1. We don't know each other, but I creeped and noticed your career change would mean you're entering nursing school. My mother was a nurse and I have a lot of good friends in nursing. I think it's incredible when people decide to do something so selfless with their lives. It takes a really amazing person to take care of others like that! I'm so glad you're on track to do something that will make you happy! :)
   
   
2. I'm in about the same place as you right now- going back to school in the fall, but until then (and during school...) I'm working at a job I really don't like but I need to pay the bills. My piece of advice? Focus on why you're doing what you're doing. I really want to be a teacher, so I think about all the kids I've worked with over the years and how much of an impact I will have on kids like them once I'm done and have a teaching job. It helps me most of the time to really take a deep breath and put up with all the crap I deal with from work and such.
   
   
3. I have a few happy and sunshine themed playlists that I'll listen to if I'm having a hard time getting through something or I'm super bored. Music really pulls me in and can definitely make my day brighter. I also like to browse my inspiration board on Pinterest and read all the quotes I posted forever ago and see all the adorable puppy pictures :) And if that fails, I have an album of photos of my family (my baby nephew, my adorable 7 year old cousin, etc) that I flip through and smile at :) Sometimes little things can really change your day in a big way!
   
   
4. I forgot to mention coloring really helps me too. :) This unicorn coloring book would definitely help with my long work days :)
   
   
   Edit: Good luck!! I'm sure we can make it through this and when we're out of school and doing what we love, we'll look back and be grateful we kept pushing through :) Hugs!

You've had a setback, but it isn't the end of the world. Things probably aren't as bad as you think they are, but it will take work both to catch up, and to convince yourself that you're up to speed.

1. Decide you're going to work at this. It sounds like this is where the major gap has been -- without your parents providing goals, it can be difficult to motivate yourself. Make a schedule, and stick to it. Assume something like four hours of work a day and do it -- you might find allocating certain hours works better. I don't know if you have other responsibilities, like a job or caring for family, so ultimately you'll have to decide on this.
   
   
2. Figure out how far behind you really are.
   
   a) Reading
   
   A lot of English skills are about practice, so reading anything (including Reddit) is good. Maybe pick up a popular book:
   
   "The Hunger Games" or "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's (or Sorcerer's) Stone" are both at about a grade 6 level. I'd avoid Twilight, which is at about a grade 4 level (and everything past the first book is crap, in my opinion).
   
   If that's okay, try "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "1984". These are more cultural classics (so you can feel more sophisticated), but at still interesting to read, and are at about a grade 8-9 level.
   
   There aren't really a lot of books that are more difficult than that to read, so if you can manage that, you can read well enough to do a GED.
   
   The more difficult books generally use archaic language like "The Canterbury Tales" or Shakespeare. In general I wouldn't recommend Shakespeare since reading plays is difficult, the language complicates things, too many people treat them as serious and deadly dull, and it takes a lot of work to even understand many of the references -- that's a place for a good teacher (and teachers who are up to the task are few and far between).
   
   You might also try looking at something like (Dont-Know-Much-About-History)[http://www.amazon.com/Don't Know Much About History/dp/0060083824]. It's fairly advanced reading (grade 11-12), and it teaches some aspects of US history that you might not know. If you like that, there's a similar book by the same author about geography. I'll also suggest (Mother Tongue)[http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-English-How-That/dp/0380715430] by Bill Bryson. Again a possibly interesting subject, and it's funny.
   
   For other books, a good librarian can be a great resource, or some sites can offer some suggestions for books based on reading level.
   
   b) Writing
   
   I think that clear written communication is a very important skill. Your question was clear, so that's a good sign you aren't too far behind. Some Essay writing is more common in higher education, but the skills are still useful in office work. The introduction in an essay and an executive summary are quite similar.
   
   The problem here is that getting someone else's point of view is very helpful. You might be able to find some assistance on Reddit, but many colleges have writing centers to help students with this. You could probably approach a local high-school teacher -- in many cases they are willing to help any motivated student. It's amazing how much you can improve if you find someone who is decent and take the time to re-write the essay a few times to incorporate their suggestions. It's difficult to completely rewrite an essay multiple times, but going through the effort once or twice can make a dramatic difference. (As a student my wife worked in one of those writing centers and several times had cases where the professors didn't believe the students could improve that much that quickly.)
   
   c) Math
   
   There are a number of sites like http://ca.ixl.com/ that have basic math tests. These don't try to teach math like Khan Academy does, but they can help figure out where to start going through the lessons.
   
   I'm already helping with some math tutoring, so I'm fairly comfortable offering my help here. (If you're serious about this, PM me ahead of time since I'm not always logged into Reddit.)
   
   
3. Catching up
   
   Depending on how far behind you actually are you have a few options.
   
   As others have said, there are GED courses at many community colleges.
   
   If you don't feel ready for that there are also free online high school classes. I don't know much about these, but this one seems to have a pretty standard curriculum, and gets reasonable approval from the home schooling forums. There are also summer school and adult education high school courses that you can take in most places. Or you might try enrolling in regular high school -- this might be the best option, since it provides a structure, extra help from teachers if you're willing to ask for it, and some of the social contact. If you sign up for next year now you'll have given yourself a deadline for some of the other work, which might help with the motivation.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, I got hit with a pretty nasty respiratory bug which put me down for awhile.

Anyway, on to talking about a general plan for this project. I think that the best thing to do would be to start with a light touch, and see how well she takes to it.

With that in mind, I might recommend starting with 'Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar'. Plato and a Platypus is a cheap, and reasonably instructive (though superficial) introduction to a range of philosophical questions through jokes. It is a strange approach, but one I think works quite well as a something like a philosophical appetizer that introduces lots of interesting topics. It has a sequel focused on politics ("Aristotle and an Aardvark") which is also quite good. I will warn that not all of the jokes are appropriate for all audiences, so whether you like this book might depend on how liberal you feel like being regarding jokes featuring explicit language, adult themes, etc.

I also definitely recommend anything from the Oxford Very Short Introduction series, particularly (given your interests) the Very Short Introduction to Philosophy and Ethics. In my experience, the entire VSI series is excellent, and I've used some of them to teach philosophy at the community college level. They are extremely brief (they can fit into my pockets) and accessible, and also quite cheap (usually about 10 bucks a piece). They are written by leading experts on each given topic, and there is an enormous selection if you decide that you want to explore particular topics (Ancient Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Theology, etc). They will be a bit tougher than Plato and a Platypus in that they don't typically have much fluff, but should still be generally relatively accessible. The Ethics volume is pretty solid, built around a series of major questions that ethics needs to respond to. I will offer two warnings about the VSI series:
(1) VSI formatting is largely left up to the author, so the approach varies considerably from text to text. This allows authors to structure the material however they feel is best, which usually turns out great. Just be ready for some jumps in how they deal with things (e.g., the Ethics volume is divided into sections which each review some set of related questions and possible answers, while the Logic volume is problem centered and features new tools of formal logic to address various problems presented in each chapter)
(2) Authors of VSI are almost always working scholars with particular philosophical viewpoints - and this will come across in their texts. Expect some axes to be ground, and presuppositions assumed. That said, of the one's I've read (maybe 5 or so at this point), they still presented a rather fair overview of the field.

I think for books, you will be hard pressed to do better than Plato and a Platypus/Aristotle and an Aardvark to provoke the feeling that philosophy is worthwhile, and the Very Short Introduction series to provide an actual introduction into the field.

There are also some great philosophy podcasts. The best for a non-philosopher is likely "Philosophize This", which is a largely chronological review of a fair chunk of the most significant philosophers in history (even including some non-Western thinkers). Again, the material isn't explicitly aimed at younger folk, so there may be some touchy content, but it is generally an exceptional program. They have quite a backlog now (something like 90 episodes), so there is plenty of material there.

Also, I've found a couple of course plans for philosophy in middle school. The strongest looking one to me is this one from UNC. Definitely worth looking at as a way to structure your thoughts, but I would augment it with some of the resources covered above.

I think this would yield a pretty low cost way to test if this approach will work. Assuming you were to buy all four books I've mentioned, I think it would run a total of about $40 per person, which should make this a pretty light investment in terms of money. Likewise, the books are all relatively short, so you might make it through them in as little as a month (if you were really motivated).

I think the real trick will be in deciding where to go after the initial introduction has been made and more serious texts are being considered, but this will depend a lot on how this project develops. I think the best thing to do with that is to wait and see how things turn out, then plan the next leg of the introduction. I'll be around for the foreseeable future, and would be happy to help you figure that out when the time comes.

Let me know what you think, and keep me in the loop as the project unfolds. I am very interested in this project and would be happy to lend a hand when possible.

Openings are hard as shit to do in sci-fi/fantasy. You have to basically lecture on the world without it sounding like you're lecturing them on the world: excuse me while I grab my smoke and mirrors. I'm not going to do line edits because it's view only. Instead you get my wall of text that I'm compiling on scifi/fantasy openings as I read more and more piles of it, when I should be reading something like literature (Idk, is that what the cool kids are doing?).

It's view only so my line edits will probably be limited, but I'll start with your opening two sentences.

>The café of 'Morl's Best Cuppa' was odd, green and uncomfortable to look at. It's rough exterior stood out against the trimmed vein of grey that was the rest of the city-block, like a bulb of gum beaten flat under step, ruining an otherwise pristine side-walk

Protag is looking at a building. I'm not as experienced in third person style narratives, but I'll do my best. If I was writing this in first person I'd be extremely leery of writing a description of the building for the begging portion. I do think you have an interesting world set out. There are genuinely funny moments, but it's packaged in a way that makes me want to put it down. I'd say this is due to an incomplete opening. You have characters and setting, but you don't have a problem for these characters to overcome (plot).I'm going to copy paste parts of a post that I did on sci-fi/fantasy openings that I made earlier, with significant modifications/additions (but the core idea is the same). If this is frowned upon, I'll stop. Disclaimer, I'm not saying that you should do any of these things that I suggest. This is merely my own opinions on ways to get over the initial hump that sci/fi fantasy stories face. These are some good resources/books that I've found.

In essence a good opening has three things

1. a solid hook (I know it when I see it definition)
   
2. introduction of problem (shit has to hit the fan in some way. "Walk towards bullets".)
   
3. brief introduction of setting. Number three is the trickiest. Too much info and its boring, and nothing feels like its happening. It's listening to a lecture entirely on the structure of a building, with nothing about what's going on inside. Too little and it's cliche, you're just some fantasy/sci-fi hack.
   
   This is kind of vague and bullshitty so I'll use some examples.
   
   The openings in fantasty/sci-fi books are notoriously terrible. For instance, Red Rising, an otherwise half decent thriller book has the shittiest opening that I've read in a published work. But that didn't stop him from selling books out the wazoo and getting good blurbs ("Ender, Catniss, and now Darrow"), because he knows how to write a page turner later on (I'd still recommend it even though the opening is questionable, if you enjoy cheap dystopian thrills). But damn, did the opening want to make me throw the book against the wall. It's not that he doesn't do the three things that an opening should do, it's that he switches voices within it and had several narration snaps when it's clearly HIM speaking and not the main character. I'd also say that Patrick Rothfuss' opening is extremely shitty (and he says so himself), as he takes 50 pages before anything substantial happens. Thus he went back and added a prologue so the reader would feel some sort of plot in the story. Prologues are effective in scifi/fantasy for quickly introducing a problem, if your world takes awhile to build. For instance -- Harry Potter also did this to an extent, since it had the scene with his parents dying. Some openings, like the one that I'm about to discuss, have a really solid hook and immediately grab the reader. Am I saying that you should write a prologue? No , I haven't really read enough of your story to figure that out. I'm just offering a few nuggets of advice that I've seen authors use to get over the initial hump of creating the world.
   
   I think a solid example of a good opening in a sci-fi story, that I've read recently, is the story Wool (here's a link, use the look inside function). The hook is one of the better ones I've read, something along the lines of "Holston climbed his stairs to his death." Is it a cheap trick? Yes. Do I really care, and does it add tension to an otherwise monotonous climb up the stairs? You betcha! He explains certain elements of the silo as he gets to the different actions, e.g. "I put my hand on the guardrail, worn down one flake at a time by centuries of use." He doesn't just come out and say "HEY THE SILO IS OLD LEMME TELL YOU ABOUT MY CHILDHOOD IN THE SILO AND THEN GET TO THE PLOT DAMMNIT". In your case we see some characters mostly annoyed, bored, or not really doing much. Sure the setting is engaging, but the characters, in my opinion, aren't. The pro of an exposition opening is that you can fit a lot of information into a relatively small amount of space. The con is that it's hard to present in a way that doesn't create a POV snap, a boring tell instead of show description, and it's hard to create a problem if you're trying to be an omnipotent narrator. Dune does it, but it hasn't set a trend because it's hard as shit to do. Pride and Prejudice does it, but Jane Austen is incredibly good at writing in different tones. I'll stick to my nice comfortable first person narrative right now. I'm not a good mechanical writer, or a good writer at all yet, but I'm working on it. I do worldbuilding half decently (though I'm put to shame by the people on /r/worldbuilding)
   
   Another solid opening is "Mistborn;" (here's a link) a fantastic example of a dialogue driven opening. I'd say that if a dialogue opening is done right, its exponentially more interesting than an exposition opening. The problem is making the characters feel natural. I spent quite some time on my opening hammering out the robotic narration style, but I still had to go back and write a prologue because I didn't introduce the main problem of the story properly. I problem that I had is that my characters seem to stick their fingers up their butts and don't do anything. Basically a dialogue opening is harder to do, but it's well worth the effort if you can pull it off. Dialogue is also a good way to squeeze information out of your world. Want to have an explanation about scientist, well slap a scientist in there and have your protag ask some questions about it. Don't have random flashbacks in the very begging. Think about a movie that had someone fixing breakfast, and every time they did something relatively minor there was a flashback. E.g. poured some orange juice. That reminds me of my mentor who trained me in how to write a good sci-fi opening. Going to eat some Coco puffs, like me mum used to. But me mum beat me so I angrily ate the coco puffs.
   
   The best fantasy opening that I've ever read is Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. I'd recommend taking a peek at it here. He casually just strolls in, quickly establishes two characters, a problem, and a setting in half a page. It's brilliant. I can't say I've read the rest of it though, but it's on my list of things to read. The only complaints that I've heard about Lies (aside from the usually fantasy grumbling about tropes), is that the heist narrative is too lowly for such a talented writer. I think that's a pretty good sign that hes doing shit right.
   
   In the words of Brian Sanderson "writing is all smoke and mirrors." In fantasy/sci-fi you have to set up scenes that are more or less infodumping segments that feel natural to the reader. E.g. travelling from town to town, "oh theres a ghost thing over there"
   "that's not a ghost its your mum!" laughter ensues
   On the bright side, it seems like you've done some good world building, so writing the segments shouldn't be too hard. I highly recommend watching Brandon Sanderson's lectures on the youtube channel "Write about dragons." Start with the first lectures he does, because they cover a lot of mistakes that people make.
   
   Also read this article on common mistakes that editors see (link) . Watching and reading just a little bit will help you from falling into a ton of pitfalls, like I did with my first story. I spent far too long on too little words, that were absolute rubbish. Now I've been able to get at least a consistent word count down every week, with mixed reviews (some chapters are better than others.) Basically, write consistently and read often. Potential and inspiration are bullshit. Hammer out some words, get it torn apart on this sub-reddit, pick up the pieces and repeat. Make sure to give back often, this place is awesome. I think one of my better experiences was posting a basically infodumpy chapter, and had some pretty positive reviews (aside from some pseudoscience that I quickly cut, and leapt back into the warm embrace of space opera).
   
   If you get past the opening hump, this article, is a fantastic way to plan how your plot is going to unfold over the course of a novel, in a concise fashion. I wish I'd found this resource sooner, cause my planning would've been much better. (I tend to discovery write, with minimal planning.)

Fellow fan of series here! Let me see...

Young Adult
Percy Jackson series is fun (and finished, too, I think).
Artemis Fowl series isn't quite as good as Percy Jackson IMHO, but it's got a following.

Fantasy
Harry Dresden series This is one of my favorites. Harry is Chicago's only professional wizard. There are a ton of these books and they are still going strong.
Game of Thrones These are great...but unfinished. If you watch the show, reading the books does help you get even more out of the story, I think.
Wheel of Time Another good series. There is a LOT of this series and it's finished. (Thank you, Brandon Sanderson!)
Mistborn Speaking of Brandon Sanderson... This one is very good. I highly recommend reading the Mistborn books before trying the Stormlight Archive, but only because as good as Mistborn is, Stormlight Archive is even better.
Stormlight Archive Amazing. Man, these are good. The series isn't finished, but the two books that are available are some of my favorites ever.
Kingkiller Chronicles I loved the first book. I could not freakin' believe I enjoyed the second one even more. The third one is still pending.
Temeraire Dragons in Napoleonic times. Super cool premise! This one is not finished (I don't think, anyway).
Gentlemen Bastards Con men in a fantasy realm. It's pretty light on the fantasy elements. Very light, I'd say. I'd also say that it has some of the very best swearing that I've ever come across. :D

Scifi
Old Man's War I'm almost finished this one--it's amazing!

Horror/Thriller
Passage Trilogy I've heard these described as vampire books...maybe zombie books... It's apocalyptic for sure. Great books!

Mysteries
Amelia Peabody Egyptology + murder mysteries. Super fun, but trust me...go with the audiobooks for these. They are best when they are performed.
Stephanie Plum Total popcorn reads. If that's your thing, shut off your brain and just enjoy.
Walt Longmire These get particularly good as it goes along. The main character is a sheriff in modern day Wyoming. (Side note: The TV show is also great--just don't expect them to stick to the books.)

Graphic Novels (Everything recommended can be gotten in a "book" format instead of only in comic form, in case that matters. I've gotten most of these from my local library.)
Locke & Key Eerie as crap. Love the art! This one is on-going.
Y: The Last Man All the men on the planet drop dead in a day...except for Yorrick. REALLY good. This is the series that got me reading graphic novels. Plus, it's finished!
Walking Dead I am not a zombie fan...but I like these. They're not done, but I've read up through volume 22 and am still enjoying them.

Other
OutlanderI have no idea how to categorize these or even give a description that does them justice. I refused to pick it up for AGES because it sounded like a bodice-ripper romance and that's not my bag. But these are good!

I hope there's something in there that'll do for you. Have fun and read on!

Edit: Apparently, I need to practice formatting. :/
Edit 2: I forgot to add the Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentlemen Bastards #1).

I finished 3 books last week, but 2 were easy YA books.

Hero by Mike Lupica - I know it's a kid's book and is supposed to be simple but this one was TOO simple. There was virtually no explanation as to why the kid or his father had superpowers, it felt like the author was just throwing abilities out there whenever it was convenient to give the kid more. Even though it was a kid's book, it definitely needed more depth or needs a sequel to go into further depth. I picked it up on a whim while at the library and read it in about 2 hours. I like superhero stories so that's why I decided to take it but it didn't do a whole lot for me.

The DUFF: Designated Ugly Fat Friend by Kody Keplinger - I really liked this one. There was a lot of sex in it for being a teen book but I guess it makes sense. The main character is a bitter, sarcastic type of girl, which I love. High school setting, the hot guy talks to her when she's at a restaurant with her friends and says he's doing it because she's the DUFF and increases his chance of getting with her hot friends. She of course hates him but over time ends up falling for him. She has a chance with the nice guy she's had a crush on for years but when they give it a go, she realizes they just don't mesh and she is meant to be with the "asshole" jock guy and he fell for her as well. It's of course a cliche storyline and predictable but it's a lot of fun, and there is a lot of great biting wit kind of humour in it. The author has written a few others I might check out. I was interested to find out that the author of The DUFF was a 19-year-old girl. It makes me frustrated because if she can do it at 19, why haven't I done it yet by 30.

Both of those were easy simple books, read them both in one day.

I then also read Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this book, definitely my favorite of the year so far. This seems to be a very polarizing book though, either you love it or absolutely hate it or were not impressed with it, there doesn't seem to be a lot of middle ground reviews. I thought it was a great fun adventure story set in the not-to-distant future that felt very real and quite plausible given the state of the earth's problems and our rapid progression of technology. It's 2044 and the world's gone to shit, and most of the humans spend their time jacked into OASIS, a fully immersive Virtual Reality game world. When the creator of OASIS dies, he announces a contest to inherit his fortune and control of the company. He has hidden 3 puzzles inside OASIS that the user has to find and solve, the first to do it wins. When an 18-year-old kid finds the first one after 5 years, all hell breaks loose. There is a giant corporation that cheats, steals and will even resort to murder just to win the contest, the kid is racing against them to finish it first. The creator was obsessed with the 80s and vintage pop culture, as that was when he was a kid and was his happiest time. So this OASIS world and these puzzles are filled with all kinds of references to old video games, movies, tv shows, food, and music. I loved this aspect of it because I am the right age to have been a kid in the 80s, so I remember most of the stuff in the book. Anyway, I highly recommend this one, but be warned that apparently not everyone likes it and thinks it's poorly written or patronizing.

This week I am reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower, of course, in time for the movie like everyone else driving the resurgence of popularity on this one. It shouldn't take too long, it's pretty short and easy to read.

