(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best american history books

One of the main things to do in Baton Rouge is to eat delicious food.

• Enjoy exploring Louisiana Creole cuisine (surprisingly great Wikipedia article!) and Cajun cuisine. Two favorites: blackened redfish, and bread pudding.
  
• Eat the incredible seafood poboy (get it with sprouts, and hashbrowns on the side; apply tabasco liberally) at Louie's by LSU (open 24hrs, usually--closed sunday nights?).
  
• Be awed by the epic summertime thunderstorms that roll through almost every day around 2pm.
  
• Visit the observation deck at the top of the state capitol. It's open till 4pm. Prepare for your visit by reading All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (or watch either of the films--the 1949 film won best picture, and the 2006 re-make was filmed locally), a fictionalization of the rise and fall of Huey Long. Pick up a copy of the book at Cottonwood Books.
  
• Visit the Louisiana State Museum (by spanish town and the capitol; free).
  
• Try to get a tour of the ExxonMobil refinery.
  
• Two local obsessions: Raising Canes chicken fingers and LSU Football.
  
• Eat pizza at Capitol Grocery in Spanish Town, at 5pm (except Sunday). Sit outside and listen to some locals telling stories. Wander around Spanish Town and Arsenal Park.
  
• Run/bike/drive around the LSU lakes. Gawk at the amazing houses.
  
• Visit Mike the Tiger at LSU. While you're there, check out the special exhibitions at the LSU library.
  
• Eat delicious food at George's restaurant, an incredible dive bar under I-10. Favorites are the burgers (the 'heavy hitter' with avocado), the pastrami and swiss on rye, the ribeye sandwich. Legendary for their shrimp poboys, though I have never had one. Leave a dollar on the tar-encrusted ceiling.
  
• Play tennis or golf at City Park or visit the dog park
  
• See the crazy snake collection at Bluebonnet Swamp nature center
  
• Drink beers, eat red beans and rice, boudin balls, and hushpuppies at the Chimes by LSU. Tin roof amber is a great local beer (it's not on the menu, but they have it!). If it's your first time, start out with an Abita Amber and a fried alligator appetizer.
  
• Admittedly it isn't Cafe du Monde, and, after being razed by Walmart, the neighborhood ain't what it used to be, but you can still get your beignet fix at Coffee Call.
  
• Visit the new Tin Roof brewery (friday afternoons only) and enjoy free samples.
  
• See a show and get dinner at Chelsea's, also in the I-10 overpass area. One favorite is the grilled cheese on foccacia; goes well with a blue moon.
  
• Drink coffee at PerksGarden District Coffee (on Perkins Rd) or Highland Coffee (by LSU; always full of lots of studying students).
  
• Get a plate lunch at Zeeland Street Market (by Perks). Get the lunch special. On Wednesdays they have the best fried chicken in town. On Fridays get the fried catfish with mac and cheese on the side. Best time to arrive is just before the 12:00 noon crowds. Closed Sunday.
  
• Take a date to lunch at Yvette Marie's, a cute low-key restaurant in an antique store. I like the jalapeno chicken sandwich. If you're looking for something more traditional, you can't go wrong with their muffuletta sandwich.
  
• Ride in the monthly Critical Mass bike ride with approximately 200 other cyclists through the streets of the city. Last friday of every month, 6:30pm, LSU parade ground/clocktower. See also the bicycle events calendar.
  
• Go on a swamp tour with Marcus de la Houssaye (Lake Martin/Breaux Bridge), Ernest Couret (Butte La Rose), or Dean Wilson (Bayou Sorrel- afterwards, take the Plaquemine-Sunshine ferry across the river and eat lunch at Roberto's River Road Restaurant)
  
• Read Cherry Baton Rouge to hear about this week's goings-on.
  
• Listen to 91.1 KLSU (college radio station) and 89.3 WRKF (NPR affiliate).
  
• Find the river road ruins south of LSU.
  
• On the first friday of the month, go to Stabbed in the Art.
  
• Some other restaurants to look up: Parrain's Seafood; Juban's; Roberto's River Road Restaurant (Sunshine, LA)
  
• The Old State Capitol is beautiful, historic, and free to visit. On the river at North Blvd (by the Shaw Center).
  
• Stroll on the levee and watch the ships (barges) go by.
  
• If you are a civil engineering / geology nerd, you will enjoy reading John McPhee's book The Control of Nature (or read it online) which details the century-long but almost-certainly-doomed effort to control the Mississippi river. If this stuff interests you, drive up and visit the Morganza Spillway and Old River Control, about 1 hour drive north from Baton Rouge (maybe a bit shorter now due to the new Audubon Bridge). There is also the Bonnet Carré Spillway on the way to New Orleans. (Morganza is also the location of the "cafe scene" from Easy Rider; visit The Bear (bar) for some memorabilia.) Check out this beautiful overlay of some old geological maps showing the past courses of the Mississippi river onto Google Maps. Roadside Geology of Louisiana is good too.
  
• The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory is about 30 miles east and offers public tours on some fridays and saturdays. Contact them in advance. CAMD operates a synchrotron light source in town (across from Whole Foods); you might be able to get a tour there too.
  
• Get a group of friends together, bring a cooler full of beer, and go Tiki Tubing down the Amite River. If Tiki Tubing isn't quite your style, rent a kayak at the Backpacker and take it out on some local river or bayou. They have equipment that will let you carry a kayak on just about any vehicle.
  
• Head out to Zydeco Breakfast at Cafe des Amis in Breaux Bridge (1 hr drive west) early Saturday morning (8am). Or the cajun/zydeco dance at Whiskey River Landing Sundays at 4pm, or their neighbor McGee's Landing Sundays at noon (also: airboat rides). Listen to KRVS 88.7 FM on the way over.
  
• Tour Laura Plantation and stroll the grounds of Oak Alley Plantation. I've heard Laura Plantation has a much better, more historically-informed tour; skip the tour at Oak Alley and go directly for the mint juleps.
  
• Abita brewery, about 1.5 hours east, has free tours
  
• Feed the giraffes at Global Wildlife (near Hammond)
  
• Get an airplane flying lesson at Fly By Knight (Hammond)
  
• Go to Tsunami on the roof of the Shaw Center (art museum) for the best view of the river (thanks BiscuitCrisps). Great place for a drink! Also, check whether any events are going on at the Shaw Center or the co-located Manship Theatre. They often have interesting shows and films.
  
• The Cove has this city's best selection of whiskey (thanks malakhgabriel).
  

I haven't done much research on this topic. Are you saying that it is far away from a meritocracy? What measures would one use to assess such things?

I think you could start by determining what amount of money in the economy is inherited vs. earned. I would actually agree with the author's assessment that inheritance must be pretty small compared to the vast wealth that self-made men accumulate.

Consider:

• Bill Gates
  
• Jeff Bezos
  
• Mark Cuban
  
• Warren Buffet
  
  You have some people around like Donald Trump, but he's the exception rather than the rule. But like I said, I don't know much about this, and I'm just guessing with intuition. Is there hard evidence around to examine? Do you feel something other than that most money is earned? I expect you would find similar results in the middle and upper classes that the vast majority of wealth is earned.
  
  Or perhaps is the idea that individuals don't accumulate wealth through merit? How else, then? How would we measure such factors?
  
  With regards to his comments about being marked for induction, it seems to be true given such programs as Gifted And Talented Education, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, and the opportunities presented to you if you get a high SAT score. With an excellent SAT score you are practically guaranteed entrance to a top school on a scholarship. As the author mentions, if you are also a minority or come from a disadvantaged background, you are virtually guaranteed a free ride at the top universities.
  
  This is a very interesting topic, one on which hard evidence could shed a lot of light. Is America a meritocracy? Is it not? We shouldn't have to guess about such things but I don't have the data. Your comment suggests that you have strong evidence against the author's points, so I would be interested to hear it.
  
  Looking into other literature on the topic, such as Bell Curve, there seems to be strong evidence that (according to one reviewer):
  
  > More than socioeconomic background, parents' marital status or anything else, intelligence correlates with education, income, employment, criminal behavior, disability, likelihood of being in automobile accidents, and just about everything else.
  
  I would posit that if education, employment, and income correlate with intelligence more than any other factor, America is trivially a meritocracy (how else do you define meritocracy?). Would you dispute that definition, or the fact of the correlation? Assuming the correlation is as-stated, do you conclude America is a meritocracy? If not, why not?
  
  (Anecdotal evidence is not helpful for advancing this argument on either side)
  
  For more research leads on this topic, see Mainstream Science on Intelligence. A statement signed by "52 internationally known scholars" says:
  
  > # IQ is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic, and social outcomes. Its relation to the welfare and performance of individuals is very strong in some arenas in life (education, military training), moderate but robust in others (social competence), and modest but consistent in others (law-abidingness). Whatever IQ tests measure, it is of great practical and social importance.
  
  Non-anecdotal evidence that America is not a meritocracy would be of great interest to me and others in the thread, I suspect. Evidence: do you have it?

The first problem you're going to run into is that no one (with good reason) wants to tell you what "works" because as soon as that becomes public knowledge, people will craft means and methods against it. There's absolutely no value to disclosing what works aside from for public relations. So understand that.

Books like this and this are great for grasping a bit of knowledge and getting a storyline, but don't share much about the nitty gritty. I've read them both, and though I have no experience in operations in the 40s-70s, I do with what Bamford speaks of and there's quite a bit of fearmongering there. Either way, it's helpful to find the perspective of what's trying to be done. These aren't people trying to trample your friends, it's people trying to find a balance between freedom and security.

A book like this is basically just a nice story. It's a few biopics in one and the writer clearly likes the people he's writing about, so he's extremely pretty sympathetic to them. Still good for motivations and perspective, though.

These two are extremely useful because they get into that nitty-gritty that I spoke of earlier.

But as I said, it basically comes down to the balance between freedom and security. If you- like a crazy amount of redditors and young people seem to be- are way way way more interested than freedom than you are security, you're never going to like what people in the IC do. And that's your preoperative, but it seems that many people that of that cloth usually live within a secure environment and just don't really worry about. It's easy to not give a shit about heavy jackets when you live in West Maui. Moreover, the craze that I've seen in reddit is just...amazing? So many people with so little experience of education in these things that insist they know just so much. These same people will flip shit if you wander into their area of expertise acting like you know what's up when you clearly don't but...if someone's talking about CIA/NSA/FBI/etc or even just international politics in general? Suddenly they're the expert. It's weird.

This is why I chuckle when people think the redacted portions of the 9/11 Commission Report somehow point to an inside job, letting it happen, or a vast Saudi conspiracy. The redacted portions were redacted because of classification, and things are classified to protect means and methods, 99% of the time. Sometimes technology is classified, but it's rare and I don't know much about that anyway.

How We Got Out of The Great Depression: New Deal


FDR swept (won by a huge margin) the elections of 1932 and took the office from Hoover; he also inherited (took on, hand-me-down from Hoover) an economy that was in ruins. Roosevelt announced a “bank holiday,” and on March 9, he and Congress (they make laws) passed the Emergency Banking Act, which provided fund to failing banks. The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited (stopped) banks from buying and selling stocks, and established the FDIC. Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard (money is backed by gold), thus making it possible to issue more money. However, the focal point of Roosevelt’s plan to stimulate (make better) the economy was the National Industrial Recovery Act. The act established (created) the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which worked with business leaders to create standards for output, prices and work conditions. Within his first few months in office, FDR changed America’s entire way of thinking from a system of total free market economy (government does not tell businesses what to do), to a system where the government is able to regulate business (government does tell business what to do). To gain support of labor unions, the new law recognized worker’s rights to organize unions, a departure (change) from open shop policies during Hoover’s administration. Unfortunately, the NRA failed to recover the economy, and it failed to keep peace between employers and workers.

To combat (fight) unemployment Roosevelt formed the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which made grants (gave money) to local agencies in order to provide relief for those impoverished (made poor) by the Depression. He also established the Civilian Conservation Corps, which provided jobs to unemployed en working on projects such as forest preservation, floor control, and the improvement of national parks. Under the National Industrial Recovery Act the Public Works Administration was created, which built roads, schools, hospitals, and created more than 4 million jobs. Unfortunately, the PWA was dissolved (shut down) due to the costs being too much and complaints that the PWA was creating a dependency (people rely) on the government.

FDR provided relief to many farmers with the creation of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which set quotas (limits) on crops, and paid famers not to plant more than the quota. The result was a significant raise in farm incomes, but benefits only came to those farmers who owned their land. This resulted in the eviction (kicked out) of poor tenants (rent land) and sharecroppers (sharecropping system is difficult to explain, ask for clarification and I will), and a mass migration of farmers to cities, or farms on the West Coast.
Roosevelt believed the ownership of a home was more-or-less a right (something we all get, like air for breathing). The New Deal established the Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration, which insured long-term mortgages (money paid to bank when you’re buying something over time) issued by banks. As well, millions of low-income housing units were developed by the government. It soon became cheaper to buy a home than to rent one. Sadly, none of these things ended the Great Depression, and unemployment was still at 20% when 1934 came to an end. In 1935, the Supreme Court declared the NRA unconstitutional, and in 1936 the AAA was also declared unconstitutional.
In 1934, there were no less than 2,000 strikes (people refuse to work until demands met) across the nation. Working conditions were still poor, and the ability to organize was still hindered (made difficult by businesses). The strikes would often erupt in violence, with employers and government repressing (like holding a kids head under water, holding them down) the strikers. In 1935, John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers, organized a walkout (walk out of work and refuse to work) which resulted in the creation of a new labor organization, the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The CIO’s main objective (goal) was to create unions. In 1936, the United Auto Workers, a CIO union, organized a sit-down, in which workers would halt production, but remain inside the building. This tactic (plan) was effective (it worked) against strikebreakers, since it allowed the workers to basically takeover the plants that they worked in. In 1937, U.S. Steel, a major opponent of unionization, finally agreed to recognize the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in fear that they’d be subjected to a sit-down strike. The CIO was effective in stabilizing (making normal) the labor situation, but also put forward many policy ideas that were pretty radical for the time. They advocated for public housing, universal healthcare, unemployment insurance, and social security. In 1937, the UAW and General Motors reached an agreement in which the pay was reflective of the cost of living. The CIO was extremely influential in what was to come.

FDR’s Second New Deal took the focus away from economic recovery, and put the focus on economic security, such as protection against unemployment and poverty. In 1935, the REA – one of the Second New Deal’s most successful programs – was formed with the goal of bringing electricity to homes that lacked it, which would also result in these homes purchasing household appliances. As well, the Second New Deal tried to promote soil preservation and family farming. The federal government also bought eroded farms (land destroyed) and converted them to grasslands and parks. It also encouraged more environmentally friendly methods of farming. However, the small farmers were once again left out, and the land-owning farmers were the ones to reap the benefits. These programs made way for the corporate farms that we see today.
The Works Progress Administration was formed, and each year it offered 3 million Americans jobs constructing public buildings and bridges, more than 500,000 miles of roads, 600 airports, stadiums, swimming pools, and sewage treatment plants. The WPA even hired artists to paint murals, and writers to produce guidebooks. The Federal Theater Project funded plays, the Federal Music Project established orchestras, and the Federal Dance Project sponsored ballets. The National Youth Administration provided relief to American teens and young adults. The focus was on creating a more enjoyable way of life for the people.
The Wagner Act – also known as “Labor’s Magna Carta” – was formed to bring democracy (everyone votes and has a say) into the workplace, allowing employees to vote on union representatives, and outlawing unfair labor practices, such as the firing of labor organizers. The idea was that unionization and higher wages would stimulate the economy due to the boost in purchasing power of the working class (the people who work).
The main piece of legislation in the Second New Deal was the Social Security Act of 1935. The Social Security Act created unemployment insurance, old age pensions, and aid to the disabled, the elderly poor, and families with dependent children. The Progressives were finally seeing their platform become a reality. The original bill also included universal healthcare, but it was dropped due to opposition from the American Medical Association.
The last few pieces of legislation were the United States Housing Act, which passed in 1937, and resulted in a national effort to build houses for the poor. As well, the Fair Labor Standards bill passed in 1938, which banned goods produced by child labor, set a minimum wage, and required overtime pay for hours exceeding 40 hours per week. This piece of legislation established a federal minimum wage, and federal regulations of working conditions.

The New Deal created many jobs for women in the government. However, it also supported the idea of the housewife, since it advocated (encouraged) for women to stay at home while the men worked. The housewife was left out of many of the New Deal programs, since paying taxes made a person eligible or the programs. As well, individual states were allowed to set eligibility standards for benefits, which allowed for discrimination.

Suggested Readings:

A People's History of the United States - This gives such an awesome view of history that you do not get in history textbooks: that of the people. Read this for an interesting take on labor unions during this time.

The Great Depression: A Diary - Really interesting. Gives a good history, but also a personal account of the hardships faced during the era. I recommend this to everyone.

The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction - I love the Very Short Introduction series, and this is no exception. Covers a lot of ground and gives a good historical perspective of how we got into the mess, and how we got out. In fact, I used some of this in writing this reply.

Could all religions be talking about the same thing? Perhaps. Anything's possible. I'll give you my personal take on that question in a bit, as interfaith relations was the focus of one of my majors back in my college days and remains a hobby of mine today. If you're really interested in exploring this topic, let me offer you a few books with differing perspectives on the matter first:

• God is Not One: Eight Rival Religions that Run the World and Why Their Differences Matter, written by Stephen Prothero: This book advocates that religious differences really do matter. From my reading of various theologians from across a number of traditions, this acceptance of differences and that we're not all talking about the same thing (often called the "exclusivist" position) is probably the most common position across religious traditions (at least in my experience).
  
• The Myth of Religious Superiority: A Multifaith Exploration, edited by Paul Knitter: This book is a collection of essays by theologians across a number of world religions who argue that we really are all talking about the same thing after all. Hick (one of the essayists in this book) is a pioneer writer on this subject in particular and comes out of the Christian tradition, but I recommend this collection rather than one of his books so you can get a wider variety of perspectives.
  
• Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion, written by Mark Heim: This book takes a sort of middle ground between the other two, arguing that each religion really is distinct from the others and pursues a different spiritual path but that perhaps multiple paths can still be right, with say Buddhists working towards nirvana and detachment and Muslims drawing towards a heaven with Allah.
  
  There are plenty more books on this topic than just these three. I merely list these three as decent introductions to their particular points of view as you explore this question yourself. As for my own opinion on the matter, I don't think all religions are talking about the same thing, no. To list just a few of my reasons for thinking that:
  
  

1. Claiming we're all really talking about the same thing in the end is just as exclusive a claim as saying that only one religion is right. In either case, you're insisting a similarly large number of people have all fundamentally misunderstood reality.
   
2. Most religions are addressing fundamentally different problems, even if there are overlaps in a few places. In most strands of Buddhism, the central problem with existence is suffering, which according to Buddhism is caused by attachment: this leads Buddhists to practice meditation in order to cultivate detachment so they can escape suffering and help others. In contrast, the central problem in existence according to my Reformed Christian faith is that we humans were all created good and in the image of God Almighty but now are so infected with evil that we can't help but go awry (whether morally, intellectually, emotionally, etc). Therefore, we need an Almighty Creator to step into our story to love us despite our sins, forgive us our trespasses, reveal the truth of the gospel, save us from evil, and teach us how to live as we were originally created to live, so even when we are weak or overcome by guilt, we can have hope that God will remain faithful to us even so and save us once again. Both Buddhism and my own faith have beauty and power to them, but they're both dealing with very different understandings of the problems facing humanity, the solutions to those problems, and how to live life having experienced such a solution.
   
3. While it's nice to say that all religions are talking about the same thing, clearly we don't think every religion qualifies. It's one thing to say, "Christians, Buddhists, Wiccans, Muslims: we're really all just talking about the same in the end." But it's quite another to lump all those people in with cults like Scientology or the Mansons, with white supremacist neo-pagan groups whose religion is mostly an extension of their bigotry, with ancient religions that held the killing of others in war or human sacrifice as essential rituals, etc. If we draw dividing lines in some instances but not among the major religions, by what standard do we so divide various religions as true or false? How can we say some don't count as "in" while others do while still being philosophically consistent? This is a problem not faced by exclusivists who just assert that they are right and all other religions, while at best perhaps helpful to living well, are not ultimately true.
   
