Reddit mentions: The best united states history books

Okay, here is a copy/paste of a comment I made previously:

"The Principles of Communism" by Friedrich Engels was an early draft of the Manifesto that many feel is actually easier to understand. I still recommend reading the manifesto as well if you haven't yet.

Why Socialism? By Albert Einstein and The Soul of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde are two short, simple, and very eloquent introductory essays that everyone should read.


"Marx for Beginners" by Rius is an illustrated book explaining the history and basics of Marx's ideas. I know it sounds absurd that it's basically like a comic book, but it seriously does a great job of concisely stating a lot of the basics. I recommend it to all beginners.

"Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" by Engels. It outlines socialism and distinguishes the scientific socialism of Marx/Engels from the utopian socialism that preceded it.

"Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism" by Bertrand Russell analyzes several different leftist views and their origins. Russell has a simple, reasonable way of explaining things. I don't agree with him on everything, but he does his best to be fair when explaining things and it is a valuable introductory work.

"The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" by Engels. This does what it says on the tin.

One of the best things to get is the Marx-Engels Reader. It contains "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" and many of the other works by Marx and Engels that I and others mention. (Here it is for free)

Everything I've listed so far, with the exception of "Principles of Scientific Socialism" and "Roads To Freedom" is a pretty short read.

Here's some slightly more advanced reading:

"Wage Labor and Capital" and "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" by Marx

"The Holy Family" by Marx and Engels

State and Revolution by Lenin

Once you're informed enough, it's definitely worth is to read through Marx's Capital with these David Harvey lectures as a guide.

Also, this guy's youtube channel has been a great help to me. I've especially found his series on the Law of Value to be very useful lately but he has tons of great videos. His videos on manufacturing consent, crisis, commodities, and credit are just a few good examples. If you go to his website you can see a list of all his videos on the right hand side. He's certainly not perfect, but he's helped me to learn a lot and helped to point me to other resources as well.


Edit: Found free copies of Marx for Beginners and Marx-Engels reader, added links. Now I link to free copies of every work I mention but one. Free education, comrades!

Edit2: I've rearranged this some and tried to order it better. I removed one book since it's hard to find and out of print but here's the description I had of it:

"Principles of Scientific Socialism" by Philip Sharnoff. I haven't been able to find this book to order online... maybe it's out of print, but I picked it up at a used book store and it's pretty great. It concisely explains all about Marxism, Leninism and modern socialist movements. I like it because he uses more or less plain English and gets straight to the point. It even goes into basic history about the Russian and Chinese Revolution, the USSR and the cold war. It's really fantastic. I'm sure there are other books that do this and if anyone knows of them, let me know. I'd love to find one to recommend that is in print.

No problem! As for some good reading that is pretty non-technical but still really delves into the manned space programs, I would highly recommend "A Man On The Moon", by Andrew Chaikin. It is appreciated as being one of the best breakdowns of the Apollo Program, and is a great read filled with a ton of interesting information.

Also, ANY of the astronaut auto-biographies are fantastic. As for a few examples, Eugene Cernan's "The Last Man On The Moon" is a great and candid read in my opinion, as is Neil Armstrong's "First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong". Chris Hadfield's "An Astronauts Guide To Life On Earth" is also excellent and very candid and open as well, covering a lot of stuff about STS and ISS. "Failure Is Not An Option", written by former NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz, is also a great read that gets into a lot of the NASA mission management from Mercury to Apollo, and likewise with astronaut Deke Slayton's great bio titled "Deke!", since Slayton was NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations after he was grounded due to a heart issue, making him largely responsible for crew assignments at NASA during Gemini and Apollo.

Another good one is "This New Ocean" by William Burrows. It covers the history of humankind's fascination with spaceflight and rocketry, from the ancient myths of Daedalus and Icarus and the early chinese experiments with fireworks right up to the STS shuttle and ISS, and goes into not just mission specifics, but the historical geo-politics and geo-military wranglings that really defined the first "Space Race" with the Soviets.

