This is a well-known story in the region around the Park and those of us who are native to the area are well-acquainted with the usual response to the story, which is "What a fucking idiot, what was he thinking?"

Kirwan survived long enough to be pulled from the water, and was clearly in shock -- but even in that state he obviously regretted the action, saying "That was stupid . . . That was a stupid thing I did." Unsurprisingly he died later in the hospital.

The horror of knowing you have literally cooked yourself to death makes me shudder every time.

Edit: also, for context, the Celestine Pool where this happened does not necessarily "look hot". It's named for the extremely deep blue color of the pool (caused by minerals/bacteria) and while the temperatures are well above lethal to humans and animals, the surface is still and smooth, not rolling/boiling. There was a lot of signage around it in 1981 reminding visitors of the deadly nature of the hot water and there's even more today, but to someone not used to Yellowstone, Celestine Pool might not have initially appeared as deadly as it is.

Edit 2: Since the link apparently does not work for some viewers, you can also read about it at Snopes here and in this Chicago Tribune review of the book I linked. The book is Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park by Lee H. Whittlesey. As other commenters have mentioned it's an excellent book in general, and right up /r/MorbidReality's alley.

For those interested
https://www.amazon.ca/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217

An entire book describing the accidental deaths at Yellowstone national park.

Example: One guy was saving his dog which jumped into one of the sulfur ponds to chase.....something. He got his dog out, but was burned to badly and swallowed so much sulfur water that he slowly died after he was pulled out of the pond. He was constantly saying how stupid he was and how much he regretted it

IOW: Its the most entertaining Darwin Awards compilation you'll ever see.

Bones breaking isn't necessarily what kills you in rapid deceleration situations. Often times it's your heart detaching from your aorta. Every once in a while someone survives a jump off the golden gate bridge or something, and it's usually because when they hit the water their heart happened to be not full of blood for that split second, and wasn't as heavy, thus staying attached.

edit: this comment got a little more attention than I thought it would. If you're interested in this kind of thing, I would highly recommend Mary Roach's book Stiff.

Sure, and how about the overthrow of the democratically elected Mosaddegh in Iran in 1952? Or how about the countless meddling in Central and South America? Speaking domestically, why is it that they always infiltrate peaceful groups of citizens and then play the role of provocateur?

The U.S. federal government should basically never be trusted and yet it seems each generation falls prey to their lies and propaganda - especially with regard to foreign policy. WMD's anyone? The American citizenry should always view everything the government says with an inherent distrust. That should be the default position of the citizenry. They have lost the privilege of being trusted. They don't work for or serve the interests of average Americans in the least. When the corporate/MIC/establishment elite want to meddle in another countries affairs or start a war, they will do whatever lying or black bag operations they need to in order to achieve their objective. They've done it plenty before and they will continue doing it until we refuse to allow it any more.

The U.S. government has put down so many populist movements and meddled/overthrown so many governments in the name of "making the world safe for capitalism" it's crazy. No other country even comes close. Yes, that's right, not democracy - that is the biggest lie of them all. The U.S. couldn't give two shits about democracy. Not even here at home. They just want to keep us believing that we live in a democracy and keep us participating in their rigged system so that we won't revolt.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh

http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409/ref=tmm_pap_title_0/191-0374213-3312233

http://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/047018549X/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321374076&sr=1-1

There was infighting between proponents of nuclear safety and proponents of nuclear readiness in SAC and Los Alamos. Some people wanted to have multiple independent safety devices to prevent accidental nuclear detonations or launches, others wanted nothing but a big red button to launch the missiles.

Command and Control by Eric Schlosser does a very good job of telling this story, as well as the story of a nuclear accident in Damascus Arkansas.

I think you are pointing out the stupidity of the American voter. Various people have commented on this. I think the book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" talks a lot about how the right twisted people into voting against their own best interests by exploiting wedge social issues and creating a false image as the heroes of the "little guy". For a long time I was on the bandwagon of blaming institutions like Fox News for deliberately misleading people and manipulating public opinion, but at this point there has been 10+ years of direct, incontrovertible evidence of the sheer corruption and incompetence of the right. If people can't see that at this point they are either being willfully ignorant, or they are just ignorant.

If you are sincerely interested in learning more about this, I highly recommend Ahmed Rashid's journalistic magnum opus, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300163681/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_h91xDb0XMD6EN.

Can't hope to elucidate a complex narrative in a few words, but a good portion of the reason why the US has been in Afghanistan and Iraq for so long comes down to international oil interests, consequences of the cold war, and Central Asian and Middle Eastern regional politics.

Check out the book. Hands down the most gripping nonfiction work I've had the pleasure to read.

Edit: to clarify, this book was first published in 2000. It is not an explanation of the wars, but a description of the geopolitical scene in Afghanistan written at a time before 9/11. Imo, it's incredible that Mr. Rashid was able to describe the structures and tensions which ended up explaining future wars.

Most of what you're talking about is Hollywood, not reality. Eric Schlosser wrote an excellent book about the history of nuclear weapon controls, and most of the time most of what you mentioned wasn't in place.

A great read on this subject is Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser. At some points during the cold war Strategic Air Command had nuclear equipped bombers circling around the perimeter of US and NATO airspace non-stop. As with anything we decide to do 24/7, there were some accidents. If you think a B-52 bursting into flames on a runway sounds kinda stressful, imagine how much worse it gets when you know it has shaped explosives ready to jam together some fissile materials inside it. A situation like that occurred once, and lucky, the shaped explosives melted in the heat before they could go off. In another incident a B-52 had something fail and ripped apart in mid-air. This occurred over US airspace, and in some kinda crazy failure of oversight, the bomb on that plane had its physical safety enabled, meaning if the pilot had happened to also have his bomb key turned to the right we would have ejected a live nuke onto Virginia.

To answer your question though: minor taps are unlikely to set off the shaped explosives which start the reaction. Think of the nuke as a football shaped thing with two bits of material in them that, when slammed together with a lot of force, set off a nuclear reaction. If only half the "lens" explodes, that might not be enough force even, so even if you shot the exposed bomb it might only set off some of the shaped explosives, possibly resulting in a 'dirty bomb' or possibly just a loud bang. The detonation charge has to be perfectly timed to all parts of the football in order to make sure the two halves slam together with maximum surface area.

By the way, I can't recommend that book enough, it made me much more aware of how many crazy accidents and near accidents our nuclear weapons program has had, and it really makes you think twice about why the fuck we need thousands of these weapons sitting around, and the huge amount of effort which went into them, both on the design level and on the practical every-day level.

Since no one else has linked it...

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers about all the stuff donated bodies are used for

This was detailed on an episode of Human Planet on Discovery. You can watch it here!

I was secretly bummed they never showed the actual process. I feel most bad for the man who has to do the burial itself. If I remember correctly, he had to drink a considerable amount of whiskey in order to stomach what he was about to do.

(Also, if you're still curious about the ways corpses can and have been used throughout the centuries, have I got the book for you.)

A book written on just that subject

That and even though our govenor is a complete shitbag, he managed to get reelected just by having an R by his name.

People fall into the Grand Canyon every year because they simply think they because they're on vacation or at some sort of attraction they won't get hurt. There's a book about this mentality written by a twenty year park ranger I have on my shelf. When I get home I'll give you the title. It's a good one.

Edit: Over The Edge: Death in Grand Canyon I was originally drawn to this book because it has accounts of most of the known, fairly recent deaths and how they occurred. I also need to correct myself in saying that people fall in every year. It is less frequent than that but I'm still sticking to the point I made earlier because this book has some seriously good stories in it about exactly what we're discussing.

You're not going to get a serious answer from the reddit echo chamber. So far you seem to have gotten:

"Her vagina"
"Nothing"
"the mainstream media is in the tank for Clinton"
"There are no Clinton supporters on the internet."

So here's what I consider the best arguments in her favor, mostly they're culled from my democratic pol/strategist friends, most of whom are serious Clinton supporters by virtue of where I live:

1. Whoever gets elected is going to have to deal with a republican congress at least until 2020, if not further. So incremental change is a given. Exactly how much of Bernie's agenda is going to get adopted by a republican congress? How is he going to get it taken up? So what's going to get passed? How is sanders going to deal with a congress that says "lol no" and sends him a budget increasing military funding and cutting welfare? At the end of the day this boils down to the "experience" argument, but there's a twist. Sanders definitely also has a history of legislative accomplishments, but more than a few presidents, Obama included, have shown us that legislative experience doesn't translate to effective leadership from the White House. I'll be frank, it's pretty damn obvious that the Clintons inspired Frank and Clair Underwood from the house of cards. That is, however you care to look at it, a reality. Personal relationships and a willingness to twist arms is what gets legislation through. Inability to work congress has been Obama's greatest failing as president I think. (I'm not saying congress doesn't share the blame, but politics is the art of the possible, more could possibly been done had the situation been better managed).
   
   
2. Clinton had a point when she said she's been the focus of partisan attacks for 10+ years. There's a SHITLOAD of dirt out there, but for the most part it's already been dug up. Think about the shit that Republicans dug up on John Kerry with the swiftboat nonsense, or on OBama with reviewing every single thing Jeremiah wright said, how exactly did it become a controversy that Obama's pastor said "god damn America?". You already largely know what Republicans are going to bring up with Clinton. Where's Bernie Sanders dirt? His personal life is largely unknown, and he's skated by on a northeastern tolerance for social indiscretions and refusing to discuss it. I guarantee you it's not because dirt doesn't exist, and not because it hasn't been dug up, but because it's being held in reserve for the general. Republicans forever tied to tar Obama with the idea that he was Saul Alinksy's protege, some kind of 60's radical reborn. Sanders actually is that 60's radical, and actually calls himself a socialist to boot. There's quite a bit out there of him associating with genuine revolutionary socialists and communists. There's going to be an army of people looking for every photo of everyone Sanders ever associated with and everything bad they said about America. His personal life wont' be off limits either. Did you know Sanders has an adult son that was born out of wedlock? Sure, millenials won't give a damn, but it will be the basis for tens of millions of negative advertising.
   
   
3. Electability. It's popular here to point to head to head polls suggesting Sanders is better able to beat Trump. But those same polls also showed Clinton beating everyone but Kasich. In a hypothetical match up against Trump, Sanders comes out +13 and Clinton comes out +6. But the presidential campaign map matters a lot as well. Sanders did particularly poor among Latinos and African Americans, and does exceedingly well amongst poor white people in largely white (and largely red) states. Sanders tied Oklahoma, and won Wisconsin, West Virginia, New Hampshire and Vermont. Clinton, Among others has won California, New York, Illinois and Florida. Even taking election shenanigans into account, the former aren't going to matter so much in the general election and the latter will.
   
   
   They are what they are, but the real question is what are you going to do about them? because when you step outside of the echo chamber, it's pretty obvious that Clinton's going to end up the Nominee. Sanders is fighting the good fight and will carry a liberal platform to the convention, which I think is a very good thing for the party in geneal and the Sanders/Warren wing of the party in particular, but his chance of ending up the nominee at this point is virtually nil unless something radical changes like Clinton actually succumbing to a major scandal or getting criminal charges filed. Then question is then, are you going to succumb to the drawback of a two party system and vote for the lesser of two evils or do something that might result in Trump becoming president? It's easy to say now, how do you think Nader supporters felt in 2001 when Bush took office?
   
   I would add to this, your question makes the exact same mistake democrats have made for years as it relates to Republican voters. going back to Thomas Frank's Book what's the matter with Kansas and why Obama's comments about clinging to guns and religion caused such a fury on the right even though they're pretty true.
   
   At its heart, the way people choose political candidate is not 100% logical. People are not robots. The reason political disagreements exists is because people have different priorities. Priorities are not driven solely by logical connections. People choose a candidate based on how they feel about them. Obama won an election (both primary and general) by creating a feeling that he would be different. Trump's winning the republican primary by creating a feeling among disenchanted voters that he's going to come in and make it right, no matter what his background or prior policy preferences were.
   
   Clinton has done a decent job creating an emotional connection with certain demographics.Women over 40, African Americans, Hispanics. She fails at it markedly among millennials and to some extent among men.
   
   Not speaking truth to power, but rather telling the truth to the mob, or at least answering a question deliberately asked about what the defenses of clinton are.

> single mother

> caring for disabled parents

> Trump voter

Can we update What's the Matter with Kansas for the new level of cognitive BS these people put themselves through?

For anyone looking at a deep dive into the subject of command and control, "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" by Eric Schlosser is well worth the read.

>“As part of that administrative process, Butler decided to look at every single target in the SIOP, and for weeks he carefully scrutinized the thousands of desired ground zeros. He found bridges and railways and roads in the middle of nowhere targeted with multiple warheads, to assure their destruction. Hundreds of nuclear warheads would hit Moscow—dozens of them aimed at a single radar installation outside the city. During his previous job working for the Joint Chiefs, Butler had dealt with targeting issues and the damage criteria for nuclear weapons."

>"He was hardly naive. But the days and weeks spent going through the SIOP, page by page, deeply affected him. For more than forty years, efforts to tame the SIOP, to limit it, reduce it, make it appear logical and reasonable, had failed. “With the possible exception of the Soviet nuclear war plan, this was the single most absurd and irresponsible document I had ever reviewed in my life,” General Butler later recalled.

>“I came to fully appreciate the truth . . . we escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.”

To say that our current PEOTUS does not know what he is doing is an understatement. Given the history of nuclear power, storage, fallout, errors and use and given the chilling interview KAC gave last night on the Rachel Maddow Show clearly showing no formal knowledge on nuclear controlling powers across the globe, we should all recognize we are in for a long and hazardous ride which might not end well.

The history of nuclear power is ripe with peril and human error. Having someone at the trigger without an understanding of the issues and the technology behind that power should rightfully scare the hell out of everyone on the planet.

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

I highly recommend "Stiff" by Mary Roach. It's...um...enlightening.

I would highly recommend [what's the matter with Kansas] (https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493738579&sr=8-1&keywords=what%27s+the+matter+with+kansas) by Thomas Frank. It is an engaging, informative look at the context around why an entire state of low-income voters voted for policies that were drafted to harm them.

I am planning to pick up a number of books I saw on this list.

Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City is probably the best true crime I’ve read. Some older true crime novels can be really campy and sensationalized.

Also, it’s not true crime, but Mary Roach’s Stiff is a fun read about cadavers and the human body after death.

>Well, that's correct, but if you grew up in the early 1800s or earlier, that idea wasn't even part of social commentary;

That isn't true.

> in the 90s and early 00s, it was accepted if not encouraged to make note and/or make fun of homosexuality.

You are totally ignoring the mass gay rights movement, that by 1990 was very large.

>It wasn't until very recently that there was more of a push for more tolerant or socially acceptable treatment of LGBT people.

Gay rights movement started in the mid 1800s. I suggest this book, for more info on the Gay rights movement in the US from 1890 to 1940

The book Command and Control gives a good accounting of that story, along with a really interesting look into the history of nuclear weapons. I'd highly recommend the book if you're interested in nuclear stuff.

THIS!

There is literally a book (and documentary based on the book) about this. Called What's the Matter With Kansas

Stiff - The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, if you want a light read about dead people. More amusing than it sounds.

I think part of the problem is really that people are looking at only granular parts of problems today and don't have enough historical context. Its useless to follow every story about everyone and every little thing. There are lots of ups and downs in politics and there's no reason to be so reactionary to every single new and probably manufactured "scandal".... that's what's exhausting. I like to keep updated on a few big issues, I follow the careers of a few people I find inspiring (and follow a few that do things that worry me), and spend the rest of the time reading up on topics in book form... they have the advantage of being written over time, and with more vigorous standards for accuracy. The news, while still important where immediate info is necessary, is essentially click bait now. You don't need to get caught in the rip tides that pull you everywhere constantly, just understand the general trajectory of the important things.

edit: to those curious about some book recommendations: I'm by no means an expert in anything really, and the books you read should really be about the topics you personally are interested in, so don't take my word as gospel (or any author's). I like American history, ancient history, international relations, and though I think they're more boring I force myself to read about the health care system and the American education system because I feel they're important. I'm also looking to read some books on the military industrial complex and cyber security/ big data because I don't really know anything about them other than the stuff I see in passing on the news or here on Reddit. So if anyone knows a good overview of those issues, feel free to let me know.

• For a good start on human history and the beginnings of modern economics/ intl relations (basically why the West has historically dominated), try Guns, Germs, and Steel I believe there's also a documentary if the book is too dense for your taste (it is pretty dense).
  
  
• Perhaps if you're interested in why people get so damn heated talking politics, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation
  
  
• If you wonder why people vote against their own social and economic interest: What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America Full disclosure: I liked this book, but I lean left. I'm not sure if it matters, the point of the book is just to track how the Republican party went from being the party of elites, to the party of blue collar workers.
  
  
• If the Supreme Court interests you at all, I liked Jeffrey Toobin's, The Nine
  
  
• The achievement gap? Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria
  
  
• Health care? There's a lot, but this one is an easy read and it compares the systems of Britain, Japan, Germany, and I believe Cuba (which is very good for their GDP!) and the US's. The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T.R. Reid
  
  This is just some stuff I've listed off the top of my head. Another thing that I find helpful to better understanding intl relations are books about the major genocides of the past few decades, which are hard to get through (because of the brutal content) but... What is the What (Sudan), First they killed my father (Cambodian genocide), Girl at War (more of a autobiography, but still chilling) there's a couple of others I've read that I can't remember now.
  
  Anyway, just go to Good Reads and look at Contemporary Politics. Perhaps Great Courses has a political philosophy course too that you can draw from if you wanna go even farther back into the origins of society's structure and political thought.
  
  Also podcasts! I've just discovered these but there's a lot of audio content (FREE!) that you can listen to on your commute and whatnot. I like Abe Lincoln's Top Hat right now.
  
  Edit edit: wow thanks for the gold!!

There are still options like The Body Farm and safety testing (aka, when crash test dummies aren't enough). You might find the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers enlightening.

Not my area of expertise, but as I understand it, it actually goes back further to the 1890s-1920s which was the period in which homosexuality began to be conceived in opposition to masculinity. In this period, however, gay men were not ostracised as they would be in the post-war era, insofar as they did not threaten heteronormative masculinity.

As I understand it, these norms were very closely tied to penetrative roles. Men acting as penetrators were acceptable in masculine roles. Men who were the penetrated were increasingly feminised and assumed that identity, in part to avoid being in conflict with established norms of masculinity.

Again, not my wheelhouse, but all of this I'm gleaning mostly from a couple of books I read a few years ago. Can recommend Geoffrey Chauncey's Gay New York as a pretty solid history of the emergence of gay identities (plural) which will challenge your understanding of sexual identity on a number of levels and also demonstrate the extent to which our current (though fast evolving) framework of sexuality is a relatively recent one.

I'm sure /u/Dr_Poz was referencing this insightful book from 2005:
What's the Matter with Kansas?

Good next up:

http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409/

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081/

http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Deadliest-Export-Democracy-Everything/dp/1783601671/

There's a book about deaths in the Grand Canyon, and one of the conclusions made is that children hardly ever are the ones involved in falls or other accidents; they seem to have an innate sense of danger that keeps them from doing really stupid things around cliffs. The highest demographic for deaths in the GC: males in their early 20s.

Animal and pet bodies are generally disposed of via a process that essentially liquifies the flesh in lye. I know that there was some amount of push several years ago to expand the service to human remains.

There's a company in Europe that was trying to push the idea of "planting" a person's body by using minimal preservation chemistry and no coffin, and putting a sapling above the body.

I'm not Tibetan, but even I can appreciate the symbology of their Sky Burials, wherein a body is sliced and left exposed to the elements, and is swiftly reclaimed by vultures.

However, there is one outstanding option for OP: Donating his body to science! Organ donors are lauded, as they well should be, but there's a pressing need for bodies for research purposes, particularly bodies of younger folk or children. The research gained through body donation can save hundreds, if not thousands, of lives, for decades after it's donated. Bodies have been used to research car crash impact effects--dummies are fine, but there really is no substitute for strapping a body into a car and launching it into a wall to see how it breaks (or doesn't!)

I'd strongly encourage anyone interested in alternative body disposal methods to read Stiff, by Mary Roach. It is far and away my favorite non-fiction book--hilarious, respectful, inquisitive, and educational!

You are correct on the title, "What's the Matter With Kansas", but it goes onto much greater depth than the single issue voting. It really delves into and explains why the social conservatives are being played to go against the fiscal conservative values they once held and who is profiting from them.

At the time it was written, 10 years ago, Thomas Frank made the prediction that this was the direction American "Conservatism" would head, and he has been dead on the money! An excellent read for those completely baffled by the ignorance of the average American voter.

Interesting timing of this post for me. I was having trouble getting to sleep last night, so I was reading Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. (This was a mistake, but only because the book is very interesting and well written. I got through 86 pages before I gave up and turned the light off. I never got sleepy.)

There are a number of stories in the book that might relate, but this reminded me most of Thomas Holmes (The Father of Modern Embalming.) The Wikipedia entry doesn't really have much trivia about him. More can be found on this page. His info is about half-way down the page. Roach goes into more detail about his story, but the part I thought of here is in that link:

>Holmes retired to Brooklyn, New York where he sold root beer and embalming
supplies. According to Christine Quigley, author of A Corpse: a History and Mary
Roach, author of Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Holmes shared his
Brooklyn home with samples of his Civil War era handiwork. Embalmed bodies were
stored in the closets, and preserved heads sat on tables in the parlor. Not all that
surprisingly, Holmes eventually went insane (Robert Mayer wrote that Holmes became
mentally unhinged after an accident) spending his final years in and out of institutions.
Shortly before he died he is said to have requested not to be embalmed.

By way of a little explanation: I work closely with a medical examiner's office. I was affected a good deal more, at first, than I expected since I don't go there every day and usually work at one remove from the actual place and the work done there. When I asked how people cope with that kind of work, both death investigation and pathology, along with a long and sensitive discussion about the job Mary Roach's book was recommended reading. I borrowed and returned it and eventually bought my own copy, but only last night started reading it. I'm only through 87 pages, but so far, it's a good read. If you want some perspective and maybe a different way to think about your own "final arrangements", or if you're just curious about stuff like what happens to bodies left to science or medicine, you may find it enlightening. She handles the subject with respect, humanity, and humor. It isn't nearly as gruesome as I thought it would be, but I have been exposed to a lot more death and bodies and such in the last three+ years than the average person, so YMMV.

That's not really accurate... one of the most well-respected, even-handed, and historically sourced resources on the Stonewall Riots is Stonewall by Martin Duberman. You should read it.

Yes, the extent to which the sparking incident and the subsequent riots were (or were not) "trans PoC"-driven is very often misrepresented, particularly today where we get all these things about how Stonewall apparently didn't have any white or cis people (which is total bullshit), but there most certainly were drag queens and trans people (at the time, those two things were strongly conflated) and nonwhite people heavily and frequently involved at Stonewall and in the riots.

Other great resources include Gay New York by George Chauncey and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers by Lilian Faderman about gay male and female, respectively, identity and culture from the late 1800s through the 20th century.

I definitely would recommend everyone here read Stonewall by Duberman, though. It's a good look at just how involved everyone was and in what ways. Conservative, middle-class white gay men, black trans drag queens, working class people, Latino people, white women, etc. Anyone who claims that one group or another "wasn't really involved" is either ignorant or misrepresenting the facts.

Don’t need future scientists, current scientist already figured out

What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
https://www.amazon.com/dp/080507774X/

Hey, no problem: Here's a couple I really enjoyed that helped me learn how to really articulate what I think and understand what others were saying about politics in those sorts of discussions:

1. The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. This contrasts how liberals and conservatives think about politics in a way that I think makes sense of what can often be really frustrating arguments.
   
2. Justice by Michael Sandel. This walks you through different ways you can reason about politics so that you can develop sharper and more consistent opinions.

https://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/dp/0316202304

Read that sometime. The paperclip scientists did some fucked up human experimentation for our government after they came here. Wasn't all good.

EDIT: apparently she has a book on paperclip too. Didn't know. Probably goes over a lot of the same stuff but in more detail.

If you would like a detailed report of what happens when people do jump or fall into the pools, check out Death in Yellowstone. You can read most of the first chapter using the 'Look Inside', which has the 'boiling to death' stories.

>My continuing complaint with the trump-a-nistas is quite simple... "Why do you continually vote against your own interests?"

Wedge social and cultural issues. People should definitely read What's the Matter With Kansas.

I had family actually move out of Kansas two years ago because of what Brownback did to that state via an infusion of faulty, disproven, horseshit Koch ideology. They have destroyed that state and it will take generations to bring it back from what they did to it with their bullshit economic experiment.

And people WARNED them about this bullshit for YEARS, but it never mattered because they are arrogant cocks who think they are smarter than everyone else.

Had a friend who worked at Yellowstone for Xanterra (the folks who run concessions and lodges in the park). He had so many stories of the completely insane things people do when they have never been exposed to nature before.

I think my favorite story was a guy getting out of his car and walking up to a bison, trying to put his kid on its back for a ride. Bison are wild herd animals, are fucking huge, and are at LEAST as dangerous as a grizzly (most of the time). The bison flipped out and charged, managing to gore the guy pretty badly (he survived). The kid got away fine, and probably has a little goddamn respect for nature and the wild now.

If you're a bit morbid, and want to marvel at the stupidity of people in a national park, check out Death in Yellowstone. It's a book full of this sort of shit.

The book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety gives some pretty interesting insight into these topics, how close we came to blowing ourselves up and how much nuclear authority was actual in the hands of those in the field.

This is a useful companion piece to Eric Schlosser's recent "World War Three, by Mistake" in The New Yorker. (Hat-tip to /u/puck2 for posting that article to this subreddit.)

For those still not sufficiently alarmed, PBS will premiere the documentary Command and Control, based on Schlosser's book of the same name, in its American Experience series next week (Tuesday, January 10, 2017).

> 4) Area 51. I suspect the truth is pretty mundane, but it'd be neat to see what projects they work on there. Maybe, just maybe, there's a group of giant space cockroaches there that shoot the shit around the coffee station.
>

https://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/dp/0316202304

That book is a pretty good read about Area 51. Essentially an Air Force (military) and CIA (civilian) aeronautics research facility. Doing research and operations that are extremely sensitive. Also reverse engineering and studying foreign aircraft like MiG and Chinese warplanes. Specifically the U2, F117, A12/SR71, and drone reconnaissance aircraft (before anyone even knew what a drone was) development.

It was/is also used to study effects of using nuclear weapons. Specifically contamination effects and how long it would take to clean up a nuked city (they did this by setting off nukes to contaminate the desert and see how much dirt they had to dig out to make it safe again). I believe the defense contractor EG&G handled most of the nuclear research at Groom Lake.

If you are interested in stuff like this you should check out the book Command And Control.

It really highlights how close to utter devastation we have been during the past 60 years...

One of the top reviews from Amazon:
As a former Titan II Missile Facilities Technician, this was a page-turner for me. The author got it right in his descriptions of the attitudes and culture in the missile career field, the systems in use, even the music we listened to back then. It is rare for a military themed book written by a non-military writer to be so spot-on (IMO). The descriptions of some of the close calls we (we citizens) had with H-bombs are chilling, and the story about the Damascus Arkansas Titan II explosion was weaved in perfectly throughout the book. Time well spent.

I haven't read What We Owe to Each Other, but from what I'm familiar with it's an attempt by Scanlon to explain and justify his particular brand of moral contractualism, and not an introductory book on ethics and moral philosophy. I believe Chidi is a contractualist and deontologist so it makes sense why he would like that book (as a philosophy professor), but that's just one area of moral philosophy.

One of the problems with philosophy is that the works are intended for students and educated audiences and not laymen, so most of the books for example that I read when I first started college (and books that you'll find listed in "good for beginners" lists) like Nicomachean Ethics and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals I would never, ever recommend to a general audience. They're full of confusing philosophy terminology and long, multi-stage logical arguments.

Instead I highly recommend what I suspect you're really looking for in Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? by Michael Sandel. While clearly aimed at an American audience, it's a very good and more importantly very readable general introduction to ethics and the varying schools of thought in the field. It's a really short read for a philosophy text and is peppered with real-life examples and dilemmas.

Another book that I actually read recently and quite enjoyed is A Concise Introduction to Ethics by Russ Shafer-Landau. Unfortunately, this one is intended for a student audience and is more of a textbook (complete with end of chapter quizzes), but it goes really broad and over not just all the big schools of ethics but also the fundamentals of moral reasoning, and metaethics and natural law (two things that don't always show up in ethics books which are usually about normative ethics).

I took my SJ class as an online course around 2010 or so. It was pretty milquetoast in comparison to yours and mostly technical. I think the most interesting stuff to me were the philosophies of Jeremy Bentham vs. John Stuart Mill. We used the book Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do by Michael Sandel

I do not know what the birdcage analogy is and there was no discussion, I recall, about agents, allies, and accomplices.

-People are missing or found near creeks, rivers <br />

of course they are, thats where people go when they are lost. they think it will lead them out of the forest. (it doesn't)

-There is a geographical clustering of disappearances

-Bad weather usually occurs just as the search party gets under way
What? This doesn't make any sense. to be able to make a claim like that, you have to analyze thousands of NPS records to find a correlation between weather and searches. Also most searches take place right after someone went missing, which is probably also connected to the weather.

