Best trivia & fun facts books according to redditors
We found 328 Reddit comments discussing the best trivia & fun facts books. We ranked the 158 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 328 Reddit comments discussing the best trivia & fun facts books. We ranked the 158 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Another great book is An incomplete Education
It covers many subjects including history and is fun to read.
'Do penguins have knees' is the name of a book
It's hard to say because any contemporary account is usually biased by the standards of beauty of the time. I would recommend the book History of the Breast by Marilyn Yalom, who describes (among many other things) the historical European stereotype of poor women with large breasts vs. aristocratic women with smaller more fashionable (about b-cup) breasts. The implication was that rich women hired the poorer women as wet nurses.
This is reflected in paintings, where a women working in a kitchen or in an agrarian scene will have larger breasts, but an aristocratic woman or goddess/historical figure will be depicted with smaller breasts.
When the Impossible Happens
Amazon description of the book:
Feelings of oneness with other people, nature, and the universe. Encounters with extraterrestrials, deities, and demons. Out-of-body experiences and past-life memories. Science casts a skeptical eye. But Dr. Stanislav Grof—the psychiatric researcher who cofounded transpersonal psychology—believes otherwise.
When the Impossible Happens presents Dr. Grof 's mesmerizing firsthand account of over 50 years of inquiry into waters uncharted by classical psychology, one that will leave readers questioning the very fabric of our existence.
From his first LSD session that gave him a glimpse of cosmic consciousness to his latest work with Holotropic Breathwork, When the Impossible Happens will amaze readers with vivid explorations of topics such as:
· Temptations of a Non-Local Universe—experiments in astral projection
· Praying Mantis in Manhattan and other tales of synchronicity
· Trailing Clouds of Glory—remembering birth and prenatal life
· Dying and Beyond—survival of consciousness after death
When the Impossible Happens is an incredible opportunity to journey beyond ordinary consciousness, guaranteed to shake the foundations of what we assume to be reality, and sure to offer a new vision of our human potential.
The basic idea here is actually more true than you think. In a psychological sense, communism doesn't fall apart because humans are innately greedy -- it's because humans have a strong sense of fairness and strongly resent cheaters.
In games meant to simulate a sharing economy, everyone is perfectly happy splitting winnings evenly until they notice someone else cheat. All it takes is a single person taking more than they put in to set off a chain reaction of cheating where people are suddenly angry and indignant at only getting their fair share because other people are getting more.
While this is obviously a simplified situation, what it implies is that while humans are for the most part innately generous, the impulse to make sure others get their fair share is weaker than the one to make sure our own share is fair... which makes perfect sense, evolutionary.
What this means for governments is complex, but it's basically why the human race as it stands now probably would never be able to function under a true communistic state -- all it takes is one weak link to destroy the whole thing. A basal income where you could then earn on top of it would be more likely to succeed.
source -- not on their website, unfortunately, the article is only in print. This is a super-interesting article about a modified version of the game and the difference between how American and Japanese subjects played -- basically, Japanese players start more spiteful but ultimately collaborate better, while Americans start okay and are more likely to go off the rails later.
I remember reading this in an old trivia book, Why Clocks Run Clockwise, I think.
I just went searching for "VIIIIIX" and found this:
https://newgateclocks.com/store/information/roman4
And there's this explanation:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071006232417AAq5vYk
Found one on The Pirate Bay, but this looks like it's worth it to have a copy on the shelf, so buy it from Amazon.
I guess it really depends what part of New England you are in/intend to be in and how far you want to drive. New England is a pretty big place both in terms of space and variety of culture and things to do.
Here's a couple that come to mind as my girlfriend and I recently had a (relatively) cheap and romantic days doing these. It may not appeal or be practical for you though depending on where you are and how much money you can spend on gas or other expenses.
In New Hampshire the White Mountain National Forrest is pretty much one of the most beautiful places you can see in this part of the country. The Kancamagus Highway (scenic byway) winds through it. It's an incredible drive with many places to stop off and see the views or go exploring. You could find a hiking trail ahead of time if you like. It's the kind of place you could pull over and walk 50 feet from the road and find a gorgeous pool in river with mountains all around you and go skinny dipping. There's a lot of other stuff up there too like the Flume Gorge. It's $13.00 each to visit the Flume Gorge, but NH's State park system is entirely funded by user fees (no taxes) so no one's making money off your admission, it's just funding the upkeep of the park. It's a pretty amazing place. There's lot of other wonderful things to see up there. Just get lost driving around and don't be afraid to leave the car.
Whale watches are also relatively cheap. We took one out of Rye Harbor, NH this past weekend that took us up to Jeffery's Ledge off the coast a Maine which is a prime feeding ground right now. We saw two Fin whales right up close (apparently two together is a rarity) that were much larger than the boat we were on. They came right up to us so close that I got a good whiff of whale breath. We also got to see two humpbacks very close-up who were feeding together. They were doing a lot of bubble nets. Every few minutes we'd spot a bubble net, and then wait for the two to come lunging up out of the water head-first with their mouths wide open scooping up all of the fish. A Minke whale followed us around for a good long while too. There were naturalists on board cataloging the whales we saw and their behavior and able to identify and tell us about the history of the different individual whales we saw. Almost all of the whales were older than me (27) which for some reason I thought was really cool. Those tickets were thirty bucks each but still with a picnic lunch packed it was a fairly cheap and wonderful day together. Might be too rich for your blood right now, but if you can afford it, you could do worse than spend $60 for a day at sea together seeing freaking awesome whales. It was also a whale watch not run by a touring company but by the Blue Ocean Society which is a marine conservation non-profit so it's $60 that helps do a little extra good than some other activities you could spend that cash on.