I was considering giving The Book Thief a go but I'm thinking of scrapping that. I still have so many other books on the waiting list that I need to get to, that one not being one of them. I will see how I am feeling after 'Perks'.

Most governments (for sure in Ontario) have programs to provide information and get you as prepared as you're going to be.

I just sent a detailed email to a friend of mine that is expecting as well and was in the same boat as you. Some of the stuff you probably haven't thought about yet, so take what I say below at face value.

Also, to all in the thread, the obvious disclaimer - these are my opinions. You might not agree with them. Also, my email was based on living in Toronto, but you can change to meet your situation


a) To start, there are a multitude of books available, as well as websites. Not to mention that I'm sure you'll be hearing stuff from friends and family. I've found it best to just filter all of that. I read only one book while my wife was pregnant, and that's because it was a good read - http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Meets-World-Smile-Toddle/dp/0312591349 (it's available at Toronto Library, so no need to buy it).

This book is also a pretty good guide - http://www.amazon.com/Be-Prepared-Gary-Greenberg/dp/0743251547 (again, also at TPL)

Here's what I found with books - Most of them have the same tone when it comes to men - "Dude, no more going out to party, and since you're stupid as hell, here are the basics"

So don't spend too much time reading 1,000,000 different books - it will be repetitive.


b) My wife and I took the prenatal courses at St. Joseph's Hospital. They helped because I learned a lot, and they were great information. Definitely helped put my mind at ease because I really knew nothing about raising a child.


c) Stroller / Car Seat. This is a toughie. Scenarios as follows:

i) Buy a travel system. This is for convenience. It's an infant seat & stroller in one package. You take the infant seat out (with the baby in it) and it locks directly into the stroller. Easy transport, no fuss. Downside - infant seats are only good until they're 6 months old. Then you have to buy another car seat.

ii) Buy the stroller and infant seat separately. Doesn't really make sense to do this, but it's an option.

iii) Buy the stroller and a convertible car seat separately (this is what we did). A convertible car seat covers from 5lb to 70lb, so basically the entire time the child needs a car seat. The downfall with this compared to a travel system is that you have to take your child out of the car seat to bring into the house / put into the stroller / etc. If (s)he's sleeping, there's a chance they'll wake up.

We also bought baby carriers (Ergo Baby, Mobi Wrap) because we live right downtown, so walking around with a baby / taking the TTC with a baby is easier when they're strapped to you.


d) Clothes. Don't spend too much on clothes. There are outfits that cost far too much, and they grow so quick that the item of clothes is only used for 3 - 4 weeks. Plus it's the typical baby shower gift, so expect to get a bunch of clothes.


e) Feeding - know that it will be hard, whatever avenue your wife goes down. Just know that whatever she chooses, you need to support her and remind her to stick through it because whether it's formula or breast, it's hard. (if you don't know, they have milk / formula exclusively until 6 months)

My wife is a big fan of the Boppy pillow. Just one of many items out there. We also got a Pashmama, which is a cover for when my wife wants to feed in public.


f) Sleeping - I made the mistake of buying a crib right away, and I set it up and everything, only to have my wife decide that she wanted a bassinet, and also that she wanted our daughter to co-sleep. You will need a crib, just discuss with your wife what set up you want before you run out and buy one.


g) To elaborate on point F, the same applies for all other baby items. We have a bouncer, a crib, a bassinet, a play pad, and some toys. My appt is suddenly feeling very very small. While my daughter uses most of the items (still doesn't use the crib), I probably didn't have to buy everything at once.


h) Diapers. In our experience, Pampers Swaddlers have been the best. You will have leaks / blowouts / messes, and from there you'll determine what works best for your baby. A good price on diapers is $0.14 - 0.18 / diaper. Amazon.ca now has Amazon Family - http://www.amazon.ca/gp/family/signup/
It's a great service once you find out which diapers work best for you.


The rest of the stuff you'll learn along the way.
You need a diaper bag. Spit rags are essential. If the child's fingers are too small to cut his / her nails, you can file them down. Burp the baby after they eat (note: do this even if they fall asleep). Introduce pacifiers later on in life if breast feeding to avoid "nipple confusion". Etc. Etc.


There are so many things that you can't possibly learn from a book, and every baby is different, so the rest of the stuff you'll learn as you go along.



In the end - congrats and have fun!

I highly recommend:

1. The Orphans of Chaos trilogy by John C. Wright. He really pushes the boundaries of the imagination by writing about a universe in which there are 4 different paradigms of magic/power, each of which cancels one of the others out and is canceled out by one of the others. It's an epic Titans vs Olympic Gods fantasy, and I've read it several times--which is rare for me to do.
   
   
2. Obviously read the Song of Ice and Fire series by George RR Martin if you haven't already done so! I delayed reading it a long time but then read all of them in a week and a half when I finally succumbed.
   
   
3. ALWAYS recommend The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
   
   
4. ALSO always recommend Lies of Locke Lamora and its sequels by Scott Lynch.
   
   
5. The Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix. It's YA, but pretty mature YA, and IMO could easily transition to the regular fantasy section.
   
   
6. Books by Diana Wynne Jones. She writes YA, but fantasy that I wouldn't call immature. The best word I could use to describe it would be "whimsical." If I could compare her style of fantasy to anyone's it would EASILY be the filmmaker Miyazaki. (His films include Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, etc.--he even adapted one of her books!) I think her best work is her Chrestomanci series which has 3 volumes (each volume is made up of several novellas), but she is best known for Howl's Moving Castle, which I also highly recommend (along with its sequels Castle in the Air and The House of Many Ways).
   
   
7. Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. It's fun, original, often dark, often humorous, fast-paced, and FILLED with action. As noted by someone else, there are vampires in the universe, but they're not the central motif. There are also other scary things, like fairies, goblins, witches/wizards, demons...the list goes on and on.
   
   
8. Terry Pratchett's Discworld canon. There are many, MANY books, and they're not written in series so you can jump in almost anywhere. I recommend Small Gods to start.
   
   
9. The Sevenwaters Trilogy by Juliet Marillier, starting with Daughter of the Forest. There are also spin-off novels, though I haven't read them all. Her writing is beautiful and mystical. She almost makes me believe magic/fae could exist.
   
   
10. The Passion and The Promise (a duet) and, separately, The Alchemist by Donna Boyd. These are really, really excellently written. "Lush" would be the word I'd use. They're not hugely well known, and I find that utterly boggling considering how good they are.

• Primary thing you need to do is make sure that when you go camping, you inform someone what your plans are and when you'll be back, so that if anything at all happens, that person can alert the proper authorities, fly in helicopters, release the hounds etc.
  
  
• I'll refer you to REI, but a lot of that is kind of advertising their own products, encouraging you to purchase the latest gadget and so on, but it has some good nuggets of wisdom, like the checklist. You can also rent tents from them instead of going full-hog and buying one (if there's one in your vicinity). Don't get sucked into acquiring all the awesome things though. Going camping is about what you can leave behind.
  
  
• ESSENTIALS I hate to say it cause the gays and Boy Scouts of America don't mix too well, but their 10 essentials list is actually awesome. And for that matter, their handbook on camping could be useful.
  
  
• COMFORT Tent: depending on how cozy you want to get with this friend, a 2-4 person tent should do, and if packing it up into a small space and lugging it around isn't an issue, don't worry too much about weight. Stove: Coleman's the classic, and it will last forever, just make sure you can get it lit. (practice!). Sleeping bags/sleeping pads/cots/air mattress: all different options for sleeping comfort.
  
  
• FOOD You should probably plan on 2 big meals a day, like breakfast and dinner. Pre-made pancake batter, frozen pre-made omelet mix, pre-cooked sausages, and bacon are good starters for breakfast. My favorite thing for dinner is hobo packs: heavy duty aluminum foil "boats" that you fill with peppers, potatoes, cubed steak, onions, seasoning, that you throw in the fire pit, after sealing them up nice and tight. They'll cook up in like 20-30 minutes.
  
  Wear layers, bring way more water than you need/have access to fresh clean water. Pack sufficient food. One of the best things, if you're not too keen on lugging everything around with you is car camping. Have a look at your state's park services, they usually have spots that you can rent for super cheap for the weekend, drive your car up, pitch the tent, and get started on the fire.
  
  Also, heres a great book, kind of on camping.
  
  Anything else that I can think: wet-wipes in a ziploc bag. Ziploc bags. Bug repellent. Lighter fluid. Propane for stove. Lighter. Pocket knife. Hatchet - seriously helpful. ICE. Cooking always takes way longer than you think it will, with set-up, assembly, clean-up. Don't take any unnecessary risks. Man, now I want to go camping.
  
  Have a good time with your "buddy".

I'll comment on both content (fact-checking) and writing structure & style. I realize others have corrected some of the data but I'm going through this as a line-edit so you'll see some repetition.

In particular: Even after the fact checking, if I were grading or judging your article (and without giving away details about my true identity, that "if" would hold some authority), I would give you no better than a C because of statements like "Overall the religion is nothing more than a money grab created by a con man," particularly given that it is obvious you have little knowledge of the subject.

If you are reporting, you report, and you do not opine. The essence of journalism (or anything like it) is to explain the facts without your emotional involvement, and to report how both supporters and detractors see the subject. ("Those in favor of this legislation see it as a way to help the disadvantaged; those opposed feel the monies raised would only benefit the military-industrial complex and never help anybody.") The idea is always to present the facts so that the reader can make an informed decision. That is especially true when you find you feel strongly in one direction or another. (Also, it's more interesting.)

Obviously, many of the people here agree with your sentiment that "Overall the religion is nothing more than a money grab created by a con man." But some people do not share that conclusion, and if you were to write an essay well, you'd reflect their world view as well. And in any case, you don't support your assertion that he was a con man. (He wasn't -- he was far more complex than that -- but you're not alone in that conclusion.)

One of the essay's weaknesses is that you can't decide whether to give a timeline of the CofS's history or to describe it. The combination doesn't work. If I were you I'd focus on the description, even though you tried to grasp it yourself by following the timeline. (That's especially so since you got so much of the timeline wrong.)

For context: I am not a member of the Church of Scientology; I left in 1980. But I practice scientology independently, and I'm among those who expand/change auditing technology to improve its workability. That makes the CofS members feel that I'm a heretic. It also means that I examine what I learned in scientology in detail to determine what part I agree with and what I object to. So take my advice with that in mind.

> Scientology is a new age religion founded in 1954 by L. Ron Hubbard.

As others pointed out: not "new-age" (that term was invented far later) and the date was 1953.

>Hubbard was a well-established science fiction writer with some 140 stories published in pulp fiction comics.

Leave out the "with some 140 stories published in pulp fiction comics." It isn't necessary, it has factual errors (never in comics), and it does not add to the description of Scientology. You either go into Hubbard's background in depth or you describe Scientology. The assignment clearly is to do the latter.

> In 1950 he released a book called Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health which became a best seller on the New York Times. Dianetics is not spiritual in itself but actually more of a psychoanalysis book.

Copyedit: Book titles are italicized, so it should be Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Also, most people abbreviate long titles like this, and the accepted writing style is to show that abbreviation after the full use of the title, so you'd write "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (DMSMH)" and thereafter refer to the book as DMSMH. That's especially important here given that Dianetics refers to the practice or subject, and DMSMH makes it clear when you're writing about the book itself.

> In the book he spoke of finding the “dynamic principal of existence” which is to survive. The book explains that in our mind we have a section regarded as the reactive mind. Our brain records everything in our lives, and the fears and threats that trigger a survival response are placed in our sub conscious reactive mind. This way we can call upon these memories in similar situation to avoid them and survive. The Scientology website gives the example of a person eating a food that later made them sick. Now when they see that food, the reactive mind reminds them of sickness they felt before in an attempt to no experience that reaction again. These bad memories are known as “engrams”.

Copy edit: In the U.S., periods and commas go inside the punctuation. Thus:

• are known as “engrams.”
  not
  
• are known as “engrams”.
  
  (For more on improving this writing skill, read the very funny and instructive Eats, Shoots & Leaves.)
  
  > The book then explains that we are all thetans, spirits that are immortal and are simply placed into bodies. They are trillions of years old and the creators of the material world which they willed into existence according to the book(URL1).
  
  Incorrect. DMSMH does not discuss thetans or introduce the topic. It very deliberately does not mention past lives (which was a weird-o topic in the very conservative 1950s). Dianetics (both the subject as theory and the auditing as practiced) focused purely on people addressing engrams to reduce their emotional charge, and not on our spiritual existence. It certainly did not go into "how long we've been around" as spiritual beings.
  
  > We as thetans are not pure however according to the book. All of our past lives engrams as well as all our pre-birth and present experiences also develop engrams that have tainted the thetan. The only way to become a pure thetan is through the process of auditing.
  
  Incorrect data. First, again, nothing about thetans is addresses in DMSMH; that's in other, later books.
  
  Second, there's no discussion of "purity" in any manner. Or rather, the concept is that we are each already immensely powerful (and kinda cool) but have collected some bad crap along the way to be cleaned up. Rather like an adorable little kid who plays in the mud; all you need to do is wash off the mud, to begin with, and then later you help the kid learn new skills and abilities (including how to avoid getting dirty in mud puddles). You aren't trying to become something you are not; you're working to become more of what you are.
  
  The key point here is that scientology sees each of us as immortal spiritual beings, called "thetans," as "spirit" and "soul" have so many meanings that they can confuse the issue. For example, in many religions you "have" a soul; in scientology there is a baseline belief that you are a soul. I am a thetan; I don't have one.
  
  > L. Ron Hubbard use to do shows where he would audit audience members. They would then claim to be able to see past lives and even go so far as to experience something called “exteriorization” which is when someone’s soul is separated from their mind and body.
  
  Copy edit: "used to," not "use to."
  
  Copy edit: "when someone’s soul is separated from their mind and body" is poor grammar because "someone" is singular and "their" is plural. Rephrase. It's up to you whether to write, "is released from his mind and body" or " ...his or her mind and body" or whatnot, but fix that.
  
  Line edit: How is the fact of him doing "shows" relevant to describing what Scientology is? This appears to be a case of, "I read it, and it sounded interesting, so I thought I'd include it." The fact of him doing "shows" was never the issue. (They were fun, but that's irrelevant here.) I think the point you mean to make is that from the earliest, Dianetics and Scientology were addressing topics such as past lives and the separation of the body and soul (what scientology calls a thetan).
  
  Also they were never "shows." They were technology demonstrations, done for the same reason that Apple attracts thousands of people to product announcements. That is, "This is something new and we want to show you how it works." It was never about him showing off in a carnival way. This was training: "Let me show you how it's done," for the same reason people watch videos on YouTube to learn how to crochet. You see how an expert does things and then you go off and do it yourself.
  
  You also imply an inaccurate cause-and-effect when you write, "They would then claim to be able to see past lives and ...". From the earliest experiments with Dianetics, and the number of people practicing auditing after reading DMSMH, people ran into past lives. Initially it was frowned upon to run those (like I said, in the 50s this was really weird), but everyone discovered that the only way to address the emotional charge -- to resolve the incident that might have ended with that case of food poisoning -- was to address whatever came up. Similarly, people were going exterior whether or not Hubbard was around.
  
  Your wording in this section betrays a negative attitude that does not belong. You can easily say that people getting auditing reported experiences from past lives, and some said they went exterior (the spiritual being separating from the body) ...without any judgement.
  
  Scientological comment: Yes, I have plenty of past life memories, and I'm generally pretty damned happy when I go exterior. Neither are the aim of what I'm doing, however.
  
  > In 1952 Hubbard released a second book building off of Dianetics called Scientology: A Religious Philosophy, this is where the religion was born. With the release of the book, Hubbard also established a few churches around America for Scientology. This is how his self-help pseudoscience writings became a religion.
  
  Factually incorrect data. Fix that.
  
  [continued...]
  

I did cloth for my first and half of my second, then switched to throwaways toward the end of my second and third kid.

The thing that will get you off of them is extra time and effort. They take up more space, are harder to manage when you have 3 kids running around, and make a lot more laundry. I found I had to do a load every other day or the smell would be not very fun when putting them in the washer.

I found pockets were the best at stopping leaks and keeping baby happy and dry, but required most effort, all in ones took more drying time but had less hands-on time while doing laundry, but sometimes leaked if baby had a heavy night, and weren't always as good at wicking away moisture as the pockets were. I only used prefolds for the infants, but if I had larger ones I might have preferred those over the pockets since they are the least time consuming of the three. Also you can reuse the covers, just wipe, dry, and put in a new prefold. Great when you are changing them every hour because they won't. stop. pooping.

I used Charlie's Soap, and we still use it for all our laundry. Our first had really sensitive skin and when we got Charlies for the diapers, we used it for a couple loads of her clothes and her skin looked much better almost right away. It's pretty good soap. We get it from Amazon delivered every month, I'd recommend it. I don't know how good it is at disinfecting.. but we've never ever had a problem with it. We used BAC-OUT from biokleen every couple of washes to help with the smell, as Charlies was great on normal laundry but after a few washes diapers get a faint odor that I didn't like. Also you need to do a special wash every once in a while, I forget what it's called but I'm sure you'll see it.

As you can see... washing is the big thing. It's the main thing that turned me off to them. If I didn't dislike laundry as much we would be using them for number 3.

Best of luck! I'd recommend a book too, nothing to do with diapers, but it's fantastic for your first kid. I give it to all my friends when they have one. The Baby Owner's Manual

Trust me, it's fantastic and totally worth 10 bucks, but you can find it cheaper on Amazon some places. I found it for 3 bucks at a local bookstore, so a bought more than one :)

Obligatory wiki links: Dystopian Literature. Although, some of the titles listed don't seem to fit (The Dispossessed?). Nuclear holocaust fiction, and your general apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction.

Some of the better/more popular ones:

• Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang Kate Wilhelm.
  
  
• Eternity Road Jack McDevitt. Well written, but not very insightful.
  
  
• The Postman David Brin.
  
  
• Mockingbird Walter Tevis. Great read. Think Idiocracy, with a serious take. Humanity's totally run by robots, everyone's forgotten how to read and think for themselves, and the world population's dropped to almost nothing.
  
  
• We Yevgeny Zamyatin. The inspiration for George Orwell's 1984. Not the best read IMO, but some people claim it's better than 1984. It's possible I read a poor translation.
  
  
• Island Aldous Huxley. It's a utopian island surrounded by a dystopian world. Might not fit in this list, but it's a good read if you like Huxley. I think it was his last novel.
  
  
• 1984 George Orwell. One of my favorite novels. I have a bumper sticker with the quote "War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Freedom is Slavery", which is a slogan from the book. (Also, a sticker on my mirror with "Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me"). The link points to Animal Farm and 1984.
  
  
• Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury. Another must read. Very well written, thought-provoking novel. Is it still required reading in schools?
  
  
• Earth Abides George Stewart.
  
  
• Alas, Babylon Pat Frank. Lucifer's Hammer Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle. I'm grouping these two together because they're very similar, both in setting and politics. I didn't really enjoy either. The politics were not at all subtle, and the characters fit too neatly into stereotypes, and too obviously the writer's hero fantasy. Still, they're pretty popular, so try them out and feel free to disagree with me.
  
  
• Brave New World Aldous Huxley. Really just a utopia that's rough around the edges, if I'm remembering it correctly (also called an anti-utopia, thank you wikipedia). Another must read.
  
  
• A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter Miller.
  
  
• Memoirs Found in a Bathtub Stanislaw Lem. Another favorite. I once created a text adventure based on this book. It was about as frustrating as that Hitchhiker's Guide game.
  
  
• The Road Cormac McCarthy.
  
  
• Philip K. Dick It's hard to keep track of PKD's novels, but some of them are dystopian, all of them worth reading. Favorites: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (also known as/inspired Blade Runner), Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, The Man in the High Castle.
  
  
• The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood.
  
  
• Y: The Last Man A graphical novel/comic collection. Decent art, great story.
  
  Zombies: World War Z, Raise the Dead, Marvel Zombies, Zombie Survival Guide, Day By Day Armageddon, I Am Legend.
  
  Also, just for kicks, some of my favorite dystopian movies:
  Brazil, Soylent Green, 12 Monkeys, Blade Runner, Akira, Children of Men, Dark City, A Boy and His Dog, Logan's Run, Idiocracy, Equillibrium.

Alright I hope you get this. Sounds like you are a lot like I was growing up. I would read a book a week and listen to two. haha. these were books i had to grow into a lot of times. so don't get discouraged. some of these are tough but they'll help you in the long run. promise.

anyways.. here's my list.

Foreign Policy

-Dying to Win- Science and strategy behind suicide terrorism

-Imperial Hubris- good book by a CIA vet on what to expect because of US foreign policy

-Blowback- Same type of book as above, but better.

-The Looming Tower- a good history and account for Sept 11






Economics and Money

-Freakonomics- Ever wonder about he economics of drug dealing, including the surprisingly low earnings and abject working conditions of crack cocaine dealers? This book is fantastic.

-Outliers- Gladwell is a master of minute detail. This book helps you focus on the future.