-Swamps and briar patches play a role in the disappearances
Do you know how easy it is to get lost in a swamp?

-Many disappearances occur in the late afternoon
Late afternoon is the time when people are usually expected back from outings, if they left in the morning. They may have disappeared earlier, but are not reported until later.

-If a person is later found, they usually are unable or unwilling to remember what happened to them.

PTSD. Simple as that.

-The missing are often found in places that were previously searched
The people doing the searches are not usually well trained parks staff, but locals and volunteers. Also, most bodies are found years later when someone stumbles on the body accidentally.

-Berries are somehow related to the disappearances.
that is so vague I honestly don't know where to start. "he ate berries." "there were berries on the trail." "they had a blueberry pie yesterday." you claim pretty much anything is related to the disappearances if you try hard enough.

how i feel right now

/rant


for anybody actually interested in National Parks search and rescue, i suggest this book, written by two park rangers who get paid by the government to rescue people

Read The Gun by CJ Chivers. Very interesting book on the history and people involved in the creation of the AK.

It's becoming obvious that all your social media is being manipulated. Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/etc. Professors have shown that the entire narrative of a subreddit/post can be controlled by as few as 5 bot accounts. $200 is enough to get a clearly false post onto the front page.

https://youtu.be/FxNvUWN3vYk

The key is that you should put NO faith in arguments nor articles written on social media/twitter/etc. Consider it all fun theater, but don't use it to form your opinions or be educated on a subject.

But this is not new. All during the Cold War, Russia would manipulate groups to stall and derail US politics. Despite the fact the whole effort was very poorly handled and turned into a witch hunt, the Red Scare searches for Russian manipulation was quite real.

If you think you're immune, know that the military's handling of nuclear weapons is often seen as incompetent and comical. See Dr. Strangeglove. Despite the fact Russia had even MORE incidents and worse handling, they did a tremendously good job of capitalizing on our failures. When their intelligence found an incident of mishandling, they would leak it to the news, and then use our own news/advocacy groups work against the government. They absolutely did fund/feed/use well-meaning groups that aligned with their goals: create scandal, discredit politicians, control narratives, ferment social disorder. Sound familiar?

Worth a read about cold war nuclear programs and had a good chapter on these tactics:

Command and Control - Eric Schlosser

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

If this sort of thing interests you, you may also enjoy this book. It's a bit older (IIRC it came out during the Bush administration) but it looks at the same issue through a bit of a different lens.

They have to. They need to calibrate the sensors on the crash test dummies.

Read more about it - and many other creative uses for dead bodies - in Mary Roach's book, Stiff.

• Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan is a great overview of the science of statistics, without being too much like a lecture. After reading it, you'll have a better understanding of what statistics are just silly (like in ads or clickbait news) and what are actually important (like in scientific studies).
  
  
• You on a Diet by Roizen and Oz is touted as a diet book, and it kind of is. I recommend it because it's a great resource for basic understanding the science behind the gastrointestinal system, and how it links to the brain.
  
  
• All of Mary Roach's books are excellent overviews of science currently being done, I've read Stiff (the science of human bodies, post-mortem), Spook ("science tackles the afterlife"), Packing for Mars (the science of humans in space), and Bonk (sex), and they are all very easy to understand, but scientifically appropriate. I'm sure "Gulp" is good too, although I haven't read that one yet.
  
  
• "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" by Mike Brown is a great, accessible overview of exactly why Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet, told by the man who started the controversy.
  
  
• "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking is a little denser, material-wise, but still easy to understand (as far as theoretical physics goes, at least!). Hawking explains the history of physics and the universe, as well as the future of the discipline. While there is a bit more jargon than some pop-science books, I think an entry-level scientist can still read and understand this book.
  

I recommend both! For Stiff, I advise getting the audiobook version. It's very well done. The book itself is not any more graphic than it needs to be and is respectful (although I did take issue with the author's apparent negative view of cosmetic surgery in an early chapter.) I found the whole thing fascinating. I was actually most fascinated though when she got to the chapter about the possibility of human head transplants. Here's the page on Amazon.

As for A Dog's Purpose, I messed up and accidentally failed to notice there was an Audible version until literally just now, so I can't attest to the quality of the reading. But the book itself (as stated, I'm only half way through) is really good. Here it is.

What's the matter with Kansas is a great book about that whole issue. Conservatives (Republicans) appeal to dumb people in these types of states on a lot of issues including jobs, giving them false promises and then turning an about-face when the time comes that they're in office.

Republican policies have long benefited the rich, and not the average worker.

Unfortunately, the most efficient way to become knowledgable about the Middle East is to read. A lot. The Middle East is a far more complex place than most people imagine and understanding the region requires a great deal of knowledge. I have been studying the Middle East for nearly a decade and I still feel like there is so much that I do not know. I would start by reading reputable news sources every day. Places like The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, Financial Times, are the Los Angeles Times are good English language news sources that you should look at. Additionally, I have written up a suggested reading list for learning about the Middle East, though it is a bit more security-related since that's my area of expertise. I hope it helps. And feel free to ask any questions if you have them.

Books - General History of the Middle East

• Albert Hourani - A History of the Arab Peoples. This is widely considered to be the definitive book on history in the Arab World.
  
• Eugene Rogan - The Arabs: A History. Another essential and critically acclaimed book on Arab history.
  
• Roy Mottahedeh - The Mantle of the Prophet. Role of religion and religious figures in Iran before and during the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
  
• Mark Lynch - The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East. An outline of the causes, reactions, and consequences of the Arab Spring.
  
• Thomas Barfield - Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. Afghanistan is usually not considered a part of the Middle East in academic research, so I am including this one. It's probably one of the best overviews of Afghan History.
  
  

  Books - Middle East Military History
  

  
  

• Kenneth Pollack - Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991. Probably the best book on Arab militaries culture and effectiveness and warfare in the Middle East between 1945-1991. Very extensive and informative.
  
• Steven Ward - Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces. A well-written history of Iran's military, from the Safavid Empire to the 21st century.
  
• Ahron Bregman - Israel's Wars: A History since 1947. A terrific book outlining Israel's strategic decision making for its military operations since its founding as a country.
  
• Bruce Hoffman - Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947. A look at the establishment of Israel and the development of the current Arab-Israeli conflict.
  
  

  Books - Middle East Terrorism and Substate Violence
  

  
  

• Daniel Byman - Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know. A terrific primer on al-Qaida, ISIL, and jihadism.
  
• Lawrence Wright - The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Probably the best book for outlining the history of al-Qaida and why 9/11 happened.
  
• Michael Wiess and Hassan Hassan - ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. One of several recent books on ISIL, this one provides an overview on the history and organization of ISIL.
  
• Barry Rubin - Revolution Until Victory?: The Politics and History of the PLO. Although a little old (published in 1996), this books does a great job chronicling the history of the PLO and its role in the Palestinian struggle.
  
• Ahmed Rashid - Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. One of the best books on the rise and fall of the Taliban.
  
  

  Books - U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East
  

  
  

• Bob Woodward - Obama's Wars. Outline of the U.S. foreign policy decision making towards Iraq and Afghanistan in the early years of the Obama administration.
  
• Kenneth Pollack - The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America. A good overview of tensions between the United States and Iran.
  
• Michael R. Gordon - The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. Follows U.S. strategic and political decision making process during the Iraq War and the U.S. occupation.
  
• Peter R. Mansoor - Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War. An extensive outline of the development and outcome of the Surge during the U.S. Occupation of Iraq.
  
• Steve Coll - Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. A widely popular and acclaimed book on U.S. covert operations from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan until 2001.
  
• Mark Mazzetti - The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth. An overview of the CIA's targeted killing program against terrorist organizations.
  
• Michael Morrell - The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From al Qa'ida to ISIS. Written by the former acting director of the CIA, this book examines U.S. counterterrorism successes and failures of the past two decades.
  
  

  Think Tanks
  

  
  Below is a list of several different think tanks, which frequently publish everything from extension research and analysis to quick and succinct blog posts about the issues in the Middle East. Some of these think tanks specifically focus on the Middle East, while for others it is only one area of their research.
  
  

• Washington Institute for Near East Policy
  
• Center for Strategic and International Studies
  
• Middle East Institute
  
• Atlantic Council
  
• Council on Foreign Relations
  
• Brookings Institute
  
• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
  
• Institute for the Study of War
  
• International Institute for Strategic Studies
  
  

  Journals, Blogs, Podcasts, and other Publications
  

  
  

• Foreign Affairs - The premier publication on international politics. Has a paywall, but I recommend it. Also has a podcast.
  
• Foreign Policy - Actually a magazine, its website operates more like a blog. A major publication in the field. Also has a podcast.
  
• War on the Rocks - Reviews international political and security issues, U.S. national security issues, and alcohol. Also has a podcast.
  
• FRONTLINE: Syria At War - Their coverage of the Syrian Civil War. Amazing reporting and film. I highly recommend watching all of it.
  
• Jihadology - A clearing house for primary sources from terrorist organizations. Good place to go if you want to know what the other side is saying. Arabic skills sometimes required. Also has a podcast.
  
• Middle East Week - Looks at issues and topics in the contemporary Middle East that are not frequently talked about.
  
• Syria Comment - Blog run by Joshua Landis, a Syria expert, with frequent quest contributors. Focuses on Syria since before the start of the civil war.
  
• Musings on Iraq - Blog on Iraqi politics and society.
  
• Syria Deeply - A clearing house for news on the Syrian Civil War.
  
• CFR's: The Shia-Sunni Divide - An amazingly detailed and succinct outline of the history and issues behind the Shia-Sunni conflict in the Middle East.
  
• bellingcat - A blog that focuses on open source and social media investigations and analysis on international security issues. A fantastic 21st century approach to international issues.

If anyone reading this guy's comment finds this sort of stuff interesting, I would highly, highly recommend this book on Morality, Justice, Society, that sort of thing. This comment reminded me of this guy's writing style & I couldn't put this thing down:

Justice by Michael J. Sandel

The gold standard on this topic is definitely Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner.

https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244

This is literally what Americans thought around 1900. See Chauncey's Gay New York when men who "topped" were considered "wolves." Cultural figures of the dandy were around, too, but this was before The Well of Loneliness came out and the idea of "sexual inversion" took hold to explain gay behavior. Sex was all about verbs, not nouns. The gerund-ification of sexuality is one of the most significant changes in 20th century culture.

>President Roosevelt was responsible for Pearl Harbor attack, knew about it in advance but didn't warn the Hawaiian commanders, because he wanted to sucker Hitler to declare war? -- That would easily find a mention in my list of worst conspiracy theories ever.

Actually this is very likely the case. This guy offers plenty of evidence to back it up: http://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-4489636-8060653?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179674151&sr=8-1

It's not a totally crazy conspiracy theory. Throughout history there have always been cases of leaders setting up, provoking or allowing attacks in order to convince the populace into supporting a war. It would be naive to think that that practice would have any reason to have stopped.

There's actually a book on that.

in case you're here for the Tibetan Genocide is fake link... see the 2nd half of this message. I tried replying to the badhistory sub but guess what? your mod removed my post citing a rule violation. He could have simply asked me to edit but instead banned me outright. Scared of sourced facts perhaps?

Excellent work again.

The idea that an entire paper is anti China propaganda is within the realm of reason as historical precedents show...

● https://np.reddit.com/r/CIWO/comments/3qttki/tiananmen_square_massacre/

● https://np.reddit.com/r/CIWO/comments/3qtu2k/falun_gong_persecution_organ_harvesting_aka_falun/

● https://np.reddit.com/r/CIWO/comments/3qyqpg/evil_communist_mao_committed_the_greatest/

● Tibetan genocide is also fake

http://i.imgur.com/EcswTEL.jpg

Colonialism, Genocide, Tibet - Sautman-2006-Colonialism-Genocide-Tibet.pdf:

http://repository.keeptibetfree.net/pdf/Sautman-2006-Colonialism-Genocide-Tibet.pdf

 

Then there is all the subhuman shit they did to other weaker nations detailed at

● http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-timeline-of-cia-atrocities/5348804

● http://www.globalresearch.ca/how-to-start-a-war-the-american-use-of-war-pretext-incidents/28554

● http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409/

● http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Hope-C-I-Interventions-II--Updated/dp/1567512526/

 

Even their white gentlemen™ vs the "evil and oppressive Asian man" is totally fake, but how fake? See the stats for yourself

http://i.imgur.com/VCNgVeU.jpg

Pathological lying is the way of the "master race".



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tibetan Genocide debunked

First of all, there is no genocide.

>A central element of the narrative circulated by the Tibet Movement has been that China has carried out genocide and practised colonialism in Tibet. These notions are, for the most part, uncritically accepted by politicians and the media, especially in the West. This essay challenges such characterizations as inept
>
>A discourse of Tibet and genocide, initially carried out by international cold warriors, began with the self exiling of the Dalai Lama in 1959. Reports on ‘genocide in Tibet’ were directed by Purshattom Trikamdas, head of an anti China Indian political party
committed to ‘the liberation of Tibet’, and published by Trikamdas’ International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) (Shalom, 1984, pp. 66 – 7; ICJ, 1959; 1960). The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which helped spirit the Dalai Lama out of Tibet and conducted a proxy war against China in Tibet, funded the ICJ (Grunfeld, 1987, p. 142; Waldman, 2000; Knaus, 1999, p. 168). Its reports argued that attacks on Tibetan Buddhism were genocide because to be Tibetan is to be Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhism was being eliminated, even in the absence of mass killing. The Genocide Convention (1951), however, requires intent to physically destroy an ethnic or religious group in whole or in part; yet Chinese Buddhism was also attacked during this period.
>
> In the case of Tibet, a political goal also accounts for unsupported charges of genocide. The aim is mobilization, especially in the West, where charges go unchallenged due to confusion over what is genocide, the sacralized popularity of the Dalai Lama, a constructed image of Tibetan victimhood, anti Communism, and anti Chinese racism.

Colonialism, Genocide, Tibet - Sautman-2006-Colonialism-Genocide-Tibet.pdf:

http://repository.keeptibetfree.net/pdf/Sautman-2006-Colonialism-Genocide-Tibet.pdf

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every legitimate gov? You mean like Britain correct?

http://i.imgur.com/C4ZBbHK.jpg

1903 photos of Tibet revealed: Pics taken show Mount Everest to Westerners for first time | Daily Mail Online:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2383412/1903-photos-Tibet-revealed-Pics-taken-Mount-Everest-Westerners-time.html

what's wrong? your "Christian" leaders never told you?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://i.imgur.com/4vhKizo.jpg

Friendly Fuedalism - The Tibet Myth:

http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, for some comedy courtesy "all men are created equal champion of human rights" (who are now committing and funding genocide in the Middle East)

>In America, we proudly call it Manifest Destiny and never trouble ourselves with how we got much of California and Texas from Mexico, never mind the rest of the country and our sordid history with Native Americans.
>
>Our history with the native people of Hawaii has been relatively brief and quite brutal and there exists a tenacious independence movement. Still, there is no talk in the mainstream media and among the Hollywood celebrity activist circuit of Hawaiian independence, not to mention Puerto Rican independence or the American Indian movement.
>
>Government repression of these movements also escapes media scrutiny. Before we lecture China, we may
want to tend to our own backyard.
>
>Under the Dalai Lama, was there religious freedom - Was there any freedom - Actually, no. We would recognize the Dalai Lama's Tibet as a medieval religious theocracy with a small elite class served by a large and oppressed serf population. The Dalai Lama ruled a region with no religious freedom, no political freedom, indeed, no human rights of any kind. The rulers were ruthless. Torture and mutilation were widespread. Poverty and starvation were rampant. It was Shangri La only in the West's imagination.
>
>Richard Gere, Sharon Stone and other Hollywood devotees may be surprised at their idol's current positions. The Dalai Lama condemns abortion and homosexuality while accepting prostitution.

For decades the Dalai Lama secured millions of dollars from the CIA

>
>Despite its shortcomings, Chinese rule has provided the Tibetan region with infrastructure and public schooling and provides Tibetans with widespread opportunities and a degree of personal freedom unheard of under the feudal theocracy of the dalai lamas.

Tibet: The Shangri-La that exists only in the West's imagination - The Salt Lake Tribune:
http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/opinion/ci_10359098

Seems strange that China would "commit genocide against Tibetans" with infrastructure and public schooling...

There's actually a whole book detailing all of the people who have died in the Canyon over the years. The overwhelming majority of deaths can be attributed to being young and male. There's also a maybe not surprisingly large number of guys who died while peeing off the side of the Canyon.

Seconded; for a great history of this, check out Cadillac Desert

Also, one problem I have with this graphic is how the United States is treated as a single entity. While the West is running out of water, the Great Lakes region sits on 1/5 of the world's available fresh water. To this day one of America's strengths is abundant natural resources.

Interesting fact about the term 'Megadeath' that I just learned from a cool book I'm reading, Command and Control by Eric Schlosser: It is a unit that describes 1 million deaths resultant from a nuclear attack, and was coined in some of the initial reports assessing the potential damage from an all out nuclear war (measuring fatalities in megadeaths, e.g. 40 megadeaths = 40 million killed) during the 1950's. I guess fans of the band are probably aware of this etymology, but as someone who doesn't really listen to them, I was not.

If you want to read more with some amazing technical details of the Titan silos, I highly recommend Eric Schlosser's book "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety". It's a compelling read.

Kind of an aside, but if you like "Bridge of Spies," read Command and Control. It's a great book about the cold war and MAD theory.

Yup. There's a whole book about the change.

It's actually more heart breaking when you know that basically the entire midwest once once considered the home of radical left politics in the US. As Thomas Frank notes in What's The Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America:

>I do not want to minimize the change that this represents. Certain parts of the Midwest were once so reliably leftist that the historian Walter Prescott Webb, in his classic 1931 history of the region, pointed to its persistent radicalism as one of the “Mysteries of the Great Plains.” Today the mystery is only heightened; it seems inconceivable that the Midwest was ever thought of as a “radical” place, as anything but the land of the bland, the easy snoozing flyover. Readers in the thirties, on the other hand, would have known instantly what Webb was talking about, since so many of the great political upheavals of their part of the twentieth century were launched from the territory west of the Ohio River. The region as they knew it was what gave the country Socialists like Eugene Debs, fiery progressives like Robert La Follette, and practical unionists like Walter Reuther; it spawned the anarchist IWW and the coldly calculating UAW; and it was periodically convulsed in gargantuan and often bloody industrial disputes. They might even have known that there were once Socialist newspapers in Kansas and Socialist voters in Oklahoma and Socialist mayors in Milwaukee, and that there were radical farmers across the region forever enlisting in militant agrarian organizations with names like the Farmers’ Alliance, or the Farmer-Labor Party, or the Non-Partisan League, or the Farm Holiday Association. And they would surely have been aware that Social Security, the basic element of the liberal welfare state, was largely a product of the midwestern mind.

>Almost all of these associations have evaporated today. That the region’s character has been altered so thoroughly—that so much of the Midwest now regards the welfare state as an alien imposition; that we have trouble even believing there was a time when progressives were described with adjectives like fiery, rather than snooty or bossy or wimpy—has to stand as one of the great reversals of American history.

https://smile.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X?sa-no-redirect=1

There's even a book.

Morbid, but interesting read about every death in the Grand Canyon. It's a lot. Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon

Edit: ~12 per year (700ish total and counting)

I hate that I don't know how to link you to the right spot, but hit "look inside" on this book. You want to read the chapter titled "Hold Fast to Your Children: Death in Hot Water". It gives actual accounts of people who went into the pools. One man dove, most fell accidentally; either way it isn't pretty.

As regards to the Body Farm. The university of tennessee gets many, many donations every year for research, they have a giant freezer full of cadavers awaiting their turn in the Tennessee sunshine. If you donate your body to science, there is no way to be assured where it is going to go. For more reference on this, check out a book called Stiff http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

Read [George Chauncey's Gay New York] (http://www.amazon.com/Gay-New-York-Culture-1890-1940/dp/0465026214)

Basically, the heterosexual-homosexual binary wasn't created until the years surrounding WWII. Before then, there were a great deal of sexual options available to men...fairies, queers, wolves, etc. A man could have sex with another man and, as long as he did not take the submissive position, it did not necessarily affected his sexual identity or lead anyone to question his masculinity.

Yep! One of the big problems was that settlers started heavily farming during a relatively wet period, tearing up all the sod and grass that was there. Then the drought came and there was nothing to hold all that soil down, so it was blown all over.

Ships out in the Atlantic got covered with soil carried from the Great Plains. I'm probably simplifying things a lot, but that's the gist of it.

If you're interested, I'd recommend The Worst Hard Time. Some of the stories are just crazy.

This is really common - if you donate a body to science it goes where it's needed. The entire body isn't needed for research in one place so the remains can be parted out as needed.

I highly recommend the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - it talks about the options out there for our bodies after we die, and manages to be light-hearted but respectful at the same time. It's really one of my favorite books

I recommend you read The Worst Hard Time about the American dust bowl. Everything that you wrote is exactly the hubris that resulted in the worst man-made natural disaster in history.

Just because you can't understand how the massive scale modern industry is polluting your planet doesn't mean that it's not happening.

The man-made ecological devastation that is currently ravaging the world will permanently leave its scar on the archeological and fossil record for hundreds of millions of years.

> Follow the money.

Right, of course. I forgot that there were no moneyed interests in maintaining the fossil fuel burning status quo. /s

Always amuses me the similarities (in general) between Pearl harbor and 9/11 and how they were able to get away with the same thing 60+ years later.

If you're bored, grab Day of Deceit....great book on the PH conspiracy

I've not read that one yet, but I did just finish "The Gun" by CJ Chivers, which covers a lot of the same ground. Also excellent in my estimation.

http://amzn.com/0743271734

Someone wrote a book to try to answer that very question

it's based on the real life shipwreck that inspired Moby Dick. Other posters point to the Nathaniel Philbrick non-fiction book [In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex] (http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828)

lol. the book is totally amazing if you want to learn more.

I grew up in Kansas. It’s stupid. There’s literally been books written about it

https://www.amazon.com/dp/080507774X/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_i_lwC1DbXTQKMJP

I believe you're a bit taken in by the neocon propaganda. Muslims don't hate us for our freedoms and they aren't too much different than you or I in their life goals.

The part I believe that you haven't heard ever is how the US has for decades oppressed and exploited other countries. There are numerous examples of US economic manipulation and exploitation that cause serious hardship for the poor of other countries. This leads to a lot of underlying resentment for western style of business practices and what can be spun by the neocons as "liberalism".

If you truly want to educate yourself on the actions of the US around the world, I would suggest reading the book Overthrow.

Want to know more about Grand Canyon fatalities? I have a book recommendation for you.

Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon

Death in Yellowstone is a very interesting book. But I just couldn't finish it. It was too depressing, especially the stories of little children who died horrible or painful deaths.

I highly recommend the book "Death in Yellowstone"

A LOT of people have died from the hot springs.

One of the people mauled by a bear was someone from my hometown and a good friend of my dads at the time.

There is a whole chapter about horrible deaths resulting from people getting too close to the hot springs in the book Death in Yellowstone. It should be required reading before entering the park.

"The Worst Hard Time" is a good book about it.

https://www.amazon.com/Worst-Hard-Time-Survived-American/dp/0618773479

What's the Matter with Kansas. Not sure if that's still a popular book but it still holds up. I's like a textbook for why people vote against their own interests.

Welcome to the mind of a Trump voter. Where Putin and Duterte are heroes.


>Trump is simply the logical response to the Democratic Party going too far left on the political spectrum and ignoring the needs of the working class.

Trump makes all of his products in other countries. No way in hell that guy gives a shit about the middle class. He's just courting the undereducated people who will vote against their own interests. It's a GOP trade secret. Sorry dude. You are getting played again. A billionaire from new york city has no interest in helping your shitty cities. Every city that guy goes to, he dumps on.

I would recommend a book called "Whats the matter with Kansas". https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

What's the Matter with Kansas? is a good read. Despite being more than a decade old, most of the points put forth in it are relevant today.

It's a good title, and lately I've seen "What's the Matter with Iowa?" and "What's the Matter with Trumpland?"

I have a book recommendation for you: Command and Control

It's a superb read regarding a series of briefs on nuclear weapon safety in fire conditions, and how safe modern weapons are in comparison.

During the anti-Soviet jihad Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA.

CIA funding flowed to mujahideen via Pakistan, which fanned the flames of militancy to keep its influence in Afghanistan, and also use these elements against its fight with India.

These very forces were cause celebre to defeat the Russia, but once the funding dried up these elements had nothing to do. The nexus between Pakistan ISI and Taliban is well documented. The handlers ultimately failed to handle these extremists and now the dance with the devil is affecting Pakistan as well, among others.

Highly recommend reading this book on Taliban.

For anyone thinking "What? I thought Area 51 was for aliens!" I would encourage you to read Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen. Really interesting book that explores aerial reconnaissance and nuclear arms development post-WWII.

There's a really old book out there, I wanna say it's called Foxfire? It's basically a manual on living rough. It's, like, all the things. From how to build a cabin, to how to grow food, what plants you can eat, stuff like that.

Found it!

I can't offer you squat on job hunting, but I used to be a water lawyer here in California and if you want to read an insanely interesting book, that will always up your interest with anyone in any part of the water business in the US (or probably Canada, too), read Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert, which all about the history of the aquafication of the West. Looks like you are Europe-based from your job applications, but it is a fascinating story well worth your time.

https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244

Since you didn't specifically mention it: it was a whaleship that was attacked and sunk by a whale. For those who want to read more on this, I enjoyed this book.

Reading my first 'techo thriller' - a non-fiction booked called Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety.

If I'd have heard of the genre independently of this book I'd likely not find it appealing, but I am really really enjoying it. Absolutely blowing through it for how dense of a book it is. Also, if I could sum up the contents of this book so far I'd say 'shit is fucked'

Hiya, I am a person who lived in Korea in 2012-2013 and for six months up to April this year. I don't have a military perspective on the issue, but I can tell you a little about my experiences in Korea.

Firstly, know that this uptick in worry and hand-wringing about an imminent nuclear attack by North Korea goes in cycles. The US media get annoyed or bored with whatever it is that they are covering, and start to focus on NK again. This happens about once a year, usually in the springtime. In 2012 it was an imminent existential threat. In 2013 it was, too. As it was in 2014, 2015, 2016, and this year. You can almost set your watch by the coverage, and it is almost always as doomsday as the last time. I went on google's search engine and looked for 'north korea' as a search term for the time since 2004 and made images of each individual year here. Admittedly, 2017's graph looks a little different, but you can clearly see the cycles in the previous years. I would be willing to bet that 2017's graph is more due to POTUS tweeting and the generalized anxiety of the Left in the States than a genuine march toward war.

I'll be that you didn't know there was a genuine exchange of fire in Korea in 2010. There were tense moments of actual live fire for that whole of that year, leading to a 23 November bombardment of a South Korean island by North Korean artillery. 70+ South Korean houses were destroyed, and several were killed on both sides. Even with the tensions and the live artillery, the peninsula did not descend into open war.

In addition, you should know that the coverage of NK issues tends to be overblown in US media. I heard this story from even the likes of NPR the other day, and laughed aloud at the ridiculousness of it. It's lines like this that get the people back in the US riled up:

Defense Secretary James Mattis went within feet of the curbstone separating North and South Korea, where grim-faced North Korean troops stared across at him. It's known as one of the scariest spots on the planet.

That whole story is hyperbolic (and irresponsible reporting, imho). I went to the border at that exact place. It's part of a civilian tourist trip that runs almost every day. It wasn't exactly as the reporter made it seem, like he'd been helicoptered into an active conflict zone.

The DMZ is sad, confusing, and very absurd. But it's probably one of the safest places on Earth. You are infinitely more likely to be shot in any major United States city than at the DMZ. I'll concede that landmines are not a normal worry in US cities, but they don't tend to go off in the DMZ, either. The last time one went off was in 2015 (wounding two).

This time, admittedly, Trump is involved. But that doesn't change things too much except for making people feel more nervous. For this, I'm afraid that I have only a long-term remedy. You need to read Eric Schlosser's Command and Control. This book changed my views on nuclear weapons and greatly improved my understanding of the ways that a nuclear war could start. I don't feel comforted necessarily, but hearing about the ways that generals dealt with say, an alcoholic, depressed, borderline suicidal Nixon during the Watergate scandal made me feel a whole lot better about Trump being POTUS.

Finally, China. They are ascendant, gaining power, and working to make the region stable. They will not tolerate NK's bullshit rising to the level that the US might strike them. They'd just invade first. It wouldn't lead to massive, open conflict with the USA or South Korea. China is a player of the long game, and they will withdraw their support from the NK regime if necessary.

Hope that this helps! Please don't worry about this. Worry about more immediate problems in your own community.

I recomend the book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser, also available in audio format. It's a much better history and synopsis of the issues at hand.