Those excursions all require driving and gas, but otherwise, if you pack your own food are pretty cheap and lovely ways to spend a summer day. There's plenty of other ideas but those are two and now I must get back to work.
EDIT: I almost forgot. For something different and more interesting than just the scenic outdoors (but still outdoors) check out "Weird New England". Goto your local cooperate bookstore and get a coffee. Then sit down with a copy of this book and browse through stuff that's in your area or somewhere you're willing to drive to a make list of stuff to try to find and explore. No book purchase necessary. Or better yet, see if your local library has a copy to check-out.
EDIT AGAIN: There's also this website to peruse. http://www.strangene.com/home.htm
Especially if your primary communication in English is written, Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is really your indispensable resource. It's much more about composition than grammar specifically, but the two topics are so closely linked that you'll benefit from it.
The Well-Tempered Sentence is another good resource, with a much more lighthearted approach. It's also primarily focused on written forms.
Neither of these are deep resources for grammar structure or usage rules, but understanding and implementing them will put you head and shoulders above a great many native speakers. I think if you're more interested in speaking than writing you'll want a language course of some kind. I've no personal experience with them, so I can't recommend one on that basis.
Good luck.
That's a tough question. Honestly a lot of engineers can't think uniquely enough because they don't know how all that stuff works. Most are book taught instead of hands on educated.
My father was an engineer and I loved taking things apart.
So if you want to learn some mechanical engineering I would do three things:
WARNING: Do not poke around inside CRT TVs or monitors unless you want to die. Capacitors in large appliances will injure or kill you. Not even joking. Learn what a capacitor is before you take anything apart. Little capacitors can't do much but the larger ones can. Hell some little ones will scare the fuck out of you. Like the ones in disposable cameras. They will make you take a tinkle in your shorts.
They also make a kickass book that is almost better than their website.
Bonus: Check out /r/askscience and /r/machineporn and check out popular science then popular mechanics.
Bonus 2: Physics and mechanical games.
It's the name of a children's book that was popular for a while... I think the author had ties to the state (from there, went to school there, something like that)
yup. source
Accirding to this bookyour death is most likely to be from internal injuries, so you should position yourself flat on the floor of the elevator. The authors did an AMA
I also recently read it in the book "you are not so smart" by David McRaney. Very, very enjoyable read.
Amazon link: (no referral link, don't worry): http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-So-Smart/dp/1592406599
Apparently the human tendency to create memories out of thin air is huge. Therefore, suppressed memories often are more the result of guidance by the psychologist, counsellor,... than they are based on the truth.
I highly recommend you read When The Impossible Happens - Stanislav Grof, which talks about experiences like yours and other very similar phenomenon.
I really like Grof because he observes these phenomenon without trying to explain it away with reason and logic that obviously leaves one wanting, instead proposing we need to find a new way of understanding to account for these phenomenon.
I would highly recommend a book from this series. You can open it to anywhere and find something interesting.
I did a lot of stuff out of this book
Visiting the "haunted" places with a friend was the best part. Nothing all that scary (besides melonheads) but hanging out was the best part.
Also, check out Derby. Like the whole city.
Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments
Zacks - An Underground Education : The Unauthorized and Outrageous Supplement to Everything You Thought You Knew About Art, Sex, Business, Crime, Science, Medicine, and Other Fields of Human Knowledge
Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bastiat - The Law
https://www.amazon.com/Penguins-Have-Knees-Imponderables-Book/dp/0060740914
I think that you should inform them that paranormal phenomena are just not as common as they presume and to exhaust all possibility before concluding that it is quite simply paranormal phenomenon. That includes questioning one's own sanity.
As for banishing:
The above suggested already by my fellow /r/occult ists
If I think of more, I'll add them.
How many prayers do you have to complete? Well, the square root of your income. Round up. That is, your gross income before deductions and exemptions and including bonuses and stock options. You can cheat on your taxes, but I warn you not to cheat God and the like. I tried it when I was younger, bad move, wild times and nothing but regrets. Anyways, donations made in good faith (not to politicians) are deductible, and strangely Dogecoin is exempt unless outright stolen. I don't make the rules. Blah blah blah stuff about Mammon blah blah passing through the eye of a needle yada yada.
I already made a post but I also have to recommend: You Are Not So Smart : http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-So-Smart/dp/1592406599
He has a website too (youarenotsosmart.com), but as far as "changing the way you see the world", well, this will definitely change your understanding of how your mind actually works, definitely changing the way you see EVERYTHING. Fascinating, fun read with LOTS of examples of studies and very wide range of topics. Lots of fun.
Relevant.
I loved that book as a kid.
huehuehue
I think you're going to have to find a balance between accuracy and ease. most academic books are dense because 50 years of theoretical work went into understanding a very minute phenomenon. For example, there are books (Locke & Latham, 1990) written on just goal setting and how important it is to set a difficult goal. On the other hand, you have books written by folks like Malcolm Gladwell, while easy to read, are often incorrect because they omit many important nuances in academic literature.