-Blink-Great book on intuitive judgement

-The Age of Uncertainty- the best book I've ever read on the fight between Capitalism and Communism

Biology and Science

-Why Do Men Have Nipples- a general Q&A book. Good for info you can use at a party or to impress somebody. really random stuff.

-A Short History of Nearly Everything- Humorous take on some heavy heavy science. Easier to read than people think.

-The Ancestors Tale- It was hard picking just one Dawkins book, so I gave you two.

-The Greatest Show on Earth- Dawkins is the world-standard for books on biology and evolution in layman's terms.

Good Novels

-1984-Hopefully no explanation needed

-A Brave New World- a different type of dystopian universe compared to 1984. read both back to back.

-The Brothers Karamazov- My favorite piece of Russian Literature. It made me think more than any other book on this list honestly. I can't recommend it enough.

-Catch-22- There are so many layers to this book. So much symbolism, so much allusion. You must pay attention to get the full affect of this book. Great satire. Masterfully written.

-Alas Babylon- Yet another dystopian novel. This time about what would happen after a world wide nuclear war.

-Slaughterhouse-5 Vonnegut is a badass. And that's really all there is to know. I read this book in one day. It was that good. Satire on WW2.

Philosophy

-Sophies World- Good intro to a lot of basic principles of the major philosophers

-Beyond Good and Evil- Nietzche can get REALLY depressing because he is a nihilist but this book is extremely quotable and will give fresh perspective on a lot of things.

-Atlas Shrugged- Ayn Rand's masthead. Its a novel, but its also a commentary on her precious objectivism.


So there you have it. My short list of books to read. I can get deeper into certain subjects if you want me to. Just PM me.

You might like some of the following for your summer book adventures:

The Lies of Locke Lamora - if you like this one, then there's a second book in the series. I think it's shaping up to be a trilogy, but I can't recall off the top of my head. It's low fantasy, clever and occasionally snarky, with some fun intrigue and good action. It keeps up a decent pace, which is great.

If you enjoy magic realism at all, I really liked The Hummingbird's Daughter, which is about a young woman who becomes a saint. I found it to be really fascinating. It doesn't exactly qualify as magic realism, but it's fairly fantastical so you can't read it as realistic either.

The Passage was an interesting read, although I didn't finish it before I had to return it to the library, so the ending might suck :P It was a really neat blend of vampire mythology, science, and the apocalypse though, and I did make it about halfway through before I had to return it.

Finally, Ready Player One was a really neat sort of blend of space opera and adventure quest, with some good nostalgia thrown in for fun. Everyone basically lives in OASIS, which is a virtual reality sort of place, because the world is ugly and gross. This kid is taking part in a contest that everyone in the whole world takes part in, and it follows his progress. I thought it was really neat, anyway.

I'm going to ponder a bit more, and see if anything else strikes my fancy as something you might like. I love recommending books to people :)

How to Build™ : Down Here Buddy(Fighter- Dual Dex Dynamo)

Objective

A dual weilding halfling using a quick wit and even faster blades.

__

Stout Halfling +2 Dex, +1 Con

• Lucky When you roll a 1 on an attack, ability check, or saving throw, you may re roll that dice, but must use the new result.
  
• Brave Advantage vs saving throws to be frightened
  
• Halfling Nimbleness You may move through the space of any creature that is of a size larger than yours.
  
• Stout Resilience You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and have resistance against poison damage.
  
  Background: Criminal
  
  
• You are the muscle behind The Cartel. Your quickness to drive home messages with great efficiency caught the eye of Those Who Be when one of their trainees didn't heed your "Scram" warning. Two blades slicing off his hand and ear proved to Those Who Be that they didn't lose a cutpurse but had gained a new Messenger.
  
  
• Criminal Contact You have a reliable and trustworthy contact who acts as your liaison to a network of other criminals. You know how to get messages to and from your contact, even over great distances; specifically, you know the local messengers, corrupt caravan masters, and seedy sailors who can deliver messages for you.
  
  
• Proficient in Deception, Stealth, Dice, Thieves' Tools
  
  
• Trained in Athletics (life among the streets where might is right), Intimidation ("Use: Stare" ).
  
  
  Equipment based off Suggested Quick Build
  
  
• Two Shortswords
  
• Hand Crossbow + 20bolt quiver
  
• Dungeoneer's Pack
  
• Crowbar & Thieves Tools
  
• Leather Armor, and 210gp
  
  Stats based off Legal Adventure League Array 15,14,13,12,10,8
  
  Stat | | Stat |
  ---|---|----|----
  Str | 10 | Int | 13
  Dex| 14+2 | Wis | 12
  Con | 15+1 | Cha | 8
  
  AC 14 (7 more AC possible with higher quality gear)
  
  HP 13 (9 hp/level afterwards)
  
  
  Level | Class | Gain|Note
  ---|---|-----|----
  1| Fighter | Fighting Style: Two-Weapon Fighting, Second Wind | With every slash you are able to get the needed leverage to drive home the blade.
  2| Fighter | Action Surge | Sometimes you just need to do some extra convincing to drive home your point.
  3| Fighter | Champion: Critical Strike 19-20 | Every strike digs closer to the threats.
  4| Fighter | Feat: Dual Wielder | Your blades move so fast that you can even use them to deflect incoming blows, as well as you have built up strength to wield larger weapon with equal speed (Rapier- 1d8).
  5| Fighter | Extra Attack I | Bring the pain.
  6| Fighter | +2 Dex | Your blows hit harder and your feet move faster.
  7| Fighter | Champion: Remarkable Athelete | Add half your proficiency bonus (round up) to any Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution check you make that doesn't already use your proficiency bonus.
  8| Fighter | Feat: Resilient Dexterity | Float like a butterfly, sting like bee.
  9| Fighter | Indomitable I| You are able to shrug off attacks and difficulties that those with a smaller heart would crumple to.
  10| Fighter | Champion: Fighting Style Defensive | You are able to leverage your armor so that it deflects blows in unexpected ways.
  
  This gets you pretty far progression wise, more beyond this and it can just get too complex as far as flexibility of a guide goes.
  
  Post level 10 I would suggest Feat: Durable, +1 Dex, +1 Con, +2 Con, and even Magic Initiate: Cleric to pick up the spell Shield of Faith or Bless and then Spare the Dying, and Thuamaturgy. These spells augment your team helping their attacks and saves, lets you instantly stop a bleed out, have great RP moments, and are not reliant on having a high wisdom. Also it could work well as your level 19 Feat as you're being blessed by the God of Theives with greater power.
  

• Watch this Yale introductory course to the old testament. (multiple videos) It's eye-opening, all the actual facts about the old testament they don't tell you about in Sunday school class.
  
  
• The new testament course is interesting too, it's good to know when it was written and by who. Then consider how little is said of Jesus outside of the bible.
  
  
• Watch any debate between an atheist and a religious figure, try to figure out which ones are actually making points you can relate to, and why. Even though Bill Nye vs Ken Ham is fascinating, I'm thinking more of Bill Craig with Sam Harris or Chris Hitchens with Bill Craig.
  
  
• Read "A short history of nearly everything" and you'll see how science, including evolution, has gotten to where it is.
  
  I don't think I ever believed in a god.
  
  Certainly I was there on Sundays and testified to my friends if they asked, I was a pretty decent missionary's kid. I participated when called on, but didn't ever initiate anything religious, just went with the flow.
  
  Going to college was the first big step. Getting out of one bubble, but that got substituted for another containing a Christianity I didn't recognize. I stopped going to church, never liked it, even worse than school ... because I wasn't learning anything. Every sermon, class, lesson I heard over and over. In college, without parents to drag me out of bed, I started appreciating that sweet Sunday morning sleep a lot more instead.
  
  (The singing was fun though)
  
  I started questioning everything about my faith, for 2 years trying to make new information and new personal convictions fit into what I already believed. It became harder and harder to do. At first it was easy, some shifting and everything fit in perfectly. But that wasn't working anymore.
  
  One night, I wanted to let it all go, start from scratch, but too terrified that I would change and wouldn't be the same "good" person I took myself for.
  
  I decided that whatever was true would present itself when approaching it with a clear mind, just practice healthy skepticism, roll every new idea around in my head and see it from every possible angle, I was always good at thinking exercises, decent at deductions, the truth would present itself. I had to trust that.
  
  Years went by and I realized how little religion was a part of my life, how little I cared for it. How little sense it made, especially after being gone for a while and going to a service ... it felt like a cult.
  
  Being a moral person is about making that decision, not something that comes from faith, faith that if you don't do it the destination will be hell...
  
  For a long time it was all I could think about, I took in books, debates, documentaries, anything that stirred the controversy. Now, it's just another (weird) thing on this planet that I get reminded of from time to time.
  

I think the best way is to suggest a few that got me into reading. One or two are YA, but well-written enough that I find it as worthwhile a read at 28 as it did at 14.

Ender's Game - Earth Has made contact with an alien species, and... It didn't go well. A program is started to teach a new generation of soldiers how to fight this alien threat. Children are not allowed to be children for long when the future of mankind is on the line. Also, it's being adapted into what is shaping up to be a pretty badass movie.

Snow Crash - Written in the 90's, but it essentially pioneered the concept of the online avatar, and predicted the rise of the MMO. Also, pizza-delivering ninjas. Trust me on this. It's good stuff.

Neuromancer Classic cyber-punk. Most sci-fi is like you see in star trek. Clean and sterile. Cyberpunk is the dirtier side of sci-fi. Organized crime, computer hacking, and a heist on a space station. And Molly. This book is the reason I have a thing for dangerous redheads.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Considered by most to be the very best in sci-fi humor. Lighthearted, hilarious, and I find I can read it in the course of about two days. It is absolutely, completely, and utterly amazing.

American Gods - What happens to the old gods when we start worshiping the new ones? Can the likes of Odin or Anubis compete with our new objects of worship. like television or internet? Remember, Gods only exist as long as folks believe in them. The old Gods aren't going down without a fight, though...

Hope some of these strike your fancy. It's admittedly more sci-fi than anything, but it's all soft sci-fi (Where the science isn't as important as the fiction, so story comes first), and nothing too out there. Please let me know if you decide to try any of these, and especially let me know if you enjoy them. I always like to hear if I help someone find a book they love.

The first thing that I suggest is that you buy a reputable book that will teach you how to write. I'm not saying that you're a bad writer, but I would wager that most people write three times worse than they think they can (I am including myself). On Writing Well is a classic, and you might also want to read this one and this one, although I strongly recommend completing the first one. What's included is:

a) Keep it simple. Don't say it's going to be a turbulent precipitation, say that it's going to rain. A lot.

b) Study each adverb and adjective. Any words that aren't necessary should be cut. Is it really important to say that the violin was wooden? Probably not. What about the sentence "She smiled happily"? The "happily" isn't necessary, that's what "smiled" means.

c) Use specific verbs.

d) Consistency is key. Switching tenses or something similar in the middle of writing is generally a bad move.

e) Proofread. Duh. That goes hand in hand with editing.

So, yeah. You should really look into that stuff area. One read-through will help significantly.

Ok. So now that I finished preaching to you, let's move on. I didn't find any templates in my quick search, so that's of no use right now. What you can do, though, is study very well-written program notes. Are their sentences long or short? When are they longer or shorter, and why? Is the tone active or passive (psst. it's probably active)? What's the tone that they use, and what is your impression at the end? You get the gist. If you write down what you think your thoughts for three of these, you'll have a good idea what you're shooting for. Other than that, it's all up to you, so go nuts.

Anecdotes are also a nice way to make things entertaining. Search for stories, or impacts on the audience. Did you know there are at least six editions of the Rite of Spring? Why was the one your orchestra's performing (let's assume) created? Many people also don't know about the riot after its premier. Stravinsky escaped out the back entrance to avoid the aristocratic mob. Say fun things, win fun prizes, or something like that.

It's also important to know that stories tend to follow the path of one person. The Odyssey could have had its crew be the focus, instead it was Odysseus. Inside Out could have placed all the emotions front and center, but it was Sadness and Joy that saved the girl. Keep that in mind if you're going down a similar path.

Man, I went all out on this. Good luck with your program.

> Would you say that a virus is a type of machine?

Yes, I would, though whether it's a living machine (or an agentive one) is much more controversial. This is addressed extensively in the Moreno & Mossio pieces I linked you to before, and I know that Estrada has a paper coming out about it soon as well (I recently reviewed the submission). You may also be interested in looking into Tibor Ganti's concept of the chemoton, the theoretically simplest cell, and its associated literature.

>Would you classify a language as a machine?

I don't think 'machine' is exactly the right word. I think language is a kind of "social technology," intended to scaffold our innate cognitive processes and extend our ability to do information processing, somewhat like how Lev Vygotsky thought of education's role during the zone of proximal development in childhood learning. Language works by piggybacking on our innate (i.e. biological) abilities to reason and work with abstract concepts, allowing us to transform significantly more complicated tasks into the kinds of semantic manipulation tasks we're good at. Andy Clark has a great piece called "Magic Words" that elaborates on this thesis.

>As in, a kind of mind virus that infects homo sapiens, a kind of terminal mental illness?

This sounds a lot like Richard Dawkins' meme theory. Dawkins postulated memes as the mental or cognitive analogue of genes: small units of self-replicating information, responsive to selective pressure, and able to spread from organism to organism. There have been a lot of criticisms of the analogy since Dawkins came up with it in the 70s, and most people don't take it terribly seriously as anything but a metaphor these days. I'm not sure it's quite right to see language as something like this in any case; natural languages are far too complex to be thought of as memes themselves, though they may contain memes, and certain languages may make the spreading of certain memes easier. I certainly don't see any reason to think that language is something like a "terminal mental illness." That is, it seems to me that language is, if anything, a monumentally helpful adaptation: the sort of thing that's let humans be as successful as we have been. This whole line of discussion reminds me a lot of Neal Stephenson's fantastic 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, in which the plot revolves almost entirely around the idea of a "mind virus" spread through the linguistic manipulation of certain deep pathways in the brain. If you haven't read it, I suggest you do so immediately--it's a really great book, and it touches on a lot of the points that seem to interest you.

As to your point on education, well, I agree in some respects. I'm highly critical of a lot of what goes on in contemporary education, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that I'm an educator myself. Your critical view isn't as radical as you might think. I get the sense that you're rather young (that's not a criticism!). If you can get your hands on it, I suspect you'd enjoy Jerry Farber's classic piece of educational anarchist literature from 1970, The Student as Nigger. I enjoyed the hell out of it when I was in high school, and it led me to a lot of interests that I still pursue today.

He sounds like a younger version of myself! Technical and adventurous in equal measure. My girlfriend and I tend to organise surprise activities or adventures we can do together as gifts which I love - it doesn't have to be in any way extravegant but having someone put time and thought into something like that it amazing.

You could get something to do with nature and organise a trip or local walk that would suit his natural photography hobby. I love to learn about new things and how stuff works so if he's anything like me, something informative that fits his photography style like a guide to local wildflowers or bug guide. I don't know much about parkour but I do rock climb and a beginners bouldering or climbing session might also be fun and something you can do together.

For a more traditional gift Randall Munroe from the web comic XKCD has a couple of cool books that might be of interest - Thing Explainer and What If. Also the book CODE is a pretty good book for an inquisitive programmer and it isn't tied to any particular language, skillset or programming level.

Of course I'm biased because this is what I love to do for a living (teach about language), but I also find myself learning about language in my free time.

Here are my "Greatest Hits" of language people, programs, blogs, and readings, in no particular order (despite the fact that I've numbered them):

1. Geoff Nunberg's segment on NPR's Fresh Air. Link to the Geoff Nunberg archive on NPR
   
   
2. The "On Language" column in The New York Times Magazine. I like the current columnist, Ben Zimmer, but I'm partial to William Safire. Here's a link to Safire's "How to Read a Column"
   
   
3. There are a number of good language blogs. It's probably "cheating" to put them all in one item, but here goes:
   
   

• Johnson, the language blog at The Economist
  
  
• Language Log
  
  
• Languagehat
  
  

4. Books:
   
   

• Bill Bryson: The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way and Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
  
  
• Expletive Deleted by Ruth Wajnryb
  
  

5. Random stuff: I like George Carlin's many humorous takes on language and Margaret Atwood's fiction and Dr. Seuss's many made-up and lovely sounding words.
   
   And I subscribe to /r/logophilia, which often has many amusing words, like pulchritudinous, an ugly word that means something beautiful.
   
   EDIT: And it's great to get a book on usage. I like Garner's Modern American Usage, but here's a list from Diana Hacker at Bedford of other good usage guides

I highly recommend science oriented books. Science is no "Maybe, perhaps, whatever", it is clear: facts are true when they are proven as such, and wrong when proven as wrong. There are theories everywhere but no one relies on them before they aren't proven right nowadays.


For a good summary of science, I recommend „A Short History of Nearly Everything". It really is about everything that regards progress in science: From Physics and chemistry, over geology and cosmology to anthropology and evolution. It is a pleasure to read, very well written and researched.


For more detailed, yet very accessible physics and explanations of the universe, there is "Big Bang".


Then there are things that - in my eyes - are beyond anything that TRP touches. Medical conditions which impair your sensory organs or rather the areas of your brain that process those sensations: Complete failure of a brain area, malfunctions in processing, illnesses. Those are very interesting stories and will make you think outside of your box. What would you do if this happened to you? How do people build a life around this? What does it feel and look like inside an affected persons head? Oliver Sacks has written a few books about those conditions/cases. He has a very pleasant and personal style of writing down his stories about the patients or even himself.

Quite analogue to that I recommend the series "Dr. House" if you are interested in that topic.


I can only recall those two from the top of my head. Of course, there are other topics which are interesting as well:

Philosophy (see: Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Platon), ancient poetry (see: Vergil, Homer, Alighieri) [because this indeed is for the most part fictional, you learn a lot about the spirit of the times], psychology, economy, paleontology, anthropology, etc etc.

Also, you shouldn't miss out on reading up about how cars/car engines are built and how they work (there are great animations of this on Youtube), this can come in handy if you want to repair one or get an idea of what features are worth your money. Same goes for computer technologies, household equipment. Basically I recommend to read up on every technical or even economical topic to be up to date.


As well, you can do researches about daily things. The internet is great at getting you those informations. But be sceptical, everyone on the internet can write articles about anything.

Often times it's the things we don't notice that have the most impact: linguistic (the history of bascially all languages is very exciting), where resources come from (nuclear plants - on this topic I found a well researched article/book on reddit regarding
Chernobyl -, coal power stations, wood clearing, purification plants, oil producers, mining, opencast mining, fishing, farming, animal breeding), the many climate zones of the globe and which one you live in, flora and fauna of the globe, the sea and especially the deep sea.


You get the idea. Turn your head around 360° and look under the surface of things. Lift a rock to see what is underneath, there is a lot to discover.

Hm, here are some recommendations of my favorite Dark/Gritty Fantasies that immediately come to mind:

Joe Abercrombie is one of my favorite new authors, his books are incredibly gritty dark and original, but the characters are simply amazing. The best starting place is The Blade Itself, but you can read his two other books that aren't part of the trilogy and can be read without losing too much, though they are in the same world and there's more to like about it if you already read the First Law Trilogy. Out of his two stand alone books I'd recommend Best Served Cold which is a Fantasy revenge story in the vain of Kill Bill.

One really good book I read recently is Daniel Polansky's Low Town which is a really cool gritty noir fantasy novel. Where the main character is a former detective for a Fantasy city, but at the beginning of the book he's a drug dealer. Then when murders start to occur, he gets drawn back into the politics of the city, resulting in a great story and multiple plot twists and revelations.

One of my favorites books I've read recently has to be Brent Week's Black Prism. It has some really unique world building, where the magic powers are based on light/colors, and the different magic users have different really unique powers based on their color wavelength. His previous work, the Night Angel Trilogy is also great and it's a little more gritty, with the main character being an assassin.

Next I'll go a little indie here, with the author Jon Sprunk's Shadow's Sun. It features an assassin with slight magical powers and the conscience of a beautiful invisible woman (a real imaginary friend) that is always following him around. There's a lot of things to like in this book, even if they are a little shallow.

Two books from different authors (both of which I really loved) that have kind of similar settings featuring thieves running amok in the underbellies of fantasy cities with a decent amount of grit (without being too dark) are The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch and Doug Hulick's Among Thieves.

There's also Ari Marmell's [The Conqueror's Shadow] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Conquerors-Shadow-Ari-Marmell/dp/0553593153/ref=la_B001JSDH98_1_20?ie=UTF8&qid=1340785404&sr=1-20), the main character is a former evil warlord who gave it all up to live a mundane life with a woman he kidnapped. He then has to put back on his fear inducing armor, when someone else is out in the world impersonating him. There is no evil force in this book, and there's a lot of interesting stuff here, the guy actually has a demonic amulet as a partner that provides him with magical abilities, and the demon is hilarious.

The next series isn't too gritty but it's awesome, so I'd still recommend the author Michael Sullivan, a DIY author that was so successful Orbit picked up his 6 book series to release as three larger books (he's also done some great AMA's on Reddit), the first of which is Theft of Swords. The characters in his book are absolutely superb. It's about these two master thieves that are brought into the conspiracy that they wanted no part of, but will see it to the end no matter what the cost.