4. Just because we disagree about foundational truths of reality doesn't mean we can't respect each other, treat each other well, etc. I firmly believe that Jesus Christ--as revealed in the Bible and attested to by the creeds of my Presbyterian denomination--is Lord God and the only means of salvation. My Muslim friends in college believed quite differently, as did my Buddhist and Wiccan friends in high school, as do all my atheists and agnostic friends to this day. Our disagreements are serious, which means it's important to discuss them civilly and with compassion for each other, because we are talking about the very fabric and truths of existence. But to just hand-wave away all that tension because it's uncomfortable, rather than to dig into those differences, to see how our disagreements highlight the unique power and beliefs of our own traditions, to learn where each of us is weak in our thinking and needs to reevaluate long-held beliefs... that's a gift I wouldn't give away lightly.
   
5. So to deal with this disagreement, I treat the conflict between me and people who hold other religious beliefs as a sort of "gentlemen's bet with higher stakes" (for lack of a better term). We disagree with each other. That disagreement matters and is rather important. Whoever is wrong is likely in some trouble, depending on how everything plays out. We can't know for sure until we die, if ever. So we each claim our beliefs, and we make our wager with our lives. Until we die, it's wise to civilly talk with each other, explore these questions, etc., because the stakes really do matter. But we can do so civilly, because acting otherwise would just cause more harm and make our attempts to understand the truths of reality all the harder. I personally am a Christian in the Reformed tradition, and my evangelism to others (and listening to them evangelize to me in turn) falls under this civil disagreement, gentlemen's bet lens. After all, with the stakes so high, it's important to share what I believe is true as best I can, while at the same time listening to others share what they think is true. Why? Because first, I might be wrong. Second, if I'm right, knowing what others think will help me explain the truth even better. And third, being civil and at peace with each other provides the best setting for discussing these ideas.
   
   That's just a few of my reasons, anyways. I'm sure I have more, but I'm trying to type this quickly as I'm writing this while on a work break.

The same Eisenhower who extremely critical of wealthy industrialist taking control of the national and attempting to exploit the poor to their benefit? I'm not saying everything he did was good, but he was aware that a certain, powerful segment of the population was more interested in ranking up a high score in their bank accounts than helping people.

> Neoliberalism, love it or hate it, saved the economy in the 80s and 90s.

That's a massive over-simplification, and mostly inaccurate. While several important metrics from measuring the economy did improve during that period, "real wages" (wages adjusted for inflation) didn't grow significantly between 1981 and 2011. A lot of the economy growth came from women entering the work force in larger numbers & obtaining wages comparable to men, from computers & automation massive boosting the productive per worker, and a massive increase in the access to credit (debt). Of the three, Neoliberalism/Laissez-Faire economy only really affected the third, with probably overall negative consequences. At the heart of the Great Recession was the house market collapse: Because of the lack of real wage growth, people couldn't afford to buy houses except through increasing ridiculous mortgages, which they were able to obtain since the investment class demands growth. This debt bubble was leveraged to create even more (imaginary) wealth, which showed up in most of the economy metrics (especially the stock market). It just disappeared when reality set in and real wages couldn't support incurred debt, crashing the economy.

> Nixon brought in the Environmental protection agency.

I put Nixon on the list for breaking the law to maintain political power. Without Watergate, he would not have made the list.

> Political parties respond to the needs and wants of the electorate.

The reason I mentioned think tanks is that they are one of the tools used by conservative to re-frame and shape the wants of the electorate. Most traditional think tanks collect facts and do analysis to build policy recommendations, but many conservative ones (especially ones funded by the Kochs) begin with the ideology and cherry-pick the data to support the policies they have already written. It's both intellectual dishonest and much easier to build a convincing narrative with. I suggest reading Dark Money and Democracy in Chains if you want to examine the interplay between conservative think tanks, public opinion and money.

> People are the ones who vote after all.

Which is why voter suppression and gerrymandering play such an important role is US elections. Given the ugly history of disenfranchisement in that country, it's much easier to build support for preventing "the wrong people" from voting that it is to actually convince other people to support your policies. It's disguising and disgraceful. Thankfully, the Supreme Court up here has been consistent on supporting everyone's right to vote.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/11/03/is-it-possible-to-increase-your-height/#1757e5cc5139


http://time.com/4655634/genetics-height-tall-short/


There is a reason that identical twins reach a very similar height, even if separated and live in different environments, as long as they get a minimum threshold of resources, (so that their height isn't stunted in any way). But it's not like if one gets adopted by the royal palace, and the other one gets adopted by a middle class family, that the rich one with more resources will be anything more than slightly taller. As long as they get their appropriate resources, they are intended to reach their blueprint, their genetic DNA design for their body. There is evidence that better resources can positively impact your height slightly, but not much more.


Intelligence is certainly more complex than height, and harder to measure than height, but it certainly isn't "hard to measure" in a vacuum. It is very, very easy to tell whether the person across from you meets a certain level of intelligence or not, and you don't even need a test to do so. The fact that we do have advanced testing methods only solidifies the point.


Sam Harris recently said, "What we have here is a set of nested taboos. Human intelligence itself is a taboo topic. People don't want to hear that intelligence is a real thing, and that some people have more of it than others. They don't want to hear that IQ tests really measure it. They don't want to hear that differences in IQ matter, because they are highly predictive of differential success in life. And not just for things like education attainment, and wealth, but for things like out of wedlock birth, and mortality. People don't want to hear that a person's intelligence is, in large measure, due to his or her genes, and there seems to be very little we can do environmentally, to increase a person's intelligence, even in childhood. It's not that the environment doesn't matter, but genes appear to be 50-80% of the story. People don't want to hear this. And they certainly don't want to hear that average IQ differs across races and ethnic groups. Now, for better or worse, these are all facts. In fact, there is almost nothing in psychological science, for which there is more evidence than these claims, about IQ, about the validity of testing for it, about it's importance in the real world, about it's heritability, and about it's differential expression in different populations. Again, this is what a dispassionate look at what decades of research suggests."


"The efforts to invalidate the very notions of 'general intelligence', and race have been wholly unconvincing from a psychometric and biological point of view. And are obviously motivated by a political discomfort in talking about these things. And I understand and share that discomfort."


If you would like to see the data that backs this stuff up, I would recommend reading 'The 10,000 Year Explosion', by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, 'A Troublesome Inheritance' by Nicolas Wade, and 'The Bell Curve', by Charles Murray.


https://www.amazon.com/10-000-Year-Explosion-byHarpending/dp/B006J4LGD6


https://www.amazon.com/Troublesome-Inheritance-Genes-Human-History/dp/0143127160/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CAWJC6Z2AZSADXQFYNND


https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299

ACTUALLY! This is something that I have recently becoming intrigued about as well.

So, basically, everyone that is born will fall somewhere on the bell curve. Obviously someone like this will fall somewhere on the far right, so, high IQ.

Ok, but that's a really incomplete answer, of course he's got a high IQ. What causes this high IQ is what you're asking.
IQ is driven in large part by genes and is highly heritable (something on the order of 0.4 or 0.5). So, odds are his parents are above average intelligence as well.

read this book, it will blow your mind http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial/dp/1501264338

Because IQ is driven in large part by genes, his race plays an important factor as well. This book goes over that http://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299

Then, there's a good chance that he has some level of Asperger's. They don't call it "the engineer's disease" for nothing. People make jokes about this but it really does have an effect on how an individual spends their waking hours. Google about aspergers and engineering and you'll find articles like this

http://www.wired.com/2001/12/aspergers/

There's a pbs documentary and some really good articles out there, but I don't care to track them down right now.

Basically, people with some level of Asperger's become obsessed or display a high level of interest to some thing that they latch on to https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=aspergers+obsession. This is important because it allows the individual to put abnormal and significant amounts of time toward a particular interest. This usually tends to come at a cost to other brain functions necessary for social functioning.

So, when you combine all those factors, you get an individual that is highly intelligent and able to spend abnormal amounts of time and energy on a particular interest.

Surprisingly, the "push from the parents" and the environment don't really matter that much. Obviously the individual will be able to achieve more with a good environment and resources, but, this won't really change how intelligent the individual is. Basically... they're born that way and there's really not much you can do to change them.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (an Oxford professor of history) has written several books you might like.

The World - A History, a two volume work, is very well regarded in teaching circles. I have heard great things about this book, but I haven't read it myself.

I have read his Millenium - A History of the Past One Thousand Years and can highly recommend it. Looking at Amazon though, it looks like it might be out of print. He also wrote Humankind - A Brief History.

A Terrible Beauty - The People and Ideas that Shaped the Modern Mind. A History by Peter Watson may also be of interest; though it focuses exclusively on the 20th century. In it, the author attempts to provide a history of the twentieth century that does not focus on 'wars and dates', and that addresses an alarming lack of focus in many recent history books. As Watson puts it himself in the Introduction "In one recent 700-page history of the first third of the twentieth century, for example, there is no mention of relativity, of Henri Matisse or Gregor Mendel, no Ernest Rutherford, James Joyce, or Marcel Proust. No George Orwell, W.E.B. Du Bois, or Margaret Mead, no Oswald Spengler or Virgina Woolf. No Leo Szilard or Leo Hendrik Baekeland, no James Chadwick or Paul Ehrlich. No Sinclair Lewis and therefore no Babbit." (He was referring to Martin Gilbert's The Twentieth Century - Volume 1, 1900 - 1933). I highly recommend this book. Another example, but of a far more personal nature, would be Clive James's Cultural Amnesia, a fascinating collection of biographical essays on some of the 20th century's greatest thinkers, musicians, artists etc. James is justifiably famous (in the UK at least) for his prose and erudition, as well as his humourous critical columns.

Finally, the much lauded trilogy by Daniel Boorstin sounds like a good fit too. The Discovers, The Seekers and The Creators are excellent. Personally, Boorstin's style is not my favourite, but there is no arguing the value of these books; superb works of learning.

If you want more recommendations, just ask. :)

EDIT: Kenneth Clark's famous TV series Civilization may also interest you. It is primarily a history of western civilization and, by implication, a history of western art & culture. It's also from the 1970's so it is considered a little dated in some circles; Clarke certainly shows his western bias. But nevertheless, it is wonderful TV, remarkably interesting, well produced (though not HD!) and a fascinating subject.

I'm absolutely not defending it, I have a master's degree in Health Services Administration and have worked with many different healthcare organizations, including hospitals and physician groups, always on the provider side.

In a sense, my livelihood depends on how complicated the system is. I don't mean to be flippant about that, and I have worked throughout my career to make healthcare more accessible to people than less, believe me. My father worked in public health, several of my family members are (or were) direct care providers, from nurses to doctors to paramedics. Trust me, you didn't want to have dinner with us if you couldn't stomach really disgusting stories and lasagna at the same time.

> I don't see why everything you just said can't be true, but you make sure that the hospital you run uses doctors that take the insurance you sell.

This seems obvious, there are some variables. The main one is "network." Insurers negotiate payment rates with each individual provider (hospitals, doctor groups, etc.). More expensive plans have a broader network, cheaper ones smaller networks.

Now, in certain areas (such as mine) almost all of the pediatric specialists are employed by the educational and research institution, so insurers have no choice but to bite the bullet and take whatever the hospital offers for fees. Still, I'd conservatively estimate that 20% of that hospital's operating budget is spent simply to collect from insurance companies (they make it hard in so many ways.)

However, for adult specialists insurers take a harder line because there can be several different groups offering the same service. A good trauma doctor can basically write his own check to work anywhere, because they're so specialized. So, they formed groups to protect their own interests. Many of the specialties fall under the same category, and they're simply too expensive to employ full-time.

The major failure of the American healthcare system, in my view (and my view is not original), is that it is a mostly not-for-profit system controlled by for-profit banks. What I mean by "controlled by" is that insurers have an inherent interest (and, in fact, responsibility to shareholders) to make as much profit as possible. Essentially, they focus on profits, and that focus directly conflicts with the needs of patients, creating an inherent barrier between the provider and the patient.

Hospitals and doctor's groups are not without their own conflicts and absurd motives, but I challenge you to find any provider who is driven, from inception, by a profit motive. Sure, some providers are very egotistical, but I think you probably have to be to do those jobs. To get into the really high dollar specialties as a physician, you have to study under the most qualified and preeminent physicians in the specialty you're getting into, and they tend to be pretty powerful personalities.

For a great read albeit dated (won the Pulitzer Prize '84) I cannot recommend enough The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The rise of a sovereign profession and the making of a vast industry.

Even the first insurers separated physician services and hospital services. To get an idea why, and the book would explain: hospitals, in the past, were basically waiting rooms for the mortuary, provided as mostly as charity. Staffed by volunteers, they would give you a bed and a place to convalesce, or pass peacefully, if you didn't have family in the area.

Physicians were basically witch doctors for most of our recorded history, with maybe a few herbal remedies for common conditions, but basically if you got really sick or hurt, you were fucked. A physician couldn't treat you, you just had to convalesce.

The profession of MD and the diagnostic capabilities of healthcare organizations has evolved more than can be imagined over the last century. I am also a pilot, and marvel that we went from the Wright brothers to landing on the moon in 60 years, but honestly, what we have accomplished in diagnosing and treating physical health (IMO) dwarfs the aviation industry.

Long response to a simple question, but I hope I turn you into a universal healthcare proponent. Our system is outdated, too complicated, and results in way more bankruptcies and poor outcomes than necessary. It's part of American culture, unfortunately, and I hope that someone will change it.

For the record, I think the American Care Act was too much compromise to the banks to really accomplish change. More people are insured, but the inherent profit motive of banks still makes care inefficient and further entrenches the divide between those who practice medicine (docs) and patients.

edit: grammar

> You have to wake up. Be aware of what you're doing and where you are. If you need to, make a schedule. And adhere to it very strictly. Set alarms if you want. But you just have to wake up and be present and plan your time. Know what you're going to do, and do it. If you don't know what to do, you'll fall back into your natural pattern and just say "I'll start tomorrow."

This is typical millennial advice.

I don't know if the author is a millennial, but the style is quite typical of the gen.

I'm super familiar with gentheory which is based on the book Generations by Strauss & Howe. If you are interested in reading it, it's great, but it's heavy reading. Also it's over 500 pages.

Generations Book on Amazon

Gentheory is basically social psychology that says that different social styles (generational trends) create a backlash trend. The backlash creates another backlash etc. This repeats in a cycle of 4.

This isn't like a superstition prediction-- it's a psychology prediction of human nature. That a certain trend produces a certain backlash.

So let me set this up for you....

Gen X which is my gen-- we are an "honest" generation-- vulgar, aggressive (not polite), selfish (hey, just being honest!), introverted politically (not that politically active compared to other gens) and kind of free-form.

What does that set-up for Millennials?

• pragmatic (steeped in vulgarity honesty)
  
• success orientated
  
• logic orientated (head over heart)
  
  The above quoted advice is all that-- "make a schedule" and "adhere to it strictly"... that's all "head over heart" type stuff which as I said is typical for Millennials.
  
  This is actually good advice-- I'm not knocking its effectiveness.
  
  But I just would like you to realize that there is a backlash to this style of thinking that is predicted to arise in the following generations.
  
  Millennial is a logic, pragmatic, success generation.
  
  Gen Z.... tries to follow in your footsteps, right?
  
  They really try.... but they weren't raised in the same Gen X environment that you were raised in.
  
  Gen Z (born 2005-2025) were raised in the "success" world that you created. So their style will NOT be your style.
  
  Gen Z is actually predicted to be the most misunderstood generation because their style is seen as a "failed" Millennial style when in reality they have a very special and more heart-centered style different from your own.
  
  The reason I bring all this up is because the advice given here does work-- so Millennials get mad at future generations (it is predicted) because they don't want to follow the same "logic, success" advice.
  
  Just a heads up. ;)

A lot of people here have claimed that "there are no unbiased books." This is simply not so, unless it's meant in some facile sense--presenting evidence to support a thesis ought not be interpreted as a bias for that thesis (though the thesis, on its own, may be biased).

Mind you, finding an unbiased book on religion is not so easy. Practically all the New Atheist books are right out, so no Harris, Hitchens, or Dawkins. That's not to say that these aren't fantastic writers, but they obviously wouldn't fall into the category you describe elsewhere of "an agnostic that states all of the beliefs of both sides and arguments for it without pushing towards a particular side."

My recommendations would be as follows:

God is Not One by Stephen Prothero -- This is a book on comparative religion in which the author seeks to demonstrate that the major religions of the world are not all "different paths up the same mountain," as is sometimes expressed to infer that all theists worship the same god. He gives a pretty balanced, if brief, account of the major underlying differences between the world's religions. Informative and interesting, but not particularly profound.

The Case for God by Karen Armstrong -- Here Armstrong examines how religions have changed over time. There's a focus on Christianity and she does a good job of demonstrating the immense changes that the religion has undergone since its inception. Arguing that today's systems of beliefs and views of God are starkly different from those our ancestors, Armstrong makes a strong argument for a return to the Gnostic tradition for those seeking to understand the supernatural. Sadly, she does devote a chapter at the very end of her book (needlessly, I think) to criticizing the New Atheist movement.

The Shadow of a Great Rock by Harold Bloom -- This is simply a literary examination of the King James Bible. No position is taken on the merits of the claims made in the Bible or of individuals who believe these claims. It can be very slow at times, as Bloom painstakingly demonstrates the careful literary decisions made by the authors of the KJV and compares it against contemporary examples like the Geneva and Tyndale Bibles. Obviously, this book is only tangentially related to the topic of religion since it focuses so intently on only one book--having said this, I never really understood or appreciated how people could consider the Bible such a beautiful literary masterpiece until I read this book. Bloom conveys his love of the work (in a purely literary sense--he's Jewish) on every page.

HONORABLE MENTION: The New Oxford Annotated Bible -- It's a study Bible with lots and lots of footnotes and maps and cross-references. Very thorough. It makes everything generally clearer and easier to understand. I can't vouch for a lack bias, since I'm not knowledgeable enough on the topic to discern what parts of the footnotes and introductions are questionable bias on the part of the authors and what's just the straight dope. Further, as with any translation of the Bible, bias may be inherent within the very text itself--though this version does a good job of mitigating that by indicating where and how other translations differ.

The last excellent work of fiction I read was City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling. The book that I feel best captures the feeling of New York City, however, is Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin.

I mostly read nonfiction books about New York City history, and I'll share a few of my favorites with you. The definitive tome, of course, is Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Mike Wallace and Edwin Burrows. Another favorite of mine, as I love the history of New Amsterdam, is Island at the Center of the World:The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto. One of the most fascinating subjects I have been learning about is Native American history at the period of first European contact, and I really recommend checking out Adriaen Van Der Donck's A Description of New Netherland (The Iroquoians and their World), which many scholars agree is just as much of a significant work as William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, and would be the definitive guide to the new world if it had been written in English. Evan Pritchard's Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquian People of New York also offers an incredible look at native culture.

If you are interested in the subway system, check out Stan Fischler's fantastic Uptown, Downtown. One of the most underrated books I have picked up recently explores the construction of the amazing Grand Central Terminal, and I learned an incredible amount from it: Grand Central's Engineer: William J. Wilgus and the Planning of Modern Manhattan. If you are interested in urban planning, I would also suggest The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel Jr., Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor.

At this point I've read a ton of nonfiction books about the city, so if you have any questions or want any other recommendations, feel free to ask!

You aren't going to change his mind, but for your own peace of mind, here is a start off the top of my head:

> He didn't even know about it...

Then tell him he is literally living under a rock. It is listed in 10,000+ plus articles via Google news at the moment. While it is not likely to receive proper treatment in the conventional media, it has reached critical mass, they can no longer ignore it. And for the people who are there, they can verify that it is people from all walks of life, and now in cities all around the country. This just in as an example of senior protesters

> He says all the protesters don't have jobs because they made poor career choices with their lives.