Your best bet is to find books written by academics but made for laymen, two I recommend are:
You are not so smart
Thinking fast and slow
They're probably not so much quiet as much as you two have no mutual interests to talk about beyond whatever small and random event that inspired you to add them in the first place.
I can say with confidence my friend's list was composed largely with people who I found, during the brief encounter, very pleasant to converse with, be it at a fishing spot or camping a slayer monster.
However, usually the effects those random circumstances that bring about your initial affinity for the other party are typically very short lived and you realize you don't actually have much of a real connection with them. So you end up not talking to or deleting them very soon thereafter.
It happens all the time.
I now personally have 12 friends on my friends list, one who is a jmod I have on there for novelty because I saw them myself in-game and talked with and another is a random person I remember giving me full bronze, which I thought was the absolute most ballingest shit when I first started, so I would leave him and his e-gf alone. The other 10 people I talk to very regularly, about very diverse topics, from RS balance to politics to preferences of gum.
Have a look at this book to get an idea of why you may have so many people you don't actually talk with.
I’ve been reading Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling and it is very interesting. I think people on this sub would like it since we all like snooping around and dissecting information haha. It’s almost like MTV’s Room Raiders but from a doctorate in psychology’s viewpoint. There’s subconscious meaning behind what types of pictures you hang on your walls and even which walls you hang said pictures on. He can go through someone’s room and paint a pretty accurate portrayal of their personality without ever meeting them. I would think it would be a good read if you’re dating around and want to get a better feel for someone haha. I’m only a few chapters in but it’s very interesting so far!!
I found out about Snoop because it was mentioned in another book I’ve been reading Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat by Hal Herzog. It’s a book on anthrozoology and talks about the history humans have had with animals, and some moral conundrums we have about them. Are we instinctually afraid of snakes or is it learned behavior? Do people really look like their dogs? (This one was interesting! Human couples that live together start to develop similar facial structures. That’s not true with dogs. We don’t start to look like our dogs but we may pick dogs that look like us. Women with shorter hair are more likely to adopt dogs with perky ears instead of floppy. And students were able to match humans with their dogs with a higher accuracy rate than they would by just random chance). Why do some cultures eat bugs but we think that’s gross, or why do some cultures eat animals that we keep as pets? They talk about the infamous trolly problem and replace it with animals and you can see your own morals start to shift and be questioned. With humans you’d think it’s better to pull the lever to save 5 lives instead of 1... but now replace that problem with 5 birds vs 1 dog and see if your answer is still the same. Very interesting.
Edit: oh oh! One more. And Then You're Dead: What Really Happens If You Get Swallowed by a Whale, Are Shot from a Cannon, or Go Barreling over Niagara. The author did an AMA on reddit which I found interesting so I bought the book and read it in a day. And the chapters are set up so you can just flip around and read what you’re interested in. My favorites include what happens if your window falls out of an airplane and you get sucked out, how many bees you’d have to get stung by at one time before you died (1,500 honeybees), and what happens if you’re in a free falling elevator (jumping won’t do anything. Lay down flat on the ground to disperse the impact... and because if you’re standing up once the elevator stops your intestines will continue to fall and impact themselves out your bottom. And then you die).
I agree read a lot of great non-fiction books.
You can start with the series and related books of this:
http://www.amazon.com/A-Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/076790818X
http://www.amazon.com/Book-General-Ignorance-John-Mitchinson/dp/0307394913#immersive-view_1457311562058
Start with googling "What you didn't learn in high school history" and then follow the path to what interests you.
Incomplete Education is good - it touches on more than history though
http://www.amazon.com/Incomplete-Education-Things-Learned-Probably/dp/0345468902/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1457314579&sr=8-2&keywords=what+you+didn%27t+high+school+history
You should be more specific about what you're hoping to learn. There are thousands of resources out there in regards to entrepreneurship, marketing, website development & eCommerce. You could find pretty much anything you want if you phrase it correctly.
Example Searches
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You can just keep going from there.
The basics of what you'll need, assuming you know nothing (which I doubt) would be this.
Everything else you just figure out along the way based on how you want to monetize your audience and quite honestly, no book is going to help you figure that out.
You'll learn a lot more just hanging out on Reddit and watching YouTube videos on the subject matter that's next on your checklist. Books are almost purely inspirational at this point and I think we can agree there are plenty of Podcasts that will help you find inspiration (and skill), such as The Top (Nathan Latka) or Mixergy
If you study hustlers you'll get all the information and inspiration you could ever hope for. Read or watch anything from Noah Kagan (AppSumo). No one does it better than him. Ryan Holiday (not an affiliate link) is another favorite of mine. There are also some older Tim Ferriss articles that really talk about how you approach certain businesses.
Like I said, man. It's all out there. You don't need to pay $1 for information, you just have to know what to look for and if you listen to a few podcasts or read a few beginner articles you'll figure out pretty quickly the steps you need to take next.
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Some Books I Like (no affiliate links)
Dette er en klassisk "Appeal to authority" tankefeil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
Alle har lov til å tenke selv.