Actually, here is a link to a list of a bunch of good books written by or about astronauts and the space programs, and just about every book on this list I would recommend.

Also, if you have not yet seen it, I STRONGLY recommend that you check out the fantastic HBO mini-series "From The Earth To The Moon". Produced and directed by Tom Hanks and Ron Howard with a star-studded cast, this 12-episode critically acclaimed mini-series is extremely accurate historically, and covers the entirety of the Apollo Program, from before the Apollo 1 fire to Apollo 17's final steps on the lunar surface. It is basically like Tom Hanks and Ron Howard's other fantastic mini-series "Band of Brothers", but rather than covering WWII, it focuses on Apollo and the race to the Moon. I cannot recommend that mini-series enough, as it is brilliant produced, directed, and acted, and, above all, historically accurate.

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.

I'm a little late to the party here, but can't resist posting, because as a fan of ship fic in general and slash fic in particular, this argument is one of my pet peeves:

>What I'm getting at is it makes your understanding of the relationships of characters very shallow. For instance, the whole point of Sam and Frodo's relationship in LotR is that it's the purest form of friendship. Sam is able to commit selfless acts and simply doesn't care if he comes off as too attached to his friend, it's beautifully innocent. It loses everything if secretly Sam just wants to have his way with Frodo.

To be honest, I consider this a rather sad and immature point of view. Platonic and romantic love are different, yes, but platonic love is not somehow "purer" or more selfless than romantic love. When you love somebody romantically, sex is one more expression of your love for them. It is not the be-all-and-end-all of everything you do for them! You can want to get into somebody's pants and commit selfless acts for them at the same time.

Additionally, as others have already mentioned, portrayals of openly LGBT relationships were forbidden in films and other broadcast media for decades and were rare in other types of media as well, so for many years, writing slash fic about non-canon relationships was the only way that LGBT fans could have any media representation at all. Even today, with LGBT characters and relationships finally becoming more mainstream in the media, choosing to interpret a same-sex relationship that is canonically platonic as romantic can add interesting layers to fanfics about them. For example, my favorite slash ship is Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes from the Captain America films. Choosing to make them bisexual or gay opens up all sorts of interesting story opportunities dealing with queer life in NYC in the 30s and 40s and in the military in WW2.

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.

There are a couple of 'strands' of Marx's thought which you might investigate. I can't comment too much on shorter introductions to the philosophical side, as I'm more familiar with (and interested in, for the moment) works the economic side. For this, I can recommend the following:

• A Short History of Socialist Economic Thought by Gerd Hardack, Dieter Karras, Ben Fine. It's all in the title :)
  
• David Harvey's excellent A Companion to Marx's Capital. This certainly isn't a short book, but Harvey is a terrific writer, and so the time flies. I would also point to and highly recommend the series of lectures on which this book is based. Of course, the lectures are hardly an exercise in brevity, but they are very good and worthwhile.
  
• Ernest Mandel's An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory is good. Read it online here. Any Mandel is very good. He is an incredible clear author, and he really knows Marxist thought inside out. For instance, I would also recommend Ernest Mandel's introduction to the Penguin edition of Capital (the introduction is a bit shorter than the whole book of Mandels that I've mentioned above) very nicely summarises the context of his economic thought, and gives an overview thereof.
  
• Yannis Varoufakis (the former finance minister of Greece) wrote a fantastic, more general introduction to economics and economic theory called Foundations of Economics: A beginner’s companion. While Varoufakis deals with economics as a whole, and discusses, for instance, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, this serves to very well position Marx within the economic milieu of his time. This is a recurring theme for a reason: to understand Marx, I believe that it's imperative to understand what drove Marx to ruthlessly critique capitalism.
  