Ask him to prove this (hint: he can't). Don't let him slide on sweeping generalization. There are people protesting across the spectrum including those who have jobs. They aren't protesting unemployment, but rather greed and corruption. While the unemployed might have more time to occupy, its not simply the unemployed who are there.

Edit: In fact, you can meet some of them in this article

Ask him if people in the Tea Party had jobs. Because while they aren't identical people, both movements have some similar populist origins. Also ask him if he smeared the Tea Party in the same way he is OWS. Because before they were corrupted by corporate interests, while I didn't agree with part of their message, at the time I could applaud their original effort. Look up various populist movements through US history and quiz him on them and draw parallels.

Also ask him why people are allowed or even celebrated in making poor choices when they are rich, but are condemned if they actually don't make bad choices (or even if they are human and make some) but get screwed by the system. Ask him if it is right that the class you are born into is a stronger indicator of upward mobility than education. (I can't find the link right now, but here is one and here is another one that can perhaps point you in the right direction.

> He says they're all to lazy to go find jobs.

Really? Then ask him about the number of places that make HAVING A JOB a REQUIREMENT for getting a job.

Ask him if he understands the law of supply and demand and can understand that The main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies and then ask him if he knows something that a majority of economists don't know (because that's what they said in the survey referenced).

Edit: Also this self post looked pretty good regarding addressing that question

> He says they're all socialists looking for entitlements

Ask him if he likes weekends off, an 8-hour workday, minimum wage, or even just not dying while at his job then he can thank a socialist.

Check out the condensed version of The "S" Word and the book

Also for good measure, check out A People's History of The United States to find a lot of things neither he, nor probably you (no offense, just sayin'), would have learned in school.

Even though he may not like it, the current quality of life he enjoys was fought for by progressives, socialists, even anarchists and him denying that fact doesn't make it not true.

> He says they do not represent the 99% but the deadbeat 5% who can't do anything with their lives.

Tell him that both they, and he, whether he likes it or not, ARE part of the 99% percent unless he is tucking away millions that he hasn't told you about because this is what inequity looks like in numbers Also via NPR and this explains a lot in 11 graphs. You can also take a peek at 2012

> Talking to him is like talking to O'Reily...

But remember that there are people who can stand their ground with him, like Jon Stewart, or even Marylin Manson.

If Marylin Manson can do it, so can you. Don't sell yourself short, stand your ground! (I know it makes Thanksgiving and Christmas difficult, but if he is not an idiot, it still can be worth it in the long run).

> OH and he said that I'm messed up in the head cause I go on socialist websites...like Reddit

Ask him to define the word socialist. If he gets it wrong, ask him how his education failed him. Ask him if he thinks most of the other industrialized countries in the world are "socialist" too, and if so why are the leading in many quality of life metrics, health care, and general happiness? Ask him why our life expectancy is shorter or why we are working ourselves to death with other countries being able to have several weeks of vacation with people here who may not take any.

> OH OH and then he and my little brother then come in and say, "Is that gonna be your excuse when you can't find a job?" (I'm a college sophmore.)

Tell him that perhaps someone sold you and your brother a bill of goods
that "working hard" is the key to the American Dream while the banksters are offloading it out the backdoor. Ask him if it is called the American dream because you must be asleep to believe it

Ask him why your education costs 1000's and others abroad may not cost anything at all.

Ask him why teachers are treated as scum in recent sentiments when they agree to concessions but want to preserve their right to assemble and bargain as a group yet CEO's get paid for failure based on a peer system and half the country is lead to believe that the richest group of all are the "victims".

Ask him why foreign companies like Toyota can make products in America, but "Made in America" brands like Ford may be made in Mexico.

Ask him if he knows what NAFTA is and why it was bad (and do your homework to learn more, and surprise him by suggesting that Clinton was wrong to support it -- so he can't say you just cheerlead for one party -- but tell him that both he AND a Republican congress are at fault for screwing up our banking sector by repealing Glass-Stegall under Republican pressure, but at least Clinton at least is man enough to open regret the decision)

Ask him why it is right for people to do all these things, to make inequity on par with the 20's before the stock market crash, yet when people stand up to fight that he has nothing but ridicule.

> Edit: As for what to discuss, can anyone put together a clear and irrefutable counterargument? I'm sick of his condescending attitude.

There is not magic bullet. Even this list here is simply a stream of consciousness off the top of my head. But your best friend is true education and enlightenment. It means not accepting the status quo, not relying on only domestic, conventional sources for news and information. It means digging into history with true historians.

In the long run you may not win the battle, but you will be more prepared to try and win the war, even if its not with him. (P.S. I may add more links later if I have the time.)

Good Luck!

> I see where you're coming from, but with Trump now at over 40% in polls against 12 or 13 other candidates, I'd say it's the GOP's loyalties that aren't in line with the party.

I'd agree, but generally, when such situations happen, the party elites generally have more sway than the general public. That's the general thesis of this book. There are tons of situations where the poll-leader ended up losing the nomination.

Basically, the party can act as a biased referee in a sports match. They have a lot of ability to manipulate how decisions are made or adjust schedules or scenarios to essentially penalize candidates they don't like, and donate money to PACs for or against candidates.

That's the reason people like McCain and Romney usually end up winning. They're more appealing to the establishment, for lack of a better term. Trump isn't as appealing because he is unlikely to keep in line for the sake of the party or the benefits of the higher ups in the party.

Trump actually winning would be very unprecedented and the first time really in modern history that such an upset happened. The party clearly wanted Bush or Christie, and Rubio is kind of controversial as a backup as he leans toward Tea Party. Trump might end up happening because party elites seem more focused on stopping Cruz than Trump and can't decide on a candidate.

While researching for my novel this morning I came across a book that seems spot-on relevant to the conversation we had yesterday. It's about why America's politics are so far to the right. Here's the link and description in case you're curious:

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

> Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers?
The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against “big government” led to the ascendancy of a broad-based conservative movement. But as Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system.
The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefs—that taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom—are sincerely held. But these beliefs also advance their personal and corporate interests: Many of their companies have run afoul of federal pollution, worker safety, securities, and tax laws.
The chief figures in the network are Charles and David Koch, whose father made his fortune in part by building oil refineries in Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. The patriarch later was a founding member of the John Birch Society, whose politics were so radical it believed Dwight Eisenhower was a communist. The brothers were schooled in a political philosophy that asserted the only role of government is to provide security and to enforce property rights.
When libertarian ideas proved decidedly unpopular with voters, the Koch brothers and their allies chose another path. If they pooled their vast resources, they could fund an interlocking array of organizations that could work in tandem to influence and ultimately control academic institutions, think tanks, the courts, statehouses, Congress, and, they hoped, the presidency. Richard Mellon Scaife, the mercurial heir to banking and oil fortunes, had the brilliant insight that most of their political activities could be written off as tax-deductible “philanthropy.”
These organizations were given innocuous names such as Americans for Prosperity. Funding sources were hidden whenever possible. This process reached its apotheosis with the allegedly populist Tea Party movement, abetted mightily by the Citizens United decision—a case conceived of by legal advocates funded by the network.
The political operatives the network employs are disciplined, smart, and at times ruthless. Mayer documents instances in which people affiliated with these groups hired private detectives to impugn whistle-blowers, journalists, and even government investigators. And their efforts have been remarkably successful. Libertarian views on taxes and regulation, once far outside the mainstream and still rejected by most Americans, are ascendant in the majority of state governments, the Supreme Court, and Congress. Meaningful environmental, labor, finance, and tax reforms have been stymied.
Jane Mayer spent five years conducting hundreds of interviews-including with several sources within the network-and scoured public records, private papers, and court proceedings in reporting this book. In a taut and utterly convincing narrative, she traces the byzantine trail of the billions of dollars spent by the network and provides vivid portraits of the colorful figures behind the new American oligarchy.
Dark Money is a book that must be read by anyone who cares about the future of American democracy.

One of the most-discussed current theories of American politics is "The Party Decides," which basically argues that party members (Governors, Senators, Representatives, as well as party leaders at state and local levels) play a much larger role in selecting their party's Presidential nominee than most people realize. Many primary voters end up following endorsements and other signals from these leaders about what candidate is best for the party. This is why, despite the Tea Party and other right-wing movements that have been around for at least a decade, moderate 'establishment' candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney have actually won the nomination.

Based on that theory, it is very likely that the 2016 Republican nominee will be someone with experience in political office whose views fall within the mainstream of the party. That excludes Trump and Carson. It also strongly suggests that the nominee will be someone that most of the party members like and get along with, which excludes Cruz. Rubio at this point seems to be the candidate with the most support who has government experience and mainstream party views. The fact that the GOP isn't lining up behind him yet is most likely because they don't like or trust him. My prediction is that they'll come around to him when it becomes clear that the other establishment candidates (Bush, Christie, Kasich) are not going to pick up enough support to win.

Edit: Jonathan Chait examines a few theories about why the GOP establishment hasn't coalesced behind Rubio yet.

That's great you are open to learning and interested in broadening your world view. That's a great first step. There are a lot of great books about religion and philosophy. You should start where you are most interested but it can be helpful to get a high-level overview with books like:

• http://www.amazon.com/The-Worlds-Religions-Wisdom-Traditions/dp/0062508113
  
• http://www.amazon.com/God-Is-Not-One-Religions/dp/0061571288/ref=pd_sim_b_4
  
  Basically giving you an idea of different religions around the world and how they differ but also how they are similar. Also the internet is a great resource. Start reading about different religious and philosophical beliefs even on Wikipedia as an easy way to get started. Anyhow, best of luck with everything.

I've actually been really disappointed to read into the history and current usage of most modern non-profits (charities) and realized that they are basically a tax dodge for the super-rich. For instance, think of the tax breaks for donating to various non-profits. They don't disappear if you own the charity, allowing you to create charities, place your own money in them to reduce your tax burden, and spend it how you like.

And almost none has to be directed towards your stated goal, similar to how non-profits like The Wounded Warriors Project use less than 10% of the donated money to actually help veterans.

Even worse, depending on the type of 501 non-profit it is, you can usually use that money politically. Recent-ish court cases have determined that, even ones that were originally designed to not permit political spending, the word "primarily" allows for up to 49% of money to be spend on political issues directly. And obfuscation can allow for plenty more to indirectly support political issues.

A final piece of the puzzle is how you can set up tax-free trusts for your kids to avoid estate taxes. They sound good: the rich get no taxes to transfer money to their kids because the interest that accrues on the trust for a decade or two goes to charities. But when own the charity you are giving the interest to, it's just a tax dodge.

If you are interested in reading more, the book Dark Money is a fascinating read. It is a bit left of center, though. Provides a lot of background on non-profits and their inception though... they used to be illegal and thought of as thoroughly un-American. And now, they are used to take billions of dollars from the wealthy, while reducing their tax burden, to fund their political causes with no limits, thanks to cases like Citizen's United.

Sorry if this was all a little off topic.

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?

Quite right they shouldn't.

Same goes for their father providing help with oil for the nazi army.

However, these days they are rising up fascism, nazis and KKK.


You can read more about where the alt right came from here

>Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers?
The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against “big government” led to the ascendancy of a broad-based conservative movement. But as Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system.
The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefs—that taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom—are sincerely held. But these beliefs also advance their personal and corporate interests: Many of their companies have run afoul of federal pollution, worker safety, securities, and tax laws.
The chief figures in the network are Charles and David Koch, whose father made his fortune in part by building oil refineries in Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. The patriarch later was a founding member of the John Birch Society, whose politics were so radical it believed Dwight Eisenhower was a communist. The brothers were schooled in a political philosophy that asserted the only role of government is to provide security and to enforce property rights.
When libertarian ideas proved decidedly unpopular with voters, the Koch brothers and their allies chose another path. If they pooled their vast resources, they could fund an interlocking array of organizations that could work in tandem to influence and ultimately control academic institutions, think tanks, the courts, statehouses, Congress, and, they hoped, the presidency. Richard Mellon Scaife, the mercurial heir to banking and oil fortunes, had the brilliant insight that most of their political activities could be written off as tax-deductible “philanthropy.”
These organizations were given innocuous names such as Americans for Prosperity. Funding sources were hidden whenever possible. This process reached its apotheosis with the allegedly populist Tea Party movement, abetted mightily by the Citizens United decision—a case conceived of by legal advocates funded by the network.
The political operatives the network employs are disciplined, smart, and at times ruthless. Mayer documents instances in which people affiliated with these groups hired private detectives to impugn whistle-blowers, journalists, and even government investigators. And their efforts have been remarkably successful. Libertarian views on taxes and regulation, once far outside the mainstream and still rejected by most Americans, are ascendant in the majority of state governments, the Supreme Court, and Congress. Meaningful environmental, labor, finance, and tax reforms have been stymied.

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0385535597

Start by putting down the phone. I got rid of Facebook and Instagram off my phone and it was the best thing I have ever done. I have them back now because I would check them on my browser and have like 20 notifications from last week so they were irrelevant when I would read them. I have significantly decreased my intake though and feel way better for it.

But what to do with your spare time? I would say put down any form of screen (no gaming or YouTube/Netflix binging) and instead pick up either a book or a deck of cards. They have expanded my mind and have made it easier for me to fall asleep. In terms of books, I would recommend Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson (he does a great job of explaining complex principles regardless of your knowledge level). I would also recommend The novelisation of 'The King's Speech' which I think is beautifully written and has some brilliant source material attached to it. It has so much more historical depth than the movie. In terms of cards, set up a game of Solitaire with yourself, the simplicity of it is incredibly soothing.

Outside of this, make sure you're having a good night's sleep, get up early and have a decent breakfast.

Hope this helps you out my friend.

I've been saying from the beginning that the process, that the party insiders have the opportunity to ultimately control who gets the nomination, is wholly undemocratic. I'm not using it now as an convenient excuse to explain Bernie's loss.

If you want to increase voter turnout, you have to instill some confidence in the American people that their vote actually counts and that they have a say in the outcome.

In the last general election, 25% of the people who didn't vote had said they did not vote because they felt that their vote would not matter. A majority of Democrats said that the 2016 primaries had not been a good way of determining the best-qualified nominees.

If you want the voters to be more enthusiastic when they vote and that you want them to vote Democratic, we need to ensure that the entire election process is more democratic. Primaries included.

ETA:

In March 2016, WaPo wrote that superdelegates have strong incentive to follow public input. But that didn't happen. In several states you would see that some superdelegates would refuse to be bound with their constituents despite the fact Bernie had won a large majority for that state primary or caucus.



State | Result | Margin | HRC supers | Bernie supers | Total supers
---|---|----|----|----|----
Vermont | 86%-14% | 72% | 5 | 5| 10
Alaska | 80%-20% | 60% | 1 | 1 | 4
Washington | 73%-27% | 46% | 11 | 0 | 17
Hawaii | 70%-30% | 40% | 5 | 2 | 9
Democrats Abroad | 69%-31% | 38% | 2.5 | 0.5 | 3
Kansas | 68%-32% | 36% | 4 | 0 | 4
Maine | 64%-36% | 28% | 4 | 1 | 5
Minnesota | 62%-38% | 24% | 12 | 2 | 16
New Hampshire | 60%-38% | 22% | 6 | 1 | 8
Colorado | 59%-41% | 18% | 9 | 0 | 12
Wisconsin | 57%-43% | 14% | 9 | 1 | 10
Wyoming | 56%-44% | 12% | 4 | 0 | 4

Additional reading - The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform

> Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters alike worried that the outcome might depend on the preferences of unelected superdelegates. This concern threw into relief the prevailing notion that—such unusually competitive cases notwithstanding—people, rather than parties, should and do control presidential nominations. But for the past several decades, The Party Decides shows, unelected insiders in both major parties have effectively selected candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box.

Maybe this?

From: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought

>If there is any lingering uncertainty that the Koch brothers are the primary sponsors of climate-change doubt in the United States, it ought to be put to rest by the publication of “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America,” by the business reporter Christopher Leonard. This seven-hundred-and-four-page tome doesn’t break much new political ground, but it shows the extraordinary behind-the-scenes influence that Charles and David Koch have exerted to cripple government action on climate change.
>
>Leonard, who has written for Bloomberg Businessweek and the Wall Street Journal, devotes most of the book to an even-handed telling of how the two brothers from Wichita, Kansas, built up Koch Industries, a privately owned business so profitable that together they have amassed some hundred and twenty billion dollars, a fortune larger than that of Amazon’s C.E.O., Jeff Bezos, or the Microsoft founder Bill Gates. The project took Leonard more than six years to finish and it draws on hundreds of hours of interviews, including with Charles Koch, the C.E.O. and force without equal atop the sprawling corporate enterprise. (David Koch retired from the firm last year.)
>
>While “Kochland” is more focused on business than on politics, in line with Leonard’s “The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business,” from 2014, it nonetheless adds new details about the ways in which the brothers have leveraged their fortune to capture American politics. Leonard shows that the Kochs’ political motives are both ideological, as hardcore free-market libertarians, and self-interested, serving their fossil-fuel-enriched bottom line. The Kochs’ secret sauce, as Leonard describes it, has been a penchant for long-term planning, patience, and flexibility; a relentless pursuit of profit; and the control that comes from owning some eighty per cent of their business empire themselves, without interference from stockholders or virtually anyone else.
>
>Saying anything new about the Kochs isn’t easy. The two brothers have been extensively covered: they are the subject of Daniel Schulman’s excellent biography “Sons of Wichita,” from 2014, and the focus of much in-depth investigative reporting, including a piece I wrote for The New Yorker, from 2010, and my book “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” from 2016.
>
>Leonard, nonetheless, manages to dig up valuable new material, including evidence of the Kochs’ role in perhaps the earliest known organized conference of climate-change deniers, which gathered just as the scientific consensus on the issue was beginning to gel. The meeting, in 1991, was sponsored by the Cato Institute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank, which the Kochs founded and heavily funded for years. As Leonard describes it, Charles Koch and other fossil-fuel magnates sprang into action that year, after President George H. W. Bush announced that he would support a treaty limiting carbon emissions, a move that posed a potentially devastating threat to the profits of Koch Industries. At the time, Bush was not an outlier in the Republican Party. Like the Democrats, the Republicans largely accepted the scientific consensus on climate change, reflected in the findings of expert groups such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which had formed in 1988, under the auspices of the United Nations.

I've been asking myself that question recently, and after surfing around I've come to three answers that have helped me:

1.) Keep surfing around. Some of the history subreddits are great places for general information, trivia, and links to cool facts, while /r/AskHistory and /r/AskHistorians are great getting answers to specific questions you have.

2.) Read a general world history. While a lot of these seems to be a bit Eurocentric and can't, by nature, go into great depth about any particular place or period, it seems to me that this is a good place to start if you aren't sure what interests you most. This reddit's book list mentions The History of the World by J. M. Roberts as a good world history book, and I've personally enjoyed The History of the Ancient World by Susan Bauer (and the other books of that series). Wikipedia is pretty great, too.

3.) Like another comment said, try to narrow your topic. It's easy to delve into history when you've picked something you find really interesting.

You'll have to read Paul Starr's The Social Transformation of American Medicine to understand the whole story, but here's my parable:

• In the US, since about the turn of the 20th century, health care financing has been about finding ways to make paying for the health care costs of hospitals and health professionals regular and predictable - rather than being principally concerned with supporting the ability of patients and families to pay some or all of their treatment bills. That latter issue has always been of secondary concern. It's always been a concern, just never the foremost concern.
  
  
  
• Health treatment has always been inherently conservative - "first do no harm", and all that. When they change at all, health treatment habits change slowly, as do their practitioners.
  
  
  
• We pay for health treatment transactionally - as if we were buying units of care off the shelf. Naturally facilities, and doctors, who "do" health care and want to make more money, do more procedures. The more procedures, the more payments. We don't buy health, we buy a knee surgery here, a bottle of blood pressure medicine there. "Of course we don't buy health, silly" you say - "we can't". So ask yourself; why not? Because it's not impossible, it's just that we just don't do it that way.
  