Also, Command and Control is a good (non-fiction) read on the topic.

http://www.amazon.com/Taliban-Militant-Fundamentalism-Central-Edition/dp/0300163681/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396212194&sr=8-1

I haven't read it, but I trust the author, because I've read his more recent books.

It focuses more on Al-Qaeda, but Lawrence Wright's 'The Looming Tower', is usually the first book I suggest to people looking to learn more about the broader subject. My Trip to Al-Qaeda is a documentary that covers a little bit about the book, which I highly suggest reading.

Other authors I read about the Middle East:

Robert Fisk

Ahmed Rashid

Rashid Khalidi

Steve Coll

George Packer

Peter Bergen

Thomas Ricks

Dexter Filkins

Jeremy Scahill

You might like My Khyber Marriage and Valley of the Giant Buddahs. They are autobiographical reports by a Scotswoman who married a Pashtun and moved to Afghanistan in the 1920s. My Life: From Brigand to King--Autobiography of Amir Habibullah may also be of interest. It is an as-told-to autobiography of an Afghan brigand who briefly overthrew the King about ten years after the first two books were written. The Road to Oxiana is a bit clunky but offers a Western perspective on Afghanistan in the 1930s.

The more general Afghanistan of the Afghans, written by the husband of the woman mentioned above, focuses a lot of culture and cultural history, Afghanistan is a more general history and this Afghanistan claims to be more about the military history but I haven't read it myself to judge.

If you want something more contemporary, The Places In Between is a decent travelogue by an adventurer/preservationist/mercenary who walked through parts of the country. It didn't blow me away but it is interesting and most contemporary Afghan books from the West are such trash that this one shines in comparison. The author really did go to areas of Afghanistan about which most people know very little.

Ghost Wars is a popular book that focuses on the US involvement in the area during the Soviet Afghan war. Taliban is another popular book, and focuses on the Taliban in the 1990s and early 2000s. The link is to the second edition which I believe is updated.

There's a whole book of this stuff. We read stories aloud as we drove to and from the park. "Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park." Many stories of attempts at hot tubbing the pools, falling into the pools, rocks falling on heads, etc.

just some of my standard answers.


The Disappearing Spoon- yes, it's chemistry but I found it very interesting.


Abraham Lincoln's DNA- if you have a good background in genetics you might already know many of these stories. Read the table of contents first.


New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers- disease based biology. There is a follow up book if it turns out you like it.


Stiff- more than you wanted to know about dead bodies.


And by the same author but space based... Packing for Mars.

I hope these help... Cheers.

have you ever read stiff by Mary Roach? its quite good.

There is actually a lot of controversy on the lack of regulation for the global cadaver trade.

This is also a great read:

http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

There are a LOT of uses for cadavers.

Reading this book made me want to donate my body to science.

What we practice in the US now, embalming with airtight caskets (they have “burping coffins” like Tupperware to release gas) began during the Civil War because of the hideous condition the bodies would often arrive home in after so long. If you’re down with learning about all the different things having to with the funeral industry and as well as how industry professionals have either lobbied to make some absurd practices legal requirements or will try to convince you they are when they’re not then these are fascinating to read, Jessica Mitford’s The American Way Of Death and Mary Roach’s Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers. Some of the most interesting reading you’ll ever do to be sure.

This book, Stiff is partially about the body farm, among other things. It is an awesome read
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393324826/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_-7YHzbP900CXB

Yes. Read this book.

> What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

Replace the title with any GOP controlled state.

Wow, I look forward to sitting down and reading through what you linked to. On the subject of hidden or forgotten queer/gender history, have you read George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940?

Yes - all other things being equal. This exact situation has played out countless times in real life with ships lost at sea, and sailors on barren islands. Just look at what happened to the whaleship Essex (the inspiration for Moby Dick, and very well documented in Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea) - the fattest sailors lived the longest/survived, while the skinniest ones died first. In the case of the Essex and many other ships of the 17th-19th centuries, the white sailors lived longer than the black sailors because they had more privileged lifestyles and thus weren't as skinny. This is also why, apart from other social and diet factors, Polynesian peoples are bigger on average - when their ancestors where colonizing the Pacific and on the sea for months at a time, the naturally larger individuals didn't die of starvation as often, and were thus selected for.

From my understanding of how the implosion-type device that was Fat Man worked, the explosives that would drive the uranium into the plutonium core (which would cause the reaction) might go off. Since damage would have occurred when it was hit, the timing would be off on these detonations, preventing a full nuclear reaction.

For the record, there was also a concern that lightning strikes would cause the electronics on early nuclear devices to go haywire and detonate. It's a bit of a wonder that there weren't more nuclear accidents between 1940-1970.

(Source: Command and Control, by Eric Schlosser)

I'm currently reading Command and Control by Eric Schlosser, which weaves together a story about a nearly catastrophic accident at a missile site and the broader history of the command and control systems that governed the US nuclear arsenal.

Contrary to the widely held belief that nuclear missiles are highly "fail-safe" and stable in adverse conditions, most of the nuclear arsenal was (and perhaps still is) quite dangerous. Armed, ready-to-detonate bombs have been dropped by accident multiple times... Missiles have caught fire in their silos, threatening to fling a cloud of plutonium across hundreds of miles of American heartland... Warheads have been in the custody of an American force so tiny that they'd have no hope of protecting against a host country's decision to seize a weapon...

The list goes on. It is terrifying. I've long been deeply skeptical of putting too much power in the hands of an unaccountable government, and this book has solidified that fear so much.

The standard by which the US government evaluated choices with regard to nuclear weapon is hideous. Generals and Presidents talked regularly of options which would result in hundreds of millions of deaths, including pre-emptive strikes against the USSR during a period without any hostilities at all.

For supplemental reading, check out Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, The Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Nuclear Safety. By Eric Schlosser. A Pulitzer finalist.

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

There is also a documentary on Netflix(?) about the Damascus Accident, where a liquid fueled ICBM exploded inside the silo.

Read Ahmed Rashid's "Taliban" and "Descent Into Chaos". He's the guy in the picture for reference. One of the few people in the world who have actually interviewed Mullah Omar (the founder of the Taliban) as well as many other ranking officers within the command structure, without a doubt he's the foremost authority on the subject. Yet he writes in such a simple and direct manner about the facts and figures as they evolved, without any of the propaganda or politics.

If I had to synthesize my undergrad in Pol Sci into a handful of books, these two would be at the top of the list. Truly an eye opener into this issue

What's the Matter with Kansas. Good book.

(Relevant, because Kansas used to be at the forefront of progressivism.)

Everytime something shitty happens in Kansas(pretty often these days) I recommend this book

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

It's an excellent run down on politicians and single issue voters were played over and over again making Kansas what it is today. If you want to know why people routinely can be counted on to vote against their own interests it's a good read

> A Democrat will blugeon the customer over the head with moral outrage and smug superiority because their "customer" is too much of a "dumb redneck" to see the amazing wonders of the same old product they've been offering.

This could be the cover blurb for "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

There's an entire book about people who die in the Grand Canyon: https://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X

I read part of it and I recall that the most common death was 30ish males who died of dehydration because they underestimated their water needs. A lot of them thought it was a quick day trip to the bottom of the canyon and back. Didn't take any water and succumbed to thirst and exhaustion on the trip up.

This reminded me of a book I bought in Arizona... There is a book that documents every death in the Grand Canyon. A large chunk of those deaths is people who died trying to pee into it. http://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X

Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1570980217/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ZPwTAb8JCFRZX

Study, I dunno. I like to listen to books about nuclear science, nuclear power, weapons, accidents and the like while I'm driving. I don't do many fiction books.

While it may not be studying, learning about the world around you can help expand your mind and keep it active while you're focusing on the road. I've listened to these books a few times over by now.

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4
Link 5
Link 6

Trust me- if you're a donor, at least one part of you's gonna get used. Now, it might not be in a way you'd expect (your skin might end up in someone's ahem sausage enhancement), but the transplant lists are long as fuck. They're not gonna risk wasting even a tiny piece if they can help it

(Stiff-The Curious Life of Human Cadavers has more information on what happens to you if you're an organ donor postmortem if you're interested)

I cringed so hard when I was reading Stiff recently (which I actually highly recommend) and the author apparently interviewed Dr. Oz and cited him as a credible, medical source because of his work in cardiology.

The book came out in before his Oprah days and before having his own show, but it's just crazy how you can go from respected doctor at the top of your field to huge sell-out. I guess he just must be money hungry and eating up his newfound fame. I can't think of another reason why someone would make that career decision.

Along with Mary Roach’s Stiff, I have often recommended
Last Breath: Cautionary Tales from the Limits of Human Endurance. The former is science writing about cadavers, albeit lighthearted, and the latter is a collections of essays-wrapped-in-fictional-example (for lack of a better term) about what the body and mind go through when dying in various ways.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.

• Neil Degrasse Tyson

Yes and no. It was a combination of drought and the fact that farmers, in their zeal, replaced hardy native prairie grasses that were adapted to centuries of drought cycles with significantly less hardy wheat. Once the wheat dried up and died, there was nothing left to hold the topsoil down, and the rest is history.

I can highly recommend The Worst Hard Time if you'd like to read more on the fascinating and sad history of the Dust Bowl, usually largely overlooked in history classes but with some significant and surprising parallels to the modern day.

We weren't taken by surprise at Pearl:

http://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299

And the French were surprised by Hitler. They were well prepared for war sadly they were prepared for WWI

This guy nails it. "A brilliant analysis-and funny to boot-What's the Matter with Kansas? is a vivid portrait of an upside-down world where blue-collar patriots recite the Pledge while they strangle their life chances; where small farmers cast their votes for a Wall Street order that will eventually push them off their land; and where a group of frat boys, lawyers, and CEOs has managed to convince the country that it speaks on behalf of the People."

Cadillac Desert, one of the greatest books pn the topic of vanishing water and the American West.

According to the beef industry, it takes somewhere between 450-850 gallons water/pound of beef. Less biased research has put that number as high as 5,000 gallons water/pound of beef. Even at 450 gallons water/pound of beef it is still pretty ridiculous.

The vast majority of this water is consumed by irrigating fields to produce feed for cows. And this is no small portion of total water supplies. In CO, 30% of the total water use in the state goes directly to the livestock industry.

Cadillac Desert put it very succinctly "The West’s water crisis — and many of its environmental problems as well — can be summed up, implausible as this may seem, in a single word: livestock." As a restoration ecologist working in the western US, there is no greater hurdle I face than damage from cattle and cattle related activities.

If we're dropping books with mundane topics count me in

Cadillac Desert is a great book that talks about this Dam and the general messed up water policy in the America West that led to it (and many other misguided projects).

Fascinating read that gives a lot of context to just messed up water policy is in the USA.

here's the book. I myself haven't gotten around to it:

http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376622637&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=wahleship+essex

>Did you even go to college?

Yep. A couple of times, in fact.

>have you ever read a book?

Just finished this one. Excellent read. I highly suggest it.

>I dont expect someone like you to be an expert at philosophy, let alone be threatened by a concept so much that the only people who believe in it MUST be juveniles.

No, I just know enough about the philosophy to see the absurdity of it. I also know enough about human nature to know it's yet another in a long line of mildly interesting intellectual exercises that have no bearing in practicality because of the very nature of humanity.

>If you could entertain a future of private law enforcement, you might be out of a job.

It's more likely that I end up being assigned to a manned mission to Mars that your absurd AnCap ideas actually be tried in any actual civilization.

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

Great book on the topic, that exposes a lot of the madness that led to and surrounded the incident. There's also a film of the same name.

It's not common knowledge. More liek common lies. The 'source' you cite is hardly one. It appears to be a compilation of rumors and what 'some analysts believe'. Basically meaningless.

A good source to start with with is Ahmed Rashid, who wrote the definitive account about the origins of the Taliban called ... well, "Taliban". In his travels during the 1990s through Afhanistan he bumped into a certain hothead from Saudi Arabia with lots of money to throw around. Rashid is a Pakistani reporter who was on the ground, and appears to have attended the earliest meetings with these militants, that eventually led to the creation of the Taliban. Before that though, he was in and out of the Afghan war zone and clearly remembered seeing Osama Bin Laden before he became the world's bogeyman.

Rashid wrote - not too surprisingly - that everyone knew the source of the money that was putting weapons into the hands of these fighters. Everyone, of course, included Osama. Rashid went on to say that Osama was greatly offended by the idea that foreign western entities were paying for the defense of a Muslim homeland. In Osama's mind, there was no honor in fighting against one infidel (USSR) with the materials and funds provided by other infidels (US, Europe, et al). In addition, Osama had money. He was rich. He didn't need western handouts. Rashid goes into great detail about these visits and proves the lie that the US or any other foreign country provided any direct assistance to the creation of Al Qaeda.

Edit: The book - http://www.amazon.com/Taliban-Militant-Fundamentalism-Central-Edition/dp/0300163681

MiB? No way. The reality of the situation was that it was a bunch of insanely smart people developing novel solutions to spying on the soviets - you had one group of people working (under IMMENSE pressure) to develop a paint that absorbs radar, and another group working to develop the proper angles to deflect radar, and sometimes they weren't even sure what project they were working on. Then it all came together and it turns out the teams were working on the SR-71.

That can be the first episode; maybe the second or third can focus on one of the janitorial staff working on cleaning up on a project that ended up killing some of them.

http://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/dp/0316202304 <- probably not ALL bullshit, and a really cool, honest look about some of the crazy shit that goes down in covert R&D facilities.

"It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere seventy-five miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada's desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the U.S. government-but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades.

Myths and hypotheses about Area 51 have long abounded, thanks to the intense secrecy enveloping it. Some claim it is home to aliens, underground tunnel systems, and nuclear facilities. Others believe that the lunar landing itself was filmed there. The prevalence of these rumors stems from the fact that no credible insider has ever divulged the truth about his time inside the base.

Until now."

https://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/dp/0316202304

It depends on what you want to get out of it. If you want a clear, intro-level overview of the subject, check out Shafer-Landau's Fundamental's of Ethics. It's a fantastic place to start, and it is the book I recommend if you really want to understand the subject and plan to read outside the context of a class.

If you want primary texts, I suggest that you get the book's companion, The Ethical Life.

If you want a textbook that is a little shorter and more engaging, check out Rachels' The Elements of Moral Philosophy.

If you want an introduction that's informative and fun to read but less informative than the Rachels or the Shafer-Landau, check out Sandel's Justice. You can also watch his Justice lectures online. This book, as opposed to the other two, is written for a popular audience.

> that people on the downstream side of the watershed will not have enough water

...or more likely agribusiness, state/local governments, NA tribes, or other highly organized interests. A horrifying but thorough analysis of the Western water crisis can be found in Marc Reisner's 'Cadillac Desert.'

There are a lot of water rights disputes going on in court all the time. When it is one state suing another state, they have to start at the US Supreme Court, like Montana v. Wyoming (pdf). If you are ever in a law class and they ask you if the US Supreme Court could be the first court a case is held in, state vs state is it.

In this case, farmers in Wyoming switched from flood irrigation to sprinkler irrigation, and this resulted in less water running back into the river (and thus less water flowing to Montana). Wyoming still only took the same amount of water they always took, which was what the 1950 treaty/compact allowed. Montana claimed that the water treaty didn't allow this sort of behavior, but the Supremes ruled that if the treaty was going to work the way Montana wanted, it would have been written that way (and they gave examples of other state treaties that were written that way).

One older book that discusses how badly we've screwed our water up in the Western US is Cadillac Desert.

The book Cadillac Desert is an excellent read on water rights in the western US--I quite highly recommend it!

I recommend to everyone on this thread to read Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner.

http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244

"Whiskey is for drinking, Water is for fighting"

And I got something for you.
https://www.amazon.com/Poisoners-Handbook-Murder-Forensic-Medicine/dp/014311882X

Companies will sell things that literally kill their customers and fight tooth and nail to keep doing so. Government had be dragged, kicking and screaming, into actually doing something. It took public demand and outrage. Countless thousands died and millions carried life-long effects due to outright malfeasance by both public and private sectors.

So when you say "regulation" like a 4 letter word, I laugh at your ignorance.

Is this the book in question?

Also I wouldn't be super confident about that - reading this book shows that the security and safety of nuclear weapons has historically been pretty slap dash.

anybody who is tired of not being worried about accidental nuclear annihilation should check out this book

Read Command and Control it's far from the first time Airmen were getting high while working around nukes.

John Rawls may be a good place for you to start for a "modern" perspective (look here first: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/ )

Michael Sandel wrote a pretty readable book based off his popular harvard course on the topic. You can find the book here ( https://www.amazon.com/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do/dp/0374532508 ) or even just check out the course itself here ( http://justiceharvard.org/justicecourse/ )

​

Hope this helps! This isn't my area of interest but I have come across them along the way.

I really enjoy Justice by Michale Sandel. It's a series of riveting lectures that serve as a great entry into philosophy through ethics and justice.

You can also read his book.

I have all the Foxfire books so if I have to I can dress a hog or build a log cabin, even though at the moment I live in an apartment where I'm currently growing butter lettuce and herbs on my balcony.

I can't see it being a problem. Here's a Goodreads collection of cannibalism books if you need comps. Some appear to be YA.

For research purposes, I would recommend chapters in Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (non-fiction). Contrary to popular belief, The Sex Lives of Cannibals doesn't contain cannibalism. It is hilarious South Pacific travel writing though.

This.

>The largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically.

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

If you look at the states with the lowest per capita income, a large chunk of which are the former Confederacy, it's a split. Mississippi has a large black population voting overwhelmingly Democratic, and a white population voting overwhelmingly Republican (now that the parties have finally switched polarities). The split is cultural/racial, despite the fact that the black and white working class in the state have far more things in common than differences.

My dad recommends What's the Matter with Kansas? as a way to show the split between the economic status of conservative voters and those that benefit from conservative policies.

> bit dull to claim that the U.S goal of the Korean war was to overthrow the PRC

It has always been the goal and it still is

USA’s warfare against China 1/2 | http://www.voltairenet.org/article177063.html

USA’s warfare against China 2/2 | http://www.voltairenet.org/article177116.html

 

Here is how America spreads by democracy....through government toppling

http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409/

Read "Overthrow" by Stephen Kinzer. It's a great book that details all of the 14 governments the US has had a part in overthrowing. He does a great job of establishing the context in each situation, which often highlights how short sighted the people involved in these events really were.

Another comprehensive, really well written book on the same subject.

I know I'm late to the party and there are a lot of good answers, and there are a lot of "hur der cause koran" replies...

This isn't so much on the extremism rise in Islam but more to the anti-western sentiment. This is more of a summary and lacking a lot of detail but a lot of it can be traced back to Operation Ajax in 1953 where MI6, with the help of the CIA, decided to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and put "their guy" (the Shah) in charge because Mosaddegh wanted to nationalize Iranian oil, thus making AIOC (now part of BP) pay more taxes if they wanted to drill in Iran.

It is hard to make a TLDR to the situation in Iran between the coup and the revolution in 1979 but essentially. Shah turned out to be a dick as a ruler, people were pissed at the US and GB for helping force the pro west regime change, started gathering in mosques since the Shah banned public gatherings due to riots, anti-west / radical clerics get into the heads of people that are pissed and things start going downhill from there.

Now you have a hard anti-west sentiment growing around the region and the west essentially cock blocking any attempt at people getting back on their feet so you have a lot of poor, uneducated people that have a lot of hate toward the US. They may not be completely sure why but as is the case with most extremely uneducated people they listen to what they consider to be smart people, in this case the clerics who are telling them to hate the US even more. A lot of the terrorists in the field (the meat shields sent out to die) are illiterate and couldn't read the Koran if you put it in front of them so they only know what they are told.

It doesn't help the US when it decides to go in every few years and bomb things back to the stone age. There may be justification to some of the bombing like removing someone who is truly bad but some of the people that live there don't see it that way, obviously. All they see is the US rolling in with their tanks blowing their houses and killing their children. This doesn't justify what the terrorists are doing by any means in my opinion but it may help shed some light on why they are doing it.

The more detailed read you could start with:
1953 Iranian coup d'état - Wiki


Steven Kinzer's - All the Shah's Men and Overthrow are also pretty good.

Books I’d recommend:

House of Rain by Craig Childs: Part travel journal, part science. It gives the best account of pre-historic and historic southwestern history I’ve ever read. I really recommend this to anyone who knows a little (or a lot) about the Ancestral Puebloan (formerly Anasazi) culture and wants something that puts it all together. If you only visited Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, Wupatki, Chaco, or Walnut Canyon, you might be a little confused by the different narratives. This’ll straighten you out and is just a really great read.

The Outlaw Trail by Charles Kelly: Written in the 1920’s by the first superintendent of Capitol Reef National Park. What makes this different from other books about Butch Cassidy is that Kelly interviewed former members of the Wild Bunch. Many of them were still alive, so it’s a great historical account, as well as being a great western story. If you plan to visit SE Utah at any time, read this and you’ll recognize a lot of the place names as you drive from Arches to Canyonlands and Capitol Reef.

Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon by Ghiglieri & Myers: Tired of the books filled with heartwarming ranger tales about baby bears? This contains an account or listing of every person who’s ever died in the Grand Canyon. Drowning, suicide, accidents, falls, snake bites, tetnus - it’s all there. Has just as much nitty gritty info as you ever wanted, if kind of morbid, but extremely fascinating - and now part of a series.

Photographing the Southwest by Laurent Martres: Obviously a great book for photography tips, but I use it mostly as a guidebook. He has fantastic directions to all the popular spots as well as some little-known areas. What makes it even better is he’s very clear on if a normal sedan can drive there, or if you’ll need a Jeep. As a Camry owner in the land of Jeep trails, this is invaluable. His information is accurate in the National Parks and he doesn’t direct people into dangerous or illegal situations. It’s an excellent book for areas outside the parks as well. Then, when you get to your cool spot, you’ll know how to get a good photo of it.

Unfortunately these stories are nothing new. It's odd to have a lot of stupid people this early, but the whole history of Yellowstone has people dying due to their own stupidity.

One of my favorite books is Death in Yellowstone. Glad to know they're getting plenty of material for Volume 2.

have you ever read Deaths in Yellowstone? I spent a week there years ago and read that book during my stay. it made for some very interesting talking points at various sites.

Probably this.

https://www.amazon.de/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217


Edit: Here is a small interview, topic related.

http://www.yellowstonepark.com/unnatural-deaths-yellowstone-national-park-avoid/

For more information on this I'd recommend the excellent book "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" by Eric Schlosser.


It's a really great history of America's nuclear program and how close we were to disaster so many times. Highly recommended.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C5R7F8G?btkr=1

Have you seen their Highlights for High School feature?

Also, there are sites like Academic Earth that might be useful.

Here are a few blogs with potential. You'll have to decide for yourself if they have inappropriate content.

Here are a few book recommendations covering various fields, in no particular order (though they should all read #1):

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything
   
2. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
   
3. Einstein: His Life and Universe
   
4. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
   
5. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
   
6. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
   
7. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
   
8. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
   
9. This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
   
10. Cosmos
    
11. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
    
12. The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy
    
13. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
    
14. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human
    
15. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
    
16. Thinking, Fast and Slow
    
17. Chaos: Making a New Science
    
18. Isaac Newton
    
19. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
    
20. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales
    
    And here's a video interview with Richard Feynman they might enjoy.

If you wouldn't be weirded out by it, I high recommend reading Stiff. It's a really great read about the various ways they use cadavers for scientific research. It's actually quite helpful and important. There's a story in there about medical students at a University (I can't remember which) who would have memorial services for their cadavers at the end of the semester. Really neat stuff.

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History available on iTunes podcasts as well.

Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of our Nature is a fantastic total annihilation of Watchtower’s constant fearmongering about how much violence there is in the world and how it’s only getting worse.

Basically anything by Richard Dawkins is evolutionary biology gold, highly recommend his book The Greatest Show on Earth

Neil deGrasse Tyson recently released a great book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry that gives so many mind-blowing facts about our universe in quick-to-read fashion. His podcast StarTalk Radio is fascinating and fun as well.

Bart D Ehrman is a fantastic biblical scholar, his book Forged examines the Gospel writers and why many are not who the religious believe them to be.

Read this if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/Gay-New-York-Culture-1890-1940/dp/0465026214

Chauncey taught "U.S. Lesbian and Gay History" last fall, and after hearing him reconstruct U.S. sexual history through his unique gloss, I actually felt like I understood myself a lot better in the context of not only today's gay culture. I appreciate a lot more deeply now how the way I interact with and feel around other gay men didn't just pop out of nowhere. Seriously; I really recommend it.

____

"Short" answer: Legal discrimination, oppressive social norms, and post-WWII pressures to maintain a nuclear family structure pushed gay life "underground" and created a collective consciousness. Once gay people understood sexual orientation to be an identity category, (similar to race or gender or class), spaces unique to gay men began to form their own counterculture. In such spaces, where secrecy and discretion were critical to maintaining a "double life," traditional relationship structures like monogamy didn't often fit the bill. On the flip side, these spaces afforded the privacy necessary to play with norms (e.g. drag). Many features of contemporary gay life are thus remnants of this past, and the fact that gay people can even imagine living a suburban life with 2.5 kids, white picket fences, and a happy marriage is an indication of sexual assimilation...well, depending on who you ask.

I obviously glossed over a lot of nuance in that paragraph, but I hope that helps.

People have argued that in fact Roosevelt engineered Pearl Harbor to specifically entice the Japanese into attacking because he knew it would make people demand involvement in the war. It sounds like a conspiracy theory but it's pretty documented.

https://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299

> never smelled a dead body

In fact, I'm reading this right now. Yes, there's a description of the body breakdown and the, uh, aromas generated.

I've been on a non-fiction kick myself.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is good. Very funny, very informative.

Packing for Mars and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers both by Mary Roach were also fun to read.

Books: "Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues", "10 Ways to Recycle a Corpse: and 100 More Dreadfully Distasteful Lists", check for related items on Amazon for both of these books.

Buy something from oddities/taxidermy shops. https://www.facebook.com/Csoddities - I don't know if they sell online, it's a small shop, but you get the general idea.

Take her/him to the museum of death or crime or anatomy. Many cities have them.

Go to together to St. Petersburg, Russia (Russia itself is morbid enough!) to visit this museum: http://www.saint-petersburg.com/museums/kunstkammer-museum-antropology-ethnography/

If you don't have much money, buy a (fake) shrunken and from Amazon, take it out of box and say it's real :)))

This website might be also a good start to find something close to you: http://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/anatomy-museums

Edit: also this book: http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why? by Laurence Gonzales

Swimming to Antarctica : Tales of Long Distance Swimming by Lynne Cox

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

I was home for a holiday, and found these laying around my mother's book stash. She recommended all of them and I thoroughly enjoy each one. Although, usually I read fiction. All of these books are intriguing, well-written, and educational. If you never read non-fiction a good place to start is reading Mary Roach. Here is her TED talk about orgasms.

This was the one that we used for Cosmology. It starts pretty gentle but moves into the metric tensor fairly quickly. If you don't have the maths I don't know that it'll help you to understand them but it'll definitely have all the terms and equations. As with Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics, the funny haired man himself actually had a pretty approachable work from what I remember when I tried reading it.

​

This one has been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. Given the authors reputation for popularizing astrophysics and the title I think it might be a good place to start before you hit the other ones.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by NDT

Though I haven't read it you might have luck with Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking

There's also audiobooks for both if she's into that sort of thing.

The ball scene extends back into the 20s too. Check out Gay New York by George Chauncey: https://www.amazon.com/Gay-New-York-Culture-1890-1940/dp/0465026214

It's probably more of a spectrum, and any given person's place on that spectrum shifts over time due to environmental factors, hormones, brain chemistry, and arguably choice (to the extent that choice exists independent of all of those other factors). This was recognized throughout most of human history going back to antiquity, with many first nation tribes recognizing gender fluidity, ancient assyrian cults based around transgenderism, Indian Hirja, transgender poet mystics in Persian Sufism, Greek clergy of Sappho and Cybele, much of the apprenticeship structure of Japanese culture- particularly during the Edo period, tribes of the Madzimbabwe changing their gender as a way of commanding powerful magic linked to creation of life and virility, first nations berdache, mezoamerican guevedoces, Oaxacan muxe. There were transgendered persons through the Parisian courts of love, in the courts of the Venetian doges, and the courts at Lisbon.

Even the U.S. has a more complex history of gender fluidity than most people assume. Our current bivalent view of being either straight or gay, male or female is only as old as the 1930's, and reflects more of a shift towards cultural assimilation that coincided with the mass migration of population away from ethnic centered city neighborhoods to suburban neighborhoods (where extended kin network and local tavern was replaced by local church and high school) that began with the Temperance/Progressive Movements.

Prior to that, there was an extensive and highly visible transgender culture, particularly in larger eastern cities, particularly in NYC, from the 1880's through the 1930's, and views on orientation and gender were much more fluid than what's assumed to be the natural order today. Transgender "faerie" prostitutes were pretty common. Equally common was male patronage of said prostitutes, which was viewed not as "gay", but as normative, even specifically masculine behavior.

George Chauncey wrote a good monograph about it. https://www.amazon.com/Gay-New-York-Culture-1890-1940/dp/0465026214

It bears remembering that human beings are more weird and complex than simplistic explanations give them credit for.