• Finally, I'm not trying to be glib or conceited by suggesting The Marx-Engles Reader (2nd ed.), edited by Robert C. Tucker. This is the book that I used to start studying seriously the thought of Marx and Engels, after reading Singer's introduction. I recommend the book because it has (again) a wonderful introduction, the works that are presented are quite short, and each work has a solid introduction. This is a very good volume for seeing the trajectory and evolution of Marx and Engels's economic thought without having to dive into the larger works. The book even has a very heavily reduced version of Capital vol. I. This book also deals with the philosophy of Marx more heavily than the other works I've recommended here, as it contains a number of earlier philosophical works (including the Grundisse, which is practically the philosophical sister to Capital).
  
  I hope these will be useful, even if they aren't necessarily the aspect of Marx that you are most interested in.
  
  Edit: I should state that I am a philosopher of language, and so one doesn't need any especial economics expertise to dive into the texts that I've recommended! I certainly knew very little about the field before I read these texts.

I love science books. These are all on my bookshelf/around my apt. They aren't all chemistry, but they appeal to my science senses:

I got a coffee table book once as a gift. It's Theodore Gray's The Elements. It's beautiful, but like I said, more of a coffee table book. It's got a ton of very cool info about each atom though.

I tried The Immortal Life of Henrieta Lacks, which is all about the people and family behind HeLa cells. That was a big hit, but I didn't care for it.

I liked The Emperor of all Maladies which took a long time to read, but was super cool. It's essentially a biography of cancer. (Actually I think that's it's subtitle)

The Wizard of Quarks and Alice in Quantumland are both super cute allegories relating to partical physics and quantum physics respectively. I liked them both, though they felt low-level, tying them to high-level physics resulted in a fun read.

Unscientific America I bought on a whim and didn't really enjoy since it wasn't science enough.

The Ghost Map was a suuuper fun read about Cholera. I love reading about mass-epidemics and plague.

The Bell that Rings Light, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, Schrödinger's Kittens, The Fabric of the Cosmos and Beyond the God Particle are all pleasure reading books that are really primers on Quantum.

I also tend to like anything by Mary Roach, which isn't necessarily chemistry or science, but is amusing and feels informative. I started with Stiff but she has a few others that I also enjoyed.

Have fun!

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

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

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

Can I give you a list? Imma give you a list with a little from each category. I LOVE books and posts like this!

Non-fiction or Books About Things:

The Lost City of Z: In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called “The Lost City of Z.” In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett’s quest for “Z” and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century. Cumberbatch will play him in the movie version of this.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers: Hilariously gross and just super interesting. Her writing is like a non-fiction Terry Pratchett. Everything she's written is great, but this one is my favorite.

Devil in the White City: All about HH Holmes and his murder hotel during the Chicago World's Fair. Incredibly well-written and interesting.

The Outlaw Trail: Written in 1920 by the first superintendent of Capitol Reef National Park (aka, the area around Robber's Roost). He went around interviewing the guys who were still alive from the original Wild Bunch, plus some of the other outlaws that were active during that time. Never read anything else with actual interviews from these guys and it's a little slice of life from the end of the Wild West.

Fiction, Fantasy, Sci-Fi:

Here I'm only going to give you the less known stuff. You can find Sanderson (light epic fantasy), Pratchett (humor / satire fantasy), Adams (humor fantasy), etc easily in any bookstore. They are fantastic and should be read, but they are easy to find. I suggest:

The Cloud Roads: Martha Wells is an anthropologist and it shows in her world building in every series. She creates societies instead of landscapes. These are very character-driven and sometimes emotional.

The Lion of Senet: Jennifer Fallon starts a great political thriller series with this book. If you like shows like House of Cards or things where there's a lot of political plotting, sudden twists, and a dash of science v. religion, then you'll love these.

The Book of Joby: Do you want to cry? This book will make you cry. Mix arthurian legend with some God & Devil archetypes and it's just this very powerful story. Even though it deals with religious themes and icons, I wouldn't say it's a religious book. Reads more like mythology.

On Basilisk Station: Awesome military space opera. Really good sci-fi.

Grimspace: Pulpy space opera. Brain bubble gum instead of serious reading. But that's fun sometimes too!