  
  
• Treatment of the most desperate, difficult cases takes serious resources, and serious skills. The most desperate cases are a very small share of the total - but they consume a very large share of all resources devoted to health care. This is America - we're good at addressing really tough problems. Remember the moon landing? Well, saving the lives of 1.5-pound babies, born at 22 weeks, are like mini-moon landings. Anyway, we find ways to tackle those really tough problems, to find resources to do it, and to fool ourselves that we can afford it, because that's what we do.
  
  
  
• But meanwhile we hate "taxes", and government, and bureaucracy - those aren't the American way. So we fool ourselves that our inefficient, wasteful means of gathering and deploying resources is the 'right' way, the pragmatic, "free market", "innovative" way to pay for health care - that our refusal to be systematic about acquiring resources to support our pretty highly capable health treatment facilities and clinicians makes "our" special, "exceptional" kind of sense. It would be funny, if it weren't so stupid.
  
  
• Taken altogether, we spend a lot more - 33 to 50% more - than people in other comparable countries do on "health", and we get no better health than they do for all our spending. We generally don't even get more health transactions - we just pay more for them. Mainly because that's how we do - that's our habit.
  
  But that still doesn't explain why health insurance* is so expensive, but now that should be easy to see. Health insurance is designed to pay some or all of a decently well-defined realm of possible treatment charges. It's not suited, mainly, to change how those procedures happen. It's a mostly passive follower of what gets charged, and while payers exert some pressure on care providers to moderate their ways, the pressure is feeble, and its motivations compromised.

I took a class on African Religions, so I can help on the Yoruba side!

For a quick primer, pick up Stephen Prothero's God is Not One. It's an introduction to World Religions type book, but it's a great read and he includes an entire chapter specifically on Yoruba.

For more mythology, pick up Osun across the Waters by Muphy and Sanford It's a great history of the Yoruba pantheon and how they crossed to the Americas. Osun has some fantastic myths attached to her.

For a really fun read that's a little off topic, pick up Karen McCarthy-Brown's Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. It's an anthropologist's conversations with a Vodou priestess, with descriptions of the ritual (Vodou is a daughter religion to Yoruba - they share a lot of the same ideas and gods), and every other chapter is a short story written by the author that explores some of the history and themes of the tradition. Her descriptions of the various orishas/lwas are really fun reading.

Ben Thompson explored Facebook's effect on elections two years ago:

> This [engaging content rising to the top] is a big problem for the parties as described in The Party Decides. Remember, in Noel and company’s description party actors care more about their policy preferences than they do voter preferences, but in an aggregated world it is voters aka users who decide which issues get traction and which don’t. And, by extension, the most successful politicians in an aggregated world are not those who serve the party but rather those who tell voters what they most want to hear.

As South China Morning Post points out, if your candidate selection process is hijacked, you only get the illusion of control.

Look at the recent Italian election. The recently formed Five Star Movement gained 31% of the votes earlier this month.

From Bloomberg:

> The five stars in its name represent the five issues it cares most about: public water, sustainable transport, sustainable development, the right to internet access and environmentalism.

Meanwhile, Americans traffic the conventional wisdom that a vote for the environmentalist or libertarian fringe candidate will have an adverse affect on that voter's preferences. Every American, like me, who was offered Bush vs Kerry AND Clinton vs Trump in their voting lifetime has an obligation to evangelize something like the alternatives offered in /r/endFPTP.

> I suspect this is why the left calls all IQ discussions 'racist'.

It was even called racist back in the day. In the 20's and 30's most everybody was fine with the concept and had no issue with it, despite the fact that the science of IQ was in its infancy compared to today. After WW2 though, I suppose on some level, its understandable why the topic became too hot to touch, but in academia from that point, its still been very difficult for the issue to make a comeback. And it's especially a bitter pill to swallow for public consumption.

Charles Murray though is the case in point that everyone likes to point to. He was crucified by (mostly) liberal academics in his line of research. In particular, Stephen Jay Gould who wrote the Mismeasure of Man (which was a direct response to the Bell Curve), which most psychologists and virtually all psychometricians today dismiss. But I don't know enough about the science as a whole to know if what Murray's talking about is true. I'll take it at face value that it is on some level.

> Hierarchy exists as a part of nature.

I agree entirely with this but it is important to remember nevertheless, when more sophisticated people on the left (and I'd like to include myself here just a bit) criticize hierarchy and inequality, we're not talking about natural inequalities for the most part.

> The funny thing is, no one bats an eye that black people make up most of the NBA and the NFL, not to mention are at the elite top of pretty much every track and field event (sans shot put maybe). Apparently in the context of sports it is just fine to discuss, but actually want to talk about things that affect success at life outcomes? How dare you!

True, unfortunately.

> I think you are an example that the overton window is shifting on this. It may not be mainstream, but the data is certainly on the side of those who think IQ is important. I can't wait until it does go mainstream - maybe then we can actually start having conversations about what we (as society) are going to do about all the low IQ people who just had their jobs automated.

It's increasingly getting a lot more steam and mainstream attraction. What I worry about however are the political/economic and social implications of this. People should be free to make of their life whatever they will, but the extent to which our choices and abilities to do what we want to are constrained by our IQ and other factors, makes this very difficult. And will always cause conflict unless its directly addressed. And this is the scary part, because its where you get into subjects about dysgenics and other things.

> This is a huge problem coming up. I don't think either side has particularly good solutions.

Indeed.

No one has called this out yet? Have you read Nate Silver's reasonings behind Sanders having no chance and Trump maybe having some?

Silver and FiveThirtyEight largely believe that the party decides. Which means ENDORSEMENTS are the biggest indicator of which candidate is the most likely to be the nominee, not poll numbers.

Trump has somewhat of a chance because the Republican party is historically divided. His huge poll numbers have a chance of dazzling the public before the Republican party can get behind a candidate, which will force the party to support him or else they face splitting their base if they refuse to endorse him. This is why you have people like Graham and Pataki dropping out in quick succession because they're doing what's best for the party.

There's a lot going on with Republicans that clears a path for Trump to maybe get it. Meanwhile, Clinton is literally the most supported party candidate in the history of elections on planet Earth. Short of a scandal worse than watergate or her death, her support isn't going anywhere. Not to mention, Silver has already wrote about how it's misguided to compare Sanders to Trump.

And just for kicks, since you seem like the type of person who's going to have some misguided optimism in February when Bernie wins Iowa and New Hampshire, FiveThirtyEight already predicted that Sanders would win those two states and then lose everywhere else.

Maybe you should read what the most accurate statistician actually thinks before criticizing him?

In the interest of trying to recommend books you may not have read, I am suggesting some that may seem far afield from books like HPMOR. But I have read each of them multiple times and loved them, and all of them gave me a lot to think about.

I just created a comment for Chapter 85 recommending Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks. It is non-fiction, a painfully honest autobiography, and not very similar except for the bits about Knut Haukelid, but it is an amazing book. The author was the head of codes for SOE during WWII and so the book is about cryptography and secrets. And courage. I'm reading it for the third time right now.

Tuf Voyaging is a collection of short stories by George R. R. Martin (no one named Stark is in it), about Haviland Tuf, a misanthropic cat-loving merchant who starts with his humble ship "Cornucopia of Excellent Goods at Low Prices" and ends up with terrifying power and some hard decisions to make about how to use it. I'd call it comedy because it is hilarious, but it is also brilliantly-written horror.

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is a tiny surreal book by Stanislaw Lem, about a journal uncovered by a post-apolcalyptic civilization. The main character has no name, and is apparently a spy on a mission so secret even he doesn't know about it. It is nightmarish, has absolutely no rationality to it at all, is clever and unlike any other book I've read, and most people haven't heard of it.

The Control of Nature by John McPhee is another non-fiction book. I recommend it for the beauty of the language, the depth of the research, and the fact that it is incredibly fascinating and impossible to put down. McPhee makes every person he meets into someone you want to know, and his science has substance without ever losing that sense of wonder.

Obama's mother was born in 1942, her father fought in WWII and Obama was 7 years old in 1968. She was eighteen when Obama was born in 1961. She was a boomer, an early hipster and Barry is an early GenXer.

When we talk about the Baby Boom it is a well-defined timeframe describing people born in the 40s and 50s when there was a huge increase in birth rates in the US. This generational cohort shares common set of experiences, marked by historical, cultural and social events that everyone reacts to in their own way, but which mark that generation in a way that younger/older generations don't share.

You are right from the perspective of a biological family unit that the parents belong to one generation, and the children to another. This fact gives us no insight into how different generations (in the sense of age-group cohorts) might react to the same set of historical circumstances.

A lot of what I see in these threads on reddit is a familiar intergenerational resentment that probably dates back to the dawn of civilization. Old people gripe at the young, because they resent their youth. Young people resent old people hanging on to economic resources and social status. So what else is new?

What's more interesting is the interplay between generations that become defined by watershed events (like WWII or the Vietnam War) that demand a collective response from young adults. As they get older they are still defined to a large degree by those events (think about how the Boomers have continued to play out old traumas of the 60s on current events).

Back in the early 90s a book was published that posed a theory of the way these generational tensions played out through American history:

Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069

It's amazing to me how much influence these ideas have today, over 30(!) years later. Here's a wiki on the theory.

In a nutshell, the authors argue that there are 4 different generational types that repeat in a cycle which can be traced back in the US to before the American Revolution. Each generation is roughly 20-22 years in historical time.

Corporations and political parties spend tens of millions of dollars trying to predict generational trends for marketing and campaign purposes. The authors even set up their own consulting business because of the predictive accuracy of their model.

Millennials, they say, correspond to the Greatest Generation, marked by idealism, hard work, and if predictions come true they will successfully "clean up the mess" left by prior generations, as did the WWII cohort. GenX, marked by well-earned cynicism and world-weary pragmatism, will serve as cautionary elder council to the exuberance of the Millennials.

It's not surprising that so many twenty-somethings resent being characterized as slackers because I don't see that at all. As a GenXer I know we invented that shit. We had reasons.

Rather than point fingers and decide which generation is good or bad, maybe we should take into account the different experiences and challenges and baggage each generation brings to the game.

BTW. Douglas Copeland would be mighty surprised to hear that people over 50 aren't GenX, since he was certainly considered as such when he wrote the book that defined the generation.

"Who are they? Does Generation X even exist? If so, how can we make money from it? Are they boomers or are they different? Do they require a different management style?

"And on and on.

"I’ve never had an answer to any of these questions, although, as a shorthand, I said, and continue to say, that if you liked the Talking Heads back in the day, then you’re probably X. Or if you liked New Order. Or Joy Division. Or something, anything, other than that wretched Forrest Gumpy baby-boomer we-run-the-planety crap that boomers endlessly yammer on about – I mean, good for them, have and enjoy your generation! – but please don’t tell me that that’s me, too, because it’s not, it never was and it never will be. The whole point of Gen X was, and continues to be, a negation of being forced into Baby Boomerdom against one’s will." -DC

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

I read The Catcher Was a Spy probably 20 years ago. It's mildly interesting in recollecting Moe Berg's life, but it reads more like someone's idea of what their life may have been like, than what it actually was.

If you want some interesting baseball books, I'd suggest October 1964 by David Halberstam, The Boys of Summer (classic) by Roger Kahn, or Great and Glorious Game by Bart Giamatti. The last one includes an essay entitled "The Green Fields of the Mind" that is probably one of the most beautiful pieces written about the game.

> It's a good reminder that "white" people in America are not homogenous. Check out the book American Nations by Colin Woodard. He doesn't go into Minnesota so specifically, as I recall, but he covers the vastly different histories and backgrounds of the people that regions of our country were populated by and how much those original values and principles still explain politics and such today.

> American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America https://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures-ebook/dp/B0052RDIZA

This was a really good read! It's an interesting perspective on North American history that makes the broad strokes fit together a lot better than my high school textbook ever did and focuses on what I think is the most interesting part of history: how it explains why things are the way they are today.

The authors of the book Generations make a pretty good description of it. Basically, the Boomer generation was born into the 'perfect world' created for them by the GI Generation (their parents).

Their whole world-view is basically self-centered and idealistic, and you can see this in advertisements for retirement funds that are targeted at boomers. (There's one I think narrated by Dennis Hopper: "We were the generation that was going to change everything, and now we're changing the way we retire")

Much of the Woodstock stuff was idealistic. As a generation, they are basically narcissistic, which is why the 70s was the "Me" decade, and why so many members of Generation X were either latchkey kids, or children of divorce - the Boomers were more obsessed with career climbing or their personal 'happiness' than institutions of marriage or family.

Although their self-centered independence was counter-culture in the 60s and 70s, in the 80s as they grew up and became more corporate and career-centered it became less about peace and love and more about profits and low taxes. (Wall Street - Gordon Gekko: "Greed is Good") Conservativism/Libertarianism is another form of dreamy-eyed Idealism.

As you would find out if you read Generations or The Fourth Turning by the same authors, this is nothing new as the general 'lifestyles and values' of generations tend to repeat cyclically, due to the complex interaction between generations. Hence, the Baby Boomer generation had a lot in common with the Missionary Generation of the 1860s-1880s.

That's a broad topic. Let's see:

• Recent, still relevant baseball: The Arm by Jeff Passan. One of the best sportswriters today goes way in-depth to what's going on with pitching injuries. Fascinating read.
  
  
• Historical / Classic Reads: Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer, about the Brooklyn Dodgers in Jackie's day. Kahn's a wonderful storyteller.
  
  
• Weird, but wonderful: Philip Roth's The Great American Novel, about the fictional Patriot League. One of these days, I want to run an OOTP sim of the league and see what happens. Completely out there, but I loved it.
  
  
• Edit: Almost forgot! The Kid Who Only Hit Homers, by Matt Christopher. First baseball book I ever read.

The presidential primaries started out as optional, non-binding referenda held by the parties to see how candidates selected by party elites would fare in elections. There have been various reforms that made them more binding over the years, but historically they were generally just a way to weed out the unelectable candidates.

The early voting states vote early due to historical accident more than anything else, but now there are interests vested in keeping them early. Iowa set their caucus date early when the Democrats made major primary reforms in 1968 and they've been there since. As the primaries have become more important, the influence of going first has grown and Iowa and NH have worked to make sure they keep voting early by moving their dates up whenever someone tries to leapfrog them.

I'd recommend reading The Party Decides if you're interested in the primaries. The analysis doesn't include 2016, there might be something more recent that takes it into account, but I'd recommend it anyway.

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

​

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

This is undoubtedly far more wonky than you're looking for, but it's an interesting read and speaks in interesting generalities about various parts of the US: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.

There are definitely regional differences, but I think there are a lot of similarities as well, and you're probably not going to write the peculiarities of a place as well as someone who's lived there so agonizing over it will only bring you headache and frustration. Otherwise, I agree with someone else somewhere on this thread. Pick a town. You can wikipedia pretty much any town and find out its size, the primary thing it produces, geographic density, local flora/fauna, etc. You don't have to say you're writing that specific town. Just use it as a blueprint. You can google image it to get pictures of what the countryside looks like, and even describe interesting features about whatever town it is without embedding it too much in an actual town. Relying too much on stereotypes regarding the state or city might turn it into a caricature.

It is very interesting, two guys (Neil Howe and William Strauss) using their research based on generation cycles correctly predicted in 1997 that some kind of event between 2005 and 2008 would happen that would be the catalyst to fundamentally change America. Low and behold, what happened in 2008? We had a economic crash and a financial crisis. Here is a 35 min video of them on CSPAN from 1997 talking about their generational theory and research:

Neil Howe and William Strauss on The Fourth Turning in 1997 CSpan

The Fourth Turning is the first book they wrote detailing their research. (William Strauss passed away in 2007).

Strauss-Howe Generational Theory

To give you some perspective, the Millennial Generation is what they call a "Hero Generation". The most recent example of a "Hero Generation" is the generation that grew up during the Great Depression and fought in WW2 (which that generation is virtually gone now).

>Hero generations are born after an Awakening, during a time of individual pragmatism, self-reliance, and laissez faire (hmm that sounds kind of like our last 30 years). Heroes grow up as increasingly protected post-Awakening children, come of age as team-oriented young optimists during a Crisis, emerge as energetic, overly-confident midlifers, and age into politically powerful elders attacked by another Awakening. Their main societal contributions are in the area of community, affluence, and technology. Their best-known historical leaders include Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John F. Kennedy. These have been vigorous and rational institution builders. In midlife, all have been aggressive advocates of economic prosperity and public optimism, and all have maintained a reputation for civic energy and competence in old age.

If you have any interest in this kind of stuff, I highly recommend reading their book:

The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny(1997)

Neil Howe also published a book in 2000:

Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation

To quote one of the reviews:

>Still, the book is engrossing reading. It was actually recommended to me by a distinguished U.S. Army officer who suggested that the book could give military leaders insights into the wave of young people currently entering the armed services. I believe that many other professionals could also benefit from a critical reading of this book.


The recent research conducted today about the Millennial Generation largely supports Neil Howe and William Strauss generational theory.

Those two guy should be given some kind of recognition for their work.

Historian here: I recommend simply finding good books on topics or periods that interest you. Textbooks are dull and by design shallow. Most people will enjoy (and benefit) from reading more in-depth studies of a topic they are passionately interested in, at least as a starting point. For example, if you are interested in the 1920s I'd highly recommend Daniel Orkrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition as a fascinating and quick read that will leave you wanting to learn more about the 1920s.

So what interests you?

Once you have some topics lined up, go to /r/askhistorians and ask for suggestions.

Thanks! I just wish I could say there were more good things on the list.

And thanks for the Patton recommendation, I'll check that out.

I do recommend anything by John McPhee in the strongest possible terms. It's all non-fiction, and always interesting and often very funny, and about a tremendous range of topics.

Like fishing? Read The Founding Fish, which is all about the American Shad, and I mentioned before.

Like boats? Looking For a Ship is about the merchant marine.

Planes, trains, and automobiles (and more boats)? Uncommon Carriers deals with all of them, and why almost all lobster eaten in the US comes from Kentucky.

Care for tales about why New Orleans is doomed, pissing on lava , and debris flows in LA? The Control of Nature covers those.

Fruit? How about Oranges?

Geology? The Annals of the Former World is a compilation of several shorter books more or less following I-80 across the US.

Sports? Tennis (and basketball to a lesser extent). He's also written about lacrosse in various magazines.

...And a ton of other stuff, ranging from bears to farmers markets to nuclear energy to lifting body airplanes to Switzerland.

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

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

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

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

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

I show this sketch when I teach about the medicalization of birth.

Woman: "Excuse me? What should I do?"

Doctor: "Oh, nothing dear. You're not qualified!"

Love it.

Edit: I knew this would draw some comments. So there are multiple ways of discussing the medicalization of birth. Personally, I don't care how you give birth. The way I teach it is in the context of physician authority. In the late 19th early 20th century American doctors had almost no respect. There was no authority overseeing medical education. You could open your own med school and pump out degrees for a fee. Thus there were tons of quacks and charlatans. There's a larger story of why that changed, but one small piece of it is that physicians had to extend their authority over things that they could reasonably improve, or (if you're a cynic) make the argument that they could improve. With the invention of the forceps and the implementation of germ theory, birth became one of those things. Contrast this with Germany, where physicians enjoyed much higher degrees of respect and autonomy relative to their American counterparts. They wanted nothing to do with birth because it was the purview of midwives. What helped establish authority and respect for American doctors would only serve to diminish authority for German doctors (or so they thought anyway). Thus birth has a stronger history of medicalization (turning a previously non-medical phenomenon into a medical one) in the U.S. than in Europe. It's much more complicated than that, but that's the basic gist. This is coming mostly from Paul Starr's The Social Transformation of American Medicine.

Again, I don't care how you give birth.

The truth is, if we could isolate one reason why healthcare is so expensive, it would be a lot easier to find a solution. I'm a few months shy of a Master's degree in Public Health, and I've spent 2+ years studying US Healthcare and Policy. To really grasp where we are today, you have to understand that the US Healthcare "System" evolved as a piecemeal operation that, through time, has been controlled by various competing interests. This is a relatively brief summary that talks about how medical care changed since the 1800s.