Det finnes mange eksempler på at majoriteten tar feil.
Einstein ble for eksempel hetset for sin relativitetsteori
https://archive.org/details/HundertAutorenGegenEinstein
og ifølge sagnet ihvertfall skal han ha svart " If I were wrong, then one [author] would have been enough! "
Et annet nyere eksempel er magesår, der var alle forskere bestemte på at magesår skyldtes stress på 80-tallet, men Barry Marshall motbeviste dette etter å ha levd med massiv hets:
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/07-dr-drank-broth-gave-ulcer-solved-medical-mystery
Det er skrevet en klassisk bok om dette fenomenet at massene ofte tar feil, dette er mekanismen i øknomiske bobler for eksempel:
https://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Illustrated-ebook/dp/B003I84MBO
How Stuff Works
A long time ago, there was a scientist, Dr. MacDougall.
interesting book about death,
also this, also that. The reasoning is legit, but it was not scientific and was unable to be reproduced. So the commentor's statement of "poop" is more accurate :)
Oh man. There's a series of exactly this. They're fairly big tomes on cheap paper with about 3 pages at a time dedicated to some obscure and interesting fact or piece of history. They're like Cracked on paper, and slightly classier (very slightly).
Actually, Cracked has a few books. Like this and this. Buy, chain to the toilet and become the most loved man in your building.
Found it. The Bathroom Reader's Institute.
So it's just a typed up version of this book?
Not the same, but check out Weird New England
http://www.amazon.com/Weird-New-England-Englands-Legends/dp/1402733305
You used to be able to find these in like every bookstore ever
From a book I own, The Book Of General Ignorance, Under section What are violin strings made from? page 140:
>Violin strings are not made of catgut, and never have been.
>This is a myth started by medieval Italian violin makers who had discovered that sheep intestines made good strings for their instruments. Killing a cat brought terribly bad luck, so they protected their invention by telling everyone else their strings were made from the intestines of cats.
>The legend was that a saddle maker called Erasmo, in the Abruzzi mountain village of Salle, near Pescara, heard the wiund blowing through the strands of drying sheeps' guts one day and throught that they might make a good string for the early violin known as the renaissance fiddle.
Yeah, that's just "legend," but it sounds plausible enough. Unexpected outcome for a product. I mean, it seems like the fibrous tissue comes out pretty stringy in the first place. It's not a far leap from fibrous tissue to string to stringed instrument.
there's lots to read of course but a good one to add to your list is "An Incomplete Education"
http://www.amazon.ca/An-Incomplete-Education-Learned-Probably/dp/0345468902
I read in this book that cats can survive falls from more than 7 stories because they need that amount of falling time to relax their body. IIRC the claim was backed up by cat hospitalization data, but I don't have the book on hand to check.
Anyway I thought it added sort-of an interesting twist to all the falling arguments.
I love Adam Ruins Everything.
I'd really like to see the actual study where they pulled the "wine pranks", so, let's go on an adventure!
I found the article they referenced in the video.
Which, in turn, cites this book as a reference, which I then "sailed the high seas and plundered".
Here is the chapter, copied and pasted from the book.
I read that, found that it was an experiment conducted by Frédéric Brochet at the Univerité de Bordeaux, and then searched for "frederic brochet bordeaux study wine", which gave me this article, which in turn had a link to a pdf of the actual study.
:)
-------
TL;DR: here is the link to the pdf of the "wine prank" study.
I don't really know anything about this myself, but fibonacci sequences definitely do appear in nature, and according to wikipedia, tree branching is one of the places they pop up.
That said, the assertion isn't really sourced in the wikipedia article, unless the seventh citation (this book), is meant to apply to that entire preceding list of examples. I don't know anything about the reliability of the source. Seems like it's decent, but everything has good reviews on its Amazon page, so it's tough to say.
Hopefully someone else has more direct knowledge...
Love those books.
Depending on how old you are if you saw it growing up, it could have been [The Way Things Work] (https://www.amazon.com/New-Way-Things-Work/dp/0395938473) or possibly the How Stuff Works [book itself] (https://www.amazon.com/How-Stuff-Works-Marshall-Brain/dp/0785824324/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1491399864&sr=1-1&keywords=how+stuff+works)
I'm sorry, but that's one of the most useless guides ever written. Truss knows nothing about the rules of English and I found a factual error on the very first page I randomly read. Even worse, there's no way to look up a rule if you want to find out what she says. Entertaining read, but Truss is stuck in the 1940s and doesn't understand her subject one bit.
For what you're looking for, get Karen Elizabeth Goonan's "The Well-Tempered Sentence." Her "The Transitive Vampire" is also excellent for grammar.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Well-Tempered-Sentence-Punctuation-Handbook/dp/0618382011
I think what you're saying makes sense, but what you're trying to do doesn't. You seem to be approaching atheism/skepticism kind of like a religion, in saying that you're new, want to become an atheist and want to work towards mastery etc. This makes total sense if you've just come out of a religion, of course. I would've thought the same thing. But in fact it's more of a de-programming than a re-programming. I think what you mean is that you've decided to de-program yourself of certain ways of thinking.
If there's anything useful that could be mastered in this sphere, one thing would be developing a knowledge of the cognitive traps that people can fall into so you can avoid them (not just with religion, but any irrational glitch the brain tends to come up with). You may enjoy:
Here's a book you might be interested in.
