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.
"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
New computer models suggest that roughly half of the asteroid Vesta is cold enough for ice to survive below the surface.
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.
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“My message is simple.” Rating the reading grade level of the State of the Union speeches.
The Flesch-Kincaid test is designed to assess the readability level of written text, with a formula that translates the score to a U.S. grade level. Longer sentences and sentences utilizing words with more syllables produce higher scores. Shorter sentences and sentences incorporating more monosyllabic words yield lower scores.
Smart Politics ran the Flesch-Kincaid test on each of the last 70 State of the Union Addresses that were delivered orally by presidents before a Joint Session of Congress since Franklin Roosevelt. Excluded from analysis were five written addresses (by Truman in 1946 and 1953, Eisenhower in 1961, Nixon in 1973, and Carter in 1981) and two addresses that were delivered orally, but not by the President himself (Roosevelt in 1945 and Eisenhower in 1956). The vast majority of State of the Union speeches were delivered in writing prior to FDR.
While you might not be surprised by the results, a close look at the list illustrates both the influence of television and the decline in political thought in the past half century.
Scouring the Aegean Sea for the world’s oldest shipwrecks.
A Bronze Age wreck called Ulu Burun shows how the remains of a single ship can transform archaeologists’ understanding of an era. Discovered in 1982, it lies about 9 kilometres southeast of Kaş in southern Turkey, and dates from around 1300 BC, a century or two after the Minoans disappeared.
Christos Agourides, secretary-general of the Hellenic Institute of Marine Archaeology in Athens, describes it as “the dream of every marine archaeologist”. It took ten years to excavate, and researchers are still studying the nearly 17 tonnes of treasures recovered. The vast cargo includes ebony, ivory, ostrich eggs, resin, spices, weapons, jewellery and textiles as well as ingots of copper, tin and glass.
But what really stunned archaeologists was that the artefacts on this one vessel came from at least 11 different cultures1 — from a gold scarab bearing the name of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti to copper from Cyprus and tin from central Asia.
The wreck provided tangible evidence of an astonishing array of contacts and trade between the different cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East in the late Bronze Age. The Ulu Burun ship sailed at around the time that Tutankhamun ruled Egypt, and “it is far more important than Tutankhamun’s tomb as a contribution to our understanding of the period”, according to Wachsmann. “This goes to the nitty gritty of the world. It’s Wall Street in a ship.”
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.
“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.
A Japanese whistleblower is using the web and YouTube to document scientific fraud by a prominent Japanese researcher.
Jigen has created separate Web sites for half a dozen cases in Japan in which he alleges scientific misconduct has occurred, and last week he posted details of what he believes is a case of image manipulation by researchers at a U.S. institution. The sites often include information about major grants and significant awards won by the scientist in question and any press releases from the institutions involved. The allegations against Kato are the first time Jigen has produced a video. He had previously used slide shows to make his point.
You can see his website here.
What really happened in the Gingrich ethics case?
Given all the attention to the ethics matter, it’s worth asking what actually happened back in 1995, 1996, and 1997. The Gingrich case was extraordinarily complex, intensely partisan, and driven in no small way by a personal vendetta on the part of one of Gingrich’s former political opponents. It received saturation coverage in the press; a database search of major media outlets revealed more than 10,000 references to Gingrich’s ethics problems during the six months leading to his reprimand. It ended with a special counsel hired by the House Ethics Committee holding Gingrich to an astonishingly strict standard of behavior, after which Gingrich in essence pled guilty to two minor offenses. Afterwards, the case was referred to the Internal Revenue Service, which conducted an exhaustive investigation into the matter. And then, after it was all over and Gingrich was out of office, the IRS concluded that Gingrich did nothing wrong. After all the struggle, Gingrich was exonerated.
I vaguely remembered the details of the Gingrich ethics case, and the article above confirms what my memory was telling me: Not only was Gingrich innocent of all charges, the charges themselves were political in nature and downright absurd.
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.
"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
An evening pause: From a 2008 concert in Amsterdam. The soloist, Melissa Venema, was 13 at the time.
It is now one thousand days, or three years, since the Democratically-controlled Senate has passed a a budget.
So, who are the do-nothings in Congress then? I must note that the Republican House has passed budgets each year since the 2010 election.