The shortest answer I can give is that the actual cost of providing care has become so far removed from the service itself, that prices have no reflection on reality. Providers are trying to capture the cost of all their services in your charge, and try to set it in such a way that they don't get fisted by private insurance companies and Medicare/Medicaid. When you pay $500 for a night guard at an ER, you're paying for the actual cost of the guard, the salaries and benefits of doctors/nurses/cleaning crew, the time you spent sitting in a bed, the cost of electricity on the ER floor, the sanitation and laundry charges of the hospital, etc. How those costs are allocated and how providers are paid are constantly changing through state/federal fee schedules, insurance negotiations, etc. Health care providers are trying to stay above water, and insurance companies are trying to make their shareholders happy.

Example: If an insurance company negotiates a rate with a hospital that they will pay 85% of whatever you charge, you raise your charge 117% to compensate and get back the original cost. As this happens over and over for three decades, you end up with hospital bills that charge you $30 for an aspirin that you see everyone bitching about. Medicare, Medicaid and charity care throw an entirely different monkey wrench in the system, as they almost universally underpay for services, leaving the hospital to let private payers shoulder the costs.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that, in spite of the desire to blame some sinister insurance/pharma/medical force that is made of men with cigars laughing in dark rooms, it's almost entirely the consequence of short-term responses to immediate pressures. Nobody has really stopped looked at the big picture, which is why we're in such a clusterfuck today.

If you have more specific questions, you can ask. I also highly recommend The Social Transformation of American Medicine, which is still one of the best analyses of US Healthcare out there.

Pretty much everything I know about QM, I learned from reading stuff on websites like the ones people love to link on Reddit, or similar things I've found on Google. :) I can suggest you take a look at Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm about halfway through and it's pretty dense with information, but it's still good!

Knowing what I know, I believe the issue with collecting a bunch of entangled particles is that scientists generally use photons, since it's easiest to entangle them compared to anything else, and photons aren't exactly something that hangs around waiting to be accumulated. One procedure to entangle particles requires forcing two electrons out of orbit from opposite sides of their atom. Read about creating entangled particles here. In one article, I read it would take about one million particles to get an entangled pair, but processes have improved so we can get about six a second.

I can't find any references to the "17 fields," though. I found quantum field theory, but nothing else.

I'm glad you weren't forced or pressured, though you do seem a little zealous when it comes to free-market ideology. Not to say there's anything wrong with that! We all have our passions in life.

It's just interesting that you seem zealous about free-market ideology and happen to attend a specific University center program that just happens to be funded by Charles Koch. Also, the author of the report you mentioned (Russell Sobel) just happens to be a Koch-funded academic at WVU. I'm sure he's not influenced at all by the funding either, especially when he blasts all regulations of all types. ;)


Are you aware that the conditions of many of Koch's academic grants are that his operatives in the program get free hand in selecting and approving resulting publications? This is where much (if not most) of the climate change denier research comes from. Does that bother you at all? (not that you were necessarily aware)

If you ever want to learn more about the Kochs and their influence, try to check this out in your spare time. Parts of it go into great detail about their inroads into academia. :)

I'm an Agnostic, So I'm not gonna be of much help here..But as you said Signs & Eclipses & End times and your Connection with it as gay.. If you don't mind I'm gonna suggest you two books by two authors & which changed my life ..And my thought about religion , god , who we we & what we can do.. Before That, i was a person who was scared of Religious Dogmas..Like Apocalypse, Or Whatever..But After Reading these & more I'm not scared of anything & I Respect Nature & everything around me more..

There are Lot Things we Don't Know About..I Would Say Never Supposed to Know about..Till Today People Don't Know That Gospels are 4 Separate books belong to different Time written by different authors & have completely different stories..& discrepancies with one other if you know how to read it you can she for it yourself, other than how you are TAUGHT to read it..

Similarly,
some biblical views of women are superior to others. And so the
apostle Paul’s attitude about women is that they could be and should
be leaders of the Christian communities—as evidenced by the fact
that in his own communities there were women who were church
organizers, deacons, and even apostles (Romans 16). That attitude is
much better than the one inserted by a later scribe into Paul’s letter
of 1 Corinthians, which claims women should always be silent in
the church (1 Corinthians​ 14:35–36), or the one forged under Paul’s
name in the letter of 1 Timothy, which insists that women remain
silent, submissive, and pregnant (1 Timothy 2:11–15) ..See, if you know how to Read the Bible...You Get to Know More about religion..

Okay its Enough about Religion..As I Said If You Have Time..Please Read The Books I Suggested..It will be helpful for you to separate nature & religion.. Natural Phenomenon Happens whether you connect it with religion or not..Eclipses happened 30000 Years Before, Ancient People Recorded It for Thousands of Year & Made Calendars for next thousands of Year.. it is Happening Now, It Will Happen In Future.. There is no stopping it by any means.. Instead of Fearing it because of Religion..LOVE IT ..Respect It..Admire it..Its a beautiful Phenomenon, and Just a small part of Nature..

Whichever Religion It Doesn't Matter, Being a Good Human is Important..Instead of Thinking about these things & fearing it..Be A Good Person, Help Others In Need ..Be Truthful to Yourself, Don't be Afraid or Ashamed to be Who you are..Stand Up for Yourself..& Love Everyone..The World Needs Love today than Anything..

From the Ashes of Angels: The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race by Andrew Collins

Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

There are Ebooks too ..If you can't wait for Paperback :) ...

This doesn't actually answer your question but if this is a topic you're interested in, you should consider checking out The Discoverers. Daniel J. Boorstin covers the history of clock making and why it rose to such prominence in some countries and not others, and he places it in a greater context of innovation and technology and man's attempts to understand the world around him. It can be a bit dry at times, but it is thorough and the topics at hand are very interesting.

Granted, I'm no expert, and it's only one, non-primary source. But I'd say it's worth the read.

Its not about preference. That's like saying the difference between slavery, feudalism and capitalism is whichever someone prefers living under. Its mutually exclusive.

Communism is not your "life your life to the fullest" type of philosophy akin to Buddhism. Its not a way of life or a way of thought, its a set of viewpoints and conceptions about the nature of society, and of its respective institutions, with private property being its main focus. Communism is about viewing the contemporary world as a result of its logical, material precedents, known as historical materialism. Its about gaining an understanding into the nature of property relations and essentially of capitalism.

Marx's viewpoint in looking at history essentially centered these principles

>1. The basis of human society is how humans work on nature to produce the means of subsistence.

>2. There is a division of labour into social classes (relations of production) based on property ownership where some people live from the labour of others.

>3. The system of class division is dependent on the mode of production.

>4. The mode of production is based on the level of the productive forces.

>5. Society moves from stage to stage when the dominant class is displaced by a new emerging class, by overthrowing the "political shell" that enforces the old relations of production no longer corresponding to the new productive forces. This takes place in the superstructure of society, the political arena in the form of revolution, whereby the underclass "liberates" the productive forces with new relations of production, and social relations, corresponding to it.

From this viewpoint he went on to conclude that capitalism inherently was a class system, based on an economic and political hierarchy, which give rise to many phenomenon that is harmful to humanity. Marx for example explained Imperialism as being the result of such a construct. This is a widely documented study and something you can find so easily.

Michael Parenti gives a good talk here which encompasses these ideas. I highly recommend watching it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEzOgpMWnVs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZTrY3TQpzw

If you never heard of the book "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn, I also highly suggest it. Its a great and popular book that tells the history of the US through the perspective the American proletariat, and clearly explains how dominant role economic hierarchy plays in history.

You see, communism is not just an opposition to commercialized lifestyle, and what not, its an explanation as to very contemporary problems within society itself. Problems that are very much deeply rooted within the system. For example, the mass media and its operation as a business. Noam Chomsky, considered US's best intellectual, along with Edward Herman wrote a great book called Manufacturing Consent that
deals with this topic.

You're operating on a huge straw man. You see, communism is more about understanding society from a logical, scientific perspective, rather than creating some utopia. I can point you to a few more sources that you might find of interest. Or at least start with Wikipedia articles. But I do recommend at least watching the Michael Parenti clip. Chomsky has good talks to but I don't like hes style as much. You don't even have to call yourself a "communist" to accept that world view and knowledge.

Hmm ... The names were always of Arabic origin for me. Alnilam, Mintaka, Alnitak.

And it was always curved somewhat ... an arc of sorts.

Ancient Islam actually had very advanced astronomy and named so many of the stars and constellations. That was before the dark ages and all of that. Not exactly a history expert (but working on this) so I'm not sure of the exact terminology or timeframes, but you get what I mean. From early civilization to medieval times to Romantic times to now. Or something like that.

I am somewhat of an amateur astrophotographer and astronomer as well, and I particularly focus on Orion, and Sirius in Canis Major, and Aldebaran and the Pleiades in Taurus, because of their relevance and mention in the ancient mysteries -- The Sirius Mystery, The Dogon people in Africa, and The Orion Mystery. The Great Pyramids at Giza align with the belt. I believe Graham Hancock mentions this variously in his works like The Message of the Sphinx and Fingerprints of the Gods.

> Trumps level of popular support is not surprising at all

Some of the reasons why Trump supporters are angry are understandable. The fact that they believe anything he says, think he gives a shit about them, or will in any way make their lives better is asinine.

> The idea being that whether the founding fathers were libertarian in their ideals is actually quite debatable

You could make the argument that some founding fathers (using the broadest possible definition of that term) may have held some points of view that square with modern libertarian thought. Hell, I share some views with libertarians as well, with respect to personal and civil liberties, for example.

But it's a ridiculous leap to declare that they were united in their belief in libertarianism and a weak central government, or that the country was founded on those principles.

When people speak of the founding fathers they're generally referring to the authors of the Constitution (mainly Madison and Jefferson), and other highly influential characters that included George Washington, Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Payne. It's amusing to hear conservatives using these historical figures to support their positions considering they all held many political views that were in stark contrast to those held by today's Republicans or Libertarians.

There were many other signatories to the Constitution, some of which you might find more ideologically compatible with your beliefs, but those folks were on the margins and cannot claim the title of architects of the Constitution or intellectual founders of the nation.

The quotes I cited, not to mention the extensive historical literature available on the topic, make it clear that the country was founded by people with widely varying and often bitterly conflicting points of view and ideologies, and were united only by their determination to gain independence from England.

Suggested reading:

American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America

https://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures-ebook/dp/B0052RDIZA/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=#nav-subnav

First off, welcome! I have a book to recommend for you OP, American Nations, it provides some great perspective and history about the cultures in the US.

The book mentions something really interesting--the US isn't becoming more homogenous, it's instead becoming more divided as people move to areas with cultures they identify with. We're 'self-sorting'.

Anyway, I'm with a lot of others here. The government doesn't really represent anyone but the wealthy and powerful. From what I understand, BC is underrepresented in it's government.

The US government is not only violating our rights (NSA etc) but is either unwilling or unable to deal with environmental and social problems. We're looking at a future with increased automation (where are the jobs going to come from), climate change disasters, sustainability problems, oil reliance, etc. As I see it the government is paralyzed because of how the current system works. The country is too big, too divided, and too reliant on lobbyists. I don't think change has much of a chance that way.

Also, the Cascadia movement isn't just about independence. A lot of folks don't care about independence. The Cascadia movement is also about recognizing our shared culture and working together in this region. I'm a huge fan of this idea--we have to work together to deal with climate change and to deal with future natural disasters.

Edit: I want to add, I think it's easier to take risks and try new things when you're smaller and more localized. As a California transplant, I feel like the culture up here is more accepting of trying out new ideas.

It depends on what you're interested in really. You can get the general explanation of Federal Reserve, Illuminati, 9/11, CIA, NSA, etc from just about any YouTube video. Some books that have recently opened my mind to other topics, however include:

The Source Field Investigations by David Wilcock - The best written and most well-sourced book I've read concerning alternative history, conspiracy theories, suppressed science, and a host of other topics. Main thesis being that consciousness is a nonlocal field.

Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock - Some of the best evidence out there for a lost civilization which fell out of power and memory sometime around the end of the ice age. A bit outdated, but a sequel is due this year.

Genesis Revisted by Zecharia Sitchin - Read this if you want to understand why some people think the Annunaki are a thing. Some interesting info, but I don't really buy into it that much.

Dark Mission by Richard Hoagland - Occult history of NASA, coverups of what was found on the Moon, Mars, and some suppressed science.

The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot - Exactly what it sounds like

Rather than reading about the same theories in different words over and over, these books gave me perspective on possible reasons why TPTB do what they do. And an idea on what some deeper purpose for their intensive consumerism propaganda might be for, other than profit. Additionaly they exposed me to new/old ideas on what the universe fundamentally is and how it works, with some good science to back it up. Highly recommend all of these books.

I feel you. It can be extremely demoralizing. It's designed to feel that way.

Despite the feeling of stagnation, we are making progress. We are making huge progress in the minds of the people. I would say that we are in the eye of the storm right now, which is why it feels so eerie and stagnant. Remember that almost no one knew who Bernie Sanders was two years ago (I remember, this is around the time I discovered him myself, and nobody I talked to about him had ever heard of him). And now is the most popular politician in the country. That is BIG. Think of all the lexicon and "common sense" he's introduced into daily discourse.

Reddit and the online media are part of a huge bubble. Reddit has always skewed upper middle class, but I really think the concerted shilling efforts have had a markedly noticeable effect on the composition of its primary user base. To be explicit, I think it used to be middle-to-upper-middle-class students and commuting tech workers. Now that shills changed the focus of the discussion, you find a lot more urban professionals and media types. "Journalists", bloggers/vloggers, silicon valley, etc. Plus, I think, more wealthy international redditors (e.g. the 1% in India, China, etc.) Not that all of them are neoliberal of course, just that the ones who are have been empowered to speak their mind more, and the ones who have a progressive or libertarian streak have been pulling back and getting more dormant. The shills are still here as well, but I feel like they have less work to do now.

But the important part to remember is, like they always smugly told us, back before they were the ones who needed reminding, "Reddit is not real life". There is something big going on in the minds of the average American. It takes time for people's worldview to change. By virtue of our participation here, it's evident that we're early adopters. It feels like we've known these things forever. Take heart: I have never been a bleeding edge person. I always adopt new ideas at the cusp, right before the tipping point where it goes mainstream. It's regular enough to be predictive, imo. It happened with smartphones, it happened with Bernie, and it's going to happen with the upcoming revolution (political or otherwise) as well. We will have campaign finance reform, universal healthcare, marijuana legalization, and so on. The collapse of the traditional mainstream media. There will also be violence, and escalation, and war, but whether it's domestic or international I can't say yet. All this within the next ten years.

Read The Fourth Turning if you haven't already. I'm impatient, it's true, but there's no doubt in my mind that it's coming.

I haven't read any Dawkins, but Daniel Okrent did a great job with Last Call. (I'm also a huge Dubner/Freakonomics fan.) I'm always very hesitant about authors reading their own work, and I'm pleasantly surprised when it great.

Because Trump has virtually zero support from his own party. Because Trump is remarkably unpopular with voters. There's no such headline as "Unpopular man with no allies defeats national party that comes together to support opponent."

There's so much good reporting out there from excellent political scientists and numbers folks, in a calmer world we'd shrug Trump off and go back to looking at the serious candidates.

538 continually puts out good articles:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/beware-a-gop-calendar-front-loaded-with-states-friendly-to-trump-and-cruz/

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-is-really-unpopular-with-general-election-voters/

And I also like Jonathan Bernstein, who is one of the best: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-07/party-elites-not-voters-will-choose-2016-nominees - who refers to this awesome book as well - http://www.amazon.com/The-Party-Decides-Presidential-Nominations/dp/0226112373

Remember, this is a primary. A primary is for a party to choose who will represent them in a presidential campaign. The people who run the party and do the most work in it have the most influence and collectively choose that candidate. Rightfully so, I think. Voters help, so do special interest groups, party-aligned media, etc etc. There are a ton of varied interests all working together and all trying to come together. It's democracy, and it's amazing. And a guy like Trump or Cruz can't just waltz in, be an asshole to everyone, and win.

Imagine going into your office tomorrow. You've been there maybe only a couple of years. Maybe it's your first day. First thing you do is call your bosses idiots, then you heroically pump up your colleagues to follow you, only to side step. You let them take the fall, effectively stabbing them in the back.

After doing this for a while, you announce your plan to run for company CEO.

Who is going to support you?

And yes, Cruz and Trump could win a state or two. Let's say you won a floor of your building, a floor not of peers, but of lower workers. You've gone down there talking shit about the CEO and what you'll do to kick them out. Populist stuff, basically.

Any sane person would say "ok, that's enough of this" and find one person they can throw their entire weight against to beat you.

Seriously, this stuff happens every cycle on both sides, since at least the 80s.

In no world does a candidate make an enemy out of their entire home team and win control over that team.

Haha - my girlfriend keeps telling me to start a YouTube channel. Personally, I think she just wants me to rant around the house less lol. But I've been thinking about putting something together - the lovely response from Redditors when I post comments like this make me think it might have a chance to be a successful way of getting the message out.

But if you're interested in reading about this stuff here are a few books by the people with real talent who did all the investigative legwork that I'm just repeating:

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307947904/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_V2.xDbT0G7T9Q

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101980966/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_23.xDbQ9EHJR5

one of my Criminal Justice professors recommended this book: legacy of ashes
Not entirely focused on the MK Ultra but good nonetheless.
It's a very good read.

Also the Men Who stare at Goats a good cinematic example.

It's very intriguing to see how they added the program into the show. Very cool way to introduce 11 (messed up) but cool.

Unfortunately, I don't think it can be said with full context. But I'll try. You can get what the book is about here:
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506716249&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+money

Basically, the trust fund kids (koch brothers and other billionaires) are creating/funding think tanks that focuses on whatever means to add to their bottom line. They are willing to skewer education in the way that teaches limited government is good for business. However, when the bailout idea came, they gladly took it. So they're not really taking on any ideological side, but whatever is easy for them to gain more money.

The reason for this is because the Koch brothers were brought up in a very militaristic style parenting by their father.. who teaches you must do whatever means to win. They were pitted against each other in fights, games, etc. so they carry that determination in business as well, and it's causing harm in our political system and society because they have so much control of wealth and thus influence.


There's a lot more to this obviously, the book is really a must read.

/u/LeeroyJenkins- has a good start in his post.

I would add Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn and Pull up a Chair The Vin Scully Story.
Not Dodger specific but Watching Baseball Smarter is also very good. It will help you appreciate the game you watch that much more.

The Baseball documentary by Ken Burns (as mentioned by /u/LeeroyJenkins-) is a must watch. It is long, around 20 hours including the 10th inning follow up, but it is well worth it. Available streaming on Amazon and Netflix.

If you took away my baseball, you might as well take away my air, water, and food. I live, breathe, and eat the game... so much so I work part time for one of the clubs!

A favorite non-fiction book is Crazy '08 about the 1908 season if you like the history of the game.
Also Summer of '49, The Boys of Summer, The Glory of Their Times, and Eight Men Out

For fiction... you MUST read Shoeless Joe. The Natural, For Love of the Game, and Bang the Drum Slowly aren't bad either... I'm sure you've seen all the movies too.

Well, Hemmingway wrote of a "lost generation," in 1926, but it was more of a poetic term and no one of that group would have called themselves/their cohorts that.

Likewise, Kerouac referred to a Beat Generation, but that never caught on and was really just a subculture, rather than a description of an entire generation.

The "Silent Generation" was first used in a Time magazine article in 1951, but again it was more poetic/metaphorical/descriptive term rather than a nominative. There was a book in the 80's called "Generations" that used the Silent Generation name to describe that group, but again, the actual people in that group would mostly never have referred to themselves that way and it wasn't really a "thing" until people started delineating the generations. Plus this name, like Gen Y, is a reactionary name to the Greatest and the Boomers, so it's more of a default than anything else.