While states haven't changed yet, most of them look pretty different from their original background as a colony or territory.
As someone who is more years out of college than I care to admit, I find that for most of the subjects outside of my major I can really only give brief overviews. I understand how things work in context, but there is just a whole lot of detail that is lost.
With that in mind, I absolutely love An Incomplete Education, it gives you that high level overview of a lot of subjects to fill in the gaps you are missing and pique your interest to dig deeper into subjects you may have never given much thought to.
Hi, I hope your day is going well! Thanks for connecting. Related to these topics, I would recommend the book Quadrivium, an article about the 'Octave of Energy', a collection of experiences by Stan Grof, titled "When the Impossible Happens" , and for online material you can tune into /r/holofractal, which has aggregated lots of material relevant to the quantum nature of reality.
This is the 'dry' approach. A stylistic and heartfelt seed can be sprouted by planting your attention in the gardens of Sufi mystic poetry, or say, by reading the stories of the Vedas and Upanishads.
Stephen Mitchell has done amazing work translating the Tao te Ching and the Bhagavad Gita.
"Deluded by identification with the ego, a person
thinks, 'I am the doer.'"
Krishna; Chapter 3, verse 27
I have this one, but never got the original. Either way, I feel trapped in the Endless September this morning. Several things on Reddit are really old stuff. The copyright in my aged issue of 99 More... is 1998. That's ten fucking years ago!
Well, you can start by learning what a run-on sentence is.
I kid, I kid.
edit: SHE_LOVES_YOU had another great idea: Read up on greek/roman myths and history. The references pop up all the time. You don't need to know all the little details (Like what Pompeiius of Ganymede taught in his school at Megatron); knowing that Odysseus made his men pour wax in their ears to stop them from hearing the sirens' song,or that the Oracle of Delphi had plaques above its entrance that said "Know Thyself" and "Avoid Excess" is enough.
There is a book called "I'm not hanging noodles on your ears" which is a guide to international idioms. Here is a link
Fountit:
-
http://www.amazon.com/History-Breast-Marilyn-Yalom/dp/0345388941/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341257046&sr=8-1&keywords=the+history+of+breasts
I highly recommend You Are Not So Smart. Excellent book about how your brain works and how it's constantly trying to trick you. Everyone should read it.
Every language has idiomatic usages which make no sense to outsiders. Check out I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World.
You should check out "Lost States" by Michael J Trinklein, it's awesome coffee table literature.
http://www.amazon.com/Lost-States-Michael-J-Trinklein/dp/1594744106
It's really good and full of a bunch of interesting facts. I highly recommend it.
Cheap too.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0060740922/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1409394247&sr=8-1&keywords=why+do+clocks+run+clockwise&condition=used
If you like interesting and strange facts about history. Check out "An underground education" by Richard Zacks
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0385483767?pc_redir=1414100278&robot_redir=1
Hmm, how about some sort of book to keep him/her engaged in educating themselves even though they're a retired teacher?
This book springs to mind :)
If you want to just know buzzwords to throw around, spend a bunch of time clicking around on Wikipedia, and watch stuff like Crash Course on YouTube. It's easy to absorb, and you'll learn stuff, even if it's biased, but at least you'll be learning.
If you want to become SMARTER, one of my biggest pieces of advice is to either carry a notebook with you, or find a good note taking app you like on your phone. When someone makes a statement you don't understand, write it down and parse it up.
So for instance, write down "Social Democracy", and write down "The New Deal", and go look them up on simple.wikipedia.com (Put's all of it in simplest language possible), it's a great starting point for learning about any topic, and provides you a jumping board to look more deeply into it.
If you are really curious about starting an education, and you absolutely aren't a reader, some good books to start on are probably:
"Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words" by Randall Munroe
"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
"Philosophy 101" by Paul Kleinman, in fact the ____ 101 books are all pretty good "starter" books for people that want an overview of a topic they are unfamiliar with.
"The World's Religions" by Huston Smith
"An Incomplete Education" by Judy Jones and Will Wilson
Those are all good jumping off points, but great books that I think everyone should read... "A History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell, "Western Canon" by Harold Bloom, "Education For Freedom" by Robert Hutchins, The Norton Anthology of English Literature; The Major Authors, The Bible.
Read anything you find critically, don't just swallow what someone else says, read into it and find out what their sources were, otherwise you'll find yourself quoting from Howard Zinn verbatim and thinking you're clever and original when you're just an asshole.
http://www.amazon.com/Unuseless-Japanese-Inventions-Kenji-Kawakami/dp/0393313697/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=014JMR0XEX4H93AE7MYK
http://www.amazon.com/99-More-Unuseless-Japanese-Inventions/dp/0393317439
not a subreddit but I think you'd enjoy An Underground Education
Read. The book to start with is An Incomplete Education. Build from there, reading widely in many fields and using your reading to find new areas of inquiry. Be curious. Talk to smart people, follows the news and cultural criticism, read The Atlantic, The Economist, The New Yorker, and a dozen other magazines, read a few papers every day, etc etc. etc. Do this for a couple of decades and you'll have a start.