I am not totally sure what you are asking for actually exists in book form...which is odd, now that I think about it.

If it were me, I would think about magazines instead. And if you really want to push him, think about the following options:

1. Science News, which is very similar to the front-matter of the leading scientific journal Science. This includes news from the past month, and some in-depth articles. It is much better written -- and written at a much higher level -- than Scientific American or Discover. For a very intelligent (and science-interested) high school student, this should pose little difficulty.
   
2. The actual journal Science. This is weekly, which is nice. In addition to the news sections, this also includes editorials and actual science papers. While many of the actual papers will be beyond your son, he can still see what passes for presentation of data in the sciences, and that is cool.
   
3. The actual journal Nature. This is also weekly, and is the british version of the journal Science. In my opinion, the news section is better written than Science, which is important as this is where your kid's reading will be mostly done. IN addition, Nature always has sections on careers and education, so that your son will be exposed to the more human elements of science. Finally, the end of nature always has a 1-page sci-fi story, and that is fun as well.
   
4. If you must, you could try Scientific American or Discover, but if you really want to give your kid a cool gift, that is a challenge, go for one of the top three here. I would highly recommend Nature.
   
   If you insist on books...
   
   I see you already mentioned A Brief History of the Universe, which is an excellent book. However, I am not sure if you are going to get something that is more "in depth." Much of the "in depth" stuff is going to be pretty pop, without the rigorous foundation that are usually found in textbooks.
   
   If I had to recommend some books, here is what I would say:
   
   
5. The selfish gene is one of the best "rigorous" pop-science books out there. Dawkins doesn't really go into the math, but other than that he doesn't shy away from the implications of the work.
   
6. Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Dennett is a great book. While not strictly science, per se, it does outline good philosophical foundations for evolution. It is a dense read, but good.
   
7. On the more mathematical side, you might try Godel, Escher, Bach, which is a book that explores the ramifications of recrusiveness and is an excellent (if dense) read.
   
8. You could also consider books on the history of science -- which elucidate the importance of politics and people in the sciences. I would recommend any of the following: The Double Helix, A man on the moon, The making of the atomic bomb, Prometheans in the lab, The alchemy of air, or A most damnable invention. There are many others, but these came to mind first.
   
   Hope that helps! OH AND GO WITH THE SUBSCRIPTION TO NATURE
   
   edit: added the linksssss

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.

> It may not be the profs. Student organizations are pretty popular here and many of them are very much ideological. I've seen at my uni that people joined a student org for their good marketing, network and famous parties then started to hold those views more and more themselves.

That's not the university or student organizations as much as it is people. People like to feel ideologically actualized. That's not a symptom of youth or studenthood nearly as much as it is symptomatic of humanity. I don't know how much experience you have outside of school (and I don't mean that to insult you, I just don't know you!), but my experience in the "real world" before going back to grad school is that if anything these kinds of ideological organizations are even more prevalent (insofar as them existing across spectra of activity and ideology). I lived in Washington, DC for a while before this and the amount of political clubs was just insane, but they're even in areas like rural Alaska and Florida.

> Personally I don't think that a communist society is viable in anything larger than a kibbutz (which I'd call a community, not society) because it goes against human nature and has significant technical difficulties regarding efficient and sufficient production.

I emphatically agree with this. I generally find communism an interesting framework to operate under, but it's almost impossible for me to see it applicable on any way on a grand scale. I have a rather pessimistic view of humanity - not that I believe humans are inherently evil or wrong, but that doing the right thing is often difficult and that peoples' definitions of what is "right" are different and applied differently. This getting a bit into a diatribe, but I'd say my personal identification is closer to classical anarchism/libertarianism (NOT what modern American libertarianism is, which has almost nothing to do with the ideology) for the reasons you describe.

> ...classes based on economics are not the only way to stratify a society. In the USA it was also races, in Eastern Europe it was ethnicities, language and religion. Even if all workers had the same rights, a Russian was still "culturally superior" to a Lithuanian. People have other loyalties than to their class, and this is something that I think Marx was wrong about.