And read Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time, which was a source for Burn's work and goes into greater detail.

Ed. I had many in my family (all dead now) who survived this. I'm not sure which caused more of my dad's PTSD: nearly starving during the depression or the hell of WW2. He was obsessed with cleanliness, though. The dust got everywhere. There was no stopping it.

Great pics! Have you read The Worst Hard Time? it's a really interesting book about the Dust Bowl. I didn't fully appreciate the scope of the disaster before reading it - it still is hard to comprehend dust storms capable of moving hundreds of tons of topsoil.

Exactly. Most people still think that FDR had nothing to do with the attack on Pearl Harbor for example [1]. Since no one reads anymore (especially history), everyone still thinks FDR had no prior knowledge of the attack and are blissfully unaware that in fact he intentionally provoked the attack.
-----------------
[1] "Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor" by Robert Stinnett

C.J. Chiver's novel The Gun is a fantastic read about the AK's conception and how it was designed vs. the M-16, which had parts with tight tolerances clearances, causing them to readily jam in harsh (think Vietnam) conditions.

edit thanks for /u/csl512 for the correction

If you are really interested, I really recommend The Gun by CJ Chivers

The thesis of your comment is brilliantly expounded upon in Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?

If you haven't read it yet, I think you'd enjoy What's the Matter with Kansas?

Added a new chapter to Five for Iron, set five years before canon. (Here's the ff.net link, for anyone who prefers that site.) Anywho, this chapter is my first from Winter's POV, and I'm hoping I did an OK job with that, while still keeping the premise engaging.

Reading:
I finished Cadillac Desert this week, and I've gotten about 100 pages into Animal, Vegetable, Miracle since then. Both are brilliantly written and wonderfully subversive, but considering my line of work I may be a smidge biased.

I'm surprised these haven't been mentioned yet:
In The Heart Of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick - The true story behind Moby Dick (and much easier to read).
Batavia by Peter Fitzsimons - Insane true story of a shipwreck, then it gets worse...

Also for fans of non-fiction novels try Longitude by Dava Sobel and Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson - both involve the sea. *edit for some obvious typo's

Not all of these have cannibalism, but most:

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Poe, The Boat, In The Heart of The Sea (this is a really awesome book, as are the authors other works), Endurance, Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls, The Wreck of the Medusa, The Wreck of the Dumaru, Life of Pi

A couple non-fiction (with a legal focus) books about the Mignonette incident and the resulting famous case of Regina v Dudley and Stevens: Is Eating People Wrong?, and The Custom of the Sea

Assuming she doesn't have it ready: The Poisoner's Handbook is a great read about the early history of forensic science mostly told though cases/the life of NYC's first medical examiner.

I don't have a TV suggestion, but if you're into reading, The Poisoner's Handbook is really great!

Not strictly about that topic but check out Command and Control, it covers the development of U.S. nuclear and nuclear safety policy from inception to present.

Does support some of what CommandoDude is saying, MAD was a U.S. invention. Doesn't cover the Russian aspect of it unfortunately.

Right off the top of my head, I'd recommend the two books in our wiki that touch on the subject:

• Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil by John Ghazvinian does a great job looking at the importance of oil in Africa. Given Africa is the mid-to-long term future of the global economic engine (with China being the immediate and India being the near-term) it's worth the read.
  
  
• The chapter about oil in Ahmed Rashid's Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia does a great job offering another lens to see the current Afghanistan conflict through. It's also much shorter than the aforementioned piece.
  
  ---
  
  I would add that a better lens for understanding oil, and energy as a whole, would be to read up and understand supply chains.
  
  What's the saying... A good General is a master tactician, a great General is a master strategian, but a legendary General is a master logician logistician. While a little off-topic and admittingly anecdotal, I've always liked this story; one of the main reasons the Romans continually bested their foes is because they saw conflict through the lens of "how many bushels of wheat will it take to sustain X Legionnaires" while their enemies simply counted how many swords were raised against them. That mindset with a methodical, disciplined fighting style allowed the Legionnaires to grind out their opponents over and over again. (Google The History of Rome podcast if that last story peaked your interest.)
  
  That last story about the Romans may seemed removed from modern day, but a recent example of just that is NATO's Libya campaign in 2011. Started at the behest of France/Italy, the US had to take over operations because their European allies literally ran out of ammo within a month into the campaign.

If you ever wanted to read about the interesting history of the creation of the SR-71, check out this book [Area 51] (http://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/dp/0316202304)

The last chapter or so of this book jumps the tracks and goes off on some crazy conspiracy theories but the first part on the history of the U-2 and SR-71 is pretty good.

• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - I loved her book Boink about sex which I read a few years ago. Really funny and informative.
  
  
• [Pretty Little Liars](http://www.amazon.com/Pretty-Little-Liars-Box-Set/dp/0061801313/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411518792&sr=1-2&keywords=pretty+little+liars_ =) - I have read 10 of these in the past couple weeks. My little sister got me hooked on them and the show which we binge watched together on Netflix. Yes they are horrible and trashy but my inner 13 year old girl loves them and I must find out who A is!!! Judge away people because I dun curr.

One of my all time favorites is Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, about a climbing season on Mount Everest where a lot of things went wrong.

I also enjoy Mary Roach - she has a great gift of being able to convey information while being really entertaining in the process. Stiff is my favorite of hers, but I also really enjoyed Packing For Mars.

>there are also surgical anatomy electives you can take later that involve surgeons (and aspiring surgeons) doing specific operations on one or more parts of your body.

This is also mentioned in the book "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers."

From here, if I remember correctly, read it long ago: https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

What's The Matter With Kansas?

How did we NOT tell he's a succ?

>the U.S. needs more input from sociology and less from economics

SUCCiology OUT OUT OUT

>The Democrats have been the party of the social safety net, and have long wondered why so many working-class Americans don’t seem to appreciate those benefits.

E C O N O M I C A N X I E T Y: jobs edition

> You were the one citing the 4 of 5 statistic. I assumed you had the data.

FTA, means From The Article. Just quoting from the article. You mentioned an assumption.

> I know several others in similar situations. I don't have data, but that's because I have life experience.

That isn't how any science works. Not even the social sciences which aren't pure or even necessarily just applied sciences, but humanities with scientific principles.

> I lived in a small town for over 20 years.

See, here is where we really need to define what is truly rural and what is urban. There are also costs associated in small towns growing so if you come to a small town, and say you build new, those houses unlike the original ones, will have impact fees built into the cost. What you might not realize is that housing over the last few decades has gotten significantly more expensive, often because of sprawl or lack of efficiency.

Any its not the point of you car breaking down. What if you have an ongoing problem, what if the mechanic is busy? The point being you can be seriously inconvenience, and since you offered it as advice of how to live cheaply why should we assume some has a brand spanking new car. It likely might be a car that needs maintenance.

> I lived in a town of 10,000 people. You don't need to leave, especially with internet access.

Well I've know plenty of people in towns of 10,000 people and they often were bored out of their minds, so they would drive to the next closest larger city for things to do.

> Yeah, but the initial water quality is what we were getting at I thought.

No, that's the thing, modern treatment plants can take literally crappy water and turn it into something pristine. I know because I have toured the facilities and know people in the field. I also have a property with a well and have been blessed with good water, yet neighbors down the road have had problems. You need to test regularly, there is just more responsibility to have to worry about.

But see you're talking about a city of 10,000, so you may not really be living all that rural. Depends on how far out you live.

> Fracking issues? Really? Please cite one of these occurrences in Wisconsin.

Does it really matter that it is Wisconsin? You held up your statement like it was a universal truth. Wisconsin honestly has been lucky but note, its not just the fracking itself, but the materials, like sand and water which can drop the water table.

Well have always had this consideration especially if local agriculture sucks the water table down and people have to re-drill to get it.

> I lived in a rural setting for 20 years. I know the situation. I don't have to "trust you" on what I lived.

There is only one fact in that sentence, and even that's sort of debatable. It sounds like you lived in a small town in a rural area that had some of the amenities that larger cities might have especially due to recent advances in technology. Trust is not an issue. Numbers, data, research is what we should seek, and we don't trust those, we verify those. Trust involves faith.

But personal anecdotes are not applicable to general situations. So if that is going to be presented as evidence it may be dismissed by everyone as such. Doesn't mean its not true, just that we have no way of knowing, nor should we trust it, for the reasons stated above.

> Many rural areas are near small towns. A rural county usually has 'the town' that serves that purpose and is only 10-15 minutes away.

That's still travel. Again we're sort picking apart just some simple examples, there could be more, still beside the point. Gas will be more because anything that isn't in immediate proximity will need to either be shipped, or you will need to travel for it. If you hang out online for entertainment and order from Amazon, then the discount rural life might be just fine, if you have good Internet access. Again, if.

> A riding mower? If you're going to have a yard that big, you should probably afford it before you buy it. That's like saying that someone's swimming pool costs are too high.

No, its not. People choose to have a pool. No only chooses the size of their yard, it is part of the parcel they buy. Or were you only talking renting?

> I was saying that people who live in rural areas make less money, many times minimum.

Well then that complicates things further. You make less money in a rural setting, and you supposedly pay less, according to you because you don't have the overhead of the city. But on the flip side the reason people are paid more in the city is because of supply and demand which is why the housing may be more, you may have some more taxes, but all services are far more economical to provide per person or per capita because of economies of scale.

So what you have to do is calculate the CoL rural and compare to CoL urban factoring in all aspects and then compare. You might, I'm not saying you won't. I'm saying its not a guarantee that you will unless you do all the math.

> It might be anecdotal, but it doesn't make it untrue. A strong farming community can support itself.

Never said it did. The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it has a very small sample size so we have no way of knowing the truth until it is no longer anecdotal. I'm saying that you have to look far more into the situation with all the data, and that still doesn't refute the OP which appears to be based on research or non-anecdotal evidence.

But, a strong farm community is harder to find. Why? Because the individual farmers that supported each other are growing scarce being replaced with industrial farming.

> Because cities tend to have liberals who want to spend that money rather than return it to the people who earned it and it's impractical to have a public bus in a town of 500.

Okay, now you are just being silly. If you check Wisconsin history, farmers used to be progressive because they were in battle with the train owners who liked to gouge them for their shipment costs. Its recent manufactured fokelore that Urban=liberal and rural=conservative.

You might actually want to read this one book, What's The Matter with Kansas which shows how of some of what you are referring to came to be.

> It also doesn't mean those problems don't exist in urban areas too.

It seems to be grasping at straws. All areas may have problems. Like I said over concentration has problem, under concentration also has problems. The OP was talking about a problem of rural poverty that any sociologist could tell you is a problem, but you, if I understand correctly, seem to be denying its existence by personal experiences.

> I disagree. I seem to recall hearing constantly during the farm bill debate about why the food stamps were included, and that was the reason I mentioned.

So you heard something once recently and that makes it a fact? You realize that is what is wrong with the current media and public, we don't challenge these ridiculous notions out of hand. Plenty of politicians on either side of the aisle support farm subsidies if it affect them or their people.

The OP topic was "The silent problem - rural poverty is rampant." Unless you have some information to say why the post is completely wrong that doesn't involve your singular personal experience coupled with a few people you know, then we'll have to go with the post having merit and needing further discussion and investigation.

> Have you lived in a rural setting? For how long if so? I get the feeling I'm trying to explain what a burger tastes like to a man with no taste buds.

Actually I know what a good grass fed burger tastes like, but we don't find them as often. Do you know why?

Actually I own a rural property that has been in the family for a couple generations. Its not farmed but it is in a rural setting. And all the problems that I cited, you know the personal anecdotes, those are all things that we contend with when were are there. Do you know why we don't live there full time? Because the city, a reasonable sized city offered many, many more choices especially employment. And grass fed burgers should I desire them.

> I disagree. Plus, if you think rural areas need the help, isn't this a good thing for them?

No. Not at all. Because the money isn't going to local areas that are desperate for tax money to maintain services like schools, another thing that doesn't scale well in the rural setting, no they stay just far enough out. It's a very deliberate tax dodge and its not simply retiring boomers, as many of them may not be well off. These are people who did not make money off the land as farmers but did so elsewhere and now flee from the city with their earnings and create paradise in the middle of nowhere.

> Not really. You can build/buy a 2006 2 million dollar house for $300,000. I know of a sale like that that just happened near my hometown.

This actually is getting to be beside the point, it was a simple observation that raises questions.

To be honest, I think it is more people who like the idea of having wealth that no one can see.

> That's a reasonable retirement mortgage if you invested wisely and are putting the sale of another house toward the purchase.

And if you didn't lose your pension, 401k, job, have a major healthcare problem or any number of circumstances. But that was just an observation. And now we're debating over budget mansions?

I'd go back and read the article itself and see if there wasn't a larger point you missed, no offense. It was never to argue against a rural way of life nor disrespect those who live in a rural setting. Quite the contrary. In fact, since it says it is the title and you said it yourself. You lived in a rural setting and even you don't it to be a problem.

So that means The Silent Poverty rampent in rural areas actually is a mystery especially if neighbors like you are unaware.

The book Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq is a great read and goes into detail on just about every example you could want over the last hundred years. You can buy it on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409

The book is Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon and it was written by the former head of the clinic at the South Rim and a biologist who leads river trips, in the hope of educating people about the fact that the Canyon is not an amusement park but a dangerous and demanding wild place. The book turned out to be an incredibly entertaining read, but whether it has prevented any deaths is hard to tell. There seems to be an unlimited supply of the sort of people most likely to act like jerks near the rim: 18-29 year old males.

As someone who is still in shock about the genuinely accidental fall and death of another expert hiker earlier this week, I'm having a lot of trouble finding this photo amusing.

I find it hard to push for complete disarmament as long as the technology exists, but rolling back the stockpile to something less than needed to destroy a nation several hundred times over still sounds good.

I found the recent Eric Schlosser - Command and Control book pretty interesting with stories of how just managing the nuclear armaments carries plenty of risks, too.

Do you have any data to support these assertions? Im curious, but hard numbers really are important here.

> http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

This seems as relevant as ever. Im adding it to my "to read" list, sadly itll be a while till I get to it though.

What's the matter with Kansasa

Look, I don't even know where to begin. That was a lot of assumptions. I'm sorry you have this view of the left. I don't believe at all that leftists dislike rural people, nor dislike them simply because they are rural. The hatred that many on the left is not directed at rural people, but conservative ideology.

The left does see conservative ideology as a major barrier to making the world better, for both economic reasons and reasons of social justice. But the left doesn't see the rural, white working class as the cause of this ideology. The ideology is perpetuated by the wealthy and powerful. But for me personally, I don't blame anyone personally for believing in this ideology. I don't think conservatives or even the wealthy are bad, evil people, I simply think they are wrong.

Liberals are more likely to pity rural folk, if anything (which granted is condescending), because we feel that they've been duped by the wealthy into supporting politics that simply make the wealthy wealthier, allowing them to exploit the working class further and destroy the environment for their own profit.

I know I can't convince you of anything here or even force you to see another perspective on your politics.

But I would like you start making an attempt to learn more about liberals, and get to know some personally. Liberals are people, and I feel like you've forgotten that. You've really managed to demonize them, because you sincerely believe that they have demonized you and the people you care about, but I don't believe that's largely true. You can cherry pick examples of anything. I'd really appreciate it if you would make an effort to talk to more liberals. Maybe asks some questions on /r/askaliberal, or expand your media diet. Especially try to talk to some in person.

This is a classic book which claims that conservatives, in the 90s, came to see politics as no longer a matter of rich vs. poor, but a matter of NASCAR vs Starbucks, as a cultural matter rather than an economic matter, which works out really well for the rich. https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

​

​

​

People have been asking that for over 10 years...

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457235862&sr=8-1-fkmr2

What's the Matter With Kansas by Thomas Frank. 2005.

Yeah, it's that whole "What's The Matter With Kansas?" phenomenon.

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X
This is a great read on the subject.

"What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America" is a great book on this subject. It talks a lot about how rural conservatives have been convinced into voting for harmful measures against small town America.

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478737100&sr=8-1&keywords=what%27s+the+matter+with+kansas

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

As relevant 10 years ago as it is today, but i think people are beginning to catch on.

"What's The Matter With Kansas" is actually the title of a pretty interesting book. http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

Drunk or not, I hope you keep this up.

It sounds like you really gained a lot from your time in, namely: (1) personal growth and maturity, and (2) a broadened world view from experience. Experience as someone actively taking part in US foreign policy, and also just as a young American going overseas and seeing how the rest of the world lives (and how truly fortunate we are here). Just that you called your 16-year-old self "naive" shows this change in mindset. Also, I think that any introspection is healthy and natural, especially for such a serious topic. It's a tough time, especially watching the current shit-storm in Iraq with those ISIS assholes.


I appreciate and generally agree with Nate Fick's view of the US on the international stage:
http://youtu.be/7mBr1UydKf0?t=18m2s

Sure, the US has done some not-so-great things or maybe done well-intentioned things the wrong way. But I don't think we're the bad guys in the broader scheme of things. Yeah, that's up for debate. Also, I'm gonna guess you're not evil on the individual level.

and more along a similar line, specifically about the Middle East and elsewhere:
http://youtu.be/fQu_7hNjPqY?t=3m27s



a serious issue, but a little [British] humor on a related note: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY

Sorry, gatorbuck, but most corporatism is not what you describe. Nor is it even just corporations; unions and other special interests can and do influence government policy for unfair advantage.

As to corporations using the government, "regulation" is a perfect example. The very first federal regulatory agency -- the Interstate Commerce Commission, set up in 1887 to regulate the railroads -- quickly became "a sort of barrier between the railroad corporations and the people and a sort of protection against hasty and crude legislation hostile to railroad interests." See Understanding Obamacare by Luke Mitchell, Harper's Magazine for the quote, and much more on the subject.

Most corporatism involves private corporations and other entities that become ever-more entangled with government. Some, like much of the the military-industrial complex, would not exist without government to start with, but that doesn't change anything -- read my definition of corporatism again. I'd also suggest Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq for a very readable history of how corporations have used our military for their own gain.

The main point remains, in any case: without a coercive power center for corporations to influence for their own advantage, corporations are generally benign. People can not do business with Apple if they want; but we can't choose to not do business with (or to provide unfair advantage to at our expence) Halliburton or Monsanto or the megabanks. Government coercion is the difference.

"Destabilize" kind of implies doing things subtly tho.

When was the last time we even practiced that? It's been pretty direct since the Banana Republic days. We've six years to fix it, or else expect another 150 years of revolving door dictators in SA and the ME

A great book on this subject is called Overthrow. It doesn't exclusively deal with Central America, but a good chunk of it does.

We've done it again and again.

add this puppy to the pile

It’s a desert, it’s always very dry – and if you’re not from a super dry place, you’ll feel awful if you don’t stay on top of keeping moisture in.
Take/drink plenty of water. Take lotion for your hands and chap stick for your lips.

The Grand Canyon is different from every other hike on Earth, because you start by walking down. So when you get to the bottom, you haven’t really done any of the work yet.
Stay on trails. Please take a map and a compass. Please take twice as much water on hikes as you think you need.

Take plenty of stuff to keep you warm. It gets down to freezing regularly at the Grand Canyon in April.
A pad to get you off the ground, a sleeping bag, and two good blankets. And even then you might be wearing sweats in bed to keep warm.

And if you’ve got $10 to spare, get this book used.

http://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X

Recommended reading.

The Grand Canyon is one of my favorite places to hike. Just make sure you have an idea of the weather above and below the rim, and be sure to pick up and read Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon by Michael P. Ghiglieri. Armed with the stories and knowledge shared by the ranger(s) that wrote that book, you should be fully prepared when it's time to head out.

> What bothers me the most about this is that the adults seem to either not care, or are clueless to the danger that this group, of mostly kids, is in.

I used to work as a Ranger in the park. This is, unfortunately, not uncommon. For some reason, otherwise normal, reasonably intelligent people just leave their brains behind when they go on vacation. I don't know if they think Yellowstone is like Disneyland, or a zoo, or what, but they just lose all sense of fear when it comes to the dangers around them.

One day, I was gassing up a Suburban in a clearly marked Rangers-only restricted area. A moose walked by. Okay, cool. This is awesome. This is why I'm here. I love nature. Nature is awesome.

But then...

Not ten yards behind the moose comes this group of 20-30 people, just completely ignoring all the signs telling them not to enter this area and completely ignoring any common sense that says you should not be anywhere near that close to a wild animal that could turn and charge them at any moment.

When I stopped them and asked them what they were doing, one guy finally said "We're trying to take pictures of the moose."

Sigh. Sigh. Fucking sigh. Now I have to be the asshole and tell them that they shouldn't be anywhere near that close to a dangerous wild animal in the first place, and second they should not have ignored the multiple signs telling them that they shouldn't be in a restricted area. And, that they need to go back and watch the moose from a safe distance.

Now, repeat this similar encounter nearly every single day. Sure, the specifics are different, but the same thing happens all the time, and I really don't get it. In spite of all the warnings people are given not to approach the wildlife, they still keep doing it.

As a side note, if you want some morbid but fascinating reading, check out Lee Whittlesey's book Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park. It's a fascinating book on all the various grisly ways people have managed to off themselves in the park, often through their own idiocy, and often ignoring many warnings in the process.

I have this book my pa gave me called Death in Yellowstone, which talks about Miss Weeks and others. The part this article does not kindly mention is the fact that all of the skin on her lower half slid off when she was pulled out. It happens to almost everyone who falls in a geyser in Yellowstone.

I felt the true meaning of the word "ambivalence" when visiting Yellowstone. Deadly, beautiful thermal features...

Anyone else ever read the book "Death in Yellowstone" while visiting/camping in Yellowstone? For true "trippyness", do it!

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217

That's the one! It has some great stories in there, and yes, a lot of people have been scalded to death in the geysers. You can frequently witness tourists going off the boardwalks, illegally, to get closer to the geysers. Darwin was really on to something.

My mom read these books to me... they scared me a little. The trauma came from camping trips in Yellowstone National Park when she put those books away, then pulled out A Grizzly Death in Yellowstone and Death in Yellowstone so that she could read graphic stories of campers and hikers being mauled to death by bears in the same fucking place we were going to sleep.

I, to date, have a completely totally rational fear of bears.

Bear spray. And read the instructions on it, and wear bells or sing the whole time you're out.

I know, silly - but I just finished reading Death in Yellowstone and damn.

Bear spray, bro.

Also, ensure you're not camping with any food smells - or any other strong smells - in your tent.

You're welcome! If you enjoyed that, you might also like this book. It's fascinating, though it's best to keep in mind that it's trying to tell an entertaining story and as such fuzzes the truth a little bit for the sake of entertainment.

> Sometimes that uses scientifically-valid concerns (anti-pipeline stuff), but more often its just crap

I wish a lot of our activists and tinfoil hat conspiracy folks would understand this. I doubt they realize they're becoming unwitting pawns of foreign powers.

China is getting better at this and there is already a lot of evidence they have tried implanting backdoors in many devices and backbone electronics they sell here in the states. The goal being to destroy our production of these devices via this kind of FUD and then provide them to us (with all their backdoors). Huawei is a government owned company largely known for their military contracts. They have been extremely cosy with lots of terrible Chinese government activities against their own, and foreign, peoples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huawei#Controversies

Wired magazine did a huge, excellent piece on how the 'growing polarization' seen in all social media platforms in our country is being largely MANUFACTURED by foreign entities/bots posting articles/comments/etc. The goal being to destroy US confidence in the target political or economic effort. I recommend that as a great read too.
(many other articles as well on Wired as well as a great video from Smarter Everyday:)
https://www.wired.com/story/russia-election-hacking-playbook/

https://youtu.be/FY_NtO7SIrY

This also happened during the Cold War. There is a great book called 'Command and Control' that discussed this tactic and is a very highly recommended read. Russians used their intelligence gathering to discover any western nuclear accidents/failures/blunders - so they could report them to the news media and activist groups to make everyone think western military/government is incompetent. Then, you fund protest groups - ones legitimately concerned about nuclear proliferation - and get them protesting for complete bans. But only in the target countries. You suppress that in your own. Now you have a country internally fighting itself without having to lift a finger yourself. Funding protests groups cost next to nothing in an espionage budget. It's the same thing we did to de-stabilize Banana Republic countries for decades. In some ways, Dr Strangeglove was a masterpiece for Russia's goals.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Yes, you can be right - but completely playing into the hands of your enemies. We must remember that we are all Americans - of every race, creed, religion, age, and gender. And that our strength is in our diversity all striving together towards the greatest good and dignity of every person. Not in tearing each other down. Not in fighting each other as factions. Not in disposing of arguing with ideas for moronic fist fights in the streets. Not for the destruction of liberties for 'safety'. Not in alienating and blaming anyone by age, race, or religion.

Having read about halfway through Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, I can definitely say that it's is both an accomplishment of engineering (for the bomb itself) and a failure of engineering (for the failure modes that exist that undermine safety).

Not necessarily. The accident that led to the explosion of a Titan II at a launch facility in Damascus, AR proceeded over the course of several hours. Here's a great recent book about it. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C5R7F8G/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Stiff by Mary Roach. It deals with cadavers, which most humans don't like to think about, but the author writes it in a way that balances heavy content with humor.

Mary Roach! Mary Roach Mary Roach!

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Packing of Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

I can't recommend these highly enough. Mary Roach is the most engaging, funny science writer I've read.

Also [A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman]http://www.amazon.com/Natural-History-Senses-Diane-Ackerman/dp/0679735666/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323874194&sr=1-1

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. The writing is so good you won't care about the squeamish content.

The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum. A perfect blend of a historical retelling and science.

A Treasury of Deception by Michael Farguhar.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks. Short stories of the mentally abnormal patients of Sacks.

My Stroke of Insight by Jill Taylor. Very good insight on what it is like to live with, and recover from brain damage. Also talks science about parts of the brain as a nice intro to the subject.

Mutants: On Genetic Variety in the Human Body by Armand Leroi.

And of course,
Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

Written by Mary Roach who is hilarious and has other great books! I recommend these in particular:

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

I read in Stiff that plastic surgeons practice on cadavers. Is that more or less gross than working on a live person?

And if you're intrigued about the decomposition of the human body, or what might happen after you donate your corpse to silence, here's a good read!

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393324826/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_-lE.yb3TNHSXQ

It's one of my long time favorites. It's the first place I read about this skin slippage, termed "gloving."

I'm a lady! I started on rotten.com a long time ago, too. I've always been a little morbid I guess, but I am also just fascinated by the things we don't see that (a) we used to or (b) other cultures still do. My mom worked around a lot of medical illustrators for most of my life, too, so I grew up seeing random fetuses in jars and understood the importance of cadavers.

Also, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is one of my favorite books.

But I'd add, as other meta posts have before, that I learned way more than I expected when I started coming here.

you would probably get into this book, parts of it talk about the body farm https://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

This book is all about the different ways human cadavers are used and it really is fascinating.

The interesting thing about rapid deceleration deaths is that it's rarely the pavement, tree, water, whatever that kills a person. Most of the body is pretty good at taking severe impacts. Hit most places with an object at the same speed and it's not immediate death.

However, there is one MAJOR weak spot. The aorta! It tears from the rapid deceleration. Immediate blood lose and you're a goner.

Here's a great book that talks about it. I was actually reading the falling death/aorta tearing chapter 32,000 feet over the east coast on my way to vacation. Nodded off, had one of those dreams where I could see through the floor of the airplane and weird falling sensation. Jumped, felt bad for the person next to me!

http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Really good book.

I've been reading this one

The post was about queer history books. My favorite queer history book is George Chauncey's Gay New York, a fascinating study of the role of urban space in New York's gay community in the first half of the twentieth century. Your response is pretty bewildering and unhinged tbh.

edit: oh, this is an /r/TIA troll, nevermind

I wish I had more time to give a great answer but allow me to highly, with weight on that, recommend The Worst Hard Time (https://www.amazon.com/Worst-Hard-Time-Survived-American/dp/0618773479) by Timothy Eganif you want more about the time period and want a very readable, edutaining book.

Just finished a great book on it: The Worst Hard Time

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan. Dark. Tragic. Informative. Reads almost like a novel.

La Relación by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca is a firsthand account of an 8-year odyssey across North America by a European shipwrecked in the Gulf of Mexico in the early 1500's. The tone is in stark contrast from other material of the same period, offering an objective and often sympathetic glimpse of the diverse native cultures encountered along the way.

Both of these books haunt me, because they describe worlds that no longer exist. We live in their dystopia.

FDR goaded Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor. Read Robert Stinnett's "Day of Deceit". And it was only b/c of America's imperial policies that Hawaii and the Philippines were ultimately targeted by the Japanese.

If you read the book "Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor" and ponder the evidence presented in it, you'll be either more terrified or reassured that our government has done similar crimes before.

The book is definitely recommended. In short, it'll shed new light on both the "good war" and the way the US government practices realpolitik and propaganda.

If you're curious, I strongly recommend the above-mentioned book.

The author is a WWII vet who served on the same aircraft carrier as George Bush, and then went onto become a journalist and author.