From the Book 99 More Unuseless Japanese Inventions: The Art of Chindogu by Kenji Kawakami
This isn't really what you asked for, nothing like Alex Jones type stuff, but it's the first book that came to mind, and it's great:
https://www.amazon.com/Underground-Education-Unauthorized-Outrageous-Supplement/dp/0385483767
This one is also great and closer to what you might be looking for:
https://www.amazon.com/Everything-You-Know-Wrong-Disinformation/dp/0971394202/ref=asc_df_0971394202/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312154648235&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1073802474094651378&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1013962&hvtargid=pla-570336966135&psc=1
https://www.amazon.ca/History-Breast-Marilyn-Yalom/dp/0345388941
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Relevant
Can't wait for the book, I've booked marked it so I wont forget.
You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself
Buy this, it will take care of your desires.
If you think your actions are 100% personal choice, you might want to research that a bit.
http://smile.amazon.com/dp/1592406599/ref=cm_sw_su_dp?sa-no-redirect=1
Top 20 Selling Children's Book
Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society by Peter McWilliams
An Underground Education : The Unauthorized and Outrageous Supplement to Everything You Thought You Knew About Art, Sex, Business, Crime, Science, Medicine, and Other Fields of Human by Richard Zacks
When the Impossible Happens - Stanislav Grof http://www.amazon.com/When-Impossible-Happens-Adventures-Non-Ordinary/dp/159179420X
I recommend this book as a fun/horror read (depending in your personal critical thinking ability): you are not so smart
Plenty of sample chapters on the site: http://youarenotsosmart.com/
hmm...very interesting..it's been a while since i've read fiction books, i'm currently reading "Underground Education"..just to mix things up...i'll have to look at those two and start reading!
http://www.amazon.com/Underground-Education-Unauthorized-Outrageous-Supplement/dp/0385483767
The book How Stuff Works (or a similar book).
https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/gender-and-sexuality-15/sexuality-415/human-sexuality-and-culture-299-12834/
https://books.google.com/books?id=MpRnPtmdRVwC&pg=PA147&lpg=PA147&dq=cultural+determined+sexuality&source=bl&ots=KqGqcsKZyc&sig=XF6coLRk1KW10TLautAAab-5azk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjs4P6Ux4TUAhWD7YMKHXzTDj84ChDoAQgbMAA#v=onepage&q=cultural%20determined%20sexuality&f=false
https://www.britannica.com/topic/human-sexual-behaviour/Social-and-cultural-aspects
https://www.amazon.com/History-Breast-Marilyn-Yalom/dp/0345388941
> I meant primary school as in k-12, not before high school.
Ah, misunderstandings happen. I thought primary school in the US was up to 12 years and after that is secondary school.
> I think that High school should be about Intro-electives, where kids can learn about a subject in an intro class, and then if they write papers, do research, and do other things (like get an internship/apprenticeship) that could count too. That would encourage kids to learn more on their own, and be curious about what interests them.
It's a good idea, but you'll be missing a lot of the basics if every student just does some projects during their school time. You get to do projects now either way, I've never heard of a school where you just sit all day making calculations for math, or reciting grammar rules in some language course, or just recite year numbers for history etc.
For every course there are always projects you have to do. It's kind of hard for math to have fun and engaging projects, but you use all of your math knowledge for physics (which has loads of awesome stuff you can engage in outside of just making calculations) and chemistry. For language courses you'll have to debate stuff in that language, write letters to foreign students, make posters about famous monuments/cities in that country (this applies more to foreign languages + is also done in geography), read awesome literature from that book and analyze it. Researching history is always a big part of the course, you have to write essays on why and how specific events happened in history.
>> Weird, because I clearly remember being forced to sit and listen to the fucking explanations on how to learn to understand and remember things from a book, how to understand and remember things the teacher was explaining etc.
> K, then maybe your experience was atypical. Most teachers are full of shit, btw.
I very much doubt my experience was atypical, because every single person I've known has had these lessons. Every foreign student I've met has had these lessons. What relevance has your statement that most teachers are full shit? And you link a book published by Cracked ffs? Wow. The first thing I read is that we do not have five senses. No shit? Has any teacher of you told you that we have only five senses? Or that those are the five traditional senses? Anyone with half a brain understands that you have more, like your balance sense? Temperature sense? Pain sense? That's practically self-explanatory.
>> What the fuck does this even mean? To think for themselves? Who the fuck else are they thinking for? Their parents? Their teachers? Their friends?
>Yeah. They're being taught how to think like their teachers, parents, friends, etc. Which is what the government likes, because it's easier to pander to a class of people when they all know/think the same way. Also, calm down a bit, will ya?
Being taught how to think like my teachers, parents and friends is wrong? Then maybe you associate with the wrong people? Take that tinfoil hat off, please. I don't even know how to answer to this. The government is keeping you complacent and stupid? Maybe that's more your own fault.
>> By learning to read and understand what you've read in primary school you can fill out your fucking tax forms yourself.
>Then why do so many people hire accountants? Do you know how to calculate your capital gains taxes on short term and long-term investments, and how that impacts your taxable income? What about the myriad of write-offs and tax-breaks/benefits that the government allows?