Robin Hobb technically isn't real gritty, but she is one of my favorite authors, and in her books serious and horrible things can happen to the characters at times, but the endings of some of her trilogies are some of my favorite endings I've ever read. You could start with her first book about the bastard son of a king (that can bond with animals) being trained as an assassin, Assassin's Apprentice, or my favorite trilogy of her's set in the same universe but a different continent, Ship of Magic that has some awesome pirate settings, talking ships, and dragons. I also love one of her other trilogies set in a different universe than the rest of her books, Shaman's Crossing, the first book has kind of a Harry Potter-esque academy setting without the magic, and the rest of the trilogy gets into some really interesting stuff that's too weird to attempt to explain.


I think that's all I got, and you wouldn't go wrong reading any of these books, all of the pages I linked to are the book's Amazon page, so you can read further descriptions that I'm sure are better than mine. :)

Yes, the crib can come at anytime, but I think he needs to be in the same room as mommy until 6 months. You could go sooner, but why? Unless he's causing problems with sleep, as they say, "if it ain't broke....".

EVERYONE, has advice and they are more than happy to give it, so I'll repeat mine. "If it doesn't FEEL right, don't do it."

You will over think everything about the first child, I did and still do. Read, but try not to obsess with "growth charts" and the "he should be doing "blank" at this many months" charts all baby books seem to have.

Find a good pediatrician, one you like as well as respect and but most of all has kids of his own. I think having kids changes your outlook and it's important that your doctor have some perspective and first hand experience of being a first time parent. Nothing changes your life more than the first child as you will soon see.

Dad needs to read this book "Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads" it's funny but has some great advice. Yes, MORE advice sorry.

Good Luck the first six months or so are the toughest, but also the most rewarding.

Einstein I would say wait a little bit, he assumes a pretty decent mathematical background in his readers, so it can get a bit tricky.

Hawking, meh. The man's a genius but he's not good at explaining physics to laypeople imo. His books seem to state things without any indication of how physicists arrived at those conclusions, so they're a bit of a head scratcher for newbies.

I would say DeGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox and Michio Kaku are fairly easy jumping off points, but you'll soon get tired of hearing the same analogies. When that happens, move onto the slightly deeper books of Brian Greene and John Gribbin. Leave authors like Leonard Susskind, Roger Penrose and Max Tegmark until later, they're pretty heavy.

All of the above are pop science/astrophysics books that deal in exciting, puzzling things at the frontier of knowledge. If you're just looking for a grounding in more mundane everyday physics then you can do a lot worse than to take the free math and physics courses over at Khan Academy and then follow them up with the more advanced free ones at The Theoretical Minimum site. If you knuckle down through those you'll be at undergrad level physics by the end of it, which is honestly about as far as you can go with self teaching imo.

I found it useful to learn the history of things too. Understanding how conclusions were drawn makes the crazy-sounding theories much easier to comprehend. Bill Bryson's book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" is a great overview, and you can follow it up with books specific to the different eras of discovery... Recentering the Universe was a good one for the earliest eras of Copernicus and Galileo. James Gleick's Isaac Newton covers the classical mechanics era. Faraday, Maxwell and the Electromagnetic Field takes you the next step. Then you can get onto Einstein and relativity, of which there are a million and one choices. Then onto quantum mechanics, of which there are even more choices... :-)

Hope that helps.

Hoookay.
To start off with, the two mandatory books are:

Neuromancer, by William Gibson: This is the big daddy, the first example of the genre. Especially notable for pre-dating the world wide web, but managing to predict it pretty well. We still use terminology (like cyberspace) coined by him today.

Snow Crash: Snow Crash (in my opinion) is the close to the genre, the book that took everything unseriously enough to lead us into the world of post-cyberpunk. An awesome book, and more readable than Neuromancer.

Movies:

Blade Runner: The visual inspiration for a ton of stuff, Blade Runner is the shit. Make sure you watch the Final Cut, because there are three versions.

The Matrix: Worlds inside computers are huge in cyberpunk, and The Matrix nails it. The aesthetics are pretty good too, given less sci-fi stuff in the computer world.

The Surrogates: Not the greatest movie in the world, and Bruce Willis has hilariously fake hair, but an interesting approach to a cyberpunk world.

Miscellaneous:

Psycho-Pass: The less well-known cyberpunk anime, Psycho-Pass treads interesting philosophical ground, and pairs it with a really fun cyberpunk police procedural. Season 2 is coming out this fall, mark your calendars.

Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex: The Ghost in the Shell movie is one of the leading lights of Cyberpunk, but I prefer the TV show for it's more drawn-out, easier to follow narrative. Drop magic into GitS, and you have Shadowrun, straight up and down. This is a must-see for anyone interested in the genre.

Akira: I confess, I haven't actually seen Akira, but it's another classic of the genre. Beware that without having read the manga, there are pretty decent chunks that just won't make sense.

If you want to just know buzzwords to throw around, spend a bunch of time clicking around on Wikipedia, and watch stuff like Crash Course on YouTube. It's easy to absorb, and you'll learn stuff, even if it's biased, but at least you'll be learning.

If you want to become SMARTER, one of my biggest pieces of advice is to either carry a notebook with you, or find a good note taking app you like on your phone. When someone makes a statement you don't understand, write it down and parse it up.

So for instance, write down "Social Democracy", and write down "The New Deal", and go look them up on simple.wikipedia.com (Put's all of it in simplest language possible), it's a great starting point for learning about any topic, and provides you a jumping board to look more deeply into it.

If you are really curious about starting an education, and you absolutely aren't a reader, some good books to start on are probably:

"Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words" by Randall Munroe

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

"Philosophy 101" by Paul Kleinman, in fact the ____ 101 books are all pretty good "starter" books for people that want an overview of a topic they are unfamiliar with.

"The World's Religions" by Huston Smith

"An Incomplete Education" by Judy Jones and Will Wilson

Those are all good jumping off points, but great books that I think everyone should read... "A History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell, "Western Canon" by Harold Bloom, "Education For Freedom" by Robert Hutchins, The Norton Anthology of English Literature; The Major Authors, The Bible.

Read anything you find critically, don't just swallow what someone else says, read into it and find out what their sources were, otherwise you'll find yourself quoting from Howard Zinn verbatim and thinking you're clever and original when you're just an asshole.

Haha... OK.

The following post was meant for this thread, but I posted here by mistake. Let me repost it for you below.

> An excellent starting point is Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Almost universally praised, this history of scientific thought covers... well, nearly everything. The basics, like physics, biology, chemistry, and then stuff like cosmology, evolution, quantum mechanics, environmental science... the list goes on and on.

>Very readable, not aimed at technical audience. Highly recommended.

>Once you have finished that (and it is a big book), you can then home in on areas of particular interest. For me, it's evolutionary theory, paleoanthropology, quantum mechanics, primatology and so on. If you have particular interests in those areas, please let me know.

>And I simply can't leave without recommending my favourite book that combines wonderful history and science. You simply must pick up and read a copy of the Pulitzer Prize winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Not only will you learn about the history of WWII, the amazing feats of the American government in achieving what they did, but also the science of atomic theory and the beginning of quantum mechanics. This is, quite simply, a wonderful book.

I know this post is 2 days old, which puts it in some sort of reddit graveyard, but I'll add my thoughts.

First, Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan is the definitive "modern" cyberpunk novel so check that out for sure.

Also, for more of a "5 minutes into the future" cyberpunk, check out the Nexus trilogy by Ramez Naam. The third book in the trilogy won the Philip K. Dick Award if that means anything to you.

Another series I liked, which has a great dark humor to it, is the Avery Cates series by Jeff Somers. Seriously, just read the 'About the Author' section at the bottom of that page to get an idea of the humor.

Have you read William Gibson's The Peripheral? It's a neat update on Gibson's cyberpunk vision now that the world has changed.

Someone else recommended Cory Doctorow. I actually think Little Brother is his best work, though it's young adult so prepare yourself for that.

Finally, I feel weird recommending this, but if you were a child of the 80s, have you read Ready Player One? It's pretty polarizing in this sub since you either love it or you hate it, but it is a popular modern cyberpunk novel.

I've owned about a quarter of these books since high school, and I read two to three books a week, so your math isn't far off! I'd say I'm closer to maybe two thousand books, maybe 2500. I want to get an accurate count at some point! I also want to catalog them so that I can tell what I own without having to call home and have my SO tell me if I've forgotten (I forget pretty often). Just haven't gotten around to doing that yet. But someday!

Ready Player One is set in the near future, in the year 2044. It's a dystopian novel that deals with a virtual reality world. The guy who created the world died, and whoever solves his puzzle gets ownership. The puzzle is solved through a bunch of easter eggs hidden in the world, all of which involve 80's pop-culture and video game references. The first couple of chapters are kind of slow, but by about a quarter of the way in, it just sort of hooks you. I finished most of it in one night before passing it off to the SO. He's not a big reader, but he practically inhaled the book. We've been buying copies from my store when they come in, and just handing them out to friends ever since.

Indy is surprisingly graceful. He corners on a dime! My SO actually nicknamed him "Indy 500" because of his speed, although I'd say the cornering ability is more akin to that of an F1 car. Scott, on the other hand, has some slight brain damage and is pretty derp. He doesn't know how to retract his claws all the way, so they stick to the area rug in the living room as he walks across it. And his tail throws him off balance a lot when he flails it around, so he falls off the furniture when he's excited. Aw, dog! What's his (her?) name? What kind of dog? Also, dog tax.

So jealous of your weather right now! Mid-seventies is perfect. It's been in the forties and fifties this past week. 38º right now, but that's because it's five AM. Sleep is totally important! I don't do mornings. At all. Like, if I'm awake before noon, it's because someone's paying me to be. (Side note: maybe the military isn't the best idea for someone who likes to sleep in late, dude.) Field training should be interesting, if nothing else! Accepted for what?

Pressure cookers can be fun! Slow cookers might be what you're after, in the beginning. Pressure cookers can lead to accidents like this if you're not careful though. Slow cookers don't have, y'know, pressure, so they cook slower (hah, words), but it's the same principle. I've got a slow cooker, but I'm a little nervous to pick up a pressure cooker just in case! Don't want to lose my security deposit on this apartment so spectacularly. XD You should totally ask him! I bet he'd love to teach you. What kind of food does he make?

Yeah, dude, it was a pretty sad thing to watch. The guy stole a book that we paid $100 for, which we priced at $400 (Sex, by Madonna-- unopened, still in the mylar wrapping, and in perfect shape), and he got $20 for it at a pawn shop. I checked online and it doesn't look like the guy has any more convictions after that one (this was in 2013), so there's hope. His defense attorney gave a story about how the guy was abused by his father, made to steal just so he could eat... I don't doubt it. Coming from that sort of background, it's no wonder he'd turn back to theft whenever times were tough.

Jesus, our government sounds kind of like my store. We've spent so much money replacing the broken, leaky AC units that half our computers are still running WinXP while connected to the internet. Thankfully, with PCI compliance, at least they're not the POS terminals! Those are running Win7 and have no internet access. Hooray for F-35s?

Oh man, I've heard so many good things about The Witcher series! I've been meaning to pick them up, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm re-reading Discworld because SO is supposed to start them soon and I want to refresh my memory a bit. Next on my list is The Blood Mirror, by Brent Weeks. It's the fourth book in the Lightbringer series and it's a really well-done fantasy series. You should check out the Night Angel trilogy by the same author; it's good, and it's finished so you don't have to wait.

Holy crap I'm watching DS9 right now too! I'm halfway through season six! The SO and I started watching it together a few months ago, but I've been on leave because of my hysterectomy (I go back on Friday, woo!) so I powered ahead of where he last saw. Been trying to catch him up this past week. We also just finished Stranger Things, which was phenomenal. Highly recommended, especially if you liked The X-Files at all, or suspense-type stuff. After that, I don't quite know what we'll end up watching. Maybe we'll pick up Voyager? Or we might go back and actually finish TNG. I've seen lots of bits and pieces, but we never watched like, full seasons in a row. The SO grew up watching it with his dad, and has the science officer badge tattooed on his chest! I'm trying to catch up to what all he's seen, I guess.

Ender's Game is seriously so much better than the movie. It's amazing what people will do to ensure the safety of the human race, without fully seeing the whole picture.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski. I was hesitant at first, always seeing it, but never checking it out at the library. It wound up being one of my favorite books to read, it was that good. Story of a mute boy raised on a farm breeding dogs. He can sign, and has pretty good life, as far as things go, until his father dies. He tries to prove his uncle had a hand in the death, but the plan backfires. Hated the ending - not because it was bad, but it was so damn sad.

If you're willing to poke at a series, try Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastards series, the first book is The Lies of Locke Lamora. The series centers around Locke and his shenanigans as a Gentleman Bastard - a notorious gang of thieves. They pull off some pretty intense schemes, some with great success, some with spectacular failures. It's a great series, and another set of favorites that I recommend to everyone that'd ask.

Congratulations on the new job, hope it works out well for you! Also, I love that you had such a great turn out for your book drive. My kids know how important it is to read - I actually push my daughter to read a little bit above her grade level. She keeps a reading log for homework, so her teachers are pretty impressed. She did amazingly well on her latest state reading/math test, and her teacher believes it's because of all the reading she does. If you do another drive, I hope it goes just as well.

I'm sure your friend has access to all the recovery literature he can handle, and more. I wouldn't even go there, if you are considering it.

I might go for some light entertainment.

Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods is about hiking the Appalachian Trail, it's an easy read and it's hilariously funny.

Cheryl Strayed's Wild is about hiking the PCT and is also a fun read.

For novels, I have to recommend A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, and Middlesex by Jeffery Eugendes. They are both big huge sprawling books that are also super enjoyable and easy to read. (So they are not a new Moby Dick.) I've never read them, but I hear the Lord of the Rings books are completely absorbing too. They would take up a huge chunk of his time.

You might also send some comfort clothes. Some warm socks or slippers or sweatpants or a hoodie, something like that. (I'm a huge fan of LL Bean's sweats, they are super comfy and well made.) Also maybe an iTunes gift card if he's got an iphone or ipod.

Out of curiosity, what's the scifi book you're sending? I'm a big scifi fan too.

I've immersed myself in science and history my whole life and quite possibly the best book I've ever come across that condenses everything in a sequential order is "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson.

> In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail—well, most of it. In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, traveling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.

The book is simply amazing. I learn something new from it everytime I read it and I highly recommend it to everyone from an uneducated teenager to a PhD carrying senior!

While you're at it, I would also recommend the rest of his books. Bryson is an amazing nonfiction writer (I daresay one of the best in the world) and his penmanship will captivate you. Just search for him on Amazon and pick another one of his books up in a category that interests you as he writer about a very broad range of topics.

Edit: Also, I highly recommend "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared M. Diamond. and Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt

1. When you wish upon a star
   
2. Can I say all of them?? :/ I LOVE Disney/Pixar movies! Like, seriously. They are amazing. So, out of Disney/Pixar movies, my top 5 are Toy Story, Toy Story 3, Wall-E, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille (not in order). My favorite Disney movies are Aladdin, Tangled, Frozen, Beauty and the Beast, and Mulan. :D
   
3. Prince Ali! Definitely. Also, I Just Can't Wait to be King, Something There, I'll Make A Man Out of You, and I See the Light.
   
4. How about a book? Books are awesome.
   
   Also, that mashup was fantastic. Thanks for sharing that! And thanks for the contest!! Disney is the best. :D

Easy, just get him a Zombie survival guide from Dymocks/Kinokuniya. What you have to watch out for is that you don't get him a shit one, of which there are many. IMO, The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks is the best one out there. If he hasn't read it, World War Z also by Max Brooks is excellent reading. It's not so much a guide as a collection of individual recounts, reports and stuff from different people over the course of a zombie breakout. It reads realistically which is more than I can say for the majority of Zombie related "survival guides" and books that are just stupid. They're making a movie out of it with Brad Pitt starring - just to show it's popularity.

If he hasn't seen The Walking Dead, getting him the seasons on DVD might be a good idea. Awesome TV show - again, realistic. If he's seen them, don't bother. I mean, he can just download them anyway so I guess this would be a crap gift unless he really likes the show. There are graphic novels that the show is based on which might be good.

If he's a gamer, might be good to get him ARMA II: Combined Operations. The reason I say that there's a great zombie survival mod for it called Day Z which is basically an online multiplayer open-world zombie survival like game. Trust me, he'll like it. Steam summer sale is on right now so ARMA II is 20% - if you can wait, don't buy it yet as it may go on sale for more (possibly up to 75%) if it goes up as a daily deal/flash sale/community choice. There's also a The Walking Dead game which I've heard is good. It's already been a daily deal so 25% is as good as it will get now.

Last of all, making him a kit might be cool. I put together this for a redditor last year. You can probably make a better one than me - I'll admit I cheaped out a little. Get a box or a backpack (you can cheap out on the backpack) and fill it up with things like a flashlight, a med kit (bandaids, bandages, surgical scissors, sports tape etc. things you can buy from a pharmacy), water purification tablets (this especially adds to it IMO), food (canned, power bars or, if you want to go the extra mile, MREs), thick army socks, a compass, etc. Basically just shit you'd take with you if you were going camping. Make it as compact/lightweight as possible.


Well, fuck, that turned out to be a lot longer than I intended. Anyway, good luck.

EDIT: Oh yeah, one more thing. What I did for that same redditor last year was that I wrote a survival plan for him. Basically, if you get him that Max Brooks Survival Guide, one of the things they suggest is hiding out in a prison (fortification, food, water, exercise yard, accommodation, weapons, remote etc.) - what I did was that I researched prisons in the walkable/bikable vicinity of his house and I mapped out routes to them from his house on a map I printed of his house from google maps.

Books

These are the only ones I bought and read:

• The Baby's Owner Manual
  
  
• Pregnancy Instruction Manual
  
  
• The Pregnancy Countdown book
  
  I love this Subreddit and just how easy breezy and fun the conversations were while still being helpful. I found these books had a similar feel to them.
  
  ----
  
  Baby Bump
  
  I'm pretty petite and really didn't start showing until 24-ish weeks? Then is was like BOOM. There's a baby in there. So, I bet it's coming sooner than you think. I honestly was able to sleep on my stomach late into the 2nd Tri - which made me very happy.
  
  ----
  
  Food
  
  I just ate what felt right at that moment. I had a lot of food aversions and it was just hard for a while. Eventually, I found things that worked and then the aversions tapered. I've been eating cashews a lot lately... Milk hits the spot... I'd say keep trying until you find something!
  
  ----
  
  TIMING
  
  I didn't really have a "timeline," and my OB would remind us and help us figure out when to do some things like, call the insurance company, schedule classes, etc. I preferred to take the classes later so the information stayed fresh.
  
  As for a car, we started that early because we knew we had two cars to sell/trade and wanted to make sure we found something we both really liked.
  
  Make a list of what you want done before baby comes and place it according to "MUST HAVES" / "NICE TO HAVES" -- that helped us prioritize and made it feel more managable.
  
  Hope some of this helped!!

I second the reading idea! Ask your history or science teachers for suggestions of accessible books. I'm going to list some that I found interesting or want to read, and add more as I think of them.

A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson. Title explains it all. It is very beginner friendly, and has some very entertaining stories. Bryson is very heavy on the history and it's rather long but you should definitely make every effort to finish it.

Lies my teacher told me

The greatest stories never told (This is a whole series, there are books on Presidents, science, and war as well).

There's a series by Edward Rutherfurd that tells history stories that are loosely based on fact. There are books on London and ancient England, Ireland, Russia, and one on New York

I read this book a while ago and loved it- Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk It's about a monk who was imprisoned for 30 years by the Chinese.

The Grapes of Wrath.

Les Misérables. I linked to the unabridged one on purpose. It's SO WORTH IT. One of my favorite books of all time, and there's a lot of French history in it. It's also the first book that made me bawl at the end.

You'll also want the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, The Federalist Papers.

I'm not sure what you have covered in history, but you'll definitely want to find stuff on all the major wars, slavery, the Bubonic Plague, the French Revolution, & ancient Greek and Roman history.

As for science, find these two if you have any interest in how the brain works (and they're pretty approachable).
Phantoms in the brain
The man who mistook his wife for a hat

Alex and Me The story of a scientist and the incredibly intelligent parrot she studied.

For a background in evolution, you could go with The ancestor's tale

A biography of Marie Curie

The Wild Trees by Richard Preston is a quick and easy read, and very heavy on the adventure. You'll also want to read his other book The Hot Zone about Ebola. Absolutely fascinating, I couldn't put this one down.

The Devil's Teeth About sharks and the scientists who study them. What's not to like?

My reccomendation would be The History of Science. Everything is available on YouTube in decent quality.

As a matter of overview, I would suggest Bill Bryson's a A Short History of Nearly Everything. It's a book, which requires reading, but there's an awesome illustrated version that's a good time. The book is as accessible as they come, and it's entertainingly written.