He researched Pearl Harbor for decades, getting many first-hand testimonials, and a lot of key US gov't documents via Freedom of Information Act requests.

The most famous document, perhaps, is the so-called McCollum memo. This was written by a mid-level Navy intelligence officer who, the son of an American diplomat, was raised in Japan. McCollum was the Naval liaison officer to the White House and met with FDR once a week or more.

The memo outlined 8 steps that the US would have to do in order to provoke the Japanese to attack the US. The book details those 8 steps and supports them with evidence.

The overall idea of provoking Japan to attack was due to the collapse of France in the spring of 1940. That shocked the world.

The US, being unsuccessful at provoking the Germans into responding to our sinking of German U-boats in the Atlantic, thus opted to provoke Japan into attacking and to use that event to enter the war in a united fashion to keep Europe from falling to the Nazis.

Edit: Typos, added link.

"I wish our wars could all be as clear as WWII was- an almost good vs. evil type conflict"

Two things you should know about WW2 ( my father was in it so I know a few things becuase I have asked him).

1. the media was completely controlled then so when the US was gearing up for war things were presented in a very clear fashion so it seemed then more clear cut- there was a movie censorship board which only allowed the official black and white depictions of war issues.
   
   2.Until that time it was not clear cut at all about whether or not the new forms of government known as "Fascist" were good or not.
   Time magazine made Hitler man of the year
   in 1939
   see it for yourself:
   
   http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19390102,00.html
   read the actual article here
   
   http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760539,00.html
   
   and the whole world envied the rapid German economic recovery under his lead and many in the US openly wanted the US government to move toward a "streamlined" form of government with a stronger central leader to more quickly replicate the miracle of the German recovery from the economic ruin that gripped the world.
   
   There were many famous US supporters of Fascism.
   
   Charles Lindbergh for example openly said the US should move toward that type of government.
   
   So WW2 was NOT clear cut. It is only told to us that it was clear cut.
   You are judging by movies not reality.
   
   Never learn history by reading anything written after history.
   Read only the things written during the times to understand history. Today with internet archives of old newspapers it's easy.
   
   By the way I am merely relaying a historical fact and I in NO WAY support fascisms or Hitler etc etc. I just believe it is important for people considering war today to learn from how decisions were made in the past so mistakes are not repeated and successes are repeated. It's important to know it was NEVER CLEAR whether the US should enter WW2.
   
   In fact historical research has now proven conclusively FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to happen to motivate the country to get behind his decision to enter WW2.
   Best book on that which you would probably really be interested in reading is
   
   http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743201299?ie=UTF8&tag=reddit0e-20
   
   By the way many suspected FDR allowed Pearl harbor to happen to get us into the war AT THAT TIME. There were articles openly written about it just a week after Pearl Harbor happened.
   
   
   
   

> Assault rifles are precision machines, and they're actually designed to function with as little action (movement) as possible - that's why they're so fast.

I will buy you this book if you send me your address.

Conosco relativamente bene la storia dell'AK47 e dei suoi successori (tra le altre cose avendo letto questo libro).

Il mio punto e' che per lanciarsi in macchina contro dei pedoni o per attaccare dei passanti con un coltello da cucina non e' necessario avere gli "agganci giusti", come dici tu.

Quindi il folle isolato che si e' invasato a forza di vedere video jhiadisti su youtube e seguire gli account twitter dei simpatizzanti dell'ISIS in questi casi e' verosimile.

Procurarsi due Khalasnikov in Francia nel 2015 invece penso sia almeno un tantinello piu' complicato, ci vogliono gli "agganci", e quindi per questo mi sembra che questo attacco sia un atto di un livello un po' diverso.

I found CJ Chiver's book The Gun to be a fascinating investigation of the AK47's design and history. It also covers the development process of the AR10, which of course became XM16A1. The first generation of that gun was... not good. Constant fouling due to dirty rounds, cleaning equipment rarely issued with rifles, the exact wrong physical environment for maintenance, the list goes on.

The later revisions were a big improvement, and today's M16 is a far cry from the ones fielded in Vietnam. But in the first years of the war, the AKs carried by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were far more effective than the M16 supplied to American armed services.

Not to mention the lower recoil and minimized muzzle rise.

If anyone is interested in the history and distinctions between Battle Rifles and Assault Rifles as well as the development of the efficient modern man-killing machine that is the M series rifle, I recommend CJ Chivers' book, "The Gun." It will erase any doubt you may have that the modern assault rifle is a designed-by-committee literal weapon of mass death. Gun nuts like to 'hurr hurr, scary just because it's black,' but as a dude with a lot of guns, I promise you the tech in these things is sophisticated, refined, and tailored for the express person of killing people as efficiently and quickly as possible.

If you are interested in this topic, I'd highly recommend a book by the name of What's the matter with Kansas, by Thomas Frank.

It details how the various political entities, seeking to dictate economic policy, took steps to keep the "masses" uninformed, and, subsequently, ended up tricking them into voting for individuals that represent the opposite of their best-interests.

Read "Whats the Matter with Kansas" and watch Jesus Camp.

Basically, in the late 80s large wealthy conservatives shipping jobs overseas blamed the decline of jobs on liberal values (abortions, decline of marriage, religious attacks etc) and said they needed more tax cuts to give jobs back to Americans. The guy out of work whom is scared listened to them because they have an alternative reality set up with Fox news and conservative radio.

This cycle has continued until today.

He's famous for writing "What's the matter with Kansas?"

I'm about to read What's the Matter with Kansas? It's supposed to answer this very question.

I read this book years ago and it talks all about the water shortage in the west. It has always been a problem and we've been slowly depleting underground stores for generation.

Relevant: I recently started reading Cadillac Desert, which is a really interesting treatise on the irrigation of the American West.

Well, one can like getting carrots for $0.99 a bag and still recognize that they're being delivered by a very suboptimal, screwed-up system of production that really needs to change. Problem is, not a lot of people seem to recognize that.

If you find this sort of subject interesting, and you've not read it before, you ought to pick up a copy of Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner.

It gets a little dry sometimes when he gets into the nuts-and-bolts details, but overall it's a great, incisive look at how utterly FUBAR water policy in the West actually is.

Michael Pollan's [The Omnivore's Dilemma] (http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1324994963&sr=8-4)
[Freakonomics] (http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324995084&sr=1-1)
Nathaniel Philbrick In the Heart of the Sea

Agree with others on Erik Larson, Mary Roach and Bill Bryson.

In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick is my all time favorite survival book. Read it before the movie comes out! It's absolutely crazytown.
http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828

If you like non fiction (and lots of detail), In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick about the sinking of the whaleship the Essex and the crew surviving (or not) at sea.

In the heart of the sea is a great book on the true account of a group of sailors this happened to in the 1700's...adrift in the pacific for like 69 days i think...it was the influence for Moby Dick because a whale sunk their ship...never has a nonfiction book read like such an action novel for me

Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is a real twisty true crime tale, involving a wealthy family and a missing infant.

A bit post-Victorian, but Deborah Blum’s The Poisoner’s Handbook is a great read.

Harold Schechter is an author of many biographies of American Serial killers, including Albert Fish and H H Holmes.

Also [The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York] (https://www.amazon.com/Poisoners-Handbook-Murder-Forensic-Medicine/dp/014311882X) if you're interested in forensics.

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York goes into that direction.

Command & Control if you never want to sleep again. Its more related to the controls systems/procedures than overall development though.

> Now, Fat Man and Little Boy? Those were different stories. Apparently they were just kept under heavy guard before being loaded onto the planes, and actually arming them was as easy as pulling a pin (imagine a big hand grenade), setting the burst altitude, and dropping them out of the plane.

That lack of security control on nuclear weapons was allowed to persist for a shockingly long time. Some in SAC considered the lack of control a positive, arguing that the weapons wouldn't be rendered useless in the case of a decapitation attack.

Eric Schlosser's Command and Control is a great and easily accessible history on nuclear weapon safety.

Niet alleen daar, fouten zijn vrij vaak voorkomend. Lees dit boek: https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

This is an entertaining book on the history of nuclear weapon incidents.

They also go over the Damascus incident, where a Titan Missile silo in Arkansas exploded in an accident. Apparently they made a film about it.

This book made the interesting point that a lot of Oxcart (early SR-71) test planes didn't have black paint but were silver. Flying a lot higher than commercial flights, the recently-set sun would still be shining on them, and could have made them look like bright flying saucers going at then-unheard of speeds.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0316202304?pc_redir=1409111139&robot_redir=1

Not really, but you should read a book by Annie Jacobsen's about area 51 it gives a good overview on the subject. Some of her other books are also very good and 100% good journalism.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316202304/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i2

Edit: She was also recently on JRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VoVIpIzj_c&t=9s

I've heard good things about Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do by Michael Sandel. There is a video of his Harvard class floating around somewhere.

Haven't read it, though, so I dunno...

>When Justice has been achieved and society is perfect.

Define justice, and define perfect. (Asking this question reminds me of this awesome book http://www.amazon.com/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do/dp/0374532508 )

Here's one for you

>Progressives are the conservatives of the future.

I am glad they are helping them out, but how about give them this and some seeds instead of some book of myths.

This probably isn't exactly what you are looking for, but I did want to give you my three favorites that relate to self-sufficiency and off grid living.

• The Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing.
  I really like this book as a sort of "what to expect" instead of "what to do." It chronicles Helen and Scott's decision and life to live a self-sufficient life.
  
  
• The Encyclopedia of Country Living. This is a great resource. It covers EVERYTHING from gardening to raising chickens. It also covers cooking and canning with what you raise. It is primarily a consolidation of 40 years worth of a homesteading magazine.
  
  
• The Foxfire series. This series is quite long and comprehensive. However, it is an attempt to chronicle the oral knowledge of rural Appalachia. Everything is essentially about self-sufficiency (including moonshining), homesteading, and living life "the old way." It is truly a fascinating series and a wealth of knowledge.
  
  I am not familiar with the books you listed, but I do love the three I mentioned above.

All of the Foxfire books
http://www.amazon.com/The-Foxfire-Book-Dressing-Moonshining/dp/0385073534

https://www.amazon.com/Foxfire-Book-Dressing-Building-Moonshining/dp/0385073534/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506462027&sr=8-1&keywords=foxfire

FoxFire is actually a fucking awesome series of books on back country living in the south. They have articles on everything from making moonshine to basket weaving, furniture making, and even old ghost stories from way back. My pop-pop has some cousins featured in it and I always used to enjoy reading the books when I was a kid staying at his place in Virginny.

Edit: Apparently they do more than just publish books now. Looks like they have field-trip programs and shit for younger kiddies. It was back in the mid-90s that I first encountered them.

Dosta ljetno štivo: http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826/ref=zg_bs_689737011_1/191-4977981-9015808

Šala, ali ova knjiga je ful zanimljiva ako imaš jak želudac.

Someone once told me that the parts left over after med school assignments sometimes end up in art projects. Is this true?

Asking because I'm 1,000,000% donating my body if I get to be science AND art.

Also: Stiff by Mary Roach made me want to donate myself to the body farm.

https://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

You might enjoy this:

http://www.amazon.ca/Stiff-Mary-Roach/dp/0393324826

The Reluctant Metropolis by William Fulton. Not only does he talk about development and history of Los Angeles, but also how it relates to Orange County, the San Fernando Valley, and Las Vegas.

If you're interested in water and politics of the American west including Los Angeles, I also recommend Cadillac Desert -- pretty relevant in this multiyear drought

Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner is about water infrastructure in the American West and its politics.

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn is fiction but talks about human-nature relations.

That was anything but a free market purchase of water rights. LA used massive amounts of political muscle to get those water rights. Cadillac Desert has a really detailed account of this, but wikipedia has a decent summary

Some pretty shady shit went down to build the LA Aqueduct.

The book list just keeps growing in so many different directions that it's hard to identify which I want to tackle next (I also have a tendency to take meticulous notes while I read and that slows the process down even further!). Some of the topics I intend to read about once I'm done with the books mentioned:

• God: A Human History
  
• Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith
  
• The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World
  
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
  
• Occult America
  
• When Prophecy Fails
  
• Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
  
• Cosmos
  
• Norse Mythology
  
• Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
  
• Guns, Germs, and Steel
  
• Misquoting Jesus
  
• On Bullshit
  
• The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe
  
• Why People Believe Weird Things
  
  Plus a bunch of books by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Carl Sagan, and others. There are way too many. And all the fiction books I want to read too! It's not that I didn't read books before, but my faith transition has sparked an intense desire to study and learn far greater than I ever experienced before.

Here are half-a-dozen good ones for you:

• The Axemaker's Gift: Technology's Capture and Control of Our Minds and Culture, by James Burke and Robert Ornstein
  
• Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner
  
• Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, by Cathy Young
  
• The Essential William H. Whyte, ed. Albert LaFarge
  
• No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, by Naomi Klein
  
• Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, by John Stauber & Sheldon Rampton

I'd suggest taking a look at Cadillac Desert by Mark Reisner. It's an excellent read in my opinion, more of an ecology book with it's central focus of water availability in the west. Having said that, the history, economics, and conflicts water policy/availability has created has had a huge impact on planning policy and how the western US developed.

In Cadillac Desert (I believe, I read it a while ago and could be mistaken on my source), there was a suggestion that the American west be divided along watersheds. That seems like a geographical feature that is not used very often, but causes quite a few problems between countries.

non-fiction:

I liked Eddie' Huang's Fresh Off The Boat. Don't let the shitty TV show (which the dude doesn't like) scare you off. It's an interesting book that covers a wide range of shit. Not just cooking or being Asian.

If you know who Eddie Huang is and you aren't a fan/don't want to give it a shot, maybe alternatively try one of Anthony Bourdain's books. I personally haven't ready them though.

The Heart of the Sea: Tragedy of the Whale ship Essex again, ignore the shitty movie. Well, I haven't seen it but I assume so. Very interesting true story about a whaling ship in 1800 something that's destroyed by a sperm whale and the shipwrecked crew tries to survive. Basically a real life Moby Dick - Herman Melville based his story on the Essex.
Fiction:

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is an easy entertaining easy read. I'm now realizing all of recommendations all seem to have movies but that's coincidence. I was also gonna say American Psycho.

Books are cool. I don't read enough anymore.

If you are not a land lubber you might try In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick or Wreck of the Medusa: The Tragic Story of the Death Raft by Alexander McKee.

Until just last night I had never heard of the Essex. I was talking with a guy at my local bar and he recommended I read this book.

Two naval books that are great reads:

http://www.amazon.com/To-Rule-Waves-British-Shaped/dp/0060534257

http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship-Essex/dp/0141001828/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382822400&sr=1-1&keywords=whaleship+essex

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex Link

This is a nice, easy reading book about the story Moby Dick is based on. The Essex was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale and her crew had to navigate home in whaleboats. It definitely falls more on the popular history side of the fence.

Don't know if this helps at all, but for historical context the story of the whalingship Essex was purportedly part of the inspiration for Moby Dick. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a book written from the perspective of a cabin boy on the Essex. It is one of the most riveting and haunting books I have ever read. This background stuff won't help too much on the literary criticism side of things, but helps put the story into a bit of historical context.

This book is exactly $12.34.

http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828

Jewish stuff aside, I'm currently in the middle of The Alchemy of Air about the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen and In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, about the Essex disaster, which inspired Moby Dick.

Deborah Blum's "Poisoner's Handbook" dedicates a whole chapter to radium and a lot of what the Radium girls went through.

Unregulated harmful substances that both consumers and workers are exposed to in the US (then and now) is a reoccurring theme that pops up in that book.

A lot of the better-researched/possible in the next 5 years stuff will have "speculative fiction" tacked on as a label instead of sci-fi. Just an observation.

In terms of very readable science nonfiction, you might try The Poisoner's Handbook, which is told in anecdotes about murder cases and the development of modern forensics in New York or Mary Roach's humorous essay collections in Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, and others. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan was also quite readable and well-researched (about agrobusiness), but his other books get overly preachy, I think.

The Best Science and Nature anthologies are a good starting point when you're looking for new authors you click with too.

The history of forensic medicine in the US.

https://www.amazon.com/Poisoners-Handbook-Murder-Forensic-Medicine/dp/014311882X

Her book that she mentions, The Poisoner's Handbook is really worth reading.

Equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is "a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie" The New York Observer
A fascinating Jazz Age tale of chemistry and detection, poison and murder, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten era. In early twentieth-century New York, poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Science had no place in the Tammany Hall-controlled coroner's office, and corruption ran rampant. However, with the appointment of chief medical examiner Charles Norris in 1918, the poison game changed forever. Together with toxicologist Alexander Gettler, the duo set the justice system on fire with their trailblazing scientific detective work, triumphing over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice.

Very interesting article, and now I want to read that book. Reminds me of one of the best books I've ever read, The Poisoner's Handbook, about the creation of the medical examiner's dept.


http://www.amazon.com/The-Poisoners-Handbook-Forensic-Medicine/dp/014311882X


Sorry for link, I'm on mobile

Part I Messe - How about UD's peacock blue shadow, Radium! Makes me think of the poor radium girls - girls who worked in factories that produced radium laced glow in the dark watches. They would dust their hair, face, and even teeth with the radium to give them a very pretty glowing look. Of course, they had no idea just how dangerous radium really was and many faced painful deaths.

Well that was a downer. But if anyone is interested in learning more, I learned about the radium girls from a wonderful book by Deborah Blum called The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York!

Part II will follow!

More than once. Eric Schlosser wrote a book about it that was turned into a PBS documentary: https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

An excellent book that covers the Damascus Incident is Command and Control by Eric Schlosser. I've read it myself and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about the US nuclear arsenal and the accidents surrounding it.

A study after the fact found that some of our most used bombs were subject to “accidental” detonation. I forget the bomb but I think it was mounted on a rotary rack on a B-52. If you want to know more read this wonderful book Command and Control.

Anyone interested in nukes should read Command and Control, pretty amazing.

Especially with nukes, the idea was that launch codes and arming/disarming systems are an unnecessary waste of time if ww3 were to happen.

Edit: Citation (https://www.amazon.ca/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788)

If anyone is interested in the insane mechanics of nuclear warfare and warhead safety (it's just dumb luck someone hasn't blown themselves up so far, almost happened several times), there is this book called "Command and Control" - a chilling read.

http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420981916&sr=8-1&keywords=command+and+control

I recommend a very good book if someone is interested in Nuclear Weapons and their incidents. Here you go

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143125788/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_binEwb04X60YG

Very good read there. It's utterly amazing that someone (a country) did not blow themselves off the map during this time period.

Fun fact for the night - there's still a 7600lb nuclear bomb "lost" off the coast of Savannah, Georgia !

Just finished reading Command and Control, so want to say that it almost happened several times with the US too:

• One time the US BMEWS detected a Soviet first strike with 99.9% accuracy, and the SAC had only 15 minutes to respond or risk obliteration (at that time second-strike capabilities weren't quite so well established so knocking out the entire American leadership in one shot may have been a viable strategy to winning a nuclear war). Only after finding out that Khrushchev was giving a speech at the UN in New York did the SAC calm down since the Soviets were unlikely to kill their own leader, and when everyone was still alive 20 minutes later it was obvious it was a false alarm. Later it was found that the BMEWS had detected the moon rising as a missile strike. Who knows what might have happened had Khrushchev been in the USSR on that day?
  
• Another time all communication to the BMEWS was knocked out from SAC headquarters, east to west. The probability of such a thing happening randomly throughout the entire extent of the BMEWS was considered highly unlikely, especially since there were redundancies in the phone system, and they were also unable to contact Thule. It was thought that a missile strike had started against the BMEWS. The only evidence otherwise was a bomber flying 24/7 over Thule whose sole purpose was simply to provide visual confirmation that Thule still existed, and sure enough this bomber finally played its role by confirming over radio that yes, Thule was still there and hadn't been obliterated in a first strike. Later it turns out that fucking AT&T had said it installed redundant phone connections, but hadn't actually done so, and one of the phone switch stations failed. Corporate greed inadvertently brought us close to a nuclear war (imagine if the bomber's radio system happened to fail for any reason?).
  
• Twice SAC headquarters showed tons of incoming missiles and destruction of American cities displayed on its status board, in a highly realistic attack that fully confirmed SAC's every prediction of what a Soviet attack would look like, but communication with radar stations revealed that they failed to detect anything, and the American cities were clearly still there. Turns out to have been practice simulation tapes that were mistakenly loaded by a technician, so no wonder they confirmed SAC expectations of what a Soviet attack would look like. Only after the second time this happened did they decide to build a separate place solely for simulation war games.
  
• Multiple times SAC computers received messages telling them that there were 202 missiles or 22 missiles, etc, heading towards the US. Once again radar stations detected nothing so it was a false alarm. The cause? A defective CPU chip that randomly replaced 0's with 2's, and a sort of ping message from computers simply confirming that they were still transmitting information, except the ping message was something like "0000 missiles detected". The CPU was replaced and the message rewritten to have no mention of missiles whatsoever.
  
  Of course things like this probably also happened on the Soviet side that the general population doesn't know about. But this is just to show that we fuck up too, and our early warning systems have in fact malfunctioned several times in the past.

The best book I've read about nuclear safety protocols, the reasons behind them, and the historical lapses is Command and Control.

I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

There is a good book on this, Command and Control really good.

Tldr:we've come very very close to nuking ourselves more than most of the public knows.

The problem isn't religion, it's extremism. I've been reading Taliban and there's a bit about how Saudi Arabia really wasn't trying hard enough to get the Taliban to give up Bin Laden, and about how they weren't really funding the right groups that could make a difference in the war in the 90s (they're Wahhabi, so they funded some minor Wahhabi warlords instead of just funding a bunch of Shia, Sunni, ethnic Pashtun, etc. warlords).

Anyway, I'm too lazy to pull out the book so I'll paraphrase (badly), but someone in the 90s basically told Saudi leadership that if they don't do what they need to do, Islam is going to be defined by the extremists and Islamists and Taliban in the eyes of the West, and thus they're only going to see this fanatical, jihadist violence. So the West will miss all the nuances of Islam, and the overall goal of Islam (which he said is the formation of a cooperative, peaceful society [which I think, with my limited understanding of Islam, is mostly correct]).

And that's exactly what happened. The West sees Muslims as terrorists. Middle Easterners—really, Arabs more than Pashtuns or other groups—are firmly entrenched as the other.

Exploding Mangoes was the first book I read about Pakistan. Here's a list:

• Pakistan - Social and Cultural Transformations in a Muslim Nation
  A little dry for my taste but I couldn't recommend this more. This book charts the social consequences of state policies and economic factors over the whole time period from '47 to now.
  
  
• Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia
  Very important book if you want to avoid the conspiracy theories floating about Taliban and our role in their rise.
  
  
• Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military
  Interested in Pakistan army's relationship with mullahs over the years? This is a must-read.
  
  
• Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding
  Title is self explanatory.
  
  
• Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples & Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey
  A very informative and interesting two part series on what joins the non-Arab muslims of the world, with a large portion about Pakistan. Written by Nobel Laureate for Literature Naipaul, behnoi of Maj. Gen. Ameer Faisal Alvi who was assassinated in 2008 in Islamabad.
  
  
• Pakistan: A Hard Country
  A good overview of what makes Pakistan run the way it does.
  
  
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist
  Haven't read it but have heard good things about it.
  
  
• The Army and Democracy; Military Politics in Pakistan
  Haven't read it yet.

When the prototype for the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane first reached subspace and then returned to Groom Lake a.k.a. Area 51, the engineers there were troubled and perplexed as to what all these little blacks specs were that were covering their extremely expensive plane. They were all over the windshield and fuselage.

They were shocked to discover that after a little testing, they were bugs. Gnats. But how?

Atom bombs. The testing of massive atom bombs, like for instance in the Bikini Atol, blasted unknown masses of insects into orbit. This was explained in the book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

Perhaps these plankton rode the blasts into space too, and are hardy enough to have survived and to have even found a home on the ISS?

If you've never read Los Angeles Times reporter Annie Jacobsen's "Area 51" book, it's about the development of the U2 spyplane (Overhead), the A12 Oxcart (what would become the SR-71), the SR-71, and several other spy plane and nuclear weapons developments out at Area 51 in Nevada.

It's a non-fiction book based on recently declassified documents and first-hand testimonies from officers and engineers who worked out there at Area 51 during the aftermath of WWII, now that their projects have been declassified.

I've got it on Audible, and it's incredibly fascinating to hear about how these planes and projects came about, all of the new scientific theories and technologies that had to be developed, obstacles to overcome.

I've read it 3 times and I just re-started it. I cannot recommend it enough!

Science fiction is nice, but it's also important to be realistic, especially when he's consulting others on the future of technology and space. If you're interested in UFO stuff you should check out this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/dp/0316202304/ref=la_B001K7ZHF0_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346813936&sr=1-1

Democratic theory, which is a study area of political science, comes down to the question, "What is good?"

All our arguments are "normative," we are expressing a value or belief about what is good.

If we define politics as "a relationship of power between two or more individuals," then we can see how fragile all our relationships are, including between a person and their government.

Who do we decide to be? Where were we born? Why did we do something?

Legend of the Galactic Heroes is why I went to law school and why I work in government now.

If you are interested in different political theories, Justice by Michael Sandel and Political Philosophy by Ronald Beiner compare different political theorists or political philosophers, and are great companion pieces to LOGH.

Do you have a specific interest? Otherwise a general introduction like Think, Problems of Philosophy, or Justice are all well regarded. Though, all have their strengths and weaknesses. There are tons of accessible introductions though and depending on your interests it might be better to use one rather than another. All of those are fairly general

Some people take classes to punch a career ticket, but there are plenty of people that take classes just to learn.

I currently am taking a justice course taught at Harvard on moral philosophy. There is even an associated book you can read if you would like that pretty much covers the same material in the same order as the class, but I'm watching the lectures because I learn better that way. Moral philosophy has no chance of increasing my completely unrelated career and honestly I wouldn't even want to take my career in that direction if given the option, because I am just learning as a hobby for fun. I am also going through a game theory course at yale.

Right now I just casually watch lectures in my free time, but there are a few subjects I would like to tackle that will probably involve actually doing homework like differential equations, topology, and algorithms. Just reading a book doesn't cut it because you actually have to participate in subjects like that to fully understand them. And again, I plan on doing those just for fun because I believe learning is a life long experience.

I would recommend reading Michael Sandel’s book Justice and at the same time getting the Justice reader (book of selected readings in political philosophy) put together by Sandel, and watching Sandel’s online lecture series entitled Justice.

Justice book:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0374532508/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0374532508

Justice reader:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195335120/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0195335120

Justice online lecture series:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL30C13C91CFFEFEA6

YOUTALKING BOUT THIS

I would think you're in exactly the right place for the Foxfire books to be interesting - I have an e-copy, but lots of the techniques and plants don't apply for my part of the country.

amazon

list of the books

here is a link to it on Amazon

It's also this

It's not a video series but the series of books and magazines Foxfire are very interesting and break down old cooking techniques.

It's also a popular survival guide

There are books like the Foxfire books that have very good instructions.
http://www.amazon.com/Foxfire-Book-Dressing-Building-Moonshining/dp/0385073534/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239564703&sr=8-2

> ... and totally not known even remotely enough in general.

I think this is one of the reasons I'm so open about recommending his work. He seems to have the ability to take topics that most people may not be exposed to and make them comprehensible. It's similar to the way I feel about Mary Roach in books like Stiff, Bonk, and Gulp.

Along with that, Bryson has some purely entertaining works like A Walk in the Woods, Notes From a Small Island, and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir that are just a joy to read. I guess I'll stop now because I'm starting to feel like shill.

Edit: spelling is hard.

I find that science history and biography gives a good understanding of scientific methods, and when written for the lay-person, doesn't get so bogged down in technical jargon.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
  
• Chaos: Making a New Science - James Gleick
  (Also check out his biographies of Isaac Newton and Richard Feynman)
  
• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach
  
  And here are a few on my to read list:
  
  
• Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society - Bill Bryson
  
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari
  
• The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine - Lindsey Fitzharris
  
• Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus - Bill Wasik & Monica Murphy
  
• The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring - Richard Preston
  
• The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science - Richard Holmes
  
• The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution - David Wootton
  
  I hope that helps.

I would start off with Stiff and then Bonk. I liked Spook but on amazon it doesn't have as good of reviews as the others so I'd read that one later if you aren't as interested in it. I've yet to read packing for mars but if it's anything like her other books, it's wonderful.

For some interesting material on organ donation, I suggest Stiff by Mary Roach.

I recommend you read Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

They go over this in the first chapter. Fascinating and surprisingly entertaining book.

I'm just speaking for myself here, but if you want to get a factbook, I'd go Uncle John's Bathroom Reader over a book of random facts. With a book of random facts, there's little incentive to do anything but glance at it occasionally. The Bathroom Reader contains longer anecdotes in addition to traditional factoid tidbits, so it's good if you've got a minute or a half-hour.

Also, if you want to get interesting science-type books, one that I haven't read but have heard good things about is Stiff. Hope that helps!

No shit?

We're well past the point if deconstructing this. A book was published in this subject back in 2005 and it wasn't the first one.