Why do people hire cleaners? They don't want to spend the time doing the cleaning? The same with accountants. Yes I know how to do my own taxes, I've done it a couple of times already, and it really is not that hard. If you want to find out tax-breaks/benefits that are not listed on the forms, you just google around a bit, maybe go loan a book on taxes from the library. Information is available everywhere in this day and age, it's not that hard if you've learnt the basic skills of reading comprehension.
>> I get really fucking pissed of at people whining about the fact that they learn nothing in school, more often than not those are kids who don't put in any fucking effort in school and then whine that they don't know shit when they're done.
>I'm "whining" because most of the shit I learned in school was completely fucking wrong or outright propaganda.
Propaganda in school? Where the fuck did you go to school to? Fucking North Korea? I hope you're not saying that most of the shit you learned in school was wrong based on that one very 'nice' book by cracked.
Starting to build a personal library since I am quiet young at the moment. Wish is too to have a 30000+ library like Umberto Eco’s. But would be happy if I happen to manage 15000+ like Nassim Taleb since it takes lot of money to build a good library.
Have around 700+ physical books having started 4 years back. Many of them are in my mother tongue(not Hindi). Handpicked 1000+ books as epub/mobi/pdf since I was initially reading in a computer and Western books were very costly and were difficult to source to my tier-3 city(Thanks to amazon I get these days now-a-days and when deals like this are announced they are god-send).
I haven’t read completely though. I have skimmed and read here and there a minority of them so have a transactional memory of those stuff. Only read a few completely.
Another 30 GB of book dump(somewhat computer related stuff) is all also there but it includes lot of .txt and .doc other than pdf collected during my teenage years.
Personal rule is to buy books below 300 bucks( but RandomHouse or Penguin mark most of the books above 500+ esp Western ones or wait till I find a good deal).In book deals, Amazon beats all other sites hands-down) . Mostly into non-fiction.
Costliest purchase is An Incomplete Education by Judy Jones and Willam Wilson purchased back in 2008 when Flipkart was a newbie. If you like trivia stuff and non-fiction it is a pure diamond, which I heartily recommend.
Here is a quote from The Black Swan about library :
> The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have. How many of these books have you read?” and the others—a very small minority—who get the point is that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendages but a research tool. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means … allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at your menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
Another one by Arthur Schopenhauer on books:
> Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
I know, mea culpa :)
Some of these occurences are called Synchronicities and there's a great read on it from the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof - When the impossible happens.
He also did a lot of work on pacients through working with LSD and does have quite some books about it and knows his stuff.
But this book concerns the things you want to know, I think you should definitely read it and as a man with a scientific mind have your world shaken up some more.
http://www.amazon.com/When-Impossible-Happens-Adventures-Non-Ordinary/dp/159179420X
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0156031353/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_3jtQAbXHKG1WN
Read The General Book of Ignorance
and The Second Book of General Ignorance. They have perhaps the most awesome list of random facts you could imagine. They were written by the buys who work on QI and they are freaking hilarious.
Relevant, and an excellent bathroom companion.
Also, it seems like the counter-intuitive stuff is the kind of ignorance that really sticks. For instance, someone -- a reasonably intelligent someone -- once tried at length to convince me that blood is blue until it meets air, something I hadn't heard since elementary school.
Hint: that is false.
Great book I own on this called Elephants on Acid...
Talks about all kinds of crazy shit scientists have done through the years in the name of science...
What? I'm talking about those books you get as gifts sometimes or find at garage sales. Like Elephants on Acid or books about extraordinary people, high times has one about people doing stupid stuff when they were high... I'm not talking about a specific publication. These things are hard to look for, you just kind of run across them places. Are you talking about something specific that you can share?
I'd share more specific titles with you, but I always give them away when I'm done. I had one about Circus Side Show people called Circus Freaks I think. I really hope I'm coming across clear. I don't know what they're called.
Ah yes... I've found just the book for you :)
http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-So-Smart/dp/1592406599
one of my all time favs, and an important read for humanity.
Oh thank you, it's been a while since I've read it. Found it reading in An Underground Education
I learned that when I read the book of the same title:
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Clocks-Clockwise-Imponderables-Books/dp/0060740922
Anyone else remember this book from 15+ years ago?
Yeah, that's the one I was looking for. My bad, sorry. I recommend this book and blog because this stuff is really interesting.
You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney.
Very interesting stuff.
The Book of General Ignorance is the one I would like if I win.
Book is available in hardcover, paperback, new and used. :)
31 is my number.
I really don't have a favorite book. I read lots of biographies and history books.
EDIT:Formatting
Magnetars are the only place in the universe you can find magnets strong enough to kill a person. Approaching one would stretch out your atoms.
Source: And Then You're Dead: What Really Happens If You Get Swallowed by a Whale, Are Shot from a Cannon, or Go Barreling over Niagara https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143108441/ref=cm_sw_r_api_-YaQzbSCZPJGM
I had read in this book that the reason paper cuts and other small wounds bug us so much is that because they are so small our brains go "that is too small to hurt me yet it does" and we end up subconsciously thinking about them more often or something like that.