I would also suggest Cosmos, since you seem to be focused more on space. Both the original and the remake are available on Netflix. The original is my favorite, beucase Carl Sagan, but the remake is also a solid show, and probably more what you're looking for. There's also Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, and a Stephen Hawking on the universe series which you might like. Pretty much everything is available on YouTube, just search "<show name>, long, hd".

I have 0 experience with incarceration, but I have loads of experience with books. Not sure his interests, but here are a few books I adore:

The Lies of Locke Lamora - Basically an Ocean's 11 heist story set in a world similar to Game of Thrones.

The Name of the Wind - (from the Amazon description) The riveting first-person narrative of a young man who grows to be the most notorious magician his world has ever seen.

Cosmos - Carl Sagan saw the best in our species. This book is what the TV series was based on.

I would encourage your friend to read text books as well while he is inside as well. Pick a topic they have an interest in, and find an older textbook on the subject. For me that would be this book. Not a topic I was educated on, but something I have an interest in.

Thank you for supporting your friend!

The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy was by far my favorite. I thought it was going to be dry and medical, but it had everything I was looking for. I found "What to Expect" to be a little disorganized and kind of scary, but I know a lot of women like it.

We also really like Be Prepared, which is really a dad book but I enjoyed as well. It's lighthearted and easy to read in quick segments, but has a lot of good info.

Online, I really like the Babycenter.com community because it has so many people... almost any question I have has already been asked and answered, so I find lots of answers. If your town has a chapter of the Mommies Network you'll absolutely get great info there, and meet local parents/parents-to-be. Finally, if you're breastfeeding, Kellymom is a must.

Whew! Hope those help!

OK, so most people will have the same basic plan: Get out of town, find remote fortifiable location. lay low, gather supplies, hold out til you can rebuild (great basic strategies Here!)

However, most people will be cramming the highways with the same strategy, then you get swarmed in the car on the way out.

SO, you need a contingency plan to hold out until you actually find a safe/quick/Stealthy way to execute the get-the-hell-outta-dodge part.

Supplies

have enough supplies on hand so that you could safely bunker down where (or near to) where you are. This is good advice in general and the same supplies will help you hunker down should a hurricane or a riot sweep through or society falls apart for some other reason.

1. Food/water - enough to last for a couple weeks, stuff that will cover your basic needs for 2 weeks- 1 month (Canned food, dried food, rice, beans, etc)
   
2. Basic Defense- Guns are great and all but are loud and need ammo. Think knives, axes or bludgeons. Ideally something with some reach.
   
3. Fortifications- Know how you are going to secure your shelter. Going to board up your windows? Better have the tools on hand and know what you're going to use to do it.
   4)Basic Hurricane Kit - hand-powered flashlight, Radio, signal flares etc. buy at any sporting goods store.
   
   Secure Shelter
   
   Now this part depends greatly on when/where you are when you become aware whats going on. But in general, (unless you are just pants-shittingly unaware of your surroundings) you should have a day or so between your first Zombie sighting and when stuff really starts going to shit.
   
   You need to have a clear idea in your head where you are going to draw the line in the sand across which the Undead shall not cross. For me this is the small section of my apartment complex. 22 units with a high iron fence all the way around. 3 entry points which can all automatically lock. I'd need to first secure and barricade these then begin to make a sweep of the neighboring units. There are 3 possibilities of what you will find. 1) Unoccupied unit - poor bastards were either caught in the initial outbreak or tried to make a run for it. make a not of these and come back for supplies. 2) Survivors - Congratulations you're not alone. enlist their help or have them keep their heads down. 3) Biters - You know what you have to do.
   
   Adapt
   
   Now once you have a safe defensible location for at least the short run, all planning goes out the window. Depending on how situations develop your plans are probably going to get blown to shit. Maybe the government falls faster than anticipated, so they don't have time to firebomb major cities. Maybe you become entrenched and are going to have to survive in place ad infinitum. Maybe you find your escape path and can make for the hills and follow the default plans.
   
   You can never be prepared - only more prepared
   
   TLDR; Have fun feasting on the brains of your loved ones
   
   

Deep breath. Everything's alright. Babies just happen sometimes. Remember that we somehow evolved as a species by having babies in the woods, when our best tools were sharpened rocks. Just love, relax, and be compassionate... everything else will play out on it's own. You sound like you are in a better position than I was (in college, delivering pizza, and no savings). I'm sure you can google your specific questions, but here's my opinion:

• Business trips - Good, more pillows for her. Things don't get too exciting until the 3rd trimester.
  
  
• Insurance - hers, since until the baby is born, it is essentially her 'condition'. After the baby comes? I guess you'll just have to compare co-pays, maximum benefits, whether a preferred provider is on the list, who will be taking to appointments, etc.
  
  
• Last name - Yours, assuming you want to be involved, she is cool with that, and possibly she might take on your name as well.
  
  
• Share news - standard is 12 wks, but it's your call.
  
  I recommend:
  
  The Baby Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting Tips, and Advice on First-Year Maintenance
  
  It's amusing and actually very informative. I found it more readable than the 'What to expect when you're expecting' series. Cheers!

Congratulations, and welcome! SO and I just found out about our incoming bundle of cuteness on Monday, had our ultrasound to rule out ectopic on Tuesday, and it has been a whirlwind ever since. I have been on the depo shot for 2 years, and I only missed one cycle (was due for a shot 7/1, conceived around 7/15). We are due April 11th, but they may change it to the 16th! As far as not drinking, I would go with the "new medications, can't drink" thing. It's something people shouldn't question, and if they do it is easy enough to explain. Just be prepared to answer the questions ahead of time!

One of my favorite books from my last pregnancy, especially for our dear sweet men, is The Pregnancy Instruction Manual and [The Baby Owner's Manual] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Baby-Owners-Manual-Trouble-Shooting/dp/1594745978/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y) once little one is here. They are easy to read and sort of hilarious!

Again, congratulations!

It might be helpful if you give us a list of any books you've read that you did enjoy or genres you think you might like.

I have never met a person who didn't love Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but it may not be your thing if you don't like wacked-out sci-fi so some general idea of your interests could help a ton with suggestions.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is a solid non-fiction

Robot Dreams is a great set of sci-fi short stories

Ender's Game gets a ton of hate but is a pretty great sci-fi

On A Pale Horse is an older series that I'd consider fantasy but with sci-fi elements

Where the Red Fern Grows is well loved fiction

A Zoo in My Luggage is non-fic but about animal collecting trips for a zoo and is hilarious.

Congrats on the job. Boo on moving in with your sister!

You're awesome because monkeyslut! Those monkeys are sluts!

I am odd and enjoy coloring in coloring books to de-stress. There are some funny adult coloring books that may give you a few laughs and help you chill out. Just search "adult coloring book" in Amazon; you'll see what I mean-> [here's an example] (http://www.amazon.com/Coloring-Grown-Ups-Adult-Activity-Book/dp/0452298253/ref=pd_sim_b_1) . I enjoyed the book [Unicorns are Jerks] ( http://www.amazon.com/Unicorns-Are-Jerks-coloring-exposing/dp/1477468528/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369842721&sr=8-1&keywords=unicorns+are+jerks). Also, listening to music that is uplifting to you or puts you in your "happy place". Is always a good idea.

I hope things start looking up for you. Maybe with your new job you can start saving up to move in with friends or something :)

Well, one of the books I read that really got me started in cosmology and physics is Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. I think it is his best book and talks a lot about the fundamentals of our universe. Brian Greene studies string theory and those bits are interesting, but just know that the theory is far from complete or proven. This one is definitely the most physics heavy suggestion.

Another book that I really enjoy is A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. It is essentially a history of science, and he covers a lot of topics. Many of which I knew almost nothing about when I read it. It puts into perspective how all the things we know came to be.

The next two recommendations are not books, but they still have a lot of great information in them. This first is a Youtube series called Crash Course Astronomy. The host is Phil Plait, one of the programmers involved with the Hubble Space Telescope. There are a lot of videos, so it would keep you busy and learning for a while.

The last recommendation is as close to the upper level undergraduate astronomy courses that I have taken without actually doing any math. It is a bunch of class lectures from Ohio State University that were recorded and released as a podcast about stellar astronomy and planetary astronomy. I found the lecturer's voice a little whiny at first, but I soon got past that because the content was so good. I kid you not, I listened to this ahead of my ASTRO 346 Stellar Astronomy class at my university, and I felt like the class concepts were almost a review.

All of those recommendations require you to do no math, but you only get a glimpse of the concepts that way. If you want to dive in more, you'll need to take a class or read a textbook on your own.

I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any other questions about astronomy as a subject or as a course of study in school :)

Few bits of advice.

1. Start reading. Every good writer is well read.
   
2. Speaking of reading.. Here are some books I'd recommend for learning writing skills.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance-Punctuation/dp/1592402038
   
   This is a great book explaining everything you need to know about punctuation in a fun way.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Vocabulary-Cartoons-Learn-Minute-Forget-ebook/dp/B00FBL1GL0
   
   This book is how I learned a bunch of vocabulary words. You'll never forget them with the help of the fun cartoons that help you recall the words.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Brysons-Dictionary-Writers-Editors-Bryson/dp/0767922700
   
   Bryson is a great author and this book can be helpful to you as well.
   
   
3. Start Journaling daily. This is a great skill to learn because it helps focus your thoughts after a long day and it will help you organize ideas quickly in your mind as you write them down.
   
   4.Finally, practice writing. I don't know what field you are studying but I would recommend learning about academic writing. Find journals (through your college library) that are about your field of study and try reading an article or two and take notes on them. The goal is to try and connect a topic from your classes with an article or some other writing (you can find articles online from reputable sources other than journals) . Then you can try writing about your own perspective on the topic in a research style paper. This way you will learn more about what you are studying and see how other professionals write about it. Also, look for books about your field as they will be great resources for your writing.
   
   
4. If you would like more information about academic writing and how I personally organize notes and go about researching topics to write my own papers just comment or pm and we can talk more.

Over five but wanted you to see this

Okay, now. Here's your item! Unicorn stickers! They are lovely and you can stick them in random places and feel special! This coffee phone topper is mine because maybe Unicorns love coffee and that is why they are so hyper and love rainbows because they are so awake...okay that was silly but you never know!!

FIVE DOLLA! :)

The best book I've read in recent years.

Ready Player One

It's the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune--and remarkable power--to whoever can unlock them.

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday's riddles are based in the pop culture he loved--that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday's icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes's oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt--among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life--and love--in the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

A world at stake.
A quest for the ultimate prize.
Are you ready?

A good book that is fun to read and has tons of anecdotes about scientific history is A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

In a similar vein, you can ponder the more mind-bending aspects of our Universe with Stephen Hawkings A Brief History of Time

Other than that you may find some interesting things in the works of Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins (I personally recommend Dawkins's The Selfish Gene)

If you are sick of scientific titles you can also check out Freakonomics or The Worldly Philosphers

These Books are all written for a general audience so they go down pretty easy.

Deciding which major in College can be tricky - I was lucky since I knew exactly what I wanted to study before I left High School, but maybe some ideas in these books will pique your interest. My parents always told me to go to school to study something I love, and not to train for a job. I'm not so sure this advice carries through in "recovering" economy. You may want to factor in the usefulness of your degree post-college (but don't let that be the only thing you consider!).

Good Luck, and enjoy!

For the machete a Cold Steel kukri is an excellent option.

Field strip the MREs: here's how.

Get the Chinese military shovel instead, it's really awesome. Here's one link to buy it.

Would advise a Camelbak or other mini-backpack style hydration bladder, much better for mobility.

For the rope: get milspec 550 paracord.

Gorilla brand duct tape is advised.

For the multitool either SOG or Leatherman are excellent choices. A couple of good picks from each: SOG PowerAssist and PowerLock as well as the Leatherman MUT and the Charge TTi.

Check out 4Sevens for excellent quality flashlights - really these guys are among the best in the flashlight market.

For the gun I would advise a Ruger 10/22 with a folding stock for compactness. Add some 32 round interlocking magazines and a box or two of ammo (.22LR is cheap, they come in boxes of 500 or so).

I would also recommend a Red Cross multifunction solar/crank radio.

The SAS Survival Handbook and of course the Zombie Survival Guide would make good additions.

I'm 9 weeks into this same thing (a boy and a girl).

One thing I've learned so far is you can't do it all. There is going to be moments where somebody's going to have to sit and cry. For example, you can only change one diaper at a time. They will be okay.

Do some research about babies being in the NICU. Don't let it worry you too much. It seems most twins go to the NICU for at least a little bit. Mine were there 3 weeks

Definitely keep both on the same schedule. If you feed one, feed the other. If you change one diaper, change the other.

There's going to be a moments where you get overly frustrated. Put the babies in a safe place and walk away for a few breaths. Also make sure momma does the same thing.

Always accept help. Don't feel proud and try to be a superhero. Weather it's somebody willing to come help you watch the kids, or someone willing to cook you a meal. If they offer, take advantage.

Some more spacific things would include:

• Keep a changing table in your bedroom (an extra for downstairs if you have two floors)
  
• Keep spair clothes in the bedroom.
  
• Use puppy pads to put them down on the couch or bed
  
• Label their bottles and pacifiers for each child (I have one with thrush right now)
  
• Buy something to hands-free carry them around the house with
  
• Multiple bottle drying racks
  
• Podster baby seats
  
• Be prepared to need formula
  
• Find a brand of coffee and creamer you like.
  
• Get a coffee pot with a timer
  
• Get A Yeti or Thermos coffee cup
  (I may add to this later if I think of more)
  
  A couple of good books I liked:
  
  Be Prepared https://www.amazon.com/dp/0743251547/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_i_tdARDbCCNJJN0
  The Baby Owner's Manual https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594745978/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_i_leARDbH84Q31C
  
  
  Lastly, and most importantly, if you're worried about being good parent, then you are being a good parent.
  
  Good luck my fellow brethren

Just recently finished "Ready Player One". A really fantastic novel chock full of awesome 80's pop culture references. Definitely an enjoyable read for anyone who loves video games, John Hughes movies, or awesome hair bands. The audio book is also narrated by Will Wheaton which is pretty great.

Hi, I have a degree in Philosophy and teach Philosophy/English to high schooler. The following advice and recommendations are what I give my students who are interested in philosophy. I would not recommend Kant as an introduction (not that he's bad, but he is difficult to understand). Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar is a book that explains philosophical topics and questions through humor and uses jokes to illustrate the concepts. It is accessible and thought provoking. If you are interested in logic you might enjoy Logicomix. It is a graphic novel that gives a biographical narrative of Bertrand Russell, an English philosopher whose work is the basis of all modern logic. It is not a book about logic per se, but it does give a good introduction to what logic is and how it can be used. Also, Russell's book A History of Western Philosophy is a good place to start your education in philosophy. If you are interested in atheism, read Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion. This book goes through the most common arguments for the existence of God, and debunks them using logic and reasoning. Good luck and read on!

Tough to decide between the two, but it's the same author and they're tied together so I'll just go with it: Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States and The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson. As a lover of language and its history, it's really interesting to see the links between usage in Britain and America.

I didn't know of Bryson before randomly buying these (damn, do I love book stores) and plan on buying more of his in the future when my reading list has been pared down a bit. (I've since learned he's very well-known and my outdoors-loving, recovering alcoholic dad read a Bryson book about getting sober and hiking the Appalachians a few years back.) His writing is very engaging and incredibly funny. I've read a lot of other linguistic books that weren't nearly as "fun" to read as these. Highly recommended.

No baby here yet (I'm due 3 days before you and still haven't popped yet!), but I have a few book recommendations. Your boyfriend might enjoy the first because it's amusing and not really overwhelming, called The Baby Owner's Manual. I am currently reading Mayo Clinic's Guide to Baby's First Year, which is more clinical but VERY detailed. I really enjoyed the mayo clinic pregnancy book because it wasn't as scare-tactic as some of the others (like What to Expect) but still gave good, evidence-based information. Speaking of evidence-based, I read and thoroughly enjoyed The Science of Mom, which is kind of like Expecting Better but for baby's first year of life. It goes over a lot of scientific studies, if that's your thing!

I bought two for my significant other. DadLabs and Be Prepared.

Be Prepared came in first and he enjoyed it. I picked it up and flipped through it a bit. Lighthearted with just enough neat little "tips" that it makes it worth the couple bucks I spent on a nice used book. It's just kind of bathroom material now.

Then DadLabs came in. He read it cover to cover. Put bookmarks in. Highlighted stuff. He LOVED it. He isn't a big "reader" so that's saying a lot for him. I read a bit of this one too. It's practical and more serious than Be Prepared, but still fun and enjoyable to read. I also got a score on Amazon with this one, bought used, it showed up in perfect condition, and was signed by all the authors. :)

We actually have an e-book in common: Ready Player One, but it's over your price limit. From the rest of your book list, I think you might like The Remaining, it's not a sure thing, but it seems to be similar to your interests.

I've been reading the Hyperion series, and they are great! I really hope you get a chance to read them. I randomly picked one up at the bookstore one time and my SO loves them as well!

Not sure if it'd count, but there's this Baby Owner's Manual that my SO and I got when she was pregnant. Lucked out and found it at a Goodwill while buying some other baby books and whatnot. Anyway, it's actually got some pretty great info and it's presented in a pretty fun way.

Other than that, just have to say, be prepared for poop. Like, I know that you've already braced yourself for dirty diapers, yeah, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how babies will just magically find ways to get poop from their diapers onto everything else. Like there will be that dreaded blowout, and trust me, one of you at least will be sent into this sort of shellshocked mode of just sitting there and shaking your head and just mumbling "I don't know, I just don't know."

My favorite book would have to be Ready Player One :)
This book is so exciting, as it's about a video game virtual reality 30 years in the future. The creator of the world was single and had no kids, but he was also the richest man on the planet. Since there was no fair way to distribute his money, his will was a contest.

"Three secret keys open three hidden gates,
wherein the errant will be tested for worthy traits.
And if they have the skill to survive these straits,
they will reach the end where the prize awaits."

Halliday(The creator of the game) left this only clue to the world to try to gain his power and money. Six years passed before anyone finally figured out the first clue.

This book touches every gamer's nostalgia and you will want this game as soon as you finish the book. It makes you feel good to be a gamer. :)

Steam ID

Just Cause 2 :D

EDIT: OP, even if I don't win, I highly recommend this book :D

My favorite book in a long time which I'm currently reading is A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. It doesn't have much to do with anything but it keeps me entertained. Definitely check it out.

Second favorite is A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Both are rather obscure of meaning but have a fun precedence (this possibly more comical than the other)

If you are looking for a semi-serious book I recommend The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. It does have to do with an ex-military doctor but it is hardly the focus of the book. It follows the creation of the Oxford American Dictionary, but it isn't quite what you'd expect. I don't believe I could give you in depth analysis for any of these nor if you'd like them. They are my favorite books (minus Calvin and Hobbs) and are worth a read.

Great Question. I was thinking about my own history. I wish there was a good single Codex, like handing out Bibles. I'd say read books broadly, read well, listen to debate, study the free MOOC courses online like edx.org. Always have a consciousness above what you are listening/reading that takes the mental exercise to evaluate: what works and what flaws there are in things, even ideas you love. I think books on Science history are especially helpful, like Byson's A Short History of nearly Everything or Boortin's The Discoverers

While you're waiting for the timer, you might try reading books on liguistics.

I'm being snarky, but I'm also being serious. You clearly are interested in linguistics, but you don't seem to know that much about how and why words form and evolve their meaning. A great book that I love because it's not a technical book for professional linguists, but for people like us who have a general interest in language and its history, is The Mother Tongue: - English And How It Got That Way, by Bill Bryson. Where a grammar teacher might say "'it's history' is wrong, the correct way to say it is 'its history'", a linguist might say, "'its' is considered correct, but someday that could change". That's a super general example, but from the reading I've done, I've noticed that linguists not only accept, but often prefer, when language breaks the rules, rather than abides by it.

I actually see a lot of parallels between your situation and where I found myself at your age. It was 14 or 15 that I really developed an interest in science, because before that I hadn't really been properly exposed before that. Fast forward 6 or 7 years, I'm now a third year university student studying physics and I love it; I'll be applying to PhD programs next fall.

Like you, astronomy (by which I broadly mean astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, etc.) was what really caught my attention. In school, I liked all the sciences and had always been good at math (calculus was by far one of my favorite high school courses because the science can be pretty watered down).

If you're interested in learning more about astrophysics, I would recommend any one of a number of books. The first book on the topic that I read was Simon Singh's Big Bang; I read a couple Brian Greene books, namely The Elegant Universe and Fabric of the Cosmos; I read Roger Penrose's Cycles of Time, and finally Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Also, I bought a book by Hawking and one by Michio Kaku that, to this day, sit on a shelf at my parents' house unread. I would recommend Singh's book as a nice book that should be at your level, and in fact it was the one recommended to me by some professors who I bugged with questions about the universe when I was around your age. Also, Bryson's book is a good survey look at a lot of different scientific topics, not just astrophysics/cosmology specific; I enjoyed it quite a lot.

As far as reaching out to people, I would recommend trying to connect with some scientists via email. That's what I did, and they were more responsive than I expected (realize that some of the people will simply not respond, probably because your email will get buried in their inbox, not out of any ill-will towards you).