Not so much. They've been voting against their own interests forever. This was to be expected to happen again. Why do they vote against their own interests? Read this book:

What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America https://www.amazon.com/dp/080507774X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_8Sj6wbCJ88R90

We had to read this in school to cover this same issue... https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

Also, What’s the Matter With Kansas is a pretty good one.

You need to read "What's The Matter With Kansas?".

EDIT: Oops, someone already linked to it. Check it out anyway, its a great read!

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491961700&sr=8-1&keywords=what%27s+the+matter+with+kansas

Google Has Become a Major Threat to Democracy in America - Michael Krieger - Aug 30, 2017

About 10 years ago, Tim Wu, the Columbia Law professor who coined the term network neutrality, made this prescient comment: “To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist, you have to have faith in the way people traditionally felt about the king.”

Wu was right. And now, Google has established a pattern of lobbying and threatening to acquire power.

It has reached a dangerous point common to many monarchs: The moment where it no longer wants to allow dissent.

When Google was founded in 1998, it famously committed itself to the motto: “Don’t be evil.”

It appears that Google may have lost sight of what being evil means, in the way that most monarchs do:

Once you reach a pinnacle of power, you start to believe that any threats to your authority are themselves villainous and that you are entitled to shut down dissent.

As Lord Acton famously said, “Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.”

Those with too much power cannot help but be evil.

Google, the company dedicated to free expression, has chosen to silence opposition, apparently without any sense of irony.

In recent years, Google has become greedy about owning not just search capacities, video and maps, but also the shape of public discourse.

As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Google has recruited and cultivated law professors who support its views.

And as the New York Times recently reported, it has become invested in building curriculum for our public schools, and has created political strategy to get schools to adopt its products.

It is time to call out Google for what it is: a monopolist in search, video, maps and browser, and a thin-skinned tyrant when it comes to ideas.

Google is forming into a government of itself, and it seems incapable of even seeing its own overreach.

We, as citizens, must respond in two ways.

First, support the brave researchers and journalists who stand up to overreaching power; and second, support traditional anti-monopoly laws that will allow us to have great, innovative companies — but not allow them to govern us.

From Zephyr Teachout’s powerful article: Google Is Coming After Critics in Academia and Journalism. It’s Time to Stop Them. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/30/zephyr-teachout-google-is-coming-after-critics-in-academia-and-journalism-its-time-to-stop-them]

The mask has finally come off Google’s face, and what lurks underneath looks pretty evil.

2017 has represented a coming out party of sorts for Google and the control-freaks who run it.

The company’s response to the James Damore controversy made it crystal clear that executives at Google are far more interested in shoving their particular worldview down the throats of the public, versus encouraging vibrant and lively debate.

This is not a good look for the dominant search engine.

The creeping evilness of Google has been obvious for quite some time, but this troubling reality has only recently started getting the attention it deserves.

The worst authoritarian impulses exhibited at the company appear to emanate from Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt, whose actions consistently seem to come from a very dark and unconscious place.

Today’s piece focuses on the breaking news that an important initiative known as Open Markets, housed within the think tank New America Foundation, has been booted from the think tank after major donor Google complained about its anti-monopoly stance.

Open Markets was led by a man named Barry Lynn, who all of you should become familiar with.

The Huffington Post profiled him last year. Here’s some of what we learned [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/barry-lynn-washington-corporations_us_57c8a6a7e4b0e60d31de6433?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004]:

There’s a solid economic rationale behind Washington’s new big thing. Monopolies and oligopolies are distorting the markets for everything from pet food to cable service. http://fortune.com/2015/05/19/cable-industry-becomes-a-monopoly/]

There’s a reason why cable companies have such persistently lousy customer-service ratings. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/17/AR2007101702359.html]

They know you have few (if any) alternatives.

Today, two-thirds of the 900 industries tracked by The Economist feature heavier concentration at the top than they did in 1997. [http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21695392-big-firms-united-states-have-never-had-it-so-good-time-more-competition-problem]

The global economy is in the middle of a merger wave big enough to make 2015 the biggest year in history for corporate consolidation. [http://www.wsj.com/articles/2015-becomes-the-biggest-m-a-year-ever-1449187101]

Most political junkies have never heard of the man chiefly responsible for the current Beltway antitrust revival: Barry C. Lynn.

A former business journalist, Lynn has spent more than a decade carving out his own fiefdom at a calm, centrist Washington think tank called the New America Foundation.

In the process, he has changed the way D.C. elites think about corporate power.

“Barry is the hub,” says Zephyr Teachout, a fiery progressive who recently clinched the Democratic nomination for a competitive House seat in New York. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/zephyr-teachout-democratic-primary_us_57728b8ee4b0f168323aee9d]

“He is at the center of a growing new ― I hesitate to call it a movement ― but a group of people who recognize that we have a problem with monopolies not only in our economy, but in our democracy.”

Many Southerners who relocate to the nation’s capital try to temper their accents for the elite crowd that dominates the District’s social scene.

Lynn, a South Florida native, never shed his drawl.

He pronounces “sonofabitch” as a single word, which he uses to describe both corrupt politicians and big corporations.

He is a blunt man in a town that rewards caginess and flexibility.

But like King, Lynn’s critique of monopolies does not reflect a disdain for business itself.

Lynn left Global Business for The New America Foundation in 2001 and began work on his first book, End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation, which argues that globalization and merger mania had injected a new fragility into international politics. [https://www.amazon.com/End-Line-Coming-Global-Corporation/dp/0767915879?tag=thehuffingtop-20]

Disruptive events ― earthquakes, coups, famines, or at worst, war ― could now wreak havoc on U.S. products that had once been safely manufactured domestically.

Production of anything from light bulbs to computers all could shut down without warning.

It was a frightening vision with implications for economic policy and national security alike.

It was also ideologically inconvenient for the techno-utopian zeitgeist of its day. Lynn’s book landed on shelves about the same time as Thomas Friedman’s better-known tome, The World Is Flat, which declared globalization a triumph of innovation and hard work for anyone willing to do the hard work of innovating. [https://www.amazon.com/World-Flat-History-Twenty-first-Century/dp/0374292884?tag=thehuffingtop-20]

Today, Lynn’s predictions of market disruption and political unrest appear to have been ahead of their time.

Early globalization champions, including Martin Wolf and Lawrence Summers, are rethinking their judgments of a decade ago. [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e46e8c00-6b72-11e6-ae5b-a7cc5dd5a28c.html#axzz4J2hMuhyq]

But Lynn turned several influential heads when his book was published. Thomas Frank, bestselling author of What’s The Matter With Kansas?, became a Lynn enthusiast. [https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_1]

So did food writer Michael Pollan.

“He was writing about an issue that nobody was paying attention to, and he was doing it with a very strong sense of history,” Pollan says.

“Barry understood antitrust going back to the trust-busters a century ago, and how our understanding of the issue shrank during the Reagan administration … The food movement is not very sophisticated on those issues.”

Lynn’s history nerd-dom is eccentric in a town that hyperventilates over every hour of the cable news cycle.

Ask about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, and Lynn will oblige you a polite sentence or two.

Ask him about former Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis or William Howard Taft, and you’ll need to reschedule your dinner plans.

“He once asked me to read about Roman law for a piece on common carriage,” says Lina Khan, referencing a plank of net neutrality policy not typically associated with the Code of Justinian.

After he published his second book in 2010, Lynn began bringing on his own staff within New America. Khan was one of his first hires.

Teachout, a Fordham University Law School professor, was another.

Teachout eventually ran for office and published a book of her own on the history of corruption in America. [https://www.amazon.com/Corruption-America-Benjamin-Franklin%E2%80%99s-Citizens/dp/0674659988/ref=sr_1_1?amp=&ie=UTF8&keywords=Zephyr+Teachout&qid=1472758645&sr=8-1&tag=thehuffingtop-20]

Another of Lynn’s associates, Christopher Leonard, published a book on meat industry monopolies around the same time.

These works shared a common theme: Monopolistic businesses create social problems beyond consumer price-gouging, from buying off politicians to degrading the quality of our food...

More: https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2017/08/30/google-has-become-a-major-threat-to-democracy-in-america/

It was a joke. It already exists.

Unless you were going along with the joke, in which case my bad.

The weirdest thing is that area definitely votes in a climate-change-denialist fashion, but the farmers there that I have met are intensely pragmatic folks and absolutely not stupid. They do change crops and how they manage animals based on conditions. Resource management based on existing and historical conditions and trends is very much how they run their businesses.

I spend some time every year just down the road from Hill City.

For a deeper discussion of these issues, though not necessarily climate-specific, check out What's The Matter With Kansas

Poorest states are the reddest states. Also see 'what's the matter with kansas.' Your assertion is so profoundly incorrect that it hurts to even read. Republicans overwhelmingly make up the nation's poor. That's why their party has such a need to appeal to religious fundies and why they constantly try to dictate morals. You don't need to stick with being anti-abortion, anti-gay, pro Xtian extremist when you're catering to rich people.

"most of them" ? Nope, very few. And even the politicians are simply the ones who shout loudest. Piyush and Marco weren't rich.

Read What's the Matter With Kansas? and you'll see exactly why.

Tip for the future. When linking amazon products click on the small share button on the right of the page. It gives you a link like so

http://amzn.com/080507774X

This is a good place to start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_(book)

https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409

(maybe some of the section on Guatemala at least is in the preview - I didn't look)

This book is also well worth reading, it expanded his section on Iran in Overthrow. Another long-term foreign policy disaster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men

I agree with your overall sentiment, but it is strange to be skeptical on this issue, which has overwhelming evidence.

I think there is a danger in receiving everything passively from Reddit, you have to actively seek out ideas and information from a wide range of sources. If you have a broader base of knowledge it is easier to know what seems fishy (on Reddit or anywhere else).

If you want a quick, moderate overview on the topic at hand here is a good book:
http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409

Amazon link to the book he's referring to.

And might I suggest another book on the topic? This one is written by a former US State Dept. historian: Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II.

Hawaii 1880s. A group of sugar plantation owners arranged to usurp control of the islands from the monarchs to lower labor standards and import tariffs to the US. Then came the banana republics, the Nicarauga Canal, America's war of aggression against the Spaniards and John Foster Dulles shitting all over the world because of communists he thought he saw.

Might I recommend All The Shah's Men author Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change

To allow companies access to cheap labor and resources. Low taxes & tariffs, minimal regulation typical neoliberal stuff. Access to financial markets bank loans, investments etc. Also to establish a network of military infrastructure to enable future conquest and prevent competing countries to do the same.

Some recommended reading:
http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409


http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427577478&sr=1-1&keywords=shock+doctrine


You can find PDFs of both, I just linked the amazon page because they're both good books and quite cheap.

Relevant

Relevant.

There is a book about this.
https://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X/ref=nodl_

I got this book a while back: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217

You'd be surprised how many morons die by falling into hot springs and the like.

I picked up a copy of Death in Yellowstone during a trip there a couple of years ago. Highly recommended.

The chapter on bears had many anecdotes about dog / bear interactions. Also people / bear interactions.

People can be really stupid.

Love Shoshone Geyser Basin. I've been there 3 times! Finally got to see Minute Man go off on the 3rd trip!

Ever read Death in Yellowstone? You'll never look at Shoshone Geyser Basin the same...

I worked a summer in Yellowstone a couple years ago. It's amazing how many people just lost their minds when they got near these large wild animals. The bison harmed FAR more people every year that bears ever do. Not because the bison are that aggressive, these people have never been around wild animals and think they are tame.

I was surprised how many times I was asked if they could swim in the hot springs. "I would not recommend it, since most of the springs are boiling or almost boiling. It would most likely be lethal"

FYI: the vast majority of deaths in Yellowstone are car accidents.

Check out Death in Yellowstone it's a great read

If you like spending money on something that wikipedia rendered obsolete-ish, I recommend

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217

Picked it up as a young morbid person in the park. Fantastic.

I do read a few history books a year. Currently reading Command and Control.

Gaming wise I'm a Civilization guy. Those Paradox games intimidate me, though I've fallen into a few Let's Play/write-up rabbit holes of people's games over the years.

Gifted Hands was an awesome book.

Also Stiff was a great book about Cadavers.

I love science books. These are all on my bookshelf/around my apt. They aren't all chemistry, but they appeal to my science senses:

I got a coffee table book once as a gift. It's Theodore Gray's The Elements. It's beautiful, but like I said, more of a coffee table book. It's got a ton of very cool info about each atom though.

I tried The Immortal Life of Henrieta Lacks, which is all about the people and family behind HeLa cells. That was a big hit, but I didn't care for it.

I liked The Emperor of all Maladies which took a long time to read, but was super cool. It's essentially a biography of cancer. (Actually I think that's it's subtitle)

The Wizard of Quarks and Alice in Quantumland are both super cute allegories relating to partical physics and quantum physics respectively. I liked them both, though they felt low-level, tying them to high-level physics resulted in a fun read.

Unscientific America I bought on a whim and didn't really enjoy since it wasn't science enough.

The Ghost Map was a suuuper fun read about Cholera. I love reading about mass-epidemics and plague.

The Bell that Rings Light, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, Schrödinger's Kittens, The Fabric of the Cosmos and Beyond the God Particle are all pleasure reading books that are really primers on Quantum.

I also tend to like anything by Mary Roach, which isn't necessarily chemistry or science, but is amusing and feels informative. I started with Stiff but she has a few others that I also enjoyed.

Have fun!

Sure.

If evolution is of interest to you (and if you have interest in the intersection between theology and science), Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth Miller explores both sides of the debate and debunks many common misconceptions about evolution. I first read it in a college biology topics course.

If you like the topic of 'creationist attempts to dispute or disrupt the teaching of evolution in the classroom', Summer of the Gods, about the Scopes Monkey Trial, is a great book (although not explicitly about science).

You may find The Selfish Gene by Dawkins worth a read.

Books by Mary Roach can be fun; I've read Stiff and enjoyed it, and Packing for Mars was pretty good as well.

I have heard good things about The Emperor of All Maladies, though I haven't read it myself.

Our Stolen Future, about contamination of the environment by artificially produced estrogen and estrogen analogs, is dated but interesting.

The Discovery of Insulin by Bliss is a great story about how science happens and how scientific discovery occurs, and it lays out what may be the most important discovery in medical science during the 20th century.

Were those types of books what you were looking for?

Stiff by Mary Roach is a really good read on the topic of cadavers as well.

Yes! For those interested, it's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. She has several others out (6 books and one compilation). Gulp might be my favorite but I really enjoyed Packing for Mars and Bonk. This sub would also really appreciate Spook!

Just sign up as an organ donor, or arrange to have your body "donated for science." Every wonder what your corpse would be used for? It's not usually being dissected by anatomy students. You could be a crash test dummy, or a study in decomposition, or a training head for plastic surgeons, or more...

Can I give you a list? Imma give you a list with a little from each category. I LOVE books and posts like this!

Non-fiction or Books About Things:

The Lost City of Z: In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called “The Lost City of Z.” In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett’s quest for “Z” and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century. Cumberbatch will play him in the movie version of this.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers: Hilariously gross and just super interesting. Her writing is like a non-fiction Terry Pratchett. Everything she's written is great, but this one is my favorite.

Devil in the White City: All about HH Holmes and his murder hotel during the Chicago World's Fair. Incredibly well-written and interesting.

The Outlaw Trail: Written in 1920 by the first superintendent of Capitol Reef National Park (aka, the area around Robber's Roost). He went around interviewing the guys who were still alive from the original Wild Bunch, plus some of the other outlaws that were active during that time. Never read anything else with actual interviews from these guys and it's a little slice of life from the end of the Wild West.

Fiction, Fantasy, Sci-Fi:

Here I'm only going to give you the less known stuff. You can find Sanderson (light epic fantasy), Pratchett (humor / satire fantasy), Adams (humor fantasy), etc easily in any bookstore. They are fantastic and should be read, but they are easy to find. I suggest:

The Cloud Roads: Martha Wells is an anthropologist and it shows in her world building in every series. She creates societies instead of landscapes. These are very character-driven and sometimes emotional.

The Lion of Senet: Jennifer Fallon starts a great political thriller series with this book. If you like shows like House of Cards or things where there's a lot of political plotting, sudden twists, and a dash of science v. religion, then you'll love these.

The Book of Joby: Do you want to cry? This book will make you cry. Mix arthurian legend with some God & Devil archetypes and it's just this very powerful story. Even though it deals with religious themes and icons, I wouldn't say it's a religious book. Reads more like mythology.

On Basilisk Station: Awesome military space opera. Really good sci-fi.

Grimspace: Pulpy space opera. Brain bubble gum instead of serious reading. But that's fun sometimes too!

http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

For the lazy ^ It really is an amazing book, I listened to the audiobook.

Mary Roach writes some pretty interesting novels, such as Stiff, the curious lives of human cadavers

I used her as a source for a paper in college and found that book very informative.

It's not World War Z, or an action type book. This book is called Stiff. It's a very interesting and informative book about cadavers. I went into this book with much skepticism, but was intrigued by her personal recollection and delivery. The book made me go from laughing out loud to cringing by the subject at hand. I highly recommend this book, and it's available on kindle.

The off-chance you read it, (Let me know how you like it!)

My wishlist - http://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/2S2J4Y7OHPGTH/ref=cm_pdp_wish_all_itms (Only one item below $15.)

One of my favorite non-fiction authors is Mary Roach. She picks a topic and gathers all kinds of detailed and odd information about it, often covering the kinds of details that the genuinely curious find fascinating.

Stiff is about what humans do with the dead remains of other humans, including her visit to the body farms where scientists figure out the cascade of beetles, bugs and grubs invade the remains.
https://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1502060523&sr=8-4&keywords=Mary+Roach

Gulp is all about the human digestive tract
https://www.amazon.com/Gulp-Adventures-Alimentary-Mary-Roach-ebook/dp/B00AN86JZ4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502060523&sr=8-1&keywords=Mary+Roach

Bonk is about sex, including the author convincing her husband to have sex in an MRI for science
https://www.amazon.com/Bonk-Curious-Coupling-Science-Sex-ebook/dp/B003M5IGE2/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1502060523&sr=8-9&keywords=Mary+Roach

Packing for Mars is all about the details of putting people into space
https://www.amazon.com/Packing-Mars-Curious-Science-Life-ebook/dp/B003YJEXUM/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1502060523&sr=8-5&keywords=Mary+Roach

Basically, I think everything she writes is worth reading if you write fiction.

there is a fascinating nonfiction book called the Poisoner's Handbook (http://www.amazon.com/Poisoners-Handbook-Murder-Forensic-Medicine/dp/1594202435) that I enjoyed. It's basically about the birth of modern forensics. Another fun read would be Stiff (http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292456067&sr=1-1), which is also nonfiction about cadavers.

This book is a really great read if you're curious about why cadavers are so useful. From a certain standpoint, a lot of people could do more for humanity dead than alive.

"The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below." - Hyperion, Dan Simmons

"Joe Gould is a blithe and emaciated little man who has been a notable in the cafeterias, diners, barrooms, and dumps of Greenwhich Village for a quarter of a century" - Up In The Old Hotel - Joseph Mitchell

"He told them he loved them" - Columbine - Dave Cullen

"Kazbek Misikov stared at the bomb hanging above his family. It was a simple device, a plastic bucket packed with explosive paste, nails, and small metal balls. It weighed perhaps eight pounds. The existence of this bomb had become a central focus of his life." - The School - C.J. Chivers

"It was summer; it was winter." The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy - MICHAEL PATERNITI

"The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken. I have never before had occasion to make the comparison, for never before today have I seen a head in a roasting pan" Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers - Mary Roach

Check out the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers some time. There's a lot more to preparing dead people than that that you would never guess/want to know.

Not a strictly educational read, but a very entertaining and enlightening exploration into something you'll probably become very familiar with in your near future...

Stiff by Mary Roach

Have you read the book Stiff'- Curious Lives of Human Cadavers?
One of favorite reads and authors in the past few years.

I can highly recommend Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach as a fascinating, yet informative guide as to what happens to human bodies after death.

There's a chapter specifically about the study of decomposition in relation to criminal forensics, so I think it'd be a good read for you.

Pretty much everything I know about QM, I learned from reading stuff on websites like the ones people love to link on Reddit, or similar things I've found on Google. :) I can suggest you take a look at Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm about halfway through and it's pretty dense with information, but it's still good!

Knowing what I know, I believe the issue with collecting a bunch of entangled particles is that scientists generally use photons, since it's easiest to entangle them compared to anything else, and photons aren't exactly something that hangs around waiting to be accumulated. One procedure to entangle particles requires forcing two electrons out of orbit from opposite sides of their atom. Read about creating entangled particles here. In one article, I read it would take about one million particles to get an entangled pair, but processes have improved so we can get about six a second.

I can't find any references to the "17 fields," though. I found quantum field theory, but nothing else.

No not reliable at all. New age spiritual nonsense with the word quantum thrown around with no rhyme or reason!

Read any of these instead. Actual physics books for new to physics readers;

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0393609391/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_.n-xDb972EWGF

Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/178416075X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Po-xDbCXBA3FT

Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by its Most Brilliant Teacher https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0465025277/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_sq-xDbBG45M3D

He's still really popular. Just because it is trendy to hate him on reddit and Twitter, it does not mean his popularity has waned.

His most recent book. It spent 48 weeks on the NYT best seller list.

But he's not popular, right?

This book might make an interesting read for you if you're into history at all.

I am not a scientist, I am a historian, however... if you would like to know some academic titles that go to the route of the problem I can suggest Coming Out Under Fire and Gay New York. Neither book is directly about the now debunked decision that homosexuality was a mental disorder but both make multiple references to it and Coming Out Under Fire is a book that deals with some of the immediate backlash of that not-so-scientific, scientific claim.

the short version of the history here though is that in 1952 it was put into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders from the APA. This was a political move and a result of 60 years of cultural shift. What had happened since 1890 is really the birth of a gay identity. Until this time, people had discussed homosexuality in obscure medical contexts or works like Krafft-Ebing's work Psychopathia Sexualis with Especial Reference to the Antipathic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-Forensic Study (1886) which concluded that it was a degeneration and talked about it more like a fetish. Later in his life after more work on the subject he retracted that hypothesis. A bit later Havelock Ellis and John Symonds came along. Their work concluded that Homosexuality was definitely not a disease but instead variation of sexuality. Then in 1948 the first Kinsey Report came out in which he definitively stated "Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual." The findings of his research was that sexuality is a range, its not black and white. This was all well before the APA's ruling.

Shortly after the ruling the work of Evelyn Hooker, The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual came out which determined that homosexuals could be perfectly well adjusted humans. The next Kinsey Report came out in 1953 and with that he once again concluded that sexuality was not black and white. According to him 37% of males and 13% of females had some sort of homosexual experience to orgasm in their lifetime. So to say somebody was exclusively heterosexual would be difficult.

Further supporting evidence of the political or social nature of the initial decision can be see in the APA's decision to remove it from their list of mental disorders. Stonewall has happened in 1969 and the entire gay liberation and gay rights movement has become very visible in media and in the public eye. Probably because of this, when the decision was made to remove it as an officially classified disorder it was also accompanied with a statement from the APA that supported the civil rights of homosexuals.

There's a lot of hate for shippers in general and slash shippers in particular in this subreddit, so that's probably why the other person assumed you were asking in bad faith.

I enjoy Steve and Bucky's platonic relationship in canon, but also ship them romantically, so assuming that you are asking in good faith, here's a few of the "undertones" as I see them.

As someone else pointed out, Bucky (and to a lesser extent Sam) are both given roles in the Cap films that are more commonly given to female love interests. Bucky is given a Damsel in Distress type role in The First Avenger when Cap goes AWOL to save his life after learning his unit was captured by HYDRA. Later, Bucky is (seemingly) killed by HYDRA and Cap becomes The First Avenger to avenge his death. A dead wife or girlfriend is an extremely common element in superhero origin stories, to the point that it's seen as a cliche. Later, when Bucky re-appears as the Winter Soldier, Cap breaks through 70 years of brainwashing and torture with a catchphrase ("I'm with you to the end of the line") that's practically a marriage vow ("til death do us part"). And so forth. Basically, the way the story tropes are set up, if you substituted Peggy for Bucky in Bucky's storyline, nearly everyone would expect their reunion to involve some swelling music and a kiss, and it's natural that people are responding to that even though in this case the characters are two guys.

Additionally, Bucky's role in the MCU is not the same as his role in the comics. MCU Bucky is more of a combination of comics Bucky and the comics character of Arnie Roth - an older and larger friend who protected comics Steve while he was growing up skinny and sickly. Arnie is canonically gay.

Moreover, it's known that the Russos are aware of and sympathetic to the Stucky shippers, even though they don't ship it themselves, and that some members of the crew on The Winter Soldier and Civil War were shippers, so there are some film-making choices that shippers tend to interpret as Easter eggs of sorts. For example, moments before Steve sees Bucky for the first time in the 21st century, the song playing in the background is a WW2 era love song with decidedly non-platonic lyrics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dh3Ape1GmU

Though I don't know anything about the director and crew of The First Avenger's feelings on Stucky, the lyrics in the background of the bar scene are downright tragic if you believe Bucky is in love with Steve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1bPRotpQDQ

I could go on, but it's also just a matter of personal taste. I love Friends to Lovers stories, so Steve and Bucky's relationship is a type that I often end up shipping whether the couple is m/f, m/m, or f/f. I also think it adds a very interesting twist to their story given historical attitudes towards gay relationships, and the more tolerant attitudes in the 21st century that they would have had to adjust to after defrosting. Entire books have been written about LGBT life in New York City in the early 20th century, and LGBT soldiers during World War 2, and a lot of Steve/Bucky fanfiction draws heavily from that research, so as a historical fiction nerd, the fic is some of my favorite of any fandom that I've ever been involved in. For example, one of the fics I read just last month was an imagining of Bucky's wartime diary that was really immersive and helped fill in the gaping holes left by the Howling Commandos montage in the film. It's a really active and fun fandom to be a part of, and frankly, people who are so tied to a heterosexual interpretation of Steve's character that they refuse to consider other options are missing out. :)

Thank you so much for this, really helps my research. I will look into contacting the OED. I'd never heard of Leyendecker before but looking into him there is a high probability that my research subject and this guy knew each other. There seems to have been a lot of somewhat open gay people in New York around the turn of the century. The whole Elsie de Wolfe circle, Mattie Edwards Hewitt, Chalfin, Leyendecker. I wonder if there are any books on this subject. From what I've heard it was somewhat fashionable to be gay then (as well as owning Chow Chows).

EDIT: I've answered my own question vis-a-vis New York gay culture.

Then I'd suggest you read This Time is Different and The Worst Hard Time. There are quite a few parallels between the current crisis and the Great Depression.

For those unfamiliar with the Dust Bowl situation and all the components that led up to it, a really amazing book is The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

The Lady and the Panda

The true story of Ruth Harkness, a socialite who married a rich adventurer. He died alone in China on a quest to be the first westerner to bring back a live panda. She took over and succeeded.

The Worst Hard Time

Stories from survivors of the Dust Bowl. It's less a "journey adventure" book than the others listed, but a pretty epic tale of what these people endured.

I guess it depends how deep down the proverbial rabbit hole you're willing to go. If you entertain the idea that the entire war was (at least partially) theater in order to justify extravagant military budgets and broad, sweeping societal/industrial changes, then it makes sense that nothing of strategic value was attacked by the Japanese. In a scenario like that, Japan and the US technically aren't "enemies" at all in the traditional sense. Japan would have been told what to bomb and how to bomb it so that nothing truly valuable was lost. The US would be willing to sack a few old battleships if they knew it could/would be used as the justification to enter the war and change the course of the country's and world's history forever (with the US at or near the top of the food chain, of course).

This is one of the only scenarios that makes any sense to me considering that nothing Japan did at Pearl Harbor really made sense from a military strategy perspective. They had every opportunity to do real damage to the US war effort by destroying a substantial amount of the Pacific fleet and infrastructure, and yet all they did was sink a few old battleships and "damage" some others. If you truly look at the alleged damage from Pearl Harbor compared to the amount of equipment, ships, infrastructure, etc. that was typically docked there, the level of Japan's failure is pretty unbelievable (literally).

It all reminds me a bit of how Hitler let the British escape at Dunkirk or how Hitler allegedly canceled all weapons research for a couple years during the war because he thought he could "win with what he had". None of it makes any tactical sense whatsoever, despite how all the mainstream historians try to spin us.

> Do you have any good reads or docs on this?

Most of this is just the overall information I've gleaned from lots of different sources. It's basically my theory of WWII based on everything I've learned with my own speculations peppered in. I just see a lot of details and "facts" surrounding the war that make no sense at all except from the perspective that both sides were ultimately working together.

One more significant detail of that era that I think sheds some light as well: the BIS was crawling with Germans/Nazis all through the late 1930's and '40's - so basically the entire time the war was going on. There was a clause in the BIS charter saying it was immune from seizure, closure, and censure, regardless of what happened and even if its members were at war. Some of the members of the charter were First National of NY, Bank of England, Reichsbank, Bank of Italy, Bank of France, etc. Basically all of the major players and "enemies" of the war. The BIS funneled money to Germany throughout the war with the obvious consent of its member banks. Ultimately, as with everything else, it all comes back to money and power in the end imo.