This is actually something Marx writes about with Engels and something he'd agree with you on. Marx did not state that economics was the only way to interpret history, but that it was one of the main forces of the "modern" era. He makes a point that stratification through race, religion, and ethnicity are all just as salient, but that economics was the one that oppressors could wield most strongly. The idea that Marx exclusively focused on economic stratification is something that's come from misinterpretation of his writings, and I've noticed that's mostly in literature coming since the 1980s - which probably coincides with the rise of neoliberalism in the West.

> Do you mean that the workers in some countries became accomplices of the capitalists, and a strong party with a strong leader is needed to keep the movement "pure"? Surely in the top 10 conspiracy theories.

Sort of. This is one of the big differences between Marxism and Leninism. Marx emphatically believed that workers fighting against the capitalists must occur organically, and that any attempt to manufacture revolution would end up being a fake revolution that would end up being more dangerous and destructive in the long run (ironic, isn't it?). This was a strong reaction against the "great man" theory of the Enlightenment, which postulated that history is moved by the actions of "great men" and personae. Marx, on the other hand, believed that history was moved by class struggles - with "class" primarily operating under the economic definition but also including issues of race, nationality, and sex. That's one of several reasons why you'll see Leninism described as "not real communism", because it violates one of Marx's central tenants that revolution must come from the people and be sustained by the people, as any revolution stemming from a figure would end up becoming by and for the figure.

Seriously it's fascinating stuff, even if you or I don't subscribe to the political/ideological aspect of it. It's legitimately interesting reading, and you can get a cheap copy of collected works here if you don't feel like reading through several hundred pages of Das Capital (and I wouldn't recommend you do so).

> I'm an economist but I don't think that everything can be explained by economics.

I was a healthcare economist before starting grad school, and I think geographical inequalities (but not inequities) do better at influencing economic behavior. Most people look at economics as being the driver of human political and social behavior in the last couple of decades, but I think it's more like a descendant of a common variable (geography) than anything else.

> I'm a huge advocate of welfare economics and sustainable finance. The first one is concerned with using human welfare instead of GPD as a measure of economic success. The second uses environmental impact in the calculation of financial feasibility of projects.

Do you have any books or authors you'd recommend? I'm taking a course on sustainability that mostly focuses on health behavior, but I'd like to learn a bit more on the sustainability of welfare and environment.

By the way, I'm enjoying this talk with you. I like having to think critically about things I've read or experienced, and I'm definitely getting that this morning! I sincerely apologize for my initial frustration.

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

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

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

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

Depends on how old you are.

• Middle school: I really enjoyed this, this, and this, but I don't think I can read those books now (29) without cringing a little bit. Especially, Getting Things Done because I already know how to make to do list, but I still flip through all 3 books occastionally.
  
  
• High school: I really enjoyed this, this, and this, but if you're a well adjusted human and responsible adult, then I don't think you'll find a lot of helpful advice from these 6 books so far because it'll be pretty basic information.
  
  
• College: I really enjoyed this, this, and started doing Malcolm Gladwell books. The checklist book helped me get more organized and So Good They Can't Ignore You was helpful starting my career path.
  
• Graduate School: I really enjoyed this, this, and this. I already stopped with most "self help" books and reading more about how to manage my money or books that looked interesting like Stiff.
  
  
• Currently: I'm working on this, this, and this. Now I'm reading mostly for fun, but all three of these books are way out of my league and I have no idea what their talking about, but they're areas of my interest. History and AI.

Great questions. I don't think there's an easy or foolproof answer to them.

>should lay people who have zero expertise in a field trust such general academic consensuses as being broadly correct?

Broadly correct? I would think that's a solid way to look at things. I'm in agreement with you.

>Are there good reasons for non-experts to be skeptical about the scientific consensus on vaccines, climate change or evolution?