At this point, I'll just stop writing because you've more than likely stopped reading, but if you are still reading this, I'd be more than happy to talk with you about science, what parts interest(ed) me, etc.

If you just use The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding as a reference, it is good. I also liked What to Expect. I kinda split the difference between crunchy SAHM and epidural-loving working mom, though.

My husband LOVED the daddy book I got him called Be Prepared. He ended up bringing it to the hospital with him, and eventually even I read the whole thing.

My friend who is really into nutrition of her babies just recommended Super Baby Food to me, but I can't vouch for it. Also seems to have mixed reviews on Amazon. I was given a book called The Best Homemade Baby Food on the Planet that I haven't really looked at yet, but might now that we're starting solids.

The only cloth diapering book I read was Changing Diapers by Kelly Wels. It was okay, but I did better just by internetting.

And if you're a frugal momma, pick up the most recent edition of Baby Bargains. I've only heard good things.

A Walk in the Woods is about my home hiking trail: the Appalachian Trail. This trail was basically in our backyard and I would hike there often before I went off to school in Idaho. We're now settled in Texas so to go hiking we'll need to trek a bit further.

A great book I read recently was Hawaii and it was marvelous. Its no wonder Michener was awarded the Pulitzer for his work.

For kids, I would recommend The Eleventh Hour. Its a mystery about a birthday party and a delicious meal. Very fun. Young kids will really like the pictures and the older kids will like trying to solve the mystery.

I'm a FTM and I have taken absolutely zero childbirth classes or infant care classes. I have done a lot of research on my own when it comes to childbirth, however. The library has been my best friend. I don't plan on doing any infant care classes. I've been around babies with my nieces, nephews and cousin's kids so I'm not worried about that. I did, however, purchase The Baby Owner's Manual for my husband and he loves it. He's never really had any experience with babies at all.
 
You are definitely not a bad mom already! You will survive without them. A lot of child care is intuition and with childbirth you will have your doula. I think you'll be absolutely fine. You got this!

We are on almost the exact same timeline (ahead 1 week) and also having a girl. I too have a younger brother, but honestly anytime I ever imagined having a child it was a girl so I feel like im subconsciously prepared for it. I was more fearful about having a boy!

I would recommend checking out this baby book I got recently which helped put my mind at ease for the infant stage. It reads like an instruction manual and has some good humor in it. Better than any of the other books ive read, and yes it covers wiping, burping, swaddling, etc.

All in all though, i wouldnt stress about the sex. It's going to be a wild ride regardless!

Yeah, some of the other subreddits have links to parenting resources, although at a quick glance I did not see anything specifically related to baby proofing, so my bad on that.

I thought the book Be Prepared, A Practical Handbook for New Dads was pretty useful, and it has a good amount of helpful information about what to do before and after the baby arrives through the first year. It's easy to read, with some good humor. Hope that helps.

I don't have the book to hand to check for the exact quote (and his references) but the excellent pop-sci A Short History of Nearly Everything mentions this in a similar context, but notes that a certain amount of time has to pass to ensure complete dispersal of the atoms in question.

So while it might be true of things some thousand years ago, the probability of this being true for this a maximum of ~3-4 decades is significantly decreased.

Obviously the type of element is going to matter a lot - solids migrate slower than liquids, and much slower than gases, but I'm not even sure how you'd put a proper number on it.

This seems like something of a Fermi Problem to me. It's quite possible that Avogadro wins, and 10^23 * $really_small_probability has in fact happened.

I like to theme my gift around all the things my husband and I had to dash out the door for with my first. Baby Tylenol, a good thermometer, ice packs, mothers milk tea, baby spoons, a very large/warm blanket sleeper for camping or just staying somewhere chilly, things like that. Oh! And everything needed for a good pedicure to celebrate when the mom to be can see her feet again. If it is for a first child, I also like to include a numerous (but helpful) baby care guide for the dad. This is a favorite. If it is not a first child, I like to bring a small present for the older sibling(s). It doesn't have to be big, a coloring book and markers will do, but it is always very appreciated by the child and parents. Hope that helps!

Yes! I bitched on here about my situation a while ago. I bought my SO this book and gave it to him when I found out I was pregnant, but he didn’t start reading it until recently (I’m almost 32 weeks). I had a major meltdown a couple weeks ago where I told him that I didn’t feel like he was being emotionally supportive. After having talked to friends and family, I found out that this can be normal for men.. and it does not mean they won’t be good fathers. I ended up signing us up for a childbirth class, as well as a baby basics class. We’ve had 2 out of 5 classes so far and he’s been attentive and will interact with me in class, which I didn’t expect at all.

Maybe he’s like my partner, and giving him that little push will help. Have you communicated any of this with him?

My DH and I didn't do anything special before trying, or while trying, aside from me using a ovulation predictor test daily that I ordered from Amazon (there are some really cheap ones that work well) and my husband keeping his laptop off his lap.

As for gaining too much weight while pregnant - everyone is different. I eat when I'm hungry and I try to eat healthy. First and second trimester I was right on for weight gain, exactly where I should be. Third trimester my weight has been bouncing all over the place and my diet/lifestyle haven't changed at all. I think your body has a lot more say over your weight gain than what you put in your mouth sometimes. I'm eating healthy and not ridiculous amounts, so I'm not going to worry about it until after I give birth, I can try to lose weight then.

I avoided all parenting magazines like the plague. Every one I looked at was pure advertising, or advertising dressed up to look like articles. I stuck to this subreddit, talking to my OB and This and this book. They were informative, enjoyable to read and pretty unbiased. DH and I also took a childbirth class, breastfeeding class and newborn care class through a third party company affiliated with our hospital.

OH MY GOODNESS they are so cute!!! :3 I have a little chihuahua/rat terrior mix named Pookie :)

Young Adult is great! I really enjoy dystopias as well! If you're interested in trekking down that path, a few good Young Adult/Dystopias are The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Giver. I also highly recommend Ready Player One and The Handmaids Tale :D

Pure worldbuilding and minimal narrative describes pretty well Expedition and Barlowe's Inferno by Wayne Douglas Barlowe.
Granted, these are books where the framing story (a person exploring the setting in question) is there to provide context for Barlowe's paintings, but you can do pretty much the same thing with words as he does with illustrations- take an explorer, an archaeologist, a historian, or some other sort of researcher, and follow them as they acquire knowledge about the setting. The story will thus focus on their discoveries, rendering exposition and story one and the same.
The SCP Foundation's various exploration logs are the best examples of this that I can name at present, as the characters involved in the framing story are generally anonymous redshirts whose only significance is the strange phenomena they encounter. As far as novels go, I also see the general formula in Jeff Fahy's Fragment.

Another example of an approach that works is the SCP-Foundation. There are traditional narratives on the site, but the main attraction for most of the Foundation's existence has been the collection of fictional documents describing various paranormal phenomena.

A fictional document or fictional documentary strikes me as a perfect method of doing what you seek. You can have an in-universe history book, an in-universe encyclopedia, some other sort of reference work like the Zombie Survival Guide, etc. You could call some of these "stories" by some definition of the word, I guess, but the bottom line is the format and content are quite different from what you typically see in things described as stories.

Thanks for mentioning you're seventeen; it does make a difference (to my mind!). M'colleagues below have recommended some pretty heavy reading, which I don't think is what you're really looking for on the face of it. If I were to recommend a book about philosophy to a seventeen-year-old, I wouldn't recommend a textbook, I'd recommend the following:

Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar. This is a book of jokes about philosophy. They're not very funny, but it's a good way to learn some ideas. Doesn't talk about people (old dead white men, for the most part); focuses on ideas.

The Pig that Wants to be Eaten. This is a little less frivolous; it's 100 little thought experiments. I'd say this is a bite-at-a-time book; read one, put the book down and think about it for a bit, then read another. I really enjoyed this.

Philosophy 101. This little volume is a pretty decent intro to some of the key ideas and thinkers of philosophy. No, it's not a textbook and it's not written by a professional philosopher, which is why I've recommended it. Its mistakes are small enough that if you get interested and start reading some more about the topic you'll pick up where the author went wrong pretty quickly. Again, this is a bite-at-a-time book.

Hope that helps, and of course if you find an idea and you have questions about it: ask away. :)

Congrats!

Lots of great advice already on this thread, but I wanted to recommend this book as well. It is witty and playful, but has a lot of really good information.

Also, be the best husband in the world and as soon as your wife starts getting big, buy her a body pillow. I made it through my first pregnancy without one, but now at 31 weeks along with my second, I can't imagine how I survived without it.

>he is fairly nonplussed and doesn't really seriously discuss it with me

This is going to be your biggest hurdle, you need to have an open line of communication. We don't have a perfect marriage by any means, but we've been together for 5 years (baby status I know) but we don't fight. We communicate and have discussions, it makes a HUGE difference and keeps stress levels WAY down now that I'm pregnant.

Anyway. I got him the book, Dude, You're Gonna Be A Dad. He's really enjoyed reading it. It goes through a lot of what to expect during each trimester, how to prepare for baby care, and most importantly (to me) momma care. It explains what we're going through physically and emotionally. It does a really nice job laying things out in terms that guys can relate to, or at least as closely as possible.

Reddit is definitely a great resource. However, make sure she knows about babycenter.com. That is a great resource for new parents (mom & dad). Having a brand new baby at home can be a very stressful time. However, between all the screaming you and your wife will have some of the most precious and memorable experiences of your lives. Treasure those moments and the stressful times will feel worth the effort. Definitely pick up the Nose Frieda. It definitely helps having the right tool for the job. Also, pickup a copy of Be Prepared. It's a great (and funny) book for new dads.

I love books, reading is one of my favorite hobbies and it's much easier now since I recently bought a Kindle Fire :p

My favorite book series is The Dark Tower series by Stephen King because it does traveling between different dimensions pretty well, and when I finished the series it gave me so many feels :(, feels that still stay with me today. Plus Roland is one of my favorite characters ever. My friends got into the Game of Thrones books, while I got into The Dark Tower series, they called me a loser because I 'wasnt reading what other people where' but the series is so worth it.

I've really been wanting to read Ready Player One I've heard great things about it.


Also I hope you have been enjoying The Hunger Games, I read them all in a one month span last summer!

I can tell from your comments: You are a close minded die hard atheist who demonizes religion, and you blindly hate the very idea of religion based on what you have heard from others.

Isn't that the something as someone who is dedicated to a church and demonizes the "heathen Atheists" based on what others have told them?

Just think about it. You claim all this bad things will come from Pastafarianism but just from your questions I can tell you have never even read a page of The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Reply if you wish but I have no desire to continue a conversation with a close minded individual like you currently are being, so I will no longer be replying to any of your comments. You have a good life and I honestly do hope you find inner peace.

There is one glaring omission from the books list!

Ready Player One is the best cyberpunk book I've read since Neuromancer.

Not only does it have a great plot, great characters, and excellent virtual worlds, but it is as much a love letter to the 1980s as it is a cyberpunk novel. Definitely check it out!

Dude, you’re going to be a Dad. Cannot remember the author, but the audiobook narration was solid. Felt super informative too. And has good quotes to start each section.

Edit: Found the link finally after work; Dude, You're Gonna Be a Dad!: How to Get (Both of You) Through the Next 9 Months https://www.amazon.com/dp/1440505365/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_xatVBb21N3E69

Also, congratulations!! My wife is 12 weeks today, so I’m interested to see what others here recommend!

I would first echo most people here and say Sanderson's anything- Elantris comes to mind as a good recommendation.

When you say in the same calibre, are you talking in terms of story, in terms of being high fiction, in terms of length or in terms of moments that make you go, "ohhh... well DAMN!"

I would recommend a lot of things I saw below, so I'm going to try to not do that any more than I already have. The Conan Chronicles by Robert Howard are fun and a much unappreciated classic of Low Fantasy. Orcs by Stan Nicholls is a great series, somewhere in the middle ground between high and low fantasy, and does an interesting twist on the classical fantasy story. The Gentleman Bastards series is another interesting take, but it is more of an Ocean's 11 in a fantasy world. I only saw one mention, but anything Tolkien is a must read if for nothing else than to pay respect to the godfather. The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks is another good story, and it uses a lot of the ideas Jordan uses in terms of who knows what, why and when to progress the story. Finally, for a more Eastern themed book, Tales of the Otori by Liam Hearn is a good trilogy with a lot of political twists.

EDIT: added a link for Elantris

a really good starting book is

A short history of nearly everything

author Bill Bryson (born in Des Moines, Iowa, living in the UK most of his life) discovered he knew next to nothing about how stuff works. How we know things. Not because of a religious upbringing, but just because he was a hardcore linguist and had never studied science subjects. So he did what he does best, research and ask tons of people about everything and then he wrote a book.

And what a book! To quote the first 5 star reviewer in view on amazon: (almost everybody gives it 5 stars)
>" I cannot think of any other single-volume book I have ever read that was as informative, entertaining, and broad in scope as this classic. Not having excelled in science, nor been much interested in it when I was younger, this gem is a massive refresher course on everything I ever learned about science, and then some."

This book is an excellent introduction in every scientific subject you can think of and dozens others you never heard of. After reading it you can select those fields of study that interest you most and find books by scientists in that field that go deeper.

There are many editions of this book, including a fully illustrated one.

http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Owners-Manual-Instructions-Trouble-Shooting/dp/1594745978

This, the Baby Owners Manual, was probably the most useful and appealing to me. It is presented like an actual manual but the instructions were very easy to understand, had great pictures to accompany the descriptions and appealed to my witty side.
I read this before my son was born and I learnt how to how him, swaddle him and kept it close by for reference most of the time.
I passed it on to a friend when they were expecting and I recommend it a lot.

I love books too, but struggle soooooo much with them. Meds seem like they are helping a little bit, as does scheduling a specific time of day (when the meds are working) to read. I'm trying to read for 15 minutes before lunch. That seems to be working, and I'm hoping that eventually I can build up to an hour.

Ready Player One has really held my interest! I might be able to finish it!! WOO!

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 just ordered my SO this awesome shirt and onesie combo, an epic coloring book, something to help if he's feeling overwhelmed, a book for bedtime, and a shirt to help bring out his inner nerd as a late father's day/early baby day present~ get your hubby something fun that matches his personality, there's plenty of awesome things on amazon for dads-to-be for every kind of dad out there. You just have to look :3

Boys don't cry (title from one of my all-time favourite songs =D)
In a Year of 13 Moons (warning; REALLY triggering even from me, a pre-hrt woman who can't even cry when she is sad 9/10)
Paris Is Burning
The Crying Game (another triggering film)
The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert
Ma vie en rose
All about My Mother
Wild Side
Becoming Chaz
Tomboy (2011)
Beautiful Boxer (2003)
Soldier's Girl (2003)
The Badge (2002)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Princesa (2001)
M. Butterfly (1993)
The Crying Game (1992)
Prelude to a Kiss (1992)
Myra Breckinridge (1970)

Here's a comic and book if you'd be interested in reading them:

http://www.amazon.com/Flutter-Vol-Hell-Can-Wait/dp/1484085957
About a cis lesbian who has the ability to shapeshift, including into a male, and has a huge crush on a straight girl to the point that she pretends to be a man, believing that she would be able to have a "straight" relationship that way. She isn't trans, at least not identified as a trans man since she identifies internally as a woman even when taking on a male body. If she's non-binary it doesn't seem like the series is intending her to be. Still its a good story and a decent ending for its first volume. It also has a side plot that could be inevitable in real life at this point: a rally of bigotted right-wingers trying to ban same sex marriage in the USA. It's second volume is kindle only on amazon so far so i haven't read it yet, but hopefully its as good as the original.
http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Like-Me-Jennie-Wood/dp/0692238069/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0DBX3BECWSV19086RCVF
She also made A Boy Like Me, a novel about a self-identified trans man, though this isn't scifi or fantasy like flutter is. Very sad at times, even for a trans feminine person like me who wishes i could switch places with him...
http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/0307887448/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1445063355&sr=1-1&keywords=ready+player+one

Dad of 2 here (4 and 2)

​

1. Breathe. You cannot comprehend what its like to be a dad yet so frankly don't burn too much energy trying. Just prepare the best you can and accept that there will be things you aren't ready for. But it will be ok, you and your wife will get through this into parenthood just fine.
   
   
2. The best baby book I've ever read as a dad is the Baby Owner's Manual. I give it to all my buds who are soon to be dads. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594745978/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_snkWCbEB79DZK
   
   
3. Take care of your wife and be prepared to be patient. She is literally growing a being inside of her. Shit is gonna get stressful and downright traumatic for her and you need to be her anchor to reality and calm the whole time.
   
   
4. Don't hesitate to ask for advice from other parents the entire time. It really takes a village, digital or otherwise, to make it work and you are not alone.
   
   ​
   
   Good luck, man. Congratulations!

lets see...

• Bill Byrson's The Mother Tongue
  
• Korea, old and new: A history
  
• Sandman Slim
  
• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
  
• How to Win Friends & Influence People
  
• The Design of Everyday Things
  
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces
  
  I've been interested in the development of the english language, and I like Bryson's writing style. I met someone from Korea, and as per my usual habit, when I meet someone out of country I try to learn some of their native history, thus the history book. I like urban fantasy, so Sandman slim looked interesting. I'm a CompE major, so code and The design of everyday things is relevant to me. The others are just things that have been recommended to me.
  
  I think I might get get through half of them at most, especially since I also have a Steam library calling me like the whore it is. This is the first year I have access to a large university library during break, so I'm going to take advantage of it.l

I am just reading the 'Locke Lamora' series: a gentleman thief in a world with quite mighty magicians but very well balanced.

For those who like a fantastic story I can also recommend Jasper Fforde. In his world the characters of all books have a personal life when nobody reads it at the time (and sometimes even then). Characters in a book that don't have a name are only blurred, also in their personal life ;-)

And of course Niffenegger, "The time traveller's wife'" is excellent.

There's a player on the game called [Player[Bill Bryson]], he wrote a funny user guide about the Appalachian Trail mission. It's more of a blog, really, but you may find it very helpful. I liked it.

Not many people that undertake the mission do it all in one go. But doing it as sectional quests is still great for [INT]. This is a good place to start.

I really liked An Agorist Primer by Konkin. Quite concise.

Complete Liberty is another good one (it's in the sidebar --> ).

I also enjoy the graphic novel Escape From Terra.

One of my favorite books is Snow Crash. It's not really a good book for advocating anarcho-capitalism, but the system in the book is essentially ancap, and it's just a fucking awesome book.

My other favorites have already been mentioned.

Edit: Ah! I forgot No Treason! Spooner dominates the constitution.

Going through a similar thing right now, while I'm no where near where I want to be, I've made some good improvements. Best tip I can give you from what I've learned is

Focus on one aspect first.

I've found whenever I start to feel like all these things are wrong with me (I'm not smart, I'm not funny, I'm not attractive), I tend to try and change things immediately. My next day will consist of a completely new minute-by-minute routine, new diet, new attitude, new me. However, the "perfect me" starts to cheat a little here and a little there, "I know it's time to exercise, but another 10 minutes on Reddit won't hurt..." Then in no time at all I'm back to just plain old me. The point is, a lot of change at once can be overwhelming.


If you start to feel that things need to be done right now and you feel like making drastic changes, more often that not, the thrill will quickly pass and you'll be left right where you started. Choose one thing you want to improve first and work on making that a routine.



Think of a stream of water pounding against a rock. It takes time before the rock begins to shape and feel the full force of the water, but it does feel it.

As for the learning to do things, I recently asked /r/suggestmeabook/ for recommendations on a book to increase my general intelligence and these were the recommendations. Currently reading through A Short History of Nearly Everything and loving it.

I know this isn't an all inclusive answer to all your problems, but I hope it helps. :)



TLDR: Focusing on changing too many things at once can be discouraging and leave you worse off than when you started. Read A Short History of Nearly Everything for brain power.

Edit:formatting

Since searching wikipedia turned up the Timeline of Non-Sexual Social Nudity(TIL) I'm just going to guess you're you're looking for a more techie true to life rendition of the hacker archetype based on the amazon synopsis.

Based on that I'd recommend:

Cryptonomicon

just.go.read.it.right.now.

It may take a little effort to get into, damn thing is a tomb, but give it a chance. You will not be disappoint.

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

Stealing the Network Series

How to Own a Box

How to Own a Continent

How to Own an Identity

How to Own a Shadow

comments

These are told in a chapter/viewpoint style, each chapter is usually written by a different knowledgeable, and sometimes security famous, security dude. Out of those I've only read How to Own an Identity so far, but it was pretty good and and my guess is that the rest hold up to that standard, so dive in. They are a series from what I understand so reading them in order is probably a good idea, but not completely necessary.

_____

And then for flair (these are more scifi/cyberpunk-ish; so if that's not your thing avoid):

Snowcrash

comments

The main character's name is Hiro Protagonist. No seriously. He's a ninja, he's a hacker, he lives in a U-Store-it container, and he delivers pizza for the Mob in a post-collapse USA, can you really not read this book now?

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

The Diamond Age

comments

All about the practical social implications of nanotechnolgy told through the eyes of a young girl, her father, and an assortment of disposable associates.