Similarly, "While evidence exists for greatest generation being used to refer to these men and women during the Second World War, Greatest Generation as a moniker was more or less coined by journalist Tom Brokaw in his 1998 book The Greatest Generation. This generation is also sometimes known as the G.I. Generation.

May I suggest that you read The Oxford Annotated Bible.

Once you are done with that ... may I suggest

• The Discoverers
  
• The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination
  
• The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World Knowledge
  
  
  All three of these books dissect imagination, creativity and the human existence. I encourage anyone who has been a JW to read these books. I was raised from infancy to be a JW and I struggled to understand mankind's history, achievements and appreciation to where we are today.
  
  Mind you ... this is a meal literary Guinness with a steak dinner vs Bible is just a wine spritzer and salad.

Bottom of the 33rd was a very well written look at both the longest game in history as well as the players, ballpark staff, and fans in attendance. It puts the game in perspective.

If you're more into fiction and don't mind diving into a book written for Young Adults Summerland is a very enjoyable read. But it sounds like you would like more baseball in the book.

The Boys of Summer has a great blend of baseball and real life, talking about baseball in the 1930s and 40s and the hearts that broke when the Dodgers (and Giants) moved from New York to California.

I do see a trend in people who do very poorly in IQ tests are very combative towards it because it can be very humbling. An IQ test doesn't define every piece of your intelligence and there can be exceptions to the rules such as someone with dyslexia who happens to excel in their field. IQ tests have purposes other than defining "intelligence" for each and every individual with 100% accuracy; it's actually somewhat interesting to run IQ tests against many different races of people and see where differences are. See the very controversial book "The Bell Curve" for example.

IQ tests are not perfect but you can graph a lot of data from it that will average out the minorities or exceptions to the rules such as your examples and still provide useful accurate data. On the other token, think of the "rain man type" who are very gifted savants who may or may not do horrible on an IQ test but also can't tie their shoe or recognize facial cues. You say what good is an IQ test if geniuses can do poorly on them? Some people might say what good is being a genius if you can't even take care of yourself?

So to your point IQ tests are not perfect and I don't think anyone is actually claiming they are, but they serve a purpose as a measuring device that can be used with other devices to produce useful data.

Here you go: http://www.amazon.com/The-Island-Center-World-Manhattan/dp/1400078679

It's a fun read, although occasionally a bit too speculative.

Edit: Oh, and Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan is really speculative, but also brilliant and fantastic. One of my favorite books of all time.

All well and good to accuse people of being shills, but that doesn't make them wrong. Silver and Enten have both addressed why the missed on trump several times. As I'm sure you would agree that a lot was different this election. Most notably divergence from traditionally held ideas about primary contests and the effect of party elites. Even in this year at least on the dem side Endorsements turned out to be a pretty good predictor.

Seriously, read this book.

Or the wiki version

"Hero generations are born after an Awakening, during an Unraveling, a time of individual pragmatism, self-reliance, and laissez faire. Heroes grow up as increasingly protected post-Awakening children, come of age as team-oriented young optimists during a Crisis, emerge as energetic, overly-confident midlifers, and age into politically powerful elders attacked by another Awakening.[44]
Due to their location in history, such generations tend to be remembered for their collective military triumphs in young adulthood and their political achievements as elders. Their main societal contributions are in the area of community, affluence, and technology. Their best-known historical leaders include Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. These have been vigorous and rational institution builders. In midlife, all have been aggressive advocates of economic prosperity and public optimism, and all have maintained a reputation for civic energy and competence in old age. (Examples among today’s living generations: G.I. Generation and the Millennials.)[45]"

If you want to hear more about this I recommend "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right". Unfortunately - seminars like this are only the tip of the ice-berg. There are huge ideological enterprises set up with goal of establishing "beach-heads" at prestigious universities by setting up private organizations that are attached to the university but paid to publish certain results. Their role is usually to promote free markets and encourage the inclusion of economic costs in law (not just public good). The Mercatus Institute is another example of one of these privately-funded-but-publicly-housed organizations. They're the guys who made news a few months ago when they published a study on Bernie Sander's medicare-for-all plan that showed that even though it was expensive - it was still cheaper than what we're spending now.

It's a bit of a mixed bag, if you look at the Politifact tracker. Even so, we're never going to have transparency into the DoD or intelligence operations. There's a book called Legacy of Ashes that points out that the very existence of an intelligence office is counter to an open democracy. That really made it clear to me that we can't actually have everything in the open, and we elect officials to be in those dim rooms seeing what we can't and making decisions in our best interest.

Proven a long, long time ago. You just aren't allowed to talk about it. Real differences too, like IQ, which is the greatest predictor of success in life far above things like family wealth and social status.

https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505490989&sr=8-1&keywords=the+bell+curve

• Look through a few political science books
  
  
• Read from a few well respected publications:
  
  -The Economist
  
  -Slate
  
  -The Atlantic
  
  -Foreign Policy Magazine
  
  (Just to name a few well rounded publications.)
  
  
• Read an enormous amount of History Books.
  
  A People's History of the United States By Howard Zinn is a great primer, but I'm sure some people will say that it leans too far to the left. Either way I thought it was great, regardless of your political view.
  
  
• Debate with people. Seek out (constructive) debate with those that disagree with you. Constantly challenge your own ideas and preconceived notions.
  
  
• Rinse and Repeat.
  
  EDIT:
  
  
• Also, I forgot the most important thing: Constantly study and improve your skills in this subject. Without it, everything else is useless.
  
  

I keep running into people who think that Hillary cleared the field just by convincing everyone that she was the best person for the job and balk at the idea that she locked up intra-party support by boxing out potential challengers from party institutions so she wouldn't get obama'd. I've got a couple sources to that effect but I could use more. Here's the way i put it:

>It's access to donors, access to policy think tanks, and access to key interest groups etc. The main theroetical text that's cited by political commenters is the party decides. By their very nature, field-clearing is a secretive process that happens behind closed doors, because making such discussions public is inherently damaging to the legitimacy of the primary process.

>A few examples that were made public:

>Warren was told by donors not to run

>Biden was told by Obama not to run

>Wonks: "Clinton has achieved such overwhelming party insider support that the Sanders campaign is largely cut off from access to the kind of para-party policy wonk universe that would allow Sanders to release campaign proposals that pass muster by the traditional rules of the game."

>The belief that everyone lined up behind hillary because of admiration and the idea that a primary was damaging (which isn't empirically true, but remains a talking point anyway) was a polite fiction designed to foster primary unity.

They epitomize libertarianism. They're largely (almost solely) responsible for the rise of right wing and libertarian think tanks and ideals in the United states over the last several decades. If you ever want to be disgusted by the efforts and successes of the Koch brothers and their oligarch friends, I suggest this book: https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1550262479&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+money. It outlines how they've infiltrated the government, academic institutions, and general society with evil intentions and great success.

Fakta om IQ, eller g (generell intelligensfaktor)

• Hög ärftlighet (r = 0.5-0.8)
  
• Korrelerar med hjärn- och skallstorlek (r = 0.2-0.4 beroende på mätmetod)
  
• Har prediktiv validitet (skolbetyg, lön, utbildning, arbetseffektivitet, succesivt bättre förmåga att lösa kognitiva problem för varje percentil etc.)
  
• Hög reliabilitet (r > 0.9) för återtest av samma individ senare i livet
  
• Validitet och reliabilitet är densamma för samtliga folkslag.
  
• Svarta i USA erhåller i genomsnitt en standardavvikelse (1 σ) lägre resultat än vita européer som i sin tur erhåller ungefär en halv standardavikelse lägre resultat än östasiater.
  
  Detta är konsensus i forskningen. Även forskare som exempelvis Richard Nisbett eller James Flynn, som tror att gruppskillnaderna är helt och hållet miljömässiga instämmer i det som skrivs ovan. Ingen insatt i forskningen tror på det typiska "IQ mäter ingenting", "IQ gynnar västerlänningar", "IQ mäter en minimal del av intelligens". Sådana påståenden visar att man ej läst litteraturen, exempelvis Nisbett, Murray och Herrnstein eller Mackintosh.
  
  Huruvida intelligensskillnaderna mellan grupperna (svarta-vita-asiater) beror på arv, miljö eller en kombination är mer spekulativt och här får man bilda sig en egen uppfattning genom att tillgodogöra sig argumenten från båda sidor. Här (kort och lättläst) är en bra sammanfattning av argument för och emot en ärftlig komponent till gruppskillnaderna skriven av Rushton & Jensen som tror på en 50-50-modell (observera att ingen tror på en 100% ärftlig modell, striden står mellan de som tror på 100% miljö mot de som tror på ungefär 50% miljö/50% arv).
  
  Data att fundera över (diagram):
  
  
• Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study
  
  
• Koreanska och icke-koreanska adoptivbarn mot infödd befolkning i Sverige
  
  
• Amerikanska högskoleprovet SAT, efter inkomst och ras
  
  
• Piffer (2015):
  
  > Published Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS), reporting the presence of alleles exhibiting significant and replicable associations with IQ, are reviewed. The average between-population frequency (polygenic score) of nine alleles positively and significantly associated with intelligence is strongly correlated to country-level IQ (r = .91). Factor analysis of allele frequencies furthermore identified a metagene with a similar correlation to country IQ (r = .86). The majority of the alleles (seven out of nine) loaded positively on this metagene. Allele frequencies varied by continent in a way that corresponds with observed population differences in average phenotypic intelligence. Average allele frequencies for intelligence GWAS hits exhibited higher inter-population variability than random SNPs matched to the GWAS hits or GWAS hits for height. This indicates stronger directional polygenic selection for intelligence relative to height. Random sets of SNPs and Fst distances were employed to deal with the issue of autocorrelation due to population structure. GWAS hits were much stronger predictors of IQ than random SNPs. Regressing IQ on Fst distances did not significantly alter the results nonetheless it demonstrated that, whilst population structure due to genetic drift and migrations is indeed related to IQ differences between populations, the GWAS hit frequencies are independent predictors of aggregate IQ differences.

To anyone who is interested in the early history of New York city, from the beginnings of the Dutch claiming the area for the Netherlands in the early 1500's, to the late 1600's when the British finally wrestled the city from the Dutch, I highly, highly recommend the book "Island at the Center of the World" by Russell Shorto. I have never been to New York city, and it is one of my top 3 most interesting books I have ever read. Especially, how he ties a global perspective of the city together with the beginnings of the Enlightenment in Europe at the exact same time period. And also how he directly relates the city of New Amsterdam (New York city) and it's founding and development to the development and founding of the Federation of the United States of America.

Link to the book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Island-Center-World-Manhattan/dp/1400078679/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395103864&sr=8-1&keywords=island+at+the+center+of+the+world

Link to those more interested: http://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/

Being a person who has taught many university geology courses, I would say that in general geology textbooks are really boring (in my opinion). I think there are some good non-fiction books our there about geology that may be more interesting. Some suggestions:

1. If you live in the US, see if there is a "Roadside Geology of <your state>" book. These books are pretty good, and relevant to where you live.
   
   
2. "Thin Ice" by Bowen, all about climate and ice cores. Lots of good climbing stories.
   
   
3. Books by people like John McPhee, such as "The Control of Nature"
   

Thank you very much for expounding on that. So much of what you say rings with truth.

>That was probably more than you wanted to know? :)

No, you reply was wonderful, and I appreciate you taking the time to write it.

Now that I understand the terms a bit better, I understand that I broke away from the blank slate model about a decade ago when I read The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. It discussed the evidence that IQ is both largely heritable (and less environmental) and affects life outcome in almost every way. I thought the book was compelling. What surprised me was the outcry from academia. I realized then that they had some sort of egalitarian agenda that they didn't want disturbed.

>I am so fucking hungover dude and now I gotta read your wall of text bullshit at fucking 2 in the morning. Whiny cunt.

Nice start, 15 lines ain't a wall, only for you hominoidea.

>Ok, assuming your assertion is accurate and backed up (Race Realism tires me greatly),why does that literally matter for anything? At all?

It matters about virtually everything, as for wealth/education levels to criminality/birth out of wedlock, intelligence is a great predictor, which seems you don't have much. For pisa and timss for example the correlation is around 0.8.

>STUDIES SAY SO BUT I AIN'T GONNA LINK SHIT.

Since you can't search for shit, here goes:

Heritability IQ

Heritability IQ Wiki

Bell Curve

IQ and Global Inequality

A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievement

More about Jews

Blacks commit more violent crimes and poverty isn't correlated:

Truth about crime

A little bit of Harris

>'THESE ANIMALS ARE GONNA BREED AND WE GOTTA LEAVE THEM IN FILTH' That is what you said, dude. In fact, I would respect you more if you just came out and said it, or retracted your prior statement, not become a whiny cunt when someone treats you at the same level as your (repugnant) statements.

First world people aren't responsible for the chaos and irresponsibility by african adults. Africa had 200 million people at the start of 1900, now it's 1.216 billion and it's still sky rocketing. They need to become self-sustainable without european aid.

>That statement pisses me off, I've seen it kicked around ad nauseum, as if when people say that 'all men are born equal', they're like 'WELL ASCHTUALLY, WE ARE BIOLOGICALLY DIFFERENTTT'. No fuckwad, that's not what such a sentiment means. It means that, regardless, everybody should be treated with a baseline of respect and dignity. No more, no less.

Never said people needed to lose their natural rights, aid isn't a natural right.

>GUESS FUCKING WHY? IT AIN'T BECAUSE THEY'RE 'THE SUPERIOR INTELLECTUAL RACE', IT'S BECAUSE THOSE ARE FIRST WORLD CIVILIZATIONS WHO DON'T SHIT IN A TROUGH. That is why people get frustrated with you as an individual, because you're dense. Abjectly dense.

You need a smart population to maintain good institutions and have professions, which requires higher cognitive abilities.

>Refer to the above. But regardless, keeping them in poor conditions won't stop any suffering. I abjectly fail to see your amazing solution to this issue. 'IF WE KEEP THEM IN POVERTY, THEY'LL JUST DIE OUT OR SOMETHING'. Nope, they'll just continued to be impoverished and continue to have more dying kids. Good job.

Lack in food supply would force african parents to considerate their number of children and their capability to feed them, like any adult needs. Also, there is no duty to send aid and most of the aid is stolen by the african elite.

>Stop spreading bullshit. Abject bullshit.

The demographics of Africa only exploded because of european technology and aid, if that stabilises is another story, regardles, there is no duty to give aid.

>GUESS FUCKING WHY? IT AIN'T BECAUSE THEY'RE 'THE SUPERIOR INTELLECTUAL RACE', IT'S BECAUSE THOSE ARE FIRST WORLD CIVILIZATIONS WHO DON'T SHIT IN A TROUGH. That is why people get frustrated with you as an individual, because you're dense. Abjectly dense.

They have higher intelligence and intelligent people tend to have less children and invest more on them.

>I dislike your assertion that, because I share an ideology, we are somehow comparable. Or I should have 'x, y and z' beliefs. Eat a dick.

Because antinatalists rely on human nature and evolution to support their claims, but there will be always people like you in any political spectrum.


Cheers.








>

If anyone wants to read a really good book about these trees and the people who study them, I recommend The Wild Trees by Richard Preston. Among other really awesome interesting things, it talks about the discovery and exploration of the two trees mentioned in the article.

If you want a super interesting read into America's failures at espionage, Legacy of Ashes is a great read. We are decades behind other nations as far as infiltrating successfully and keeping our people alive.

The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. I'm a fan of time-travel, and history, and I was completely sucked into it. She's got a number of books in the same universe- some comedic, some very dramatic, but The Doomsday Book is my favourite.

If you're at all interested in high fantasy, I'd recommend either Tigana or The Fionovar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay. You either love his prose style or hate it, but if you love it, it will definitely take you away.

If you like SF and haven't read them, I'd try either Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos, or David Brin's Uplift Series (I'd skip Sundiver until later, and start with Startide Rising.)

If you're looking for more light-hearted/quirky, I'd try Christopher Moore- either Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal , or The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror. If you're into a mix of horror/sf/comedy, try John Dies at the End. They're not deep, but they're fun.

Non-fiction- if you haven't read it yet, Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is very difficult to put down. If you're travelling with someone who doesn't mind you looking up every few pages and saying "did you know this, this is awesome, wow-how interesting", I'd go for Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants or Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life. They're all very informative, fun, interesting books, but they're even better if you can share them while you're reading them.

This is a huge question, if I were you, I would do a combination of reading the book "American Nations"

And to get a better political understanding(which does in general inform culture quite a bit), read this report https://hiddentribes.us/

It's well regarded, long, but very very good. I think the report is fascinating.

Don't get caught up in labels like "races" or "breeds" etc, here are the basics:

When different communities of the same organism live in different environments they adapt to their situation. This is the basis of evolution.

Darwin's finches are a great example. You can also look at dogs like greyhounds and huskies. The one developed in a dry environment and the other in the cold.

This does not mean that a greyhound is better than a husky, it just means that they have different inherent AVERAGE population attributes. Now what makes it more interesting is that these attributes are spread over Bell curves. So while your average greyhound is faster than your average husky, there is an overlap where your very fast husky beats your slow greyhound.

This is why it is very dangerous to generalise about people. So while the average black IQ is 80, nine out of ten times you are bound to run into the 1% with a gifted intellect.

The sad thing is that we want the world to be equal and fair, thus we are very reluctant to admit to inherent differences. This cognitive dissonance prevents us from effectively addressing problems arising from these differences.

Relevant reading materials:

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/pharmacogenetics-personalized-medicine-and-race-744

http://www.jenjdanna.com/blog/2012/7/10/forensics-101-race-determination-based-on-the-skull.html

http://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299

I'm sure how far back you want to start, but if you want to get into our ancient ancestors, I'd start with Before the Dawn. Follow that up with Cro-Magnon for a decent overview of the first modern human migrations into Europe. There is some overlap with After the Ice-Age, but the latter is a great resource describing the first transitions into agriculture.

The History of the Ancient World would be a good follow up; it's breadth is quite broad, starting with the ancient Sumerians and taking you up to the fall of the Roman Empire, but it's broken into small, readable chunks.

Hopefully this helps to get you started!

Try reading the book "Legacy of Ashes" by Tim Wiener because it is a good non-biased history of the CIA. It will tell you about how they have behaved in the past as well as give you a good history about the CIA. They have done some very questionable stuff but they have also acted in the best interests of the USA at times. It really is a tough call but reading more about the history of them might help.

https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511592188&sr=8-1&keywords=legacy+of+ashes

I mean you say that but there have been very clear efforts by the leaders of the republican party to stop Trump. Trumps entire candidacy has pretty much debunked the party decides.

I wrote about this over on that other site that shall remain nameless and got a few comments, but also some not-so-good ones. Perhaps the community here might be more understanding and less critical, because this makes perfect sense to me.

Strauss & Howe co-authored a book published in 1997 entitled The Fourth Turning that I could not put down. While researching another topic, they discovered something odd, so they switched gears and researched in depth. They discovered that truly, history repeats itself, with quite distinctive and repeating patterns, going all the way back to the 1100s.

Their premise is simple. Each "turning" is comprised of approximately four 20-year periods similar to regular seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter. Each period lasts the time an average person is born till when we start having children. Four of these equal 80 years, an average lifespan.

The best way to envision this is to put yourself in the shoes of a person born in London England around 1904. Speaking in general, Zeitgeist terms, what would their life experiences be? That period was one of great technological advancement. Trains had been around for quite a while. Automobiles were new and were gaining in popularity. Next, what would be the life experiences of someone born in London in 1924? This time became known as "The roaring twenties" due to industrialization.

Lastly, what was the experience of a Londoner born in 1944? Starkly different. And to finish, envision the life experiences of 1964 London.

Strauss & Howe found the same repeating pattern over and over and over again, all the way back to the Dark Ages. The "turning" prior to and analogous to WWII included the Civil War. The one before that included the Revolutionary War. See where I'm going with this?

Each period corresponds to a season. "Spring" for us during this turning was just after WWII where we all rebuilt and put things back together. "Summer" was in the 1960s and everyone here knows what that was like. "Fall" was the 1980s. This is a period where things reach a zenith and begin to show signs of dying, just as during a regular fall the weather turns colder and trees lose their leaves. And then there's "Winter".