"Good" reasons? Eh........I'll give a few scattered thoughts here:

• Some people are just going to be contrarians. I don't have any sources to link at the moment, but I think we've all encountered this at some point.
  
• Other people, often those who feel they have been marginalized by society (ex. white people who watched their friends go to college but couldn't go themselves—I'm referring to my own mother in this case), have a deep longing for "secret knowledge" and the sense of power it brings. Michael Barkun's A Culture of Conspiracy gives one of the breakdowns of this phenomenon while Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American History (1966) shows that none of this is new. For people who usually possess traits we associate with intelligence (they are intensely curious and often willing to reading extensively) but who feel like they have been unfairly excluded from the centers of intellectual life, the idea that that everyone but them has it wrong is a bit intoxicating. Especially when a small groups of other marginalized people begin listening to them. I am not justifying this phenomenon—it probably shares some of the same social DNA as the incel movement—but I am trying to humanize it.
  
• In addition to these two groups (contrarians and the intellectually marginalized), we might also add those people who have been turned off by the fervency and (please, don't throw anything at me) fundamentalist fanaticism of some popular science devotees. While 99% of modern people simply go about their days with a fairly healthy view of science and knowledge, we are all aware of the loud fringe who wants to paint anyone who disagrees with them as a "science denier" and launch social media crusades against them. Again, I'm trying to use a scalpel here and not a broad brush—it's the militant defenders of Scientism who have (like their religious counterparts) managed to turn some people off.
  
• Then there are what I like to "gut thinkers." These often genuinely good and kind-hearted people often make decisions (like whether to vaccinated their kids or not) based on emotion rather than strict reason. For them, there is nothing in the world more important than their child and the idea of their child being harmed by something they chose to do terrifies them. While they might not ever realize it, they operate in a similar fashion to those people in the "Trolley Problem" who refuse to pull the lever and save some lives because then someone would be dying as a direct result of their action. These people often hear conflicting stories (vaccines are safe vs vaccines cause illnesses) and it troubles their gut to the point where, rather than sitting down to rationalize a solution, they avoid the issue or default to whatever option requires the least amount of direct action.
  
• Lastly we might add those people who would otherwise accept scientific findings but who have one or two core beliefs or predispositions that can complicate things. For example, while we commonly label American fundamentalists as "anti-science," anyone working in that field knows from the work of the eminent George Marsden that they are rather ardently pro-Baconian science—meaning that they absolutely love empirical, directly observable science based on inductive reasoning. What they reject is deductive science and its long-range projections both forwards and backwards in time. I can say from experience that understanding this and acknowledging it in discussions with these people does wonders for the conversation and really disarms a lot of suspicion.
  
• I don't know that there is a perfect solution here, but one possible approach would be to start affirming "folk culture" within modern society. I'm literally just tossing this one out here and I expected it to be a bit controversial, but maybe it will stimulate some discussion. In essence, we (as modern, scientific Westerners) usually don't find it problematic to acknowledge, accommodate, and affirm indigenous forms of knowledge. In fact, we often condemn those who try to "Westernize" others for being colonial or destroying culture. For those who belong to tribes or ethnic enclaves, practicing non-scientific forms of knowledge is seen as a good thing by most of the intellectual elites in the West. But for those born into Western society, there is little socially-acceptable opportunity to seek out and develop alternative forms of knowledge. Perhaps creating a safe social arena for such a "folk culture" to re-emerge could give these above groups a healthy and socially legitimate avenue for exploring and fulfilling some of their deep unmet needs without the subversiveness that presently undermines a lot of the good work that science is doing.

>Don't you often celebrate your love for people who have a little good and a lot of bad in them?

Well, no, not really. If they have only a little good but a lot of bad then there's not much to celebrate. I hate to risk Godwinating myself, but they say even Hitler loved dogs and children. The question is how much good and how much bad has the US caused, and at what scales? That is probably not possible to reasonably measure now. Maybe 100 years from now, if any of the transhumans remember what the US was, then we can take a dispassionate look at the historical situation and see how it all worked out.