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

The Sprawl Trilogy

Neuromancer

Count Zero

Mona Lisa Overdrive

comments

I've only read Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive, which were both great, so I'm guessing Count Zero is probably good too.

Similar to Snowcrash in the lone gun hacker sense, except with more drugs a little bit more of a scattered tone.


And if all else fails there's always the DEF CON reading list.

ninja edits because I suck at markdown

I always get very excited when anyone acknowledges my username, so thanks! And yes, I love it very much; I'd recommend The Mother Tongue - English and How It Got That Way if you want a hilarious (seriously, it is) book on English that'll make you love it too.

It was brutal. I wasn't that good. But there were many people who were superb. It was such a pleasure watching them perform.

Here are some sci-fi recommendations (you may have read them already, but I thought I'd offer anyway):

Serious Scifi:

Anathem the "multiverse" (multiple realities) and how all that works
Seveneves feminism meets eugenics—watch out!
The Culture series by Iain Banks, esp Book 2, the Player of Games Banks is dead, but wrote some of the best intellectual scifi ever

Brilliant, Visionary:

Accelerando brilliant and hilarious; and it's not a long book
Snowcrash classic
Neuromancer another classic

Tawdry yet Lyrical (in a good way):

Dhalgren beautiful, poetic, urban, stream of consciousness, and more sex than you can believe

Underrated Classics:

Voyage to Arcturus ignore the reviews and the bad cover of this edition (or buy a diff edition); this is the ONE book that every true scifi and fantasy fan should read before they die

Stress Pattern, by Neal Barrett, Jr. I can't find this on Amazon, but it is a book you should track down. It is possibly the WORST science fiction book ever written, and that is why you must read it. It's a half-assed attempt at a ripoff of Dune without any of the elegance or vision that Herbert had, about a giant worm that eats people on some distant planet. A random sample: "A few days later when I went to the edge of the grove to ride the Bhano I found him dead. I asked Rhamik what could have happened and he told me that life begins, Andrew, and life ends. Well, so it does."

I'm gonna stretch the rules and include some comics on this list:

1. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Perfect in tone, pacing, characters, exposition and humour.
   
   
2. Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. One of the greatest sci-fantasy epics of all time.
   
   
3. The Outlaw King by S.A. Hunt. More sci-fantasy, but with the sort of trippy, psychological, anything-goes attitude that elevates it above most of the genre.
   
   
4. Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis. Exceptional political satire contained inside in a painfully real near-future scifi wrapper. Ellis's best work, IMO.
   
   
5. Saga by Brian K. Vaughan. Yeah, I have a soft spot for sci-fantasy, but this comic series is all about the characters, and every one of them is pure gold. Exceptional writing, great art, compelling storytelling. The complete package.

Depends on what you like. There are books out there for just about everything.

I you like somewhat simple and strange designs The bizzare coloring book for adults, and the sequel are good.

The adult coloring treasury. Is a nice way to get a bunch of samples from different artists to see what you like.

If you like animal designs This one is good.

And if you like irreverent coloring books Unicorns are Jerks is a fun and funny book

Here's an idea I think you'd be good at based on your interests: I'm reading a book now called A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. It's about how we came to understand the things we know about our planet and our universe. It's absolutely fascinating but it's super long. Condense some of that information down into a format more accessible for high school students. The universe is unfathomably incredible...like pants-wettingly amazing. But high school textbooks are the most boring possible medium ever for conveying that wonder. Turn it into some captivating format that blows kids' minds and makes them fall in love with science. Start a YouTube channel or something.

It depends on what you're interested in.

Great War for Civilisation is full of fascinating stories from a war correspondent covering the middle east; he interviewed Bin Laden several times before 9/11 among other things. The book is long, but it brings the conflicts to your doorstep and takes you behind the scenes where the media is often restricted from going. Be warned of the size and content though. It is gruesome in most places, and provides a very realistic account of what goes on daily over there.

1776 tells the story of the American revolution, concentrating on the battles and the men who fought them. It is written extremely well. If you have any interest whatsoever in the founding fathers, the characters behind the revolution, or even just a good story, read it and you shouldn't be disappointed.

Short History of Nearly Everything basically takes everything you're interested in that is science related, condenses it all into discrete explanations, and combines the whole to present a great reading experience. It's a bit like doing for science what "A People's History of the United States" did for history. It all feels genuine.

Those are a few I have particularly enjoyed.

Read. Make sure they are good books. If you want a leg-up on your classmates, make sure they cover topics you will be studying next year. Probably the best books for this off the top of my head are Lies My Teacher Told Me and A Short History of Nearly Everything. The first covers American history (including Columbus), the second covers many of the natural sciences.

For someone who is looking at public school as a failing educational tool, these two books will do a wonderful job of explaining topics in a way that will make them interesting and living subjects, not just a useless series of facts to be memorized.

As far as literature goes, try to read some heavy-hitting classics instead of whatever fantasy/Twilight crap someone your age might be reading. Again, try to keep ahead of the curve, both with what you are going to study and what is intellectually beyond what you are going to study. Something with more than 300 pages, if you need a measuring stick. If you really want to go above and beyond, email teachers and ask for book suggestions that AREN'T on the suggested summer reading list.

I'll stick to recommending science communication books (those that don't require a deep background on biological concepts):

• On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection - Charles Darwin, bonus points if you can get a 1st edition reprint (before his colleagues made him change a lot of important things); it is a must-read but it might need quite some time to truly understand it, it is a heavy read.
  
  
• A lot of people recommend the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins but that one is one of his most controversial books and if you decide to read it, you should take everything with a pinch of salt; for Dawkins I prefer to recommend the Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution and the Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. Just beware of Dawkins, he's a little dogmatic in his approach.
  
  
• The Dialectical Biologist - Richard Levins & Richard Lewontin.
  
  
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas Kuhn, this one will change forever your conception of science as a whole.
  
  
• The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - Matt Ridley.
  
  
• Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, and the Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History - Stephen J. Gould.
  
  
• The Ghosts of Evolution: Non-sensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms - Connie Barlow.
  
  
• Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? - Frans de Waal, this one is about animal cognition but has an incredible underline of all the deficiencies and prejudges on science.
  
  
• Microbe Hunters - Paul de Kruif.
  
  
• Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution, and What is Life? - Lynn Margulis.
  
  
• The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan.
  
  
• A Short Story of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson.
  
  ---
  
  For books that everyone studying biology ends up reading, my candidate would be Lehninger's Principles of Biochemistry, by Nelson & Cox but that's a textbook.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. Fantasy.

Engraved on the Eye by Saladin Ahmed. Fantasy stories. Free.

Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos. SF.

Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey. SF. (Part One, free.)

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. SF.

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. Fantasy.

----

You also can check in at /r/FreeEBOOKS, /r/freekindle, /r/KindleFreebies and /r/kindlebookdeals occasionally. There are lots of self-published ebooks nowadays, and lots of them are offered free or very cheap, especially if the writer is a new author. Lots of them aren't very good, but there's also some hidden gold. Some writers will offer their ebook for free for a limited time (like, a week or less) in hope of encouraging some people to write them a good review.

1. Don't panic.
   
   
2. This book was excellent for me as a gift from the inlaws.
   
   
3. Sign up for free samples of baby stuff and you'll get great coupons for diapers and wipes and stuff.
   
   
4. Congrats!

I love my inner child. :)

And this unicorn book looks like it would be awesome. Because it's got unicorns. XD

It's not free, but "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss is a pretty great read about the importance of punctuation. AND it's cleverly written.

I'm halfway through Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I really like it so far! It's set in a not-too-distant future wherein people live both in reality and virtual reality, and everything belongs to or is a corporation, including the US. Hiro Protagonist ["'Stupid name.' 'But you'll never forget it.'"] is a freelance hacker attempting to get to the bottom of a dangerous drug/virus called Snow Crash, which is transmitted virtually but unusually has near-fatal effects in real life. Obviously there's a lot more to the story, but I like it for its unique premise. Stephenson makes some really intriguing intellectual connections, and I love his dry sense of humor. Check out the Amazon reviews, but watch out for spoilers, even in the editorial reviews (seriously though? So unprofessional).

http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/030788743X
The first time in a long time I have been so sucked in that after finishing int in 3 days, I wanted to go right back to it. Every child of the 80s I have shared it with, especially those who were extra-nerdy, loved this book.

http://www.amazon.com/A-Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/076790818X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347860128&sr=1-1
If you want non-fiction, I finished this recently and it is hands down the best non-fiction book I have ever read. History filled with compelling narratives rather than dry dates and facts, Bryson brings the past to life - the story of how Halley convinced Newton to write the Principia even though Newton would rather have been searching for King Solomon's tomb for the dates of Christ's second coming or practicing alchemy is just one example of the wonderful narratives that fill this book.

It is good but I almost got annoyed by the amount of nostalgia/references it makes. I kind of wonder how much I would have liked it had it not thrown around all the references. It was entertaining though. I think I liked Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson better to be honest (except the ending).

Bonus for some: I got the audio book from audible read by Wil Wheaton...so if you're a nerd that might be your cup of tea.

This is one of my favorites that i've bought as gifts a few times (and DH actually gifted it to me for christmas lol). Basically a legit user manual for a baby that treats it like it's an appliance, car or electronic device. Has "Figure A, Figure B" type photos throughout, and topics such as "Understanding Power Supply: Programming Baby's Eating Schedule" and has a section on "safety and emergency maintenance" (babyproofing, baby CPR, etc).

Basically a hilarious read with TONS of great information for BOTH of you. Doesn't have the usual "dads don't know anything" vibe that a lot of parenting books do.

https://www.amazon.com/Baby-Owners-Manual-Instructions-Trouble-Shooting/dp/1594745978


The book plus a tool belt or similar tote with things like a rattle, bottle, wipes, and diapers might be kind of fun. or simply the book with some of his favorite snacks!

The Baby Owner's Manual

I don't know if this is "small" enough, but it's relatively cheap and a smaller sized book, and I found it incredibly useful! We were gifted it after the baby was born, and I really wish we had gotten it before I gave birth!

It's funny, concise, and actually really useful. :D

Yes, Diamond Age is such a great spiritual successor to Snow Crash. Where Snow Crash has that frantic pace and hyper compressed events, Diamond Age takes its time and describes every molecule of the beauty in the book's events. These two works are such great testaments to Stephenson's skill because it's obvious he worked really hard to make them describe similar themes, but also compliment each other.

Have you seen the new covers? I like them, they do a good job of presenting them as companion pieces.

Snow Crash

Diamond Age

I'd recommend you read A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. It's a pretty good survey of natural science and very accessible to the layman. I think I've read it twice and each time come away with that "everything in the universe is awesome" feeling. It's probably my favorite non-fiction overall.

Haha funny thing, my best friend bought me a baby owner's manual written in the same fashion as an appliance instruction manual. It was both humorous and helpful.

I'm also a researcher in my professional life and I found just reading a few books and taking a class was the best way to get my basic knowledge of parenting. I like to keep The Baby's Owner Manual around as a nice reference. After that I talk to parents online and in person about parenting, asking questions here and elsewhere as things came up. There are so many products advertised as essential for kids that it can be useful to get feedback from other parents.

I've probably spent the most time researching medications and ingredients in various products. It seems like many things like gas drops or teething soothing medicines fall under homeopathic medicines.

This comment is wonderful, because it shows the importance of situational awareness. While the example below is in relation to commas in a list, it still points out the importance of seeing it through to make your proper point.

Eats, shoots, and leaves.
The panda has a meal, fires it’s pistol then splits.

Eats shoots and leaves.
The panda eats bamboo and plants.

This shows how important this comment is. You need to always take a good look!

(Taken from the wonderful book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Approach yo Punctuation.

Grats!

We're in our 17th week, so I'm right there with you. I picked up all 3 of these from a local used book store, and I like to read at the same pace as the pregnancy is going because these first 2 are broken up by month.

For you, there's The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips, and Advice for Dads-to-Be. Good book from the father's perspective. Covers the often overlooked male emotional issues that you may go through.

For both of you, there's the Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy. Covers a lot of medical and physical issues she'll be going through. Almost like a school textbook, but a good one.

And if you're into geeky and funny, there's The Baby Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting Tips, and Advice on First-Year Maintenance. There is some good tips here, but it is humor first and informational second.

$24/mo is absurd. The best way to check grammar is to put it down and come back an hour or two later to proofread. If you're desperate, MS Word does have a built-in grammar check tool you can use or Open Office has some grammar check extensions you can download such as LanguageTool.

If you question your own grammar, get a couple of light and easy grammar references to keep by your desk. Eats, Shoots & Leaves or The Transitive Vampire are two that are easy to work with and don't take themselves too seriously.

EDIT: Also, if you need to write regularly, buy one of these: The Synonym Finder. Hands down one of the best, easiest to use on the market. I write professionally and I have 5 copies of this book -- one for every place I may wind up writing. That's how useful I find it.

Try Ready Player One. It's about a world that's become obsessed with this virtual game, but there's a conspiracy and an interesting dynamic between online personas and real life. If you like audiobooks, Wil Wheaton narrates. (BONUS! The ebook is on sale for $2.80!) and if you have any passing interest in SF, definitely read The Martian. It has math in it AND I DIDN'T EVEN CARE IT WAS THAT GOOD. Basically, an astronaut gets left behind on a mission to Mars and must survive on his own...

https://www.amazon.com/Baby-Owners-Manual-Instructions-Trouble-Shooting/dp/1594745978/

great book. great info. great bits of humor. welcome to fatherhood.

I really liked this one. It's super practical and actually funny. The illustrations are great, like from old school men's magazines. Be Prepared by Gary Greenberg et al. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743251547/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_AUPetb1CM32XA

Just like last time you ran this contest I can say that the Unicorns are Jerks coloring book would Make me Smile! Mostly because I really want to give it to my best friend because it would make her smile. It fits her personality so perfectly and she loves to color.

Get another shot ready.

No, I really should try to follow my username.

I'm a language descriptivist, not a language prescriptivist. Essentially, the distinction is that for descriptivists, the definition of words is how they are used, whereas for prescriptivists, the definition of a word is prescribed, usually by a particular authority, such as a dictionary.

In the descriptivist paradigm, it is impossible to use a word incorrectly (but it can be used contrary to what is usual or expected), new words come into and out of existence all the time, and a person can define a word for their own contextual use as they please.

In the prescriptivist paradigm, a word is incorrect if its use doesn't match the prescribing authority, new words must be specifically added by the authority, and a person is supposed to find the exact word or composition of words they need from the provided supply.

I find some problems with prescriptivism. First off, it means that some people who own the language others use. Second, there are many prescribing authorities, and they don't all agree. Third, if you want a word to describe a new concept, you're screwed.

I like descriptivism. First off, it's a better, more accurate model for how people actually use language; people make up new words all the time; languages evolve, borrowing and adapting where they see fit. Second, allowing people to define words within a context allows for more expressiveness, compactness, and power in the language we use.

An example of a prescriptive language in French[1]. An prescriptive authority would be one like Webster's dictionary[2].

A descriptive language would be one like English. A descriptive authority would be one like the Oxford English Dictionary.

[1] French has the infamous Académie française, which determines exactly what the language consists of. The academy has been involved in suppression of native languages such as Breton and Basque as recently as 2008, and of native languages in the french colonies when France had colonies. Prescriptivists can commit crimes against humanity.

[2] Noah Webster was a very important person in the history of english, for many of the wrong reasons. He was staunchly involved in trying to reform english, and was more or less singlehandedly responsible for a number of changes in our speak. The dictionary itself has strayed towards descriptivism since its book on english usage in 1993.

The topic is actually a really big one, and well discussed. An excellent book on the history of english that touches on the subject is The Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Came out in August, 2011. Prodigies in the year 2044 get PhD's in pop-culture of the 1980's in order to save the greatest videogame ever made. Best entertainment value I've read since World War Z. I wrote Ernest Cline to tell him how much I loved it, and the man actually wrote me back. Fellow gunters, unite!

Easiest recommendation I've ever made, Dr. Louis Borgenicht. He is a great guy, funny as can be and fits your last criteria by being Jewish. Here is a link to a book he wrote and a video he did for, "Old Jews telling jokes." He is a great doctor and a very good person.

https://www.amazon.com/Baby-Owners-Manual-Instructions-Trouble-Shooting/dp/1594745978

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTF6dOJmxqw

This is a very interesting point. Last week I read The Mother Tongue by Bryson. It's a wonderful overview of the development and divergence of the English language, and explores the tendencies for Americans to retain the foreign word for an object: but also the trend of using the German or French word for a foreign article over a spanish/mandarin/japanese one.

He argued that it came down to isolation of a language affecting it's development the most. There are people in England who are not mutually intelligible to one another, just as there are people who cannot understand one another in America, but they are all technically speaking the same language. The idiomatic expressions are more unique than regional dress or music (with the exception of the appalachians). Yet, if you add things like Uber or Wonder or Kinder to the front of a word, it becomes mutually intelligible across most dialects because of common Germanic roots. The same could be said for the latin participles, also.
I assume with foods that are easy to pronounce and are phonetically identifiable (for example saur sounds like 'sour' and kraut has a hard sound like 'cabbage'... retaining saurkraut is not as difficult as say: poutine, which is often called monster fries or urban fries).

We just picked up Baby Bargains by Denise and Alan Fields. It seems really helpful - lots of product guides, reviews, and suggestions for first time parents. Again, we just picked it up today so take this for what it's worth, but I'm happy we did and already feel like we've gotten our money's worth.

Edit to add I've heard good things about Experimenting with Babies and Be Prepared, but I haven't looked closely at either one.

For general fantasy I've enjoyed Gentleman Bastard, The Kingkiller Chronicle, and The Broken Empire. I listen to Kingkiller Chronicle fairly often due to the amount of commuting I do where I live.

For more urban/fantasy maybe try Lives of Tao, Iron Druid Chronicles, or anything by Neil Gaiman. The anniversary edition of American Gods was really excellent on audio-book. Not sure if the others have audio editions or not.

I've also really enjoyed stuff by Drew Hayes (a webnovelist). His banner series is SuperPowereds. But I though NPCs was a great take on an old fantasy trope. Neither come in audio formats unfortunately.

Good luck.

Fierce_Fox is right. FM manuals such as FM-217-76 Survival.....may be somewhat outdated but the information is reliable.
As a Medic/EMT my prepping focuses on my skill set with everything else falling close in line. I have a lot of information in digital format; both on USB and a small external drive. I have a small tablet that is in my BoB for reading documents and such.
At a minimum, here are my suggestions:
FM 21-76 Survival - Department of the Army
https://archive.org/details/military-manuals
SAS Survival Guide - https://www.amazon.com/SAS-Survival-Guide-Collins-Gem/dp/0061992860/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483496552&sr=8-1&keywords=sas+survival+guide
The Pocket Prepper's Guide - Bernie Car
https://www.amazon.com/Preppers-Pocket-Guide-Things-Disaster/dp/1569759294/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483496827&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=The+Pocket+Prepper%27s+Guide+-+Bernie+Car
The Complete Disaster Home Preparation Guide - Robert Roskind
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Disaster-Home-Preparation-Guide/dp/0130859001/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483496881&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Complete+Disaster+Home+Preparation+Guide+-+Robert+Roskind
How To Survive the End of the World As We Know It-James Wesley,Rawles
https://www.amazon.com/How-Survive-End-World-Know/dp/0452295831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483496952&sr=8-1&keywords=How+To+Survive+the+End+of+the+World+As+We+Know+It-James+Wesley%2CRawles
Bug Out - Scott B. Williams
https://www.amazon.com/Bug-Out-Complete-Escaping-Catastrophic/dp/156975781X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483496991&sr=8-1&keywords=Bug+Out+-+Scott+B.+Williams
When There Is No Doctor - Gerard S. Doyle, MD -
https://www.amazon.com/When-There-Doctor-Challenging-Self-reliance/dp/1934170119/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1483497054&sr=8-2&keywords=When+There+Is+No+Doctor
The Ultimate Survival Medicine Guide - Joseph Alton, MD & Amy Alton, ARNP - https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Survival-Medicine-Guide-Preparedness/dp/1629147702/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483497109&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=The+Ultimate+Survival+Medicine+Guide+-+Joseph+Alton%2C+MD+%26+Amy+Alton%2C+ARNP
Last, but not least, The Zombie Survival Guide - Max Brooks
https://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Survival-Guide-Complete-Protection/dp/1400049628/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483497158&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Zombie+Survival+Guide+-+Max+Brooks
The last one is more humor but it does have many great points and ideas.
A library that covered everything would be very heavy and take up a bit of space. For the minimum, at least 1-2 books on everything one will need to survive will still be a lot. These books should be read, reread, and read again. We can't memorize everything, but having this to go back on when needed is a great addition. There's tons of information online and downloadable for free.
Depending on one's skill set, then they may not need as much. Teach others in a group is a must. Can't have one person be the ONLY one who can do 'this' skill. IMO, research should always be the first step. So much information out there and it's free.

Recommended Reading:
https://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance-Punctuation/dp/1592402038

The more you read, the better your writing. Thankfully I am still very technical, but write up drafts to the best of my ability as our team has some excellent word smiths. Above book is how we solve arguments, but still working on comma usage.