Good news: A new superconducting detector might supersede CCDs for large astronomical telescopes.
Ben Mazin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, believes that he is on the cusp of a camera breakthrough: his lab is working on a superconducting detector that could eventually replace the charge-coupled devices (CCDs) that have become de rigueur in both consumer and astronomical digital cameras. Mazin’s detectors, known as microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs), can simultaneously count photons, measure their energy and record each one’s time of arrival — something that CCDs can do only after the light is split with a prism or a grating, an extra step that adds to the loss of photons.
And you know that inevitably some variation of this technology is going to find its way into ordinary commercial products.
Tonight is the night to look at the sky, as the solar storm that hit the Earth today could produce spectacular aurora in lower latitudes.
In a preprint paper published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph website, astronomers have concluded that the exoplanet orbiting the star Formalhaut might not exist. This planet, the first exoplanet ever thought to be directly imaged in visible light, was first described in a paper published in 2008, and was actually tracked in its orbit over several years, as shown in the image on the right.
The new research used the Spitzer Space Telescope to see if the planet’s heat could be detected in infrared wavelengths. Unfortunately, the scientists found nothing.
» Read more
Fifteen questions the mainstream press would ask Barack Obama if he were a Republican.
While many of these questions are simply intended as a way to attack Obama (which of course is what the press does to Republican candidates), the last three are perfectly reasonable and do address directly the actual failures of his administration.
13) Why should the American people reelect you when your 10 year budget saddles America with more debt than all previous Presidents combined?
14) Your stimulus bill cost more in real dollars than the moon landing and the interstate highway system combined. What do we have to show for all of that money spent?
15) Members of your administration promised that the trillion dollar stimulus would keep unemployment under 8 percent. Instead, we’ve had 35+ months of 8% and above unemployment. Doesn’t that mean we wasted a trillion dollars on nothing?
Members of the Democratic Congressional Black Caucus on Monday charged that voter ID laws are intended at preventing blacks from voting and are specifically aimed at defeating Barack Obama.
“It is clear to me that whether racially based or not, this is a direct attempt, not only to undermine the election process, but a specific attempt to derail what surely would be and ought to be the re-election of Barack Obama,” Rep. Donna Christensen (D-VI) said on the floor.
So, according to these Democratic elected officials, blacks are either too stupid to carry ID, or are all criminals who fear being identified. What bigotry.
Or maybe these Democratic elected officials simply want to maintain the possibility of voter fraud.
Romney and Gingrich and their contrasting space policy views, as stated during in Florida debate last night.
A 33,000-year-old dog skull found in a Siberian cave, when compared with other ancient dog remains found in a Belgium cave, suggest to scientists that the domestication of dogs took place separately in many different places.
An evening pause: From Mel Brooks’ classic film, The Producers (1968), a good description of how our modern government functions.
Cavers in West Virginia have returned a stalagmite to its original cave home after nearly fifty years above ground.
The biggest coronal mass ejection to be aimed at the Earth in seven years is expected to reach us by Tuesday.
No need to panic. Not only is the storm still relatively mild compared to past eruptions, the airline and electrical industries are actually well prepared for this event. However, if you want to see the aurora, this will probably be a good opportunity.
Gingrich has announced that he plans to give a “visionary” speech on space this week in Florida.
To me, this does not bode well. The last thing the American aerospace industry needs right now is another politician dictating a “new” path. The best thing Gingrich could do is to endorse the effort to have private companies do the work, and to then outline how he will get the government out of their way.
Act quick! The deadline to apply to join the next astronaut class at NASA is Friday.
Though if you ask me (and no one is), it probably makes more sense to apply to Virgin Galactic, Scaled Composites, SpaceX, or Stratolaunch if you want to be a space cadet, as these are going to be the guys in charge in coming years.
A victory for freedom: The Supreme Court today ruled unanimously that police must have a warrant before they can attach a GPS tracker to anyone’s vehicle.
U.S. Senator Rand Paul has been detained by the TSA for refusing a pat down.
Has the TSA now made you feel safer?
Islamic election politics: Egyptian Islamists torched the homes and businesses of Christian Coptics this week in an effort to prevent them from voting in the next election.