I was a huge fan and loved reading these. I have over 10 of them, some of them read multiple times. But after finding a number of inaccuracies mostly in the little footnotes at the bottom of each page I was disillusioned to the point I stopped reading them.
http://www.amazon.com/Uncle-Johns-Bathroom-Reader-Extraordinary/dp/1592236057/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278707817&sr=1-3
They were all in this book in particular. I have never found anything wrong with the others. The longer stories in particular are quite excellent reading.
this book? http://www.amazon.com/99-More-Unuseless-Japanese-Inventions/dp/0393317439
I have the same one
You should try to find The Well-tempered Sentence. It's a fun English grammar book that you could use as a reference for English punctuation.
If you enjoy reading stories like this, I highly recommend reading "Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments " by Alex Boese, its chock full of weird stuff like this. http://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Acid-Bizarre-Experiments-Original/dp/0156031353
What got me started this year was a fun little book that my ex recommended me called "And Then You're Dead: What Really Happens If You Get Swallowed by a Whale, Are Shot from a Cannon, or Go Barreling over Niagara" Fun little book that describes different scenarios that lead to your death. Really fun and very funny. https://www.amazon.com/Then-Youre-Dead-Swallowed-Barreling/dp/0143108441/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527565315&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=what+happens+when+you+get+swallowed+by+a+whatle
Actually, got this one from a book
Something by Karen Elizabeth Gordon perhaps? She uses amusingly macabre example sentences juxtaposed with weird public domain illustrations. Some of her titles are Torn Wings and Faux Pas: A Flashbook of Style, a Beastly Guide Through the Writer's Labyrinth, The Transitive Vampire: a Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed and The Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook
>This is Now I Know. A bunch of redditors already subscribe total and I'm a long-eight-year redditor myself. Last year, the Now I Know book came out and my second book, Now I Know More comes out November 1 and is available for pre-order now.
>
>What I write about is idiosyncratic -- if it's new to me and fascinating, I write about it. Here are five recent ones, to give you a taste:
>
> The US took Guam from Spain in the Spanish-American War without much of a fight, because the Spaniards holding Guam didn't know they were at war.
> Before cosmonauts go to space, they pee on a bus.
> One of the flaws on the ceiling of Grand Central Terminal is also a hidden health message.
> You actually can die from a broken heart.
> One creative way to fight Ebola? Write a song about it.
>
> And from my first book, reprinted in the newsletter: Where your luggage goes after the airline loses it.
>
>All the archives are here and you can subscribe for free. They're kind of random, but hopefully interesting.
>
>Keep the questions to Now I Know and I'll answer just about anything. I'll also answer questions about baseball, just because. And most other stuff as well.
>
>My Proof:
>(Coming once I tweet!)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0385483767?pc_redir=1397922141&robot_redir=1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0156031353
If you like to read, this book looks fun!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0156031353/ref=aw_wl_ov_dp_3_9?colid=36GQC3I4W7DBK&coliid=I1Q1HT1JAET2YG
Here is the mobile version of your link
Not entering, but you might like And Then You're Dead.
And Then You're Dead
Serendipity! i've never been gifted (mostly because i just joined reedit like a week ago, and just did an intro post today), but something interesting about me is that i'm studying to be a cognitive scientist so that i can help people with brain damage improve their memories. this is a book on experimental design that i've been looking at. it's goes 22 cents over the 10 dollar limit, but i figured it was worth a shot!
http://amzn.com/0156031353
hope you have an awesome day!
I think that came from this book (there was another one as well). Both of them are filled with similar stupid/genius ideas.
Read the book The Book of General Ignorance.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader
I meant primary school as in k-12, not before high school.
I think that High school should be about Intro-electives, where kids can learn about a subject in an intro class, and then if they write papers, do research, and do other things (like get an internship/apprenticeship) that could count too. That would encourage kids to learn more on their own, and be curious about what interests them.
> Weird, because I clearly remember being forced to sit and listen to the fucking explanations on how to learn to understand and remember things from a book, how to understand and remember things the teacher was explaining etc.
K, then maybe your experience was atypical. Most teachers are full of shit, btw.
> What the fuck does this even mean? To think for themselves? Who the fuck else are they thinking for? Their parents? Their teachers? Their friends?
Yeah. They're being taught how to think like their teachers, parents, friends, etc. Which is what the government likes, because it's easier to pander to a class of people when they all know/think the same way. Also, calm down a bit, will ya?
> By learning to read and understand what you've read in primary school you can fill out your fucking tax forms yourself.
Then why do so many people hire accountants? Do you know how to calculate your capital gains taxes on short term and long-term investments, and how that impacts your taxable income? What about the myriad of write-offs and tax-breaks/benefits that the government allows?
> I get really fucking pissed of at people whining about the fact that they learn nothing in school, more often than not those are kids who don't put in any fucking effort in school and then whine that they don't know shit when they're done.
I'm "whining" because most of the shit I learned in school was completely fucking wrong or outright propaganda.
Have you read that book!? It's awesome. I love idiom-related writings.
http://www.amazon.com/Hanging-Noodles-Intriguing-Idioms-Around/dp/1426204582
Another good one is "They have a WORD for that?" which explains amazing concepts that other cultures define with specific words. English has no word for 'adult offspring'. If someone has a kid, the kid could be 8 or 28.
Penguins do have knees
Man that reminds me of this blast from the past. This whole book is for your “special” someone. the perfect counterpoint to high end Japanese knife wankery. It’s the equivalent of omurice.