If you want a book specifically about Pearl Harbor, this one is pretty decent.. The author of the book appears to be a spook and the book itself is likely a limited hangout in my opinion, but it's still a good entry-point and I think a lot of the evidence it compiles actually supports my theory that Pearl Harbor was one act in the Grand Play that is WWII, with Japan "in on it", despite that not being the author's intention.

It's more than that it "never stopped" -- the US callously broke the agreement it made with Gorbachev not to expand NATO to the east.

In the so-called Cold War, the USSR surrendered. It withdrew from eastern Europe and allowed itself to be broken up into over a dozen different countries -- but the US gov't acted treacherously and has never ended US aggression against Russia.

The entire Cold War strategy of provoking Russia and encircling it with military bases continued. The US pushed NATO east, and it tore up the ABM treaty placing an anti-missile base in Poland using the laughable excuse that we did that "because of Iran." Clearly the US wants to negate Russia's nuclear deterrence.

Twice in one decade the US has funded the overthrow of Ukraine's -- the historic birthplace of all of Russia -- government, with this last coup d'etat being a blatant violent and bloody affair.

Is it any wonder Russia is responding? We certainly have tried hard enough to provoke them!

> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944. The book "Day of Deceit" proves that the US carried out a deliberate, successful policy to provoke Japan into attacking the US so the US could enter WWII.

I haven't read Shirley's book, but it seems obsolete, given the evidence that Robert Stinnett uncovered.

In his book "Day of Deceit" Stinnett documents that the Roosevelt administration definitely knew of the attack before Dec. 7th, but more than that, had a policy to provoke Japan into attacking the US. Prior knowledge of the attack has been a theory for many years, and many people talked about it immediately after Pearl Harbor, but Stinnett unearthed much new evidence from the US gov't itself using Freedom of Information Act requests.

The most startling evidence is a US gov't document written by a Naval officer who proposed provoking Japan into attacking the US. This officer was in contact with FDR and the highest Navy admirals on a daily basis. The memo proposed 8 steps which would provoke Japan to attack the US, and the US gov't then enacted all 8 steps and Stinnett documents these.

Stinnett also offers evidence and testimony that the US gov't had broken the Japanese naval codes (the US gov't only claims to have broken Japanese diplomatic codes) before Pearl Harbor and not afterward like the US gov't and our history books claim.

Stinnett's theory is that with the fall of France in the spring of 1940, the US was shocked and feared that Britain might fall to Germany; the administration then enacted a policy of provoking Japan into attacking the US so that the US could enter the war in Europe in a "backdoor" fashion and have the country united in the war effort as a result of the attack.

Edit: Clarity.

As documented by this author's discovery of the so-called "McCollum memo" (and other research), after the fall of France, the US gov't had an actual policy of provoking Japan so we enter WWII against Germany via the German-Japanese alliance.

Day of Deceit

You should check out Day of Deceit

The review reads, "Historians have long debated whether President Roosevelt had advance knowledge of Japan's December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. Using documents pried loose through the Freedom of Information Act during 17 years of research, Stinnett provides overwhelming evidence that FDR and his top advisers knew that Japanese warships were heading toward Hawaii. The heart of his argument is even more inflammatory: Stinnett argues that FDR, who desired to sway public opinion in support of U.S. entry into WWII, instigated a policy intended to provoke a Japanese attack. The plan was outlined in a U.S. Naval Intelligence secret strategy memo of October 1940; Roosevelt immediately began implementing its eight steps (which included deploying U.S. warships in Japanese territorial waters and imposing a total embargo intended to strangle Japan's economy), all of which, according to Stinnett, climaxed in the Japanese attack."

The truth about Pearl Harbor was already uncovered by Robert Stinnett, who discovered the McCollum Memo and also wrote an extensive book about it. People tried to defame him, but it's ultimately up to the reader/researcher to decide truth from falsehood.

You have obviously not read Day of Deceit by R. Stinnett because your statement was proven false back in '01. Seriously, look it up then read it.

The argument over this issue has been settled via FIOA requests of US government documents that prove, at the very least, foreknowledge.

As other uses have pointed out, it didn't change things very much, but was more an adaptation to a battlefield that had already changed thanks to the increased deadliness of supporting arms.

I just wanted to add some supplementary materials you might be interested in.

The Gun is a pretty exhaustive history of the AK-47 and automatic weapons in general

On Infantry is a very dry study of infantry tactics from late 1890s through the 1970s. It is a bit out of date, but covers the period you are asking about.

There is also FM 3-21.8 which covers the US Army Infantry Platoon and squad organization and fighting style. It would be useful to understand exactly how a modern army expects its units to fight and how it organizes them to do so.

No rain, no mud, no sand. You might enjoy reading this: https://www.amazon.ca/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734

The Gun by CJ Chivers is a really excellent and thorough history of the Kalashnikov and its significance. One of my favorite books and authors.

I can't recommend the book THE GUN enough. Amazing story about the AK47:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734

I would like to participate.

Here are three books that might fit the theme.

CJ Chivers "The Gun" - Well written and details the development of the AK-47 which has impacted men's lives for three generations now.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734

Geoff Colvin "Talent Is Overrated" - We are all trying to change ourselves for the better. That takes focus and determination. This book is definitely echoing that view.
http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World-Class-Performers/dp/1591842948

Dean Karnazes, "Ultramarathon Man" - Good biography about a man transforming himself. Lots of fuck yeah moments.
http://www.amazon.com/Ultramarathon-Man-Confessions-All-Night-Runner/dp/1585424803

*All three of these have audiobook versions availible from Audible so that could be a boon for the dyslexic amoungst us who have issues reading.



Of the three I would say Talent Is Overrated would probably prompt more discussion. The Ultramarathon Man might be good for a working out themed choice. The Gun is just a damn good book that combines politics, engineering and war.

I'm a 19-year-old boy from Ottawa, Canada (you may have heard of our little country :P ). While I was not homeschooled per se during my public school years (I went to regular English schools), I definitely learned more quickly, more thoroughly and more widely due to my parents' constant efforts to teach me things that went way above and beyond what I was "learning" at my high school.

My parents are both high school teachers, and have each spent roughly 30 years teaching their respective subjects.

My dad actually just retired last year, but he taught most of the Social Studies curriculum during the course of his career (History, Philosophy, Psychology, World Religions, etc.). He is a bilingual Francophone from Ottawa, so he taught at one of the French Catholic high schools in our area. He also happens to be somewhat skeptical of religion (not an atheist, but damned close). Odd combination, yes, but it has resulted in him introducing me to
military history, everything from the Roman legions to the Knights Templar to the Taliban.

My mother was born in Ottawa, to Greek parents who had left Greece after the Second World War; my grandparents are from a village about 20 minutes away from the modern city of Sparti (Sparta). During the war, the village was at some point occupied by Axis forces (I'm not sure when or to what extent, because my grandparents' English is not great and only my mother speaks Greek).

I decided to include a list (below) of works that I've found particularly interesting (I've never actually written down a list of my favs before, so this may be somewhat... sprawling and will be in no particular order :P ). Depending on the ages of your kids, some of this stuff might be inappropriate for them right now, but they can always check it out when they're older. It's mostly military/wartime history that interests me (it's what I plan on studying in university), but I've learned so many little tidbits about other things as well from having access to these works. Since your kids are all boys, I hope they'll find at least some of this stuff to be interesting :) .


Books

• http://www.amazon.com/Apache-Inside-Cockpit-Fighting-Machine/dp/0802144780/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375711529&sr=1-4&keywords=apache
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/American-Gun-History-U-S-Firearms/dp/0062242717/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375712862&sr=1-1&keywords=american+gun
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375712990&sr=1-1&keywords=the+gun+cj+chivers
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Generation-Kill-Evan-Wright/dp/0425224740
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/One-Bullet-Away-Making-Officer/dp/0618773436/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Fist-Education-Humanitarian-Making/dp/B0098RLDT8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375713827&sr=1-1&keywords=the+making+of+a+humanitarian
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Shake-Hands-Devil-Failure-Humanity/dp/0786715103/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375713894&sr=1-1&keywords=shake+hands+with+the+devil
  
  
  Movies and TV
  
  
• http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/lovehatepropaganda/
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Military-Combat-Megaset-Dogfights-Seasons/dp/B002D1XJUW/ref=sr_1_6?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1375714091&sr=1-6&keywords=dogfights
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Tank-Battles-N/dp/B0055HK6V6/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1375714235&sr=1-1&keywords=greatest+tank+battles
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Deadliest-Warrior-Season-Geoffrey-Desmoulin/dp/B0037TPIAI/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
  
  
  This is all non-fiction. If you like this list, let me know, and I can expand on it further, and also include my favourite works from other genres, as well as my favourite fiction books as well :) . I left out tons of stuff that I'm too much of a lazy teenager to type in here, lol.
  
  
  
  
  

At this point in the US its kind of a feedback loop, the republican party made their bed with christians (particularly the powerful ones at the top) and they now lend their political influence to rightwing causes.

That being said, there are larger trends that show religious people, especially the very religious tend to be very conservative and this is a trend that has held for centuries. What is new is the hollowing out in America at least of the political middle of the laity.

One could and people have written whole papers and books on this very subject.

I will just say a lot of this solidified around and because of the Reagan presidency, he built the "moral majority" coalition and it still affects us.

More basically, those who are taught that an old book contains the greatest truths handed down by a divine being who is the ultimate source of authority tend to be more susceptible to accepting things that are and resistant to change, as well as having a susceptibility to authoritarian acceptance and worship (they already literally worship a god in this structure, so why not politically?).

These are also people who believe in absolutes, in an unchanging, perfect god and an unchanging set of perfect morals. Much easier that way.

 

> In its broadest sense…fundamentalism is a form of ideological intransigence, which is not limited to religion, but includes political or social positions…

source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1369219/

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism

 

Here are some books of relevance:

One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate/dp/0465049494

 

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America

https://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284437/

(Note the author of this one Chris Hedges, has a background in theology, but a very leftist/liberal one. He isn't an atheist, but is very hostile to much of christianity in america)

 

What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/0805073396/

 

And here are some links to online free content that may be of interest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism

 

An overview of christian political affiliations, it also has citations and sources for those who doubt that increased religiosity correlates positively with right wing/conservative voting and views.

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/10/3616.full

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/10079-religious-and-free-market-fundamentalism-have-more-in-common-than-the-tea-party

Social conservatism, primarily abortion and gay rights; but also, euthanasia, drug policy, welfare, etc. "Conservative" republican politicians tout "family values", and frame campaigns as us vs. them, or the godless liberals. So while you ostensibly vote pro-life, anti-gay, drugs-evil, anti-socialism...what you get is pro-corporate, anti-poor, do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do hypocrisy. This might help.

Check out this book

Did you ever read a book called "What's The Matter With Kansas?" http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/0805073396 Thomas Frank pretty well summed up the story of contemporary American politics in this book.

The funny thing is that many of America's poor and otherwise marginalized people vote Republican, thus denying themselves benefits and helping the rich get richer. Check out What's the Matter With Kansas?.

What's the matter with Kansas?

Looks like the book, What's the Matter with Kansas is going to need a second edition.

<http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/0805073396>

Duh...

Deer Hunting With Jesus and What’s The Matter With Kansas are good reads. They explore the reasons people give for voting against their best interests.

What's the matter with Kansas, you ask?

It's weird you're asking for academic sources for someone's armchair analysis and opinion that politics are best handled moderately. It's not really a thesis. If you mean you'd like academic sources about how certain sides get popular votes because of backlash from the other party, and how party alignment can lead to incredible bias, well that's kind of common sense. But here are some interesting academic articles and books about the subject.


https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/party_over_policy.pdf


https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X


http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS234/articles/bartels.pdf


http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/williamson/files/tea_party_pop.pdf


https://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS125/articles/pomper.htm

Read this book, http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

There's a book you might want to read, called What's the Matter With Kansas? which is dedicated specifically to that question.

The short answer is republican propaganda A)leads lower-class voters to not realize how far down the totem pole they are, while B)causing them to focus all their energies on external threats to undefinable things like "family values."

Put that together, and you get people who will happily vote for someone who's going to destroy their local economy, just so long as he promises to keep the gays from marrying. Because they've been conditioned to think the latter is the more pressing problem, not the former.

An oldie, but goodie

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

There's a great book on specifically what happened in Kansas, but somehow I doubt it gets many conservative readers-- What's The Matter With Kansas?

I look up a lot of random bullshit on a whim, I got interested in this after an old episode of Ripley's Believe it or Not. There was this book I read called Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers I read a long time ago, I remember a lot from that.

Just look it up the author was a Mary Roach. Here is a link to her book's Amazon and a PDF if you don't have the cash to buy it.

The Age of American Unreason - Susan Jacoby, which is the antithesis of
Slouching Towards Gamorrah - Robert Bork, a horrible horrible book
And for a fun, interesting read:
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers - Mary Roach

"Recentemente" li um livro que é o Stiff (sim, os meus gostos literários são algo estranhos), onde a autora refere que a história de comer cão é especifica a uma ou outra provincia e não algo generalizado. Confirmas?

Qual a formação da tua mãe?

Estudando tu na Inglaterra, sentes muitas diferenças em comparação com estudantes chineses (que vieram da China)?

I just finished this book. If you want to hear more about human cadavers - its really really cool. I'd advise the audiobook, personally.
http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411046472&sr=8-1&keywords=stiff%27

ITT: a lot of people saying that having their body blown up after they're dead would be kinda cool.

If that's you, I recommend reading this book all about what happens to dead bodies that have been donated to science. I got it through a Redditgifts book exchange. It's morbidly fascinating.

And it turns out that donating your body to science is actually incredibly useful to the living as all sorts of safety mechanisms, surgical procedures, forensics testing, etc have been developed because others have donated their bodies.

For highly entertaining non-technical biology reading, consider Stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers by Mary Roach. It covers all the things that can happen to your corpse after you die: use of cadavers in research, safety testing, organ donation, forensics, anatomy labs, etc, as well as some interesting history of all of these things.

But your organs don't get transplanted unless you're brain dead. (Which I'm assuming he wasn't)

He died to become a crash test dummy, help someone learn Botox injections, or literally rot in a field for years.

Source: (This book)[http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826] I read a while back

Not totally accurate, but if you’re looking for popular science/entertainment that’s somewhat anthropology related.... Kathy Reichs is a board certified forensic anthropologist and has written a lot of books. They (she) are what the TV show Bones was based on.

Stiff by Mary Roach is a good one

For nonfiction, and if you’re interested in things highly relevant politically now, these are some incredible works on immigration.

Becoming Legal
They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields

I’m pretty sure this author is a sociologist, but still a great book. imagined communities

Try Stiff

http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373828596&sr=8-1&keywords=Stiff

Someone already suggested it, but I'd like to restate House of Leaves. Though perhaps it's not a good vacation book because it will suck you in and it's kind of a dark book.

The Xanth and Apprentice Adept series by Piers Anthony are really quick reads; they're corny as shit fantasy for teenage boys, but they got me through some rough years so I'll always have a spot for them. Also on the fantasy side, check out Hyperion.

On the nonfiction side: Stiff and Salt were both awesome. I've read a bunch of other books by the author of Stiff, and they're all worth it--she's very accessible and funny, but also serious and respectful of the topics.

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons or Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers might be interesting to you

aka Stiff by Mary Roach (some places don't feature the sub-title); great listen.

They all go to saving lives, madam!

Seriously though, absolutely, they can take whatever they want when I'm gone - I can't think of anything more selfish than denying someone who needs them something I can't use any more.

If you're looking for different options and a generally interesting read about the subject - even covering off the opt in/out arguments, have a read of Stiff by Mary Roach. Can highly recommend any of her books!

There is a book titled [Stiff] (http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826) by Mary Roach. Entertaining and macabre reading. It talks about using human cadaver for crash testing.

The Human Bone Manual is like a biblical source to me. Also, Stiff, by Mary Roach is some SERIOUSLY interesting stuff.

Currently on my list and in no way expected to last out the month, much less the summer:

Stiff: The Curious lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. This is one of the toughest books I've ever read, barring anything by Dickens. One chapter on something like crash test dummies or organ donors will be OK, then I read two pages of the history of human head transplants involving some French Fuck who cut dog's heads off and sewed them onto other dogs and I've got to put it down for a few hours.

Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, also by Mrs. Roach. I certainly hope to find this more enjoyable than the one about cadavers.

And finally, A Dance with Dragons, book 5 of George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones series. Which, if the first four are any indication, promises to be a heady mix of both of the first two books on the list.

You should read the wonderful book: Stiff - The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers. It's excellent. http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

The Disappearing Spoon. Also anything by Mary Roach, especially Stiff.

If you haven't read it, you should check out Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Each chapter is about a different use for bodies that have been donated to science. It's humorous, engaging informative, and fun. Really great read!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393081575
Or
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393324826/ref=pd_aw_sims_3?pi=SL500_SY115

If you haven't already, read 'Astrophysics for People in a Hurry' by Neil deGrasse Tyson. It's a great read whatever level of scientific understanding you're at and I also like NDT's silky baritone voice to be the voice in my head when I read it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson book “Astrophyics for people in a hurry” is a quick read. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393609391/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_qDhjDb48EPV2R

Yes it is.

edit: No it isn't. Release in May.

I recommend Astrophysics for People In a Hurry by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Sabem quando é que este livro irá estar disponível em Portugal? Não me importaria de o ler em inglês, mas preferia em português.

Já agora. Este tópico saiu da front page aqui do subreddit o que o torna um bocado difícil de se ver.

Astrophysics

There are also some great physics books on Amazon. For example, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.

Maybe a cool book about astronomy, or this one, or maybe

Maybe https://www.amazon.com/Astrophysics-People-Hurry-deGrasse-Tyson/dp/0393609391/ref=la_B00NSCELKC_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1506740644&sr=1-1

You might be interested in Gay New York

It's not about Stonewall, but Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 explores a lot of interesting stuff most people don't know about. I took Chauncey's queer history class at Yale. It was amazing.

As for trans* stuff, I'd recommend a lot of theory. Judith Butler mainly. I'd also recommend Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity.

> blaming society

I agree that he does it himself, but if you are familiar with discourse analysis (think Michele Foucault), there is validity to the proposition that society is, in fact, to blame for linguistic violence and socially oppressive forces. Society forms a collective discourse regarding what is and what is not acceptable, and how things should be as opposed to how they shouldn't be. Think about the discursive definition of masculinity vs. femininity: men are supposed to be "manly" while women must remain "feminine." What do these terms really mean? Obviously, these terms do not have set definitions, but are rather constructed by society and change dramatically over time. Thus, when someone does not necessarily fit into one of those discursive definition, they are "othered (marginalized)," and discursive violence is inflicted upon them. The same goes for gender identities: what is considered homosexual vs. heterosexual? In the early 20th Century, men could have sex with another man, and as long as they didn't "receive" they were considered "straight". After WWII, however, the Christian right in this country began construction of the "closet" through discursive violence, changing the definition of what was socially acceptable.

I obviously cannot go deeply into critical discourse analysis, but the point is, there is substantial academic support for the proposition that society is to blame for many ills facing marginalized individuals.

> Judeo-Christan values are the real counterculture.

Yeah, all but two Congressional Representatives are Judeo-Christian... Solid argument, Prager.

George Chauncey

Here's the book we were required to read for his class http://www.amazon.com/Gay-New-York-Culture-1890-1940/dp/0465026214

Nice guy. Didn't make students buy his books if the bookstore was selling it at a ridiculous price.

There are some great books and articles on this subject. I think that you should avoid the 1950s onwards, because that would be like confirmation for Peterson fans.

For the gay identity that the books that I recommend are:

https://www.amazon.com/Gay-New-York-Culture-1890-1940/dp/0465026214/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522048690&sr=8-1&keywords=gay+new+york
https://www.amazon.com/Gay-Berlin-Birthplace-Modern-Identity/product-reviews/0307473139/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_hist_1?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&reviewerType=all_reviews#reviews-filter-bar
https://www.amazon.com/Homintern-Culture-Liberated-Modern-World/dp/0300218036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522048869&sr=8-1&keywords=Homintern


A free source that is full of primary sources.
http://rictornorton.co.uk

This was the norm. There were openly homosexual bars in the U.S. back then, too:

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940

Another great read:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465026214?pc_redir=1407908281&robot_redir=1

This looks interesting though I kind of hope this book paid more attention to historical accuracy and nuance than this review of it did.

Another excellent work on early gay culture and the development of a distinctly gay identity in the United States is Chauncey's Gay New York, a fairly serious scholarly review or pre-WWII gay life in NYC.

The Worst Hard Times, about how America brought about, what was at the time, the largest man made environmental disaster the world had ever seen, the Dust Bowl.

My favorite part was when Congress was bitching about what to do about it in D.C, all of a sudden the city gets pummeled by a great, suffocating, rolling red dust cloud.

A man asks, " What the hell is falling from the air?!"

The man from the heart of the disaster answers, " Gentleman, that's Nebraska."

It was not just the dust and starvation and thirst, you know. It was your lungs turning to glass from the silica in the air, until they shattered and cut open lungs and hearts which died drowning in blood. It was the overwhelming number of spiders, centipedes, and insects driving people mad. It was the crackling air full of balls of fire and dry lightning and the rolling black darkness. The earth was dead, but once airborne, it became a plague, and every horde visited the American midwest in a way to put the bible to shame. The earth was a dug up zombie then, and it roamed brutal.

That was a crime we should have watched more closely. It was no mystery, but the big ones never are mysteries. Usually it's just stupid and money.

Close to Shore, by Michael Capuzzo

The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan

I just read this history book it was pretty good, I enjoyed it. It's told in an interesting way so it's not really boring

Antony Beevor's Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin 1945 were superb narrative histories of World War Two in the East. On the American end, the first two volumes of Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy - An Army at Dawn and The Day of Battle are great. I think somebody else mentioned The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. Just the first paragraph of that book is worth the price of the paperback.

If you're not into the whole military thing, The Worst Hard Time by Tim Egan covers the dustbowl era in the southern plains. Reads like an epic novel.

All of these suggestions prioritize craft of writing over intellectual rigor. I studied history, so I have a keen appreciation for the value (and the limits) of academic history. These books are not that sort of history, though I don't think any of them get any facts egregiously wrong. It's just that they're remarkable for being well-written - which should appeal to a fiction enthusiast - not for being pathbreaking academic treatments of their subject matter.

That's speculative theory, of course. What we know is what happened.

But to project, it depends on whether we deliberately provoked Japan into attacking the US or not.

Some people -- like this author and journalist, and WWII vet who served on the same aircraft carrier as President George H.W. Bush -- claim that after trying to provoke Germany into declaring war on us by sinking German subs in the Atlantic in int'l waters, we enacted a plan to enter WWII via the "back door:" the German-Japanese alliance.

That author uncovered a US document via Freedom of Info Act request which outlined steps for the US to provoke Japan into attacking us, and the book details the fact that we carried out those steps. One -- moving Pacific Fleet HQ from well-equipped San Francisco to the isolated, vulnerable backwater port of Pearl Harbor in our colony/territory of Hawaii, was so controversial that the Pacific Fleet commander resigned in protest over the move.

The logic goes that the US was so shocked (as was the world) at the lightning fast defeat of France, then the world's 2nd largest global empire, that the US felt compelled to enter the war. But FDR wanted to enter the war with the country united (it wasn't during WWI) so he felt he needed to be attacked -- thus the secret policy.

The author also claims, based on first-hand testimony by WWII cryptographers, that we had broken the Japanese naval code before Pearl Harbor (the US gov't claims we only broke it afterwards). That would've given us knowledge of the Japanese attack, and allowed us to move our aircraft carriers and new ships out of Pearl Harbor leaving only old, mostly obsolete ships to be attacked -- exactly what happened.

While this seems nuts to us today, in the 1940s it wasn't (see quote below). In fact, a Hawaiian newspaper ran a front page story the week before Pearl Harbor which said Japan was about to attack Hawaii.

If you subscribe to that theory, we entered WWII unjustly without cause, just like we did WWI.

> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944. The book "Day of Deceit" documents that the US carried out a deliberate, successful policy to provoke Japan into attacking the US so the US could enter WWII.

http://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299

Wise Japanese diplomats and people on Obama's team will remember that the US actively and deliberately manipulated, maneuvered and provoked Japan into attacking the US at Pearl Harbor, as was proven in the book Day of Deceit.

Given the costs of that war to Japan, it is highly likely they've learned some valuable lessons from the US' strategy of starting that war...

> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944.

This beat it to it

[Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor](http://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299 "Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor")

> like how the US started WWI

Well, if you read the US Senate's Nye report done after the war, the US gov't made a conscious decision to wage war against Germany. The Zimmerman telegraph is usually offered up as one reason, though we laughed at Mexico's "power". The Nye report notes how the US loaned much money to Britain and France and how that was a critical factor. The Germans were within their right to sink British ships with submarines, because those ships were carrying war munitions and were legitimate targets under int'l law.

> & WWII

Journalist and author Robbert Stinnett uncovered much new evidence in his book Day of Deceit including the famous McCollum memo which was written by a naval intelligence officer that med with FDR almost daily. That memo -- uncovered with a Freedom of Information Act request -- outlined 8 steps which the US had to undertake to provoke Japan into attacking the US; the US undertook all 8 steps and what do you know, Japan attacked.

Unless you've read and pondered the new, groundbreaking evidence presented in Day of Deceit, you cannot say you have evaluated all of what might have happened at Pearl Harbor.

> or stated the Korean war by invading South Korea.

In 1950 South Korean and North Korean forces battled each other along the 38th parallel and in the air above it. This happened for months and it was only when the South Korean dictator's forces crumbled and fell apart that the North was able to push deep into the South, prompting the US to rescue our puppet dictator.

> The Balkan, that as started by the US too I suppose.

No, actually most accounts have German influence as critical in blowing that up into a war. The US was happy to use Muslim fundamentalist proxy forces to wage war in Bosnia, much like we did in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

> Oh and and in the 90 the US invaded Kuwait.

Have you read transcripts and reports of what the US envoy April Glaspie said to Saddam Hussein in meetings before he attacked Kuwait? Glaspie certainly not give him a red light...

privatejoker: ^^original ^^reddit ^^link

Always amuses me the similarities (in general) between Pearl harbor and 9/11 and how they were able to get away with the same thing 60+ years later.

If you're bored, grab Day of Deceit....great book on the PH conspiracy

Gulf of Tonkin 1967: McNamara knew it was a mistake before LBJ used it as an excuse to escalate. Daniel Ellsberg’s firsthand account from inside the Pentagon: http://www.pbs.org/pov/mostdangerousman/excerpt-ellsberg-memoir/2/
(Gareth Porter says Mac kept the truth from LBJ: https://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/05/how-lbj-was-deceived-on-gulf-of-tonkin/ )

Cold War’s End 1988-1991: CIA so busy lying about Soviet power under Casey and Gates, they missed the USSR’s fall. http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21487-no-tears-for-the-real-robert-gates

Iraq War I: 1990-1991: Lied about Iraqi preparations to invade Saudi, Iraqi forces murdering babies https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p01s02-wosc.html

Kosovo: 1999: Lied about 100,000 Albanian Muslims slaughtered by Serbs
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/aug/18/balkans3

Afghanistan: 2001: Lied that Taliban wouldn’t give up Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5

Iraq War II 2003: Lied that Iraq was making WMD, including nuclear weapons, was allied with al Qaeda https://medium.com/dan-sanchez-blog/16-articles-that-expose-how-they-lied-us-into-war-in-iraq-bedf2e47c0bc

Somalia 2006: The Islamic Courts Union government was not truly in league with al Qaeda as claimed https://www.thenation.com/article/blowback-somalia/

Libya 2011: Lied that there was an impending genocide in Eastern Libya https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/29/hillary-clinton-libya-war-genocide-narrative-rejec/

Syria 2013: No Slam Dunk on al Qaeda false-flag sarin attack, they finally admit much later
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/03/10/neocons-red-faced-over-red-line/

Iraq War III 2014: Yazidis on Mt. Sinjar did not need rescuing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/2014/08/13/5fdd3358-2301-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html?utm_term=.b2834d3b716b

Yemen 2015: Not really bad intel, but notably knew war would be “long, bloody and indecisive,” launched it anyway, just to “placate the Saudis.” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/14/world/middleeast/yemen-saudi-us.html

—Hasn’t led to war yet, but they’ve been lying for years about Iran’s intent and actions to make nuclear weapons, which never existed. https://www.amazon.com/Manufactured-Crisis-Untold-Story-Nuclear/dp/1935982338 https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/16/when-the-ayatollah-said-no-to-nukes/ CIA did finally admit this was so in 2007 https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/20071203_release.pdf —

Older phony casus belli:

1812: Impressment of sailors was the excuse when the Democrats really just wanted to seize Canada. https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/06/19/1812-the-war-partys-first-success/

1846: Mexico: U.S. invaded, called it defense from the Mexicans https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lincoln-resolutions

1861: Civil War: Keeping Ft. Sumpter open after South Carolina secession was a provocation. (Everyone’s got a different opinion about this one.)

