:05 pm

The FAA and NASA have worked out their differences concerning their regulation of private commercial space.

Essentially, NASA has finally conceded with this agreement that it has no control over a private space launch that is not flying to a NASA facility. That the FAA continues to have as much regulatory control is bad enough, but getting NASA out of the loop will at least ease the bureaucratic burden for private companies.

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The Moon: a desert after all?

10:10 am

LEND data of lunar south pole

The uncertainty of science: A new science paper, published Saturday in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets,, has found that there is much less water ice trapped in the permanently shadowed craters of the lunar poles than previously thought. From the abstract:

This means that all [permanently shadowed regions], except those in Shoemaker, Cabeus and Rozhdestvensky U craters, do not contain any significant amount of hydrogen in comparison with sunlit areas around them at the same latitude.

And from the paper’s conclusion:

[E]ven now the data is enough for definite conclusion that [permanently shadowed regions] at both poles are not reservoirs of large deposits of water ice.

» Read more

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Scientists have concluded that a 460 foot diameter asteroid only has a 1 percent chance of hitting the Earth in 2040.

11:09 am

O goody: Scientists have concluded that a 460 foot diameter asteroid only has a 1 percent chance of hitting the Earth in 2040.

Observations to date indicate there is a slight chance that AG5 could impact Earth in 2040. Attendees expressed confidence that in the next four years, analysis of space and ground-based observations will show the likelihood of 2011 AG5 missing Earth to be greater than 99 percent.

It appears that they won’t really be able to pin down the impact odds for 2040 until 2023, when the asteroid passes the Earth at a distance of 1.1 million miles.

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