Baby Owners Manual for to-the-point advice.

Everywhere Babies is a classic the parents will love reading to their baby. It has great rhyming and as the toddler grows, he/she will enjoy looking at the many types of babies in various types of scenes. The book exudes parental love.

Well, we hit the 10000 limit. Reserving this comment for the misc. section.

FREE TIME/FUN/MISC.
The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security
The Art of War
Steal This Computer Book 4.0: What They Won't Tell You about the Internet
How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace
The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey
Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart
Casting the Net: From ARPANET to INTERNET and Beyond thanks sjhill
A Quarter Century of UNIX thanks sjhill
A Reading List For the Self-Taught Computer Scientist thanks zinver
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk thanks segamix
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable thanks AgonistAgent
Snow Crash thanks AgonistAgent
Cryptonomicon thanks Mirple

The Baby Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting Tips, and Advice on First-Year. So I haven't read a whole lot of this book yet, but from what I've read so far I really enjoy it. It mixes in some humor with a lot of great information. I saw it recommended in another thread on /r/predaddit and decided to purchase it.

I got "So You're Going to be a Dad" as a gift and I loved it. It was hysterical to read, but insightful and useful as well. However, for the more serious stuff, I agree with someone else who suggested "Be Prepared". You've got a lot of good advice in this thread.

Oh god I love this question. I've got some fantastic recommendations:

Fantasy Series:

• The Gentleman Bastards Sequence
  

  by Scott Lynch
  Book One: The Lies of Locke Lamora
  
  Simultaneously one of my top 5 favorite fantasy novels, and my favorite Heist story of all time.
  Suspense, Intrigue, Visceral action, and some of the wittiest, best-written dialog I've ever read in fiction make this series simultaneously dark, tense, and hilarious.
  Thank god Lynch was wondering what a swords and sorcery take on Ocean's Eleven would look like, because the thought never occurred to me before this.
  
  

• The Mistborn Trilogy
  

  by Brandon Sanderson
  Get the boxed set. Just do it.
  
  Sanderson is perhaps best known for being chosen to continue the Wheel of Time series after the passing of Robert Jordan; and this is very unfortunate. I would take Mistborn over WoT any day.
  The author's passion seems to be exotic settings, and unique magic systems with a solid set of rules. You get so attuned to what Mistborn's Allomancy can and can't do, that it seems as fundamental as gravity by the end. And speaking of endings, this one is Incredibly well thought out.
  
  -----------------------------
  I've got stuff to do, so I'll cut it off here for now, but seriously, check them out. And Please don't ask me which I'd recommend more, I don't want my head to explode.
  
  More to come, if I'm not too lazy. I'm full of these.

New dad to a 1 year old here.

• Be prepared to support your wife through emotional times.
  
• I recommend this book which I found funny yet pretty informative.
  
• Start working out with a kettle ball of at least 15-20 lbs doing lifts similar to picking up a baby. Strengthen that lower back. You will repeatedly pick up the baby a lot.
  
• Look into and take your paternity leave. Too many guys skip out on this. But it does two things. Gives you bonding time, and saves you money. Daycare is expensive.
  
• Look into daycare costs so you are prepared.
  
• Look into local mothers clubs. They usually let in dads. Those groups give away a ton of free gear. They also connect your wife with other women going through the exact same thing. They will have answers you cannot give.
  
• Do not tell friends or family until after the first trimester. Miscarriages happen more often than expected early on. Having to explain this to friends or family is not something you want to do.

>I want to make sure that when my SO looks back on her first pregnancy, that she sees me right by her side.

Dude, that was heartwarming AS FUCK. I'd say you're already on a pretty good track just having that mindset.

I had a really tough first trimester and was having a lot of trouble eating/keeping weight on. Any time I had any little craving my SO made it happen like he was a freakin' genie or something. That was pretty nice. I think a big one is never making her feel like she needs to rationalize anything to you, whether it's a craving or a bad mood. Let her complain, be that sounding board.

And here are two books I'm really liking:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Baby-Owners-Manual-Trouble-Shooting/dp/1594745978
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1580054846/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687662&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1594745978&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=01MTWYFH3MCT00RNPVJS

Congrats on the upcoming addition to you both. :)

I can't pick one, so here are a smattering:

E.L. Doctorow has yet to write a disappointing book. He writes fiction stories that are heart-wrenching. The one that gets the best response from people I recommend it to is Homer & Langley.

There's a series by Jonathan L. Howard about this necromancer named Johannes Cabal. It's quite good.

Italian Calvino wrote a book called Cosmicomics that I recommend to everyone, even though technically it's sci-fi.

Scott Lynch wrote a series called The Gentleman Bastards, which is part heist (swashbuckling in the second book), part buddy story, part magic/fantasy. Quite good.

Take a look, it's in a book!

Okay your first two links are to blogs that only publish work by Austrian economists. Hardly objective analyses. Even if SO did drop the cost of gas, that says nothing of who bore the brunt of the cost. It says nothing of the enivronmental costs of their business practices. It says nothing of how they treated their workers. And still sidesteps the point of how the monopoly was formed by business practices that are anti-competitive and would completely overcome any advantages of a strictly free-market system. As I mentioned before, costs aren't the only metric we should use in judging a civilization.

> This is how high profits counter-intuitively accelerate the trend towards lower price and higher quality (witness computer and cellphone progression).

It isn't the fact that profits were high that drove this trend. It's the incredible volume of demand that drove prices down. Again, see the history of Bell Labs for this as far as computers and cell phones go. It was a government-sanctioned monopoloy that made these possible.

Your DC link was unfortunate, but was just a case of idiots in government. This isn't something inherent in governments. There are more than enough idiots in management. Luckily we live in a democracy that can be changed with an informed electorate.

> Insurance companies profit only because of the fact that it costs MORE to have health insurance for most people than it costs to NOT have it. It's risky to not have health insurance, but if you are of normal health, you come out ahead financially by not having it. Also, [5] many hospitals, doctors give discount for paying cash

I'm not sure what the point is you're trying to make. This is all obvious. The point is that you never know your future health states. The fact that doctors give discounts for paying cash is analogous to people not paying interest rates when they pay off their credit cards on time. But in the real world, most people can't afford to do this. As I mentioned before, the number one cause of individual bankruptcy in the US is due to medical bills.

> Consumer Reports is a private regulatory agency. Amazon ratings are a consumer-driven regulatory agency. Yelp too. Ebay feedback, etc. Your social network is a regulatory agency.

Okay so you never actually meant regulatory agency. Consumer Reports is a consumer advocacy magazine. Amazon, Yelp, and Ebay are a sort of word-of-mouth that only exist due to technology developed by the government and public-private parternships. And Yelp has recently been accused of removing negative reviews if the businesses pay up. None of these can do anything about abuse of workers or pollution or anything else industry has a history of doing.

>We can take risks for discounts, or be conservative and pay a premium for a trusted brand, and when that trusted brand starts overcharging, people like me step in and offer a new solution at a better price.

This really depends on what you're talking about. We shouldn't have to risk that discounted item being unsafe or dangerous or snake oil. Not everyone can afford items that are too expensive. And sometimes the profits just don't exist for goods and services at the price point that people can afford them at.

>Let's say there's a mafia. They steal from everyone, but they use the money to fund research projects. They steal half of what everyone earns (total cost of govt taxation over what things would cost without it, includes regulatory costs), but they take credit for everything that is done by the researchers they pay with the stolen money. Some people defend it, and say "without the mafia stealing from everyone and paying some of the people to research things, it would be impossible to get humans to create amazing things!" That is absurd, that human society requires guns to our heads to make us innovate.

Or let's say there's a charity that everyone chips into. They build roads so we can transport goods. They organize police forces so thieves don't rob us. They have fire departments so our homes don't burn down. They fund a military to protect us from foreign threats. They fund scientific research so that our children don't die of diseases that we suffer from or so that energy costs go down in the future from new and cheaper sources of energy.

Do you think ideas just pop into people's heads? You really really need to read up on some science history. I really hate to repeat myself, but you are incredibly ignorant and should educate yourself if you really want to argue that your magical free market could have built the world we live in. Private industry has no financial incentive to fund basic science research. Without basic science research, there can't be future applied science research. Without applied science research, there can't be future engineering in that field. Humans don't need guns to their heads to innovate. That's why we got together and use our tax dollars to fund basic science. But private industry sure as hell needs a gun to its head or else they risk pissing of their shareholders for throwing away profit on research they won't see an ROI for decades or centuries.

> Venture capitalists are the exact opposite of govt research, and they have funded every major advance in the past 20 years.

Buuuulllllllsssshhhiiiiiiiittt. Holy crap don't even try to act like you know what you're talking about. Are you gonna tell me that it was a VC who funded the Human Genome Project? It was a VC who funded CERN? It was a VC who put Rovers on Mars? You are completely divorced from reality.

NASA ended shuttle launches because America doesn't give a damn anymore. And those private enterprises you claim have no government funding . . . they get their grant money through NASA. It's called contracting. And in case you were unaware, contracting is done using tax dollars. Those engineering firms don't do it out of charity. They have to get paid like anyone else.

Learn some fucking history.

This guy has some good info

Kristen Gates has great info on ultralight gear and has tons of experience.

Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods is a good read.

Youtube also has anything you could ever want to learn.

Also since you will be packing around trees. Many long distance hikers have sworn by hammocks, they are good alternative to tents when attempting to save weight.

Congrats! This is a good book for you for the next 7.5 months. It is not so much about what to do with a new baby, but I found it an easy and someone useful info for being a good partner in pregnancy.

Dude You're Gonna Be a Dad!

If you like Wool I highly recommend Ready Player One.

If you enjoy 80's culture, video games, or dystopian futures you'll love it. Wool was actually recommended to me because I liked this book so much.

Ready Player One

by Earnest Cline

I'm not sure if anyone else has recommended it on this sub yet, but I will say that if you love FireFly, then you will love this book!

I loved Ready Player One, written by Ernest Cline and read by Wil Wheaton.

I just finished this book last night, I listened to it at every moment it was so fun. Engaging, interesting, exciting, new, GOOD.

Ready Player One book reviews on Amazon

Ready Player One on Audible

I'm a big fan of this book,
http://www.amazon.ca/Be-Prepared-Gary-Greenberg/dp/0743251547

Seems to be written for dads, without any of the semi condescending attitude that some writers/bloggers would have regarding the male portion of the equation.

I'm about 7 weeks away... and the wife and I are doing good. There are lots of opinions you're about to hear and yours probably won't hold any weight (because.. you're not a parent.. what would you know :P :P) but taker easy, think with common sense, ask questions and you'll be good. Congrats!

Recommended these a while back, great, assessable reads.

The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker
http://www.amazon.com/The-Language-Instinct-Mind-Creates/dp/0061336467/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343383543&sr=8-1&keywords=the+language+instinct

Patterns in the Mind by Ray Jackendoff
http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Mind-Language-Human-Nature/dp/0465054625/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343383561&sr=1-1&keywords=patterns+in+the+mind

And if you are into etymology, check out

The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, by Bill Bryson
http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-English-How-That/dp/0380715430/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343383614&sr=1-1&keywords=the+mother+tongue

The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour Through Mankind's Greatest Invention, by Guy Deutscher
http://www.amazon.com/The-Unfolding-Language-Evolutionary-Invention/dp/0805080120/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343383676&sr=1-2-fkmr0&keywords=guy+deucher+language

Again, all superb books.

There are formal grammar guides and more 'layman' and humorous guides, but I've found the best success just by learning from context. Read quality books in any field and see how authors write. Read articles in newspapers and magazines that are not sold on supermarket checkout lines, and notice the writing. Learn by osmosis, just by seeing correct grammar and observing it. You'll get a feel for comma placement, apostrophe use, and so forth. Honestly, that's how I learned.

I will say the few sentences you've typed above are pretty decent. Only a couple of minor, nitpicky, errors.

I absolutely love Snow Crash. Very humorous writing without becoming pure comedy. Great plot. Awesome concepts.

Snow Crash is a beautiful book, with Neal Stephenson being one of my favorite cyberpunk authors. Anathem is also a great book by him.
I highly, HIGHLY recommend getting the book, as it's only 10.20 + 6 day free shipping from Amazon right now.

Colouring books are probably one of the best things I've discovered on amazon, last year for Christmas I got my mom this one and she thought it was awesome. It's also a bit of a fun/unexpected gift which is nice! Everyone should colour more.

Wow super awesome contest!

I've heard a lot of good things about Ready Player One

Pecksniffian

I've been making a "joke" survival kit for my boyfriend. This is what I have in it so far:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/82012973/united-states-zombie-hunting-permit

http://www.gamestop.com/xbox-360/games/red-dead-redemption-undead-nightmare-collection/84602

http://www.etsy.com/listing/65530954/zombie-repellent-soap?ref=sr_gallery_1&ga_search_submit=&ga_search_query=zombie&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade

http://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Survival-Guide-Complete-Protection/dp/1400049628/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322669816&sr=8-1

I'm going to throw in a couple of those small bottles of liquor to sterilize wounds of course ;). I'm also hoping to find a funny crowbar-eque bottle opener or something. For his main gift, I'm going to include a nice pocket knife and get his name engraved on it. I'd love more ideas for things to include, if anyone can think of something.

I strongly recommend A Short History of Nearly Everything. The guy does excellent job to go through a lot of stuff, including life.

I will drill on the "to develop" part of your question.

Basically, life as it exists now (and including us) had astonishingly "lucky" brakes. Even global disasters were needed to progress thus far. Having in mind that, I think it is very hard to define what would be better (e.g. there were stages when Earth's atmosphere would be deadly for most modern organisms, but life was present even there and probably in huge amount). Maybe some compounds/conditions would be more beneficial to life but in a lab environment. Our planet was far from that.

Another good point is that life's primary goal seems just "to be". Nothing more, nothing less. In this sense all those coincidences were neither "astonishingly", nor "lucky".

Ready Player One

>Ready Player One takes place in the not-so-distant future--the world has turned into a very bleak place, but luckily there is OASIS, a virtual reality world that is a vast online utopia. People can plug into OASIS to play, go to school, earn money, and even meet other people (or at least they can meet their avatars), and for protagonist Wade Watts it certainly beats passing the time in his grim, poverty-stricken real life. Along with millions of other world-wide citizens, Wade dreams of finding three keys left behind by James Halliday, the now-deceased creator of OASIS and the richest man to have ever lived. The keys are rumored to be hidden inside OASIS, and whoever finds them will inherit Halliday’s fortune. But Halliday has not made it easy. And there are real dangers in this virtual world. Stuffed to the gills with action, puzzles, nerdy romance, and 80s nostalgia, this high energy cyber-quest will make geeks everywhere feel like they were separated at birth from author Ernest Cline.

We both enjoyed The Baby Owner's Manual, which is a rather nerdy look at how to care for a baby. It doesn't cover pregnancy or childbirth, though.

We particularly liked the fact that it said things like "bouncing a baby at a frequency of > 1 Hz is shaking a baby". It's nice to have good definitions of that boundary line.

It's a nice quote, but doesn't really make sense to me. A period does not indicate one is finished speaking. It simply helps us organize our words in a more understandable manner. I would imagine a supreme being doesn't speak in run-on sentences.

I am not an English major, although I did enjoy reading Eats, shoots and leaves, but that quote has one too many commas. The first comma should be a period.

This book is one I recommend to everyone who reads any non-romance genre of fiction with some regularity.

Looking Good, sweetheart, and so will I if I win ;)

If you liked Safe Baby Handling Tips available from amazon, then you'll love
Safe Baby Pregnancy tips (read it here), also available from amazon

Seriously, if you like it, buy it, who knows when someone you know will get knocked up, and you'll have the perfect gift!

Have you read A Short History Of Nearly Everything? It's an awesome read about, well a short history of nearly everything. From the beginning of time. It's great and Bill Bryson really does a great job of making light of topics that are usually "too dense" for non-science people.

I'm stuck at work for 10 hours today and 12 hours tomorrow so any extra reading material would pretty much be a god send. Haha. I can only read so many trashy free books at a time. Gotta break up the monotony of it all.

This book was recently suggested to me and I'm really curious to read it. I've heard quite a few good things about it.

For those wondering how this was made:

1. The raw terrain is created using WorldPainter. That isn't grass; it's two shades of stained, hardened clay.
   
   
2. The large, customized trees are manually placed in using MCEdit. These trees are originally created by LetsLente and are available for download for use in your projects [here]
   (http://www.planetminecraft.com/project/native-trees-of-europe-template-repository-1779952/).
   
   
3. In ZBrush, a 3D model (the giant head) is sculpted or edited before being exported as an OBJ file.
   
   
4. That OBJ is run through Binvox to convert it to a schematic file.
   
   
5. The Schematic file is checked using ViewVox.
   
   
6. The final Schematic file is imported and posed in the WorldPainter-made World using MCEdit. It is then changed from default stone into Quartz.
   
   
7. For the first time, the world file is opened in vanilla Minecraft. Here the terrain is adjusted, with the small houses being built, the caves dug, and the waterfalls added. Smaller trees are bonemealed into existence along the ground, or hand built on the model. The model is also retrofitted to better fit it's surroundings. In my case, I needed to almost completely destroy and rebuild the nose.
   
   
8. The world is opened up using Chunky, excellent software built for rendering Minecraft worlds. The chunks that are visible from where the camera is are selected for rendering.
   
   
9. In Chunky, the render is set up. Light-colored blocks (like Quartz and Sand) have trouble rendering in Chunky under the default setup, so the sun's brightness, the photo gamma, and many other features are adjusted. The sun is also moved to where it best compliments the build. The sky is actually an image called a "Skymap" and there are many available online.
   
   
10. The scene is rendered, a process which can be very time-consuming for the computer based on the complexity of the lighting. While the scene is being rendered, it might be a good idea to leave your computer and read a book. I suggest Ready Player One by Ernest Cline or The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. ^^^DFTBA!
    
    
11. The image, now completely rendered, is imported into Photoshop. Here adjustments are made to the color of the photo. I find the David Nanchin actions to be helpful for this sort of thing, though I never run them full-strength. I also add in a water splash at the base of the water fall, and remove some pesky leaves that floated too far from their trees.
    
    
12. The final image is exported from Photoshop and is ready to be seen by the lovely people of /r/Minecraft.
    
    In Conclusion:
    
    These kinds of renders do take time. A user commented:
    
    > Pretty Certain you just imported a 3D model of a head using Binvox..
    
    And that's absolutely correct. However, that doesn't mean this kind of thing is simple to create! Certainly, this wouldn't be what it is without the help of external software- but the use of that software doesn't mean it can't be respected as a build. Don't say I just imported it-- it took a lot of work!
    
    TL;DR: I used a lotta software and it took a lotta time.

> ... 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.

That's an unfortunate reaction from your husband. He probably doesn't understand that being supportive means being proactive.

I was browsing Amazon today for some journals and landed on this https://www.amazon.ca/Dude-Youre-Gonna-Be-Dad/dp/1440505365. I'm tempted to get it for my husband this Father's day, but I'm not gonna lie, it's a bit of a gamble, given his reaction so far, though I'm hoping the humorous tone will lessen the blow of the "lessons". The fact that the author is a man might help with that (husband dealt a lot better with the news after he spoke with a newly minted dad about it).

If I might recommend a book, Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything sounds like something you'd be interested in.

It's mostly about the origins and stories behind major scientific discoveries and theories that have shaped our view of the world and universe today. He starts at the Big Bang and goes from there. The book is quite accessible to those without formal scientific education (like myself). Bryson dumbs things down just enough so you can understand it while feeling enriched afterwards at the same time. I can definitely say that the book changed me for the better when I read it for the first time back as a teenager. It also has an awesome illustrated edition.

By the way, there's a really good sci-fi book about VR. It's called "Ready Player One"

It's different in the narrative, but also touches upon the topic of people becoming addicted to the virtual world. It also contains a mystery that the characters had to solve, which I found to be pretty intriguing. Also, if you grew up in the 80-ies, you'll love it even more.

Have you read Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss? It isn't long, but it is a great, funny book about common grammatical errors. It includes some interesting history about grammar and the context helps cement grammar guidelines into your brain.

This is an excellent book that covers most major scientific subjects. More than that, it's a great read.

If you're looking for more physics related stuff, this is a pretty easy read and even has a NOVA series that accompanies it.

Ready Player One reference? Needs a Z, but I bet it is since he's a good parallel to Halliday or the Great and Powerful Og.

There's this series that has a book for pregnancy, new baby, and toddler. My husband LOVES it, very informative, fun, not so earthy-crunchy like the women's books. Good luck!

This came up not to long ago and I will put what I put before
It is very informative and research based but still fun "Caveman's guide to ...." http://www.amazon.com/Cavemans-Pregnancy-Companion-Survival-Expectant/dp/140273526X
A something a lot lighter and just fun to get him into the idea
http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Owners-Manual-Instructions-Trouble-shooting/dp/1931686238
The latter has a lot less hard fact but I know I enjoyed it and it got me prepped to read the bigger, harder stuff.