Guess where we are today?

Those born during each season also exhibit repeating patterns. We Boomers were born to buck the system, to challenge the conventionality of society, and that we did. The authors gave our archetype the name of "Patriots". Our job during the winter cycle is to help the "hero" generation, our present-day millennials.

And here is where I get to the reason for this long post. We are in this turning's "Crisis" period, which will end in approximately 2020 to 2025. Just as WWII's Dough Boys fought in the trenches during the last Crisis period, it will be the Millennials this time fighting the great fight. They will need our help, fellow Boomers. That's our job. We offer direction, but they are the one's who get it done.

And this makes me so proud and gives me hope. They are almost speaking in one voice: Enough of the madness, we want progressive policies. They are the ones who are to change the world. So your initial post is spot-on in that our systems and structures are becoming more and more dysfunctional, which will worsen until there's a single event, a tipping point if you will, that will bring everyone together. We have not reached the tipping point yet, but we can all feel and see it coming.

I just hope this time around we don't have a WWIII.

If I had to choose one single book to recommend about Vietnam it would be Neil Sheehan's superb A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

Also essential:

• Bernard Fall's Street Without Joy
  
  
• David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest
  
  
• Daniel Ellsberg's Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
  
  
• Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA(not specifically about Vietnam, but goes into a great bit of detail regarding the CIA's involvement in south-east Asia. Illuminating.)
  
  
• David W.P. Elliott's The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930-1975
  
  Hope this helps!

I guess science and data are racist now lmao

Here ya go:
https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299

The findings are pretty well accepted at this point. Scientific figures like Richard Dawkins have acknowledged the findings as legitmate, just "not useful to talk about".

But sure, go ahead and stick your head in the sand rather than engage in dialogue. Ignorance is bliss.

Doctors used to have to make house calls because there were no doctors' offices. There were some hospitals or convalescence homes, but they were run by charities or clergy and were places where you were given comfort rather than actual treatment.

Their profession was a very low-status one, and house calls reflected that. Doctors had to drive long distances to treat people, were paid very little, and had low status because they were largely ineffective. It wasn't until the start of the 20th century -- with the advent of clean water, antibiotics, and cleaner surgeries -- that doctors had more status, a union of professional peers (the AMA), and offices or hospitals to work with.

Source:http://www.amazon.com/The-Social-Transformation-American-Medicine/dp/0465079350

Do you think you've managed to do any of what you just outlined - at /r/femradebates more than here i guess, or whever else you might post.

> I mean interrogating the concepts/perspectives we have in terms of their assumptions

It seems like first of all you have to see if the concepts exist and what they are. At any rate I don't see much difference between what you say you are doing and what you say he's doing. It seems to me that in order to get at a common denominator, you will also be looking at differences. Those two things are not in conflict at all.

For example if you wanted to do something similar with religion, to get away from an amorphous sort of "all religions are the same " (at least the one I know about is), then you'd need to find commonality and difference. so something like this would be useful:

http://www.amazon.com/God-Is-Not-One-Religions/dp/0061571288

Once you've done that then you have a better chance to ask if the differences are significant or not, whether the different groups are essentially all the same thing with a few little trivial changes here and there or whether the common denominator as a concept shrinks upon close inspection of the different groups.

But I don't see you doing anything like this.

The Joe Rogan Experience with Graham Hancock #142 These two episodes of the podcast are both a must watch

The Joe Rogan Experience with Graham Hancock #160

Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock is a good book to start with.

Revelations of the Pyramids is a great documentary. I've seen this one at least a dozen times.

Graham Hancock's "Quest For The Lost Civilization" documentary is a bit on the slower side, but still very informative. He also has a ton of conferences and videos on his youtube channel.

The Pyramid Code & Magical Egypt are both good series.

Hope this helps!

Health doesn't function like a normal market good for several reasons. The most important, though, is that people do not assess healthcare like they do other commodities. You don't decide whether or not to get an operation or procedure (even an elective one) in the same way that you assess whether or not to buy a new cell phone or graphics card. That's why Martin Shkreli, for instance, can jack the price of a drug several thousand percent.

This has come out in history multiple times. My favorite is the Hill-Burton Act. That's a link to a wikipedia article but I like Paul Starr's account. Basically, they tried to drive down medical costs by expanding hospitals and increasing the numbers of doctors. More players in the market should increase supply relative to demand and drive down prices. The problem is that they failed to realize that doctors can actually drive demand. They can prescribe tests, drugs, and offer services that may only be marginally beneficial. As a patient, you're going to play it safe and do what your doctor says. This legislation actually wound up increasing the cost of medical care.

tl;dr: medical services do not function like other commodities in a market.

Edit: Here's another, and more recent article, by Atul Gawande.

Not been too many great replies here. I have the perfect book for you. Susan Wise Bauer's History of the Ancient World. It takes you from the dawn of history (~3,000BC) to Constantine, and is a really easy read, in fact it reads almost like fiction. A real pleasure. She also has two more, taking you up to 1453, but you can decide if you want them after you have read the first one.

I'm also going to suggets Francis Fukuyama's Origins of Political Order. This was the book that made me realise I didn't understand history or politics (most people go through life without ever realising this). Its also a history book, but focusing on the theme of the origins of our political institutions. A real good one. BTW ignore the boring cover that makes it look like a dry academic read; it isn't.

Thanks, interesting. I know you have probably read it (or maybe you're in it) but there is a great book called The Wild Trees that you might like.

https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Trees-Story-Passion-Daring/dp/0812975596

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

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

We do know why they're happening.

Have you ever read a history book? Generally speaking every single discussion* they ever had required a "note taker" and it's our custom to speak about these decisions a couple decades after. Obviously the whole truth isn't out there, and certainly not everyone tells the truth. But the motives behind everything I mentioned were clear as day.

I would encourage you to read books like

http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/0307389006

http://www.amazon.com/Osama-Bin-Laden-Michael-Scheuer/dp/0199898391

http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Midnight-Kennedy-Khrushchev/dp/1400078911

These men aren't all powerful, they don't take orders from some homogenous group that always retains the same position. And most importantly the information our leaders are given is often woefully inaccurate. The president more than anyone has the information that he is presented to him manipulated. Although some certainly have been more savvy than others.

I actually came in this thread to recommend that book. I shouldn't be too surprised that WSPer /u/irishjihad beat me to the punch.

Richard Preston is a fantastic nonfiction author. I've liked all his books, from the Hale telescope in First Light to enormous redwoods in The Wild Trees, and of course what's probably his biggest commercial success, The Hot Zone.

Anything by or editied by Craig Elevitch - he's Hawai'i based, so focuses mostly on tropical and subtropical trees, but the insights are valuable to anyone studying agroforestry.

i highly recommend The Overstory Book, which is collection of scientific articles on tree crops, including nutrient cycling, NFT's, intercropping etc etc etc.

not related to permaculture per se, but The Wild Trees is about folks exploring and studying the world's largest trees. very engaging and readable.

Anybody interested in the prohibition should read Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition which has a lot of fun facts like this one, along with some excellent information regarding the political machine that allowed a very vocal minority to get this kind of legislation passed.

Intrepid museum:

https://www.intrepidmuseum.org/The-Intrepid-Experience/Exhibits.aspx

South Steet Seaport Museum, but you might want to check right before you come to see which ships are open and when:

https://southstreetseaportmuseum.org/visit/

You might especially enjoy a morning or afternoon at Governor's Island, with Castle Williams and Fort Jay:

https://govisland.com/map

Also near where the ferry departs is Castle Clinton in Battery Park:

https://www.nps.gov/cacl/index.htm

This is an excellent book on early NYC history:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Island-Center-World-Manhattan-Forgotten/dp/1400078679

I wouldn't hold my breath... The CIA has been up to some pretty shady shit for a long time- For a good, tidy account of the historical highs and lows of the CIA, check out Legacy of Ashes
by Tim Weiner. A good read but definitely not does make one very proud to be an American at times. That and the special cocktail of hubris, stupidity, and lack of accountability that the CIA displays is breathtaking.

This might. Private funding, funneled through philantropic foundations to charitable and social causes. Aimed and organized specifically to swing close elections, influence their idea of a conservative ideology and culture and hand-pick candidates in their service. Billions of dollars from very very rich donors. Candidates either toe their line or find themselves either without funding, or run out of primaries. Paul Ryan and many others are featured.

Lots of names, lots of details. One of the best books I've read on american politics in a long time.

I actually really liked Susan Wise Bauer's The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome. It's kind of a slow read, but I enjoyed it, learned a lot, and am eagerly awaiting the next volume.

If you want to read a truly excellent book on the subject of Prohibition, you will immediately buy Last Call by Daniel Okrent.
He goes into detail about this issue and a lot of others. I don't have it in front of me or I would find a citation. One thing I liked about the book was that he goes all the way back to the first stirrings of the prohibition movement way back in the mid to late 1800s. I can't recommend this book enough if you're interested in the subject.

First and foremost: the Scandinavian ancestry and cultural values that came with it.

Pretty much everything else people have listed flows from that: work ethic, practicality, emphasis on education, mix of capitalism can-do attitude and well funded social programs.

Scandinavian countries usually rank really highly worldwide in all of the things you mentioned. Minnesota is an extension of that.

It's a good reminder that "white" people in America are not homogenous. Check out the book American Nations by Colin Woodard. He doesn't go into Minnesota so specifically, as I recall, but he covers the vastly different histories and backgrounds of the people that regions of our country were populated by and how much those original values and principles still explain politics and such today.

American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
https://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures-ebook/dp/B0052RDIZA

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

Your arguments are so rampant with slippery slopes its effectively pointless to talk to you. Read the book above, how fucking naive do you have to be to consider things like Super PACs, Citizens United, lobbyists, etc. to consider it a "theory". You are clearly beside yourself, and I'm sorry you can't have a level headed discussion without hitting every emotional branch on the way down.

The best part is is that I've never advocated for not voting, an implication you are desperately clinging to.

The beauty of NYC is that it's total chaos. That is something to dive into. People try to re/make NYC as kind of cleaned up Toronto. Doomed.

For in the middle of chaos, well that the secret of it all I guess. If you can't handle. Well I guess you can leave. No one will notice. It's a tough town. No tears will be shed. NYC is in/different to your suffering. Sorry.

But the good news, as they say (updated): "If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, even on Mars."

Friend has an amazing rooftop view of Manhattan from Greenpoint. At night he points to the glimmering Manhattan skyline and says to us gathered there:

"We're all pirates here, we go to Manhattan and we plunder their gold and silver created from unfettered capitalism, and we bring it back to Brooklyn. That is our goal. To plunder Manhattan and bring those riches back to Greenpoint. Our true home, where the artists live and thrive. For this is what pirates do."

He is kind of a sane guy, thought that was an insightful observation of all things NYC.

OH, HIGHLY recommend this book, it's really a great read about the history of NYC, of all people, Charles Schumer pointed it out to us at a conference, and said "Read this book. It's cool." He was right. :-)


The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (on amazon of course!)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400078679/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_sZkACbVX4PEDT

actually, gen theory is super interesting regarding trends.

pragmatic vs idealistic

introverted vs extroverted

like gen x is introverted pragmatic and millennial predicted to be extroverted pragmatic. they don't rebel against the pragmatism vs idealism axis... they rebel against gen x introversion and lack of political involvement... which itself was a rebellion against boomer extroverted idealism.

generations book (origin of gen theory) doesn't use those terms, but the template is there... I just used more abstract terminology. I would really recommend the book before being so dismissive about the irrelevance of generations. it's a difficult and long read, but fascinating.

generations by strauss & howe (amazon link)

edit: they coined the term millennials

First, you should read this book (talks about some of the people who developed big tree climbing techniques... and it's also a nice read): http://www.amazon.com/The-Wild-Trees-Passion-Daring/dp/0812975596

Climbing large trees of course can be dangerous and it is not recommended to do so without proper instruction (there's a variety of organizations if you're truly interested http://www.gotreeclimbing.org/?gclid=CJKJr6XxwrgCFckWMgodUCEAug)

Really what you need to climb most trees includes:

• Tree saddle
  
• Static rope
  
• Smaller diameter cordage for friction knots
  
• carabiners
  
• throwline and weight
  
• Branch protection so you do not harm the tree.
  
  
  The generalized process to do this as simply as possible (without just shimmying up the tree):
  First get your throwline (string tied to a weight) over a very strong lower branch. Tie your static line to the throwline and pull over the branch. Then you tie yourself into the static line using a friction knot and you can then work your way up the tree using what is known as doubled rope technique.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1RSzKkBOWc
  
  Again, this really isn't recommended unless you have some proper experienced guidance. It's really not that difficult once you get the basic mechanics down and then you can climb pretty much any tree. Do some reading.

Theres a very famous book in political circles called 'the party decides.' Basically they analyzed every election before and after and got a feel for who the party wanted to nominate before the primaries and who they actually ended up nominating. They found that the president is always, without exception, picked by the party. So if trump won, that means the establishment didnt throw everything they had at stopping him

https://www.amazon.com/Party-Decides-Presidential-Nominations-American/dp/0226112373

The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin is the best book on the history of both science and exploration ever written. Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos is the best work on physics for a general audience I've seen lately.

Don't get so butt hurt dude, I am not attempting to smear his character. I am simply pointing out he has made serious mistakes of judgment in the past.

If you are interested, my source is the national book award winning Legacy of Ashes. A very interesting book in which Gates tenure is examined, amongst all directors.

https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527199813&sr=8-1&keywords=the+bell+curve

This book compares genders for IQ.
The smartest men are smarter than the smartest women.

The number of lowest IQ men is greater than the number of lowest IQ women.

This would suggest that "the glass ceiling" is just an artifact of which gender is smarter in aggregate.

Women try to redefine the problem and it does not work.

> there's been surprisingly little generation-level analysis since the gen x stuff faded away.

This guy builds a case that Generation Y represents a sharp contrast to the boomers. He says the psychological profile strongly suggests a throwback to the values of the WWII generation.

This guy also has a lot to say about Generation Y.

> I don't think the generation y label ever really caught on.

It's definitely a real phenomenon and used in marketing circles, at least. It certainly exists as a demographic artifact; it's the generational echo of the boomers.

I don't want to discourage you from reading my fellow redditors' proposals, but consider this: Do yourself a favor and don't try to cram your head full of dates and facts, but rather try to get a look at the bigger picture. After all, humans have been around for a few hundred millennia, and only obsessing on the last couple centuries, and then on minute details, is kind of short-sighted and a sure-fire way of getting frustrated.

Millennium takes a nice look at the last thousand years and does a nice job of boggling your mind at that by taking your eyes off Western history for a change.
Anything by Jared Diamond will help you get an original look at how the cogs of civillizations turn.
The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin is also a fascinating read that highlights mankind's continuing search for new horizons, new knowledge and new conquests.

This here is just bursting at the seems with real life examples of the state doing its best to save small property owners from the predation of the ultra wealthy. Can't imagine how "please don't dump mercury into the river that waters my farm" would go over without the state there to back that up.

I can't find the actual text, so I'm paraphrasing from Shorto's excellent Island at the Center of the World

Since the basic needs of living were far exceeded for a small subsection of people living in colony of New Amsterdam, that cultural section could afford luxuries. And so the luxuries sprang up, including fine women's clothing and pastry shops creating non-essential sweets, such as cakes - in 18th century dutch, "koek." The smaller versions became known as "koekje" or "koek-yees" or any of the other spellings. Yada yada yada, that's why Americans call them "cookies" and Britons call them "biscuits."

Yes, it was a Princeton study iirc... a short summary can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

If you're interested in a detailed and quite focused historical review of how the US went from democracy to oligarchy I would recommend Jane Mayer's, "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right"

People who don't like Nate's predictions (because he says their candidate is going to lose) have always liked to attack Nate as wrong and not knowing what he's talking about.

There's a very legitimate track of criticism against Nate this cycle. One that I followed since last August and one that Nate himself ended up confessing was true: How I Acted Like A Pundit And Screwed Up On Donald Trump

Nate's not a political scientist. As a pundit he's no more informed than the average pundit, and way less informed than the (rare) knowledgeable pundit. He and many at 538 screwed up in 2015, because they'd tried to fill the Political Science shaped hole in their data journalism by adopting The Party Decides theory. Which wasn't stupid, this was the most popular theory in Political Science up till this year, just so happens 2016 is the election cycle that pretty much proved The Party Decides theory wrong (or at least no longer applicable in the 21st century). So the 538 lost their fig leaf and the gaps in their knowledge was exposed for everyone to see.

But they're still great at data journalism. They've acknowledged their mistakes, which already puts them ahead of 99% of pundits, and unlike in 2015 now in 2016 they've got actual polls and data to work with so imo they are now delivering truly great stuff very much worth following.

Also, I picked Nate Silver for the attention grabber and ease, but he wasn't the only person doing demographic predictions. Nate Cohn did a lot, to name just one other, with equal success. And the demographic models only got more predictive as they got more actual primary voting data to go on.

What?

Read the book. You can get a used copy for $5 at amazon. Great summer reading, well written, fascinating. You might just learn a few things you never knew.

Control of Nature by John McPhee has a great chapter on that project specifically as well as all of the levees and other river control schemes that take place on the Mississippi. It is a fascinating read.

If you are interested in reading more on this subject, you absolutely have to check this book out The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The rise of a sovereign profession and the making of a vast industry It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 and describes the evolution of our healthcare industry over the past 200 years.

read all about it -- and the whole CIA corruption of Planet Earth -- https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006 -- still ongoing running our foreign policy for the good of Banksters, Multi-national Corps, and Military Industrial Complex ... under the guise of freedom & democracy until US rules planet earth's people and natural resources

There is a great book I read a few years back about the search and discovery of these massive trees. It's called The Wild Trees. Highly recommend it if anyone is interested in a personal/detailed account of the history of the discovery of these.

I'm not an expert on religion. This is the best book I've found about how to view the religious aspects of the world. Just reading a good summary of the book would be good, but I have yet to find a good one online.

How about something dealing with the history of science and knowledge? I would recommend The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin. Definitely one of the most fascinating and life-changing books I have ever read.

Thanks. You still might want to read it just because Diamond's thesis is pretty unique so it's enjoyable to read.

It's quite a controversial book but if you want the opposite perspective of Diamond, Wade's "A Troublesome Inheritance" is among the best: https://www.amazon.com/Troublesome-Inheritance-Genes-Human-History/dp/1594204462. The other obvious contender is Charles Murray's The Bell Curve, though there's basically only chapter that's relevant to this discussion, and unsurprisingly it's the chapter that has gotten him the most praise and the most criticism: https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299

For criticism of Diamond from someone opposed to Wade/Murray, try Wertheim's review in the Nation (it's short): http://www.columbia.edu/~saw2156/HunterBlatherer.pdf in which he argues that even Diamond is too deterministic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh7rdCYCQ_U

Poslusaj video ukoliko imas vremena.

Svi izvori upotrebljeni u ovom videu:

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307700763/?tag=freedradio-20



Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of An Empire by Simon Baker
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1846072840/?tag=freedradio-20


The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome by Susan Wise Bauer
http://www.amazon.com/dp/039305974X/?tag=freedradio-20


The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World's Greatest Empire by Anthony Everitt
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0812978153/?tag=freedradio-20


A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0871404230/?tag=freedradio-20


Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400078970/?tag=freedradio-20


The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195325419/?tag=freedradio-20


The Twilight of American Culture by Morris Berman
http://www.amazon.com/dp/039332169X/?tag=freedradio-20


The Fate Of Empires by Sir John Glubb
http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf

>Spencer invited two prominent members of the movement to join him. One was Peter Brimelow, the founder of the website VDARE.com, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as an "immigrant-bashing hate site that regularly publishes works by white supremacists, anti-Semites, and others on the radical right." (Brimelow freely admitted during the event that he publishes white nationalists.) The other was Jared Taylor, a self-described "race realist" who explained why the white race is superior to all others (except for East Asians, he said, who are superior to whites)

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/alt-right-makes-its-main-stream-debut

>He added, “the alt right accepts that race is a biological fact and that it’s a significant aspect of individual and group identity and that any attempt to create a society in which race can be made not to matter will fail.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/26/the-intellectual-godfather-of-the-alt-right-talks-to-the-daily-caller/#ixzz4XBkyMSQU

>Spencer declared in 2013, "We need an ethno-state so that our people can 'come home again,' can live amongst family and feel safe and secure,"

http://www.dailywire.com/news/11089/5-things-know-about-alt-right-leader-richard-aaron-bandler


And very anecdotally I have engaged several alt-right trump supporters in why exactly they are prejudiced towards Hispanics & African Americans and they usually link me to the very flawed book called "the bell curve" in which the author puts out the implication that people with lower IQ scores are inferior in some way. At the very least these people are using the book as a intellectual high-ground to put down other races while completely ignoring flaws in IQ tests & socioeconomic differences.