1620-Current: Indian wars: Paid Napolean for the land. God says we can. And they started it anyway. http://users.humboldt.edu/ogayle/hist110/unit3/indians.html

1898: Spain: Remember the Maine was an accidental fire which spread to the magazine. https://www.loc.gov/law/help/usconlaw/pdf/Maine.1898.pdf

1898: Philippines: Must Christianize these Catholics. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/blackboard/mckinley.html

WWI: Lusitania was a deliberate provocation, Zimmerman telegram threat of German-Mexican invasion of U.S. Southwest was a ridiculous joke. https://www.amazon.com/Lusitania-Colin-Simpson/dp/0582127076 https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/zimmermann

WWII: Pearl Harbor: FDR Knew. https://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299

Korea: Syngman Ree’s forces’ provocations preceded Northern invasion https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/07/28/who-really-started-the-korean-war/

> You seem to be implying that the US government is behind the attacks on mosques.

No, again, I don't know.

But what I'm saying is that such a course of action would not be beyond the US gov't. It is a blatant fact that the US Pentagon -- at the highest levels of our military! -- proposed to fake attacks in "Operation Northwoods" to start a war on Cuba. Thankfully, JFK's administration shot down such an idea, but the Pentagon still kept working on it.

And journalist Robert Stinnett, a WWII Navy veteran who served on the same aircraft carrier as George H.W. Bush, has uncovered multiple sources of evidence that the US gov't, again at the highest levels, had a deliberate policy of provoking Japan into attacking the US in the Pacific to start WWII. Stinnett wrote a book on this called "Day of Deceit". In it he claims FDR's administration planned this after France fell as a desperate way to enter the war with the support of the American people, as a backdoor way of declaring war on Germany through the tri-partite alliance between Germany, Japan, and Italy.

Since 1941 some have claimed that FDR "let Pearl Harbor happen" but there has been only iffy evidence to support such a claim. But Stinnett not only uses first-hand interviews with WWII vets, but also used FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests to uncover additional material, including an 8-point plan written by a US Navy intelligence officer who saw FDR on a near-daily basis and was born in Japan, a memo that was routed to high military brass and proposed 8 specific points to cause Japan to attack the US. The US then carried out all 8 points.

Whether Japan was deliberately provoked into attacking or not -- that is a question open to your own interpretation of the facts.

There is so much wrong with this article it'd take a book to explain it.

But wait, one journalist/author who served on the same WWII aircraft carrier as former president George Bush, and who has researched Pearl Harbor for decades, did write a book to explain it.

That author not only dug up key evidence from the federal government via Freedom of Information Act requests, but he also personally interviewed WWII cryptographers who said the US did break the Japanese Navy's code (something the US gov't said was not done until after Pearl Harbor).

Needless to say, there's more to this story than this article, which has a NSA historian as its key source.

> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944.

> Everyone knows Germany attacked the USSR without provocation, to preemptively fuck up the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as you said. And preemptive knowledge of Pearl Harbor has never ever been established. You must cite something. It's basically the same old libel otherwise.

Sure, propaganda is a weapon both sides can wield. I'm more knowlegable in the latter field, so I will constrain myself to that one:

About the Foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743201299/ (I would also like to include the diary of the US ambassador to Japan between 1932 and '45, Grey, but it has been out of print for a few years). There is tons of incidental proof, however, such as the order to build an 100 carrier two-ocean navy in September 1940, or the fact that to this date not all japanese decrypted messages have been released to the public record because they are considered a threat to "national security".

Disclaimer: I have majored in Japanese cultural studies and political sciences.

> NATO was designed to militarily defeat the USSR. That's gone and many Warsaw Pact countries have joined NATO. I agree NATO doesn't know what NATO's purpose is, but NATO's original purpose is long gone.

NATOs purpose is to stand together if "troops, an aircraft or a ship of one or more of the undersigned nations gets attacked by a third party in the Mediterrean, the Atlantic Ocean north of the tropic of Capricorn or on its own territory." This purpose stands till today. This was not the case in both Bosnia nor Libya.

> I'm not saying Germany isn't still a part of NATO, just it's not still a great part of NATO.

And we are more than proud of not taking part in every military the US wants.

>> If the Libyan people are not strong enough to get rid of their leadership by themselves, what right do we have to interfere?

> I think this is irrelevant to the discussion but NATO is close to arming them and I'm sure it won't be Germany.

It is a sad day when we as a pact were to arm one kind insurgents against a dictatorship (Libya) while other very similar insurgents are ignored (Bahrain) or seen as terrorists (Palestine). It says something about our morality, don't you think?

>> It is likely that Gadhaffi will survive this episode, and we really don't want to be the target of libyan-sponsored state terrorism. Lockerbie anyone?

> this is your weakest argument. If your greatest defense against state-sponsored terrorism is to plea "not me, the other guy!" then I'm at a loss.

My point is you don't troll an aggressive dog. Europe has lived in peace with Gadhaffi for years, that guy even was more than helpful sometimes. No need to get bitten.

>> Excuse me for not honoring the heroes in the Golden Armors the US troops were back then, according to your thesis. The US, however, pledged MAD not for the sake of Germans, but for the sake of Britain, which would have fallen without a continental stronghold. The NATO plans for Germany were to transform it into a nuclear wasteland as soon as the first soviet tank touched our territory. We were to be destroyed by our American friends, not saved.

> Well you're absolutely right, there. No more germans. It's a shame, cause I love Spaten.

Eh, come on, Augustiner is way better. Ever tried their Maximator?

> I understand you're probably german, but you mean affect now. Germany is probably the most vital member of the EU, but now you've got France on your back. They're tired and they want to stop for wine a lot.

Trust me, France is not concerning us. We see other EU members to be a bigger problem, such as - for instance - Portugal. France will do whatever it takes as long as we subsidize their farmers.

It wasn't exactly a false flag. Japan was trying to attack covertly, the U.S. happened to be able to intercept their encoded radio transmissions. There are numerous sources on the USA's knowing provocation but this book has some of the best examples of messages we intercepted that clearly described an attack on Pearl Harbor.

So, if FDR knows its going to happen, and conceals it, because he wants the American people to want revenge. Is that a false flag? I'm going to lump it in with one because it serves the same ends.

It won't help much in terms of differentiating all of the variants, but The Gun by CJ Chivers is an absolute must read.

Uh, no. A whole design/manufacturing team produced the AK and Comrade Kalashnikov was given the majority of the credit for propaganda purposes. He was possibly the most important contributor, but one of many.

source: the Gun by C.J. Chivers

I recommend a book called 'The Gun'.

https://www.amazon.com/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734

Surprised I didn't see one comment about "The Gun" by C.J Chivers. Very interesting and comprehensive book about the AK-47 and it's variants and how they have shaped the world. Anyone really interested in the weapon and it's history should check it out.

If you like more modern stuff, The Gun by C J Chivers was an enjoyable read. It focuses heavily on development of the M-16 and AK-47, but I thought the most interesting bits were on how the automatic rifle has changed battle tactics over the last century.

Recommended gunnit books?

May I suggest:

https://www.amazon.com/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734

and

https://www.amazon.com/War-Flea-Classic-Guerrilla-Warfare/dp/1574885553

American Rifle is a good introduction to US military rifles. The Gun is a fantastic introduction to automatic weapons (Chiver's blog is worth a read too). Wolfe Publishing has a deal where you can get PDF copies of their three Magazines for about the price of subscribing to one for physical copies. They are a bit old fashioned but aren't extended ad copy like G&A is. Shooting Times is worth looking at online.

> what do you do with your creations?

Never made a thing.

I was bad at carpentry when I was a kid - the birdhouse and flowerbox I made fell apart quite quickly.

> do you destroy them or sell them?

Nothing to sell, or destroy.

> if you sell them, who do you sell them to?

Cant' sell something that doesn't exist.

> who is aware of what you are doing

Uh, most of my professors have actually taught me what I know. One of them is good friends with CJ Chivers, a renowned, Pulitzer-winning weapons expert - he's written a great book about the AK. My professor's specialization is nuclear weaponry. She's very good at wargames, she went to Cornell, and she's taught at Harvard and Stanford.

> and what is the security level on your workshop?

I have no workshop.

I have the internet, mainly Library of Congress links, or JSTOR documents for uni.

There's so much information on youtube, alone, that you can just use it to learn how to do anything.

If you haven't ever googled/searched on youtube for something you want to learn, then you really should - it's a great learning tool.

Oh, and Forgotten Weapons is an excellent youtube channel, that has a wealth of info about antique weaponry. I highly recommend it.

But what about the fact that people, the less educated most especially, will be persuaded by propaganda and will often vote against their own interests? There was a book published a few years ago, What's the Matter with Kansas? that shows how the working class in the United States does exactly this over and over and over.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but they would be better off today if they hadn't voted at all and had let the votes of the better educated, (and the better educated people are, the more left-of-centre/progressive their voting patterns are) have more weight as a result.

Yeah. 1984 reads as a horror story to me.
That quote reminds me of this book.

>I don't know about brainwashing

Okay, then let's start with a definition of brainwashing: any effort aimed at instilling certain attitudes and beliefs in a person — beliefs sometimes unwelcome or in conflict with the person's prior beliefs and knowledge, in order to affect that individual's value system and subsequent thought patterns and behaviors based upon the brainwashing tactics and content.

When the rightwing repeats the same lies and distortions regarding liberals until people begin to believe them, then I would say that fits the definition of brainwashing. In fact the majority of Americans hold liberal beliefs but the right has so demonized the word that many liberals will only refer to themselves as "moderates." And what passes for a "conservative" today would be more accurately described as a political extremist.

>but isn't a lot of backlash against the Left's support of communism and socialism back in the day?

How far back are you going? Are you saying the Johnson administration supported communism? That's a stretch, to say the least, especially given their expansion of the Vietnam conflict... allegedly a "fight against communism." As for socialism, it is a word that has been stigmatized in this country to the point of absurdity, often with the ridiculous claim that it is a "stepping stone to communism." Again, repeat a lie often enough and loud enough and some people can be made to accept it without question (a good question being: where has this ever happened?).

>The idea that because they are "smarter" than us they can control our funds and dispense it more appropriately?

If you look at the "socialist" polices of Democratic administrations you find that they lead to some of the most productive periods in our nation's history. Out of the New Deal and the G.I. Bill came a robust middle class. Beyond the US if you look at other nations which have accepted socialism (that would be most of Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan, among others) you'll find they are healthier, better educated, have better employment (higher wages and more time off) and overall are happier than the US. Has it occurred to you that allowing the "smarter" people control the distribution of wealth really is the best way to go? And what of the "conservatives" who balk at this notion of "helping the less fortunate" (actually, "helping everyone" would be more accurate)? Given the chance, they immediacy granted themselves huge tax breaks, shifting the burden to those least able to shoulder it, then ran up the greatest debt in history transferring the public wealth into the accounts if the the top 1-2% richest Americans. As a result the rest of us are becoming less educated, less healthy and working longer hours for less pay. The right has convinced Americans that "they" don't want a "welfare state" and effectively given them a kleptocracy in it's place. When the right claims they are against "socialism" and "New Deal policies" they are effectively declaring class warfare on the middle and lower classes. That they can convince people in those classes to fight a war on themselves either says a lot about the conniving shrewdness of the ultra-rich or the overall stupidity of everyone else... probably a degree of both.

>I think you paint a too simplistic, absolute picture.

You seem to be referring to the first sentence of my post... it's rather of difficult to make a detailed, non-simplistic analysis in a single Reddit post. If you want a more in depth analysis you could read something like What's the Matter with Kansas?... with shipping it will cost you a whole $4. There are a multitude of reasons why people vote the way they do, and Republicans have become very skilled at manipulating every human shortcoming they can find... greed, prejudice and religious superstition being chief among them.

>I think that someone being smart should neither be a reason to vote or not vote for them. Brains can be used for bad purposes.

While you've taken some down modding over this comment I think you have a point and I made a similar comment on Reddit about a month ago. Nixon was certainly smart but overall not a very good President due to his domestic corruption. Likewise I don't think the problem with Bush is his general lack of intellectual prowess but rather, like Nixon, it is his corruption that has most hurt this nation. I'd take honesty over raw intelligence any day, though ideally to be a good president requires both.

Or maybe they don't. The fact that the GOP fabricate a culture war to make people vote against their economic interest is not new.

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/0805073396 (2004)

Serious Answer

Your typical (dumbass) Shillary supporter isn't constantly asking why Sanders has a "poor white Republican-voting southerns" problem. If you did, the answer would be the same. See: What's the Matter with Kansas

What's the Matter with Kansas?

Thomas Frank wrote about this ten years ago. For 30+ years, the Republican establishment riled up their voter base by inciting their fears over social and morality issues. But amazingly, the track record shows that on average they don't actually do anything for these issues once in office, instead by and large defending corporate insider interests. At which point it's very easy to contrive their lack of follow-through on the left, and then continue the cycle of RedSox/Yankees politics into the next election cycle. A great example is immigration. 'Closing the border' and deporting illegals is an oft-used talking point on the right. But at the end of the day, they don't really want to lose that cheap labor base or its overall effect on the price of labor. This strategy has been a revolving door of status-quo-maintenance that's worked quite well for a few decades now.

However, now the Frankenstein they've created has become unmoored from the table and is smashing everything inside their proverbial mansion. This guy says he wants to ship all the illegals back and build a wall. And he actually means it. So now they are shitting their pants.

However now the Frankenstein monster will venture out and wreak havoc on the whole city.

BRACE YOURSELVES... BEAR THROUGH... BUILD UP AGAIN?

#MakeAmericaGreatAgainIn4to8Years

God, Guns, and Gays.

The documentary was based on a excellent book by Thomas Frank that I recommend as well.

Since the issue seems to be coming up a lot in the comments, anyone interested in the water politics (and history) of the American West should read this book. It is a long read and can be hard to follow at times, but it's absolutely fascinating.

Cadillac Desert?

http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244

It sounds like you have an Intro Geology book.

For a nice overview of historical geology, I was enraptured by "The Earth: An Intimate History" by Richard Fortey. It starts slow but delves into the major developments and ideas of geology as the author visits many significant locales around the world.

Stephen Jay Gould was a very prolific science-writer across paleontology and evolution.

John McPhee has several excellent books related to geology. I would recommend "Rising from the Plains" and "The Control of Nature."

Mark Welland's book "SAND" is excellent, covering topics of sedimentology and geomorphology.

If you are interested in how society manages geologic issues, I would recommend Geo-Logic, The Control of Nature mentioned before, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, and Cadillac Desert.

These are some of the texts I used in university:

• Nesse's Introduction to Mineralogy
  
• Winter's Principles of Metamorphic and Igneous Petrology
  
• Twiss and Moore's Structural Geology
  
• Bogg's Sedimentology and Stratigraphy
  
• Burbank and Anderson's Tectonic Geomorphology
  
• Davis's Statistics and Data Analysis in Geology
  
• Burbank and Anderson's Tectonic Geomorphology
  
• Fetter's Applied Hydrogeology
  
• White's Geochemistry (pdf online)
  
• Shearer's Seismology
  
• Copeland's Communicating Rocks
  

Thanks, I'll read the book mentioned in the article. A good starter/companion reader for those interested in water history out here is Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. It's older, but it's been revised over the years and is a great place to start.

https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244

Salon founder David Talbot chronicles the cultural history of San Francisco and from the late 1960s to the early 1980s when figures such as Harvey Milk, Janis Joplin, Jim Jones, and Bill Walsh helped usher from backwater city to thriving metropolis.

http://www.amazon.com/Season-Witch-Enchantment-Terror-Deliverance-ebook/dp/B005C6FDFY/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Cool, Gray City of Love brings together an exuberant combination of personal insight, deeply researched history, in-depth reporting, and lyrical prose to create an unparalleled portrait of San Francisco. Each of its 49 chapters explores a specific site or intersection in the city, from the mighty Golden Gate Bridge to the raunchy Tenderloin to the soaring sea cliffs at Land's End.

http://www.amazon.com/Cool-Gray-City-Love-Francisco-ebook/dp/B00D78R550/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1451757678&sr=1-1&keywords=cool+grey+city+of+love

Not a book, but this American Experiance episode is fantastic.

In 1957, decades before Steve Jobs dreamed up Apple or Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, a group of eight brilliant young men defected from the Shockley Semiconductor Company in order to start their own transistor business. Their leader was 29-year-old Robert Noyce, a physicist with a brilliant mind and the affability of a born salesman who would co-invent the microchip -- an essential component of nearly all modern electronics today, including computers, motor vehicles, cell phones and household appliances.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/

Also, not related to San Francisco directly, but focusing on California and the west, if you want to understand why California is the way it is today, this is on the list of essential reading material.

http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244

There are plenty of people whose careers (mine included) that revolve entirely around western water law, supply, growth, etc. It is pretty cool stuff.

Cadillac Desert is a good book to start learning about some of these issues.

Much longer than that. Cadillac Desert is 20 years old this year. Chinatown will be 40 years old next year.

If you haven't read the book 'Cadillac Desert' or seen the film, you absolutely should.

Ghost in the Wires - The story of famed hacker Kevin Mitnick

Any Mary Roach Book if you like Science

In the Heart of the Sea - The true story behind Moby Dick

The Omnivore's Dilemma - A great walk through our food landscape

Gang Leader for a Day - Behavioral Economist embeds with a Chicago Gang

Shadow Divers - My first audiobook. It's a thriller about a scuba discovery of a Nazi Submarine on the Eastern US coast.

The Devil In The White City - A story about a serial killer at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II

Neither book was within my realm of interests, but they were both fascinating.

I'm from New England and never had a lobster 'til I went to Africa in my 30s :(

I would imagine this is true of lots of salt- and freshwater foods, oysters, scallops, crabs, tuna, salmon...I'm not real sure about the state of the lobster population, but I think high prices for this kind of stuff can be a good thing (depending on how the money is used and the fishing is carried out).

Reminds me of something I read in In the Heart of the Sea, an awesome book about the shipwreck that inspired Moby Dick, but also more generally about the Nantucket Whaling industry. Nantucket was the world's whaling capital in the early 1800s, some days they could practically do their harpooning from the docks. A few decades later, they're sailing from Massachusetts to the Pacific to make their catches.

Then again, I'm sure some of that pricing is just high because it can be. There are weeds in my yard that fetch insane prices at microgreeneries and heirloom farms.

In the Heart of the Sea tells the true story that inspired Moby Dick, and is a great read.

If you like non-fiction, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage and The Perfect Storm are also very good.

In the Heart of the Sea

Based on the Novel:

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex - Nathaniel Philbrick

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

It's the nonfiction story about the Essex, and is a pretty amazing retelling of these men. The things they went through, and how they were forced to overcome. The story about the Essex is what inspired Melville to write Moby Dick. It's really quite incredible and gripping.

In the heart of the sea, the disturbing true story behind Melville's Moby Dick.

I was reading this book on the story of the whaling ship Essex and some of the survivors mention doing this as a rudamentary way of testing the ships speed. I'm curious if this is how it got named or if this is just what they did in a pinch.

The real life story it's based on is a really good read.

http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828

Not sure about the movie that came out recently.

Ever read In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex? Not exactly the same kind of adventure, but it fits the disaster bill quite nicely, and I really enjoyed it.

Here is what I know on the topic. Also highly recommend this book & the American Experience (PBS) episode:

Book

Episode

But it isn’t a how to distill spirits book.

I was going to make a detailed and sassy comment about how I read variations of the same posts every day on the sub but I think I’ve kicked enough people in the shins today so: The Poisoner’s Handbook

Another excellent true-crime read is the Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Poisoners-Handbook-Forensic-Medicine/dp/014311882X

Also, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

http://www.amazon.com/The-Suspicions-Mr-Whicher-Victorian/dp/B002VPE6YS

Not yet verified but in the middle of setting up for a trade. I would recommend reading The Poisoners Handbook! This book is all about the bith of toxicology and it goes along with prohabition and all of the acciedental suicides, poisonings and mass murder's. It is a great read that allowed me to learn something new.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Poisoners-Handbook-Forensic-Medicine/dp/014311882X/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1382502406&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=the+poisoners+handbook

If you've got some time, you should check this out. It covers a number of easily-available (in the 1920s) poisons, their symptoms, and methods of detection. It's nonfiction and thoroughly fascinating!

Have you read "Command and Control" by Eric Schlosser?
https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

It's Deja Vu all over again and if you think it's better elsewhere may I recommend a little light reading.

First of all, I'm going to highly recommend Command and Control by Eric Schlosser. It came out recently, is explicitly about nuclear weapon safety, and is a fantastic read.

There are...a lot of different things that can go wrong with nuclear weapons. No system is perfect, and any tiny imperfection is amplified by the number of weapons in service. If there's a one in a million chance of a nuke accidentally detonating during its service life, it sounds pretty safe, but if there's 10,000 of them, there's only a one in a thousand chance of there being an accidental nuclear explosion, and statistically you start getting closer and closer to being able to say with certainty that there will be an accidental nuclear explosion at some point.

The hair trigger is indeed what makes these things extra dangerous, and IIRC we've started to shift somewhat to a somewhat more relaxed doctrine? Not certain, though. The problem, especially during the cold war, is that the time between detection of a nuclear strike and the missiles impacting is extremely short. Thirty minutes would be a generous time frame, and that could go down to fifteen or even less if launched from a submarine or neighboring country.

That short timeframe means that every nuke we think we'd need has to be ready to go 24/7, able to launch within those 15-30 minutes. And while constant readiness sounds easy enough, that means you're constantly handling a lot of hazardous equipment with Nuclear weapons on the top of it.

At that timeframe, you don't necessarily have time to load the bombs onto planes. You either have to keep the planes loaded on the runway, or even better, up in the air with the bombs on board. We kept nuclear bombers flying 24/7 for years. And with that many bombers constantly landing/taking off in B-52s (which were designed for speed/altitude, and not for airframe durability), some planes are going to crash. There were numerous instances of loaded bombers crashing, planes breaking up midair, etc. Bombs had their high explosives go off. One time a bomb stayed intact as a plane was breaking up and acted like it had been dropped for real. It only didn't go off because of a single analog safety that could have very easily have been shorted out.

Missiles have their own set of problems. Rocket fuel is volatile by definition, and ICBMs have the problem that they have to constantly be ready to go, meaning you can't use cryogenic fuels like liquid hydrogen and oxygen. You have to use much more "exciting" stuff that's incredibly poisonous, eats through most protective gear, burns with just about anything, and will explode if it touches the stuff in the tank beside it. And then you store it in lightweight missiles with paper-thin walls.

One of the central stories Command and Control explores is an incident at Damascus, Arkansas. A mechanic drops a wrench, it tears open a hole in the side of the missile resulting in a massive fuel leak. The complex is evacuated, and a few hours later a spark makes all the fuel and oxidizer blow up the silo, shooting the warhead hundreds of feet in the air in a massive fireball.

We like to think that our bombs are really safe, that they can't go off accidentally, but there have been plenty of past designs studied and shown to be unsafe, where something like a crashing plane, bullet impact, lightning strike, or even a solid drop could cause it to go off.

And that's before considering mistaken or accidental launches. There have been multiple instances in both the USA, USSR, and modern Russia of nuclear launches being detected. In the early 90's Russia actually opened their nuclear football and presented it to Yeltzin.

Then there's terrorism. We've made tens of thousands of bombs. The more there are, the easier it is for one to go missing and fall into the hands of terrorists. That's why the breakup of the USSR was scary. That's why it's scary when a smaller, more unstable nation like Pakistan or North Korea develops nukes. It's one additional failure point for Nuclear security.

The only totally safe number is zero. In any event, even after extensive arms reduction, we still have thousands of nukes, which is way more than is needed to destroy any possible enemy.

(seriously, read Command and Control. Best book I read this year.)

Yes they are. Cities are wiped out by an A-Bomb. A H-Bomb wipes out an entire metropolitan area. Humans have not had the ability to destroy entire geographical regions for '100k years' by any stretch of the imagination. MAD entails that a single misinterpreted signal will result in each side escalating their ICBM launches, resulting in a world-wide apocalypse.

For verification of the above, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_(nuclear_war)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100768310
http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

According to what I remember from the book Command and Control, missile silos usually have a very small staff, and among the installation commander's responsibilities is turning one of two keys which initiates the missile launch sequence.

However, I may be misremembering, and the above book is specifically about Titan missiles in the 70's or 80's; modern procedures in Minuteman installations may be different.

Wikipedia Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_explosion

Alternatively, a book: https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

For a scary look at how close we've come to accidental nuclear detonations, check out the book [Command and Control] (https://smile.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1524942940&sr=8-2&keywords=nuclear+accidents) by Eric Schlosser or the [documentary] (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5598206/?ref_=nv_sr_1) based on it. These systems or similar ones still exist and the chance of an accident is non-zero. The fact that nothing serious has happened yet is due to the incredible safety system built into these machines or dumb luck, depending on how you look at it.

For anyone who finds this type of stuff interesting.... I highly recommend the book Command and Control by Eric Schlosser.

It's a wonderfully written look into all kinds of aspects of the nuclear program, and covers all kinds of things like this.

http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

Can't go off... check out the book "Command and Control"... now also a documentary that I believe is on Netflix.

I would suggest reading "Command and Control" which covers a great deal of nuclear weapons history and in particular who was in control of what weaponry. There was a PBS documentary made based on the book but the doc concentrated mostly on the one missile that blew up in Arkansas. The book goes into a lot more detail about other weapons and (mis)management of them.

Oh man, it's even worse than that in the real world - especially during the 70's to late 80's, I recommend reading Command and Control by Eric Schlosser if the state of our nuclear stockpiles interests anyone.

It was just released a couple of months ago, very eye opening.

Eric Schlosser's Command and Control is a great read too.

Read or listen to this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

I am not sure where you have got this from that Russia and China would just up and attack if the US did not have nukes. China is encircled by 400 US military bases. Russia is almost equally surrounded. The US has almost 1000 military bases across the world and a military spending that is larger then the rest of the world combined.

The only reason we are not at war, is that people both in Russia and in the US who have been under order to fire nukes have decided to refuse.

This is a book that partly deals with that:
https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

hahahahaha right? If you're interested in what happened in Arkansas, or any of the large number of "Broken Arrow" events, check out "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" by Eric Schlosser. It's a supremely well written account.

Yeah, in fact the US has dropped nukes accidentally in its own country. However the way the nukes work/worked they didn't go off. I read a very interesting book recently on America's nuclear program including the details on what activates a nuke called "Command and Control". Definitely recommend picking it up to help understand the USAF and it's role in nuclear and conventional warfare.

I read a ton. Last few good books I read were The Martian, The Glass Castle, Flowers For Algernon. Reading this at the moment, it's awesome!

"Global War on Terror (GWOT) was known by those who fought it for long periods of boredom, punctuated by masturbation and enemy fire."


Seriously, there are so many viewpoints and critiques of the GWOT and implications of such an effort and progressing, globalizing world that Google really is your friend.

To give you only bullet points would be unfair. But I will toss a few good book links below.

http://www.amazon.com/Taliban-Militant-Fundamentalism-Central-Edition/dp/0300163681/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405913163&sr=8-1&keywords=taliban

http://www.amazon.com/American-Spartan-Promise-Mission-Betrayal/dp/0062114980/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405913151&sr=8-1&keywords=american+spartan

http://www.amazon.com/Horse-Soldiers-Extraordinary-Victory-Afghanistan/dp/1416580522/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1405913294&sr=8-2&keywords=horse+soldiers

http://www.amazon.com/In-Graveyard-Empires-Americas-Afghanistan/dp/0393338517/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405913285&sr=8-1&keywords=graveyard+of+empires

Angry Walter is also woefully ignorant of history.

Edit- if anyone is actually interested in learning about the Taliban and the history of Afghanistan so as to avoid gross oversimplifications like this meme, I suggest reading this and maybe this.

Oh, wow. When has Afghanistan NOT been at war? America turned Afghanistan into a warzone?

I'm all for peace, and if a country is doing fine then we should stay the hell away. But Afghanistan has never been in the situation you seem to think it is. I'm glad you're passionate about a cause, but make sure you understand what's going on before you spread information like that. You get tons of people reading it and taking it for fact and eventually you have this huge group of misinformed people. I don't think I need to give you modern day examples.

I won't comment on Iraq, but you have Afghanistan completely wrong, in every aspect. And what's more is, like the people in this thread who have actually been to the country can tell you, their people actually support the US being there. If you care about them the way your posts suggests then you should be willing to take the time to learn what's actually going on in South Asia. A great place to start is by reading Taliban by Ahmed Rashid.

Nope, just the product of hours and hours of non-fiction reading.

Start with Ahmed Rashid's Taliban to some background on the region, then get his next book Descent into Chaos that covers the US invasion. From there check out The Interrogator by former CIA spook Glenn Carle that will provide a basic understanding of some of the "black" operations post 2001. Next you need to read Top Secret America to realize just how leaky even the most top secret compartmentalized operations really are and how easy it is to track them down with the right resources.