You are wrong about your history. There was a purely bible thumping aspect to prohibition, but the much larger basis for its support was the progressive movement. And there was a great deal more overlap between nativists, evangelical protestants, and Progressives than you seem to believe. Progressivism was and is very much based in America's puritanical tradition. You should read about things before you talk about them.

The Boys of Summer is a great book about the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers.

This is an outstanding Lou Gehrig biography.

There is a big difference between "hoping for a collapse" and being prepared for "unexpected massive world change."

I've studied a lot of history in my lifetime, and this is what scares me the most:
>"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history." -
Aldous Huxley

I am in my early sixties. I have always been interested in history, learned much of it, and have lived through the history made since WWII. Literally, a lifetime ago.

As I have watched world events over my lifetime, I have felt that something was coming, something was changing, something "new" or unplanned for or expected was due to occur.

In 1997, Straus & Howe came up with this theory of how history repeats in roughly 80 year cycles. This work galvanized what I had learned in decades of study and thought. It just made so much sense.

Zero Hedge did a four part series about this last month that I view as prescient. I didn't post it here, firstly because most here think ZH is baloney, not a truly important alternative news source, and because it was four parts, WAY beyond the attention span of most readers here.

In this article, I find to my amazement that my feelings, my conclusions, my anticipations were shared by others, and that what I was "part of" had happened repeatedly, so it seems that perhaps whatever "event" is coming is an inevitable cycle of history. A cycle that lasts roughly 80 years.

Born in the early fifties, my life has spanned the "Spring, Summer, and Fall" of this cycle. Now the "season" has had it's "fourth turning" and tumultuous times might inevitably be at hand.

It would be foolish to ignore this possibility, as signs of the fourth turning have abounded for some years now. Since you can't exactly predict what and when, it just makes sense to try to be ready for whatever happens, knowing that something is headed done the pike in your direction.

"Surprising Op-ed"??


"Singing a new tune"?!?!


Charles and David Koch are the unrivaled kings of gaslighting and manipulation.

They have spent literally hundreds millions of dollars, over decades, on a concentrated effort to influence academia, the media, and public policy towards their pro-corporate (profits) and anti-goverment (public accountability) ends.

"Dark Money" should be required reading for everyone.

Buy it, trust me: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0307947904

Or listen to the audiobook free here:

Part 1: https://youtu.be/3uoaTlB5oPA

Part 2: https://youtu.be/gcQQKalLbZs

I won't give any direct answers because this is something you need to know for yourself, not because someone told you.

So if you want to know how to approach this, first you need to know the history. Read for example A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn to see specific instances how was government behaving in last 500 years. Watch documentaries from John Pilger. Watch Assassination of Russia to see how Putin got into power. Read War is a Racket. I could go on and on; there are hundreds and hundreds of great books and documentaries and unclassified documents which you can get today and check for yourself.

Also I need to point out - don't make a (common) mistake thinking of any government as a single entity. It is made of people, each of them having his own agenda. More proper question then would be, could some people in government have so much power and skill and at the same time be so unscrupulous, that they plan, commit, and get away with committing terrorist (false-flag) acts for their own profits?

Yep, it's been going on since the late '70s. The Koch brothers and their billionaire friends (Richard Scaife, Rich DeVos, John M. Olin) have been slowly, systematically filling the government and academics from the bottom up with corporate-friendly lackeys.

Source: Jane Mayer's Dark Money

Bell Curve by Hernstein and Murray would say yes. But there's some caveats to that - first, it's less than a single deviation across all racial groups, and second, there's enough variation within a single racial group that knowing a person's race can't be used to predict an individual's intelligence. Essentially, your genetics appear to control you maximum potential intelligence, while environmental factors will limit the expression of your genes.

American Nations by Mainer Colin Woodard might also help you make sense of cultural differences between the regions. It's a good read. Welcome to Yankeedom!

I have not read this (yet) but it comes highly recommended from people I trust. The author was also one of the main contributors for Ken Burns' Prohibition.

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Call-Rise-Fall-Prohibition/dp/074327704X

Books that touch on Prohibition but don't focus on it that I have read:

https://www.amazon.com/Drinking-America-Our-Secret-History/dp/B016MXGYPI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1499305189&sr=1-1&keywords=drinking+in+america+our+secret+history

https://www.amazon.com/Whiskey-Women-Untold-Bourbon-Scotch/dp/B01B3H8960/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1499305231&sr=1-1&keywords=women+in+whiskey

I have just started this, and I expect a good portion to talk about Speakeasies and Blind Pigs:

https://www.amazon.com/America-Walks-into-Bar-Speakeasies/dp/B00PCQITW8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1499305375&sr=1-1&keywords=america+walks+in+a+bar

Boorstin's The Discoverers. http://www.amazon.com/Discoverers-Daniel-J-Boorstin/dp/0394726251

It's a history of science and exploration, with (IIRC) just enough reference to war and politics so you get some context (or at least have your interest piqued). It is formatted as a collection of relatively brief essays, with each essay about a person, place or significant deveopment, so it is good for bathroom reading, or for reading straight through.

Also, Grun's Timetables of History makes a good companion for this or any other reading you do.

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Timetables-of-History/Bernard-Grun/9780743270038

It really is just a very large table (hundreds of pages) divided by era and year along the vertical axis, and region along the horizontal axis, so you can see the major events in the world around a specific time. It includes Asian and African history, so it is more than Western European/American-centric. It is NOT very detailed -- its goal is to provide broad context.

For anyone interested in inter-generational dynamics and how they have played out in the history of this country I seriously recommend The Fourth Turning. It was written in 1997 and becomes more relevant everyday.

I've read some good ones. I'll try to list all that I can remember from when I was getting my history degree and ones I've read for fun. I read the Iliad, odyssey, Thucydides, Herodotus. I read a lot of those guys. Unfortunately I don't have very many of my books and I can't remember all the titles. But, I do work in a library and have seen some good ones. Here are some links to some:
https://www.amazon.com/Wonders-Ancient-World-Metro-Books/dp/1435129660/ref=sr_1_18?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495553357&sr=1-18&keywords=Wonders+of+the+ancient+world
https://www.amazon.com/History-Ancient-World-Earliest-Accounts/dp/039305974X/ref=sr_1_27?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495553171&sr=1-27&keywords=Ancient+Greece
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Athens-Worlds-Greatest-Civilization/dp/0812994582/ref=zg_bs_4880_22?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=C0JCVQDM2MA8DDZ43TYV
https://www.amazon.com/SPQR-History-Ancient-Mary-Beard/dp/1631492225/ref=pd_sim_14_33?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1631492225&pd_rd_r=0HRJM2DS4HWZMWWQXP8B&pd_rd_w=OTprV&pd_rd_wg=vT33O&psc=1&refRID=0HRJM2DS4HWZMWWQXP8B
https://www.amazon.com/National-Geographic-Greeks-Illustrated-History/dp/142621670X/ref=zg_bs_4880_43?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=RXBQK8K2K31NX6BE98ME

If you're into neuroscience, have you ever looked into class/race differences in IQ distribution?

Pretty good book I recommend: https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299/

This book won't answer every question you might possibly have on the nuances between the "Abrahamic" Faiths, but it is a great introduction:

http://www.amazon.com/God-Is-Not-One-Religions/dp/0061571288/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369104390&sr=8-1&keywords=Prothero+God+is+not+One

Fingerprints of the Gods, it describes some kind of weird theory that suggests as early as 4000 BC, the continent of Antarctica was free of ice, and speculates about how (possibly extraterrestrial) explorers were able to map the parts above sea level remarkably accurately many years before the first seismic probes through the ice were done (ca. 1949). Interesting, so far doesn't strike me as a crackpot kind of work like "The Philadelphia Experiment" did.

WhatShouldIReadNext is a good way to find new reading material based on stuff you and others already like.

Oh, my. I just read a great book about Prohibition, and how involved in banning liquor the suffragettes were. Women likely wouldn't have earned the right to vote if it weren't for all their hard work in passing the 18th amendment. And if it weren't for Prohibition, most women would never have started hanging out in pubs at all, b/c it was suddenly so illicit and exciting to do it. Win-win!

I recommend reading The Wild Trees, by Richard Preston. Yes, it is a nonfiction book about trees (mostly Giant Redwoods), but it focuses on people searching for the tallest trees in the world and is a quite fun read.

FYI the Mercer Famiky was/is a major player in the Koch network that brought us the radical right and who now own the Republican Party.

Read Dark Money, buy a copy for a friend.

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill is a great look into OIF which is the most significant event to happen in the region in the 21st century.

His book Dirty Wars is also excellent.

Also, Legacy of Ashes

This is all super American centric, but there's a reason for that.

Friedman's review is even on The Bell Curve's Amazon page:

>This brilliant, original, objective, and lucidly written book will force you to rethink your biases and prejudices about the role that individual difference in intelligence plays in our economy, our policy, and our society

This matches up pretty perfectly with the theory in The Fourth Turning:

The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny https://www.amazon.com/dp/0767900464/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_MQYwybY776C08

TL;DR The site's real, the clip is misleading.

The structures at Gobekli Tempe are real, and their origins are indeed something of a mystery. There is real, honest-to-goodness archaeology going on at the site. This video clip however, shows quite clearly why a great deal of the programming on the History Channel needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Here are a few issues I have with the clip that's been presented.

1. The overly dramatic tone which is more of an irritant than anything else. We get it, History Channel, this place is old and not much is known about it. Do we really need the ominous music?
   
   
2. 'Experts'. They're not - at least, they're not experts in the subject of the video. The first is Linda Moulten Howe, who's primary 'expertise' seems to lie in the area of crop circles and cattle mutilations, not ancient archaeology. Why she is here is puzzling... until you meet expert number two; Graham Hancock.
   
   Hancock is famous for writing such 'alt-history' books as 'Fingerprints of the Gods' and 'Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization', which assert that all human civilizations are the product of an ancient, hyper-advanced civilization (like Atlantis, for example), that either inspired or outright taught the younger civilizations that followed. His views are, to put it mildly, not supported by either the archaeological community, nor by the archaeological evidence.
   
   Expert number three is Robert M. Schoch, a geologist and geophysicist who's current pet theory is that all ancient pyramids (Egyptian, Mayan, etc.) are the products of an ancient, global civilization that was destroyed by some pre-historical cataclysm in ages past, possibly by a century-long rain of asteroids.
   
   Next on our list of History Channel approved 'experts', is one Andrew Collins, author of 'Gateway to Atlantis', a book which alleges that ancient Middle-Eastern civilizations may have had transoceanic contact with ancient meso-Americans, possibly via contact with Atlantis or some other ancient global civilization.
   
   Oh Gawd... at 6:00 in the clip, the 'documentary' begins to speculate if this find has anything to do with Noah's Ark.
   
   Next up, Phillip Coppens: ancient aliens, 2012, ancient global civilizations and catastrophes. Seeing the pattern here?
   
   Most, if not all of these 'experts' are cult archaeologists who have, at one time or another, flirted with or explicitly endorsed the concept of 'hyperdiffusion', which is the belief that all ancient cultures sprang from an older, advanced, global culture such as Atlantis, Lemuria, or Mu. This is one species of pseudohistory that has been quite popular over the years. The ideas that are stated (or sometimes simply implied) in this clip are a fairly obvious attempt to graft the assertions of the pseudoarchaeologists onto an actual archaeological site. The video even concludes by splashing a 'See the Evidence: Check out Ancient Aliens on History Channel' graphic. Others in this thread have warned against dismissing a claim because one doesn't approve of the source, and that is generally a good rule to follow, but in this case, a fair degree of skepticism is warranted. A good analogy here would be that these 'experts' are to the field of archaeology what homeopaths are to the field of medicine. This clip isn't history; it's pseudohistorical speculation attempting to masquerade as legitimate archaeological inquiry.
   

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

It's a pretty great memoir of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers written by their former beat reporter.

https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Trees-Story-Passion-Daring/dp/0812975596

https://www.amazon.com/Redwood-Forest-History-Conservation-Redwoods/dp/1559637269/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=Redwood+ecology&qid=1566444550&s=gateway&sr=8-1

These two are pretty decent. I haven't read this one yet but it looks interesting as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Redwood-Logging-Conservation-Santa-Mountains/dp/0940283263

And you are implying that you have some understanding of the intelligence community?

Like most Americans, I have to go with the information that's available, but my conclusions don't seem to contradict what much better informed, Pulitzer-Prize-winning authors have concluded about the CIA.

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for 2007 and is based on >50,000 documents(mostly from from the CIA archives), and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans (including ten Directors of Central Intelligence).

I certainly agree with that, as I read books like Cataclysm and Fingerprints of the Gods and am convinced that the scriptures have been criminally misinterpreted. However, stimulating or helping people to hang on to the retarded previous notions is not productive at all.

There's this book that was written in the 90's about our generation. It's called The 4th Turning. You might be interested in the theory that generational behaviors follow circadian rhythms and that we may in fact BE an echo of the Greatest Generation, or at least in the same position in the cycle. Check it out!

Glad I could help out, hope you enjoy it! Also 'Legacy of Ashes' is another good one, follows the same track but actual interviews with James Angleton, quite a few others.

http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/0307389006

It's a fantastic and fascinating book. Check it out.

To be fair, the textbooks most of us studied in school (in the US anyway) tended to gloss over some of these more uncomfortable truths about our history. I highly recommend reading A People's History of The United States by Howard Zinn. It really put things in perpective for me.

That doesn't sound quite right.

Prohibition movements pre-date WWI and WWII and had much more to do with religious temperance groups (specifically among Protestants and particularly among Methodists) than any anti-German sentiment. If you enjoy the subject, I highly recommend Ken Burn's Prohibition series as well as Daniel Okrent's "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America

Those corrupt governments are installed and supported by the US.

Gathering and analyzing intelligence on other countries is its primary, original role. Most directly for keeping specifically the President informed of just what the heck is developing around the world. It was started after WW2 in order to prevent another Pearl Harbor surprise. And they were not allowed to gather intelligence on US soil, but that has not been strictly observed.

This work involves gathering tasks as mundane as always reading the news in a target country, as political context matters as much as tapped phone conversations when putting together an analysis. But the movie-caliber stuff is important too. They tap phones, recruit sources in governments and industry, build a whole network of resources.

To collect this information, the CIA uses two kinds of employees. “Official cover” officers pose as diplomats in US embassies worldwide. All embassy staff will be under surveillance from the target country’s counter-intelligence organizations — their FBI equivalents — so meeting sources is risky and they might stick to less blatant parts of the job. But on the upside, they have diplomatic immunity and just get sent home if caught spying. Non-official cover officers get jobs in multinational companies or assume some invented identity that gives them a reason to be in country. They can more freely recruit local sources but must rot in prison or die if caught, unacknowledged.

Info goes back to legions of analysis teams working in offices in the US who prepare it into reports.

The CIA also engages in covert and clandestine activities meant to influence other countries. This latter role has grown, diminished, and changed in nature throughout its history depending on political climate. Some bad press from some really ugly leaks in the 70’s (I think) about the extent of these activities put a big damper on them for a while, requiring Presidential sign-offs on killings, iirc. Post 9/11, the CIA is back on the hard stuff but keeps a legion of lawyers to make sure it’s teccchhnically legal.

These cold war activities include funding and organizing Afghan resistance against communist rule, for example. A whole covert war. Also tons of election rigging, assassination, etc. Post cold war they have been involved in anti-terror activities like running the war against the Taliban and assassinating militants and their neighbors with drone missiles.

Fun fact: “covert” operations are meant to hide who is behind an operation, “clandestine” are meant to conceal the entire operation from anyone but us. Compare an assassination to a phone tap.

Edit: in one episode (2 or 3 i think) of Netflix docu series Inside the Mossad explains how Israel’s foreign intelligence uses elaborate sting operations to recruit sources. By the time they realize they’re working for Mossad, they’re in too deep to not go along with it. Intelligence orgs do this a lot when they know the people they need probably hate the org’s country. This is basically all the time for Israel spying on other middle east states. Case officers often use really impressively manipulative strategies for recruiting and controlling their local agents. “The Americans” illustrates some great examples of this, if a little more dramatic.

Edit 2A: There are a bunch of other specialized US foreign intelligence agencies, like the NSA that traditionally intercepts signals and cracks their codes.

Edit 2B: In the UK, MI6 of James Bond fame does foreign intelligence and MI5 does counter-intelligence. These existed during WW2 but back then the lines got blurred, with both organizations running their own double agents against Nazi Germany’s own two competing foreign intelligence orgs. In fact, 0% of any spies Germany sent to Britain were able to work for enough time before being caught to send anything useful over. By 1944, when the UK was more confident that they were controlling all the sources sending info to Germany (the ones that wouldn’t work for the UK as double agents radioing harmless intel back home were either dead or imprisoned), they fed Germany massive misinformation about the location (and timing?) of the D-Day Normandy invasion. Read the excellent book Operation Double Cross to learn about this incredible operation.

BOOK EDIT:

Books on the CIA I found rewarding.

“The Master of Disguise” by Tony Mendez. Ben Affleck played him in Argo. Memoir of this artist’s time in the CIA inventing disguises and forging travel documents, often to exfiltrate an exposed source. Watch or read Argo too if you haven’t, the film at least is incredibly cool because its evacuation of American diplomats from Iran as Canadian filmmakers is largely real.
https://www.amazon.com/Master-Disguise-Secret-Life-CIA/dp/0060957913/

“Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.” Recent declassifications are exposing just how terribly the CIA bungled things in the early cold war, which is what this is about. From massive nuclear arms race miscalculations that threatened the world, to unfounded communism paranoia that led to totally unnecessary coups, they used classification to hide their greatest errors.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307389006/

“Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda.” Beyond just the tech, you get insight into the lives of tech team members who would bug homes for their career. Interesting stuff. I think I read a different edition but this is probably fine.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0452295475/

“Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001”
Tom Clancy name, but actually an extremely detailed history of the CIA’s 1980’s support for Afghan mujahideen against the USSR and continued involvement in the 90’s. Down to highlighting cultural generational differences within the multiple cohorts of CIA officers in charge of the long-running operation. Also highlights Pakistan’s demand to hand out all the money, both to act as kingmaker for the dominant factions and to skim hella bux off the top. Descriptions of the conflict and how the Afghans relentlessly persevered and how factions had independent deals and truces with USSR. Then much of the civil war aftermath of USSR pullout when the US stopped caring. Taliban become popular for not tolerating warlords raping local boys, an issue that remains to this day among US supported administration (a coalition of “former” warlords who you will recognize if you read the book). Great read, incredible breadth.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143034669/

I would like to nominate Roger Goiran, a Bronze Star winning OSS Captain. Roger was head of CIA's Tehran station in the early 1950s and in Belgium in the early 1960s. Goiran had a very promising CIA career but somewhat fell out of favor after he resigned his Tehran post in protest when the plan to depose democratically elected Iranian President Mohammad Mosaddegh came through. Goiran believed the plan to put the Shah in power compromised US principles and threw its support behind English and French colonialism.

He is mentioned in Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes and Meyer and Brysac's Kingmakers