>it's possible to love it for the good while still hating the bad

Fair enough, but there is no mention in the song of the bad, only the good. I need to have God Bless the USA coming in one ear, and People of the Sun or something coming in the other. :-D

As far as my ambivalent feelings go, that's just the way I feel. I've traveled a fair amount in Europe as well as the US, and it is always a relief to get home. But on the other hand even when I lived in New Jersey, it was never "home" to me, even though it was in America. And I felt a lot more alienated when I was in the deep south than when I was in Germany, say.

A lot of my ambivalence stems from reading books like The Politics of Heroin and A People's History of the United States, and general background reading I've done on stuff like the firebombing of Tokyo and the Banana Wars, etc. Ah I said I wasn't going to go tit-for-tat here, sorry, I'll leave it at that. Anyway, loving America in a realistic way seems to me like what it must be like to have a close family member who beat you as a child or something (maybe not quite that extreme, but you get the picture). It's a complicated kind of love, with a lot of caveats, and to express only the love and not expressing the other part makes me feel a little weird.

Thanks for sticking around and having a civil conversation about this though, it's an interesting subject to talk about.

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.

> taking the 2000 year figure, that's getting awfully close to the KJV (1611AD).

So taking "the 2000 year figure" to go from alleged composition to the first manuscript is comparable to the distance from the composition of the gospels to a popular English translation of a Latin translation of the original Greek how?

>You'll need a source for that, every contemporary historian agrees the earliest scroll dates to at least 30 years, and most claim it's more like 60.

Well I was thinking of 7Q5, which was in an area abandoned in 68 and dated by papyrologists to the first half of the first century, but it's a small fragment and not without controversy. There's a more recent (c. 2012) find that has been dated by one paleographer to the second half of the first century, but apparently hasn't been sufficiently examined by others... I've neither seen it discredited or publicized as confirmed.

Since those are both "iffy" sources, I don't mind sticking to 30 instead of 10-20 ... considering paper lasts several hundred years properly cared for, I don't think 30 years is long enough to require a whole lot of copying distance from the originals. I mean ... I have books on my shelf written on cheap wood pulp that are closer to a century than a half-century old (and that haven't been considered holy) and if I wanted to copy them I could; I'm not sure why it's expected that a copy 50-100 years from the originals would have had time to pick up a lot of errors... that doesn't make sense to me.

But why does it matter to you? If you are acknowledging that it's reasonable to care whether it's 10-20 vs. 30-60, then aren't you implicitly saying that it's not intellectually dishonest to consider provenance dates as a reason to believe one document over another?

>To pretend that 2000 years of closely preserved mnemonics will somehow specifically crumble Krishna's resurrection account is not only silly, but entirely unfounded.

If you want to disagree that oral tradition (even with "closely preserved mnemonics") is just as reliable as having a written copy of something and copying it letter for letter, then it's your prerogative to have that opinion... even if we think each other "silly" I don't think that leaves either of us in a position to accuse the other of intellectual dishonesty... just poor reasons for (honestly) believing or disbelieving things, right?

And I haven't seen a response to the idea that oral tradition shouldn't be considered as trustworthy as written copies, but regardless of that, in the 2500 years before the mnemonics began, from there to when the events supposedly happened, is also a big enough gap. Most info I've seen place him at around 3000 BC, if it took from then to 500 for the account of his life to be recorded, that's 2500 years of time for exaggeration to slip in... again, multiple orders of magnitude different from the gospel accounts.

>And again, this is just 1 of the 13 gods I've mentioned resurrecting themselves.

So are you saying that you recognize at least for this one that there are legitimate, non-intellectually-dishonest reasons to trust the New Testament over the Vedas, and you want to move on to the other 12 now? This is why from the get-go I was more interested in discussing the fact that different texts are different levels of trustworthiness for a number of different reasons. Could be the details, could be the provenance, could be the intended audience or the interest of those promoting it.

I can give you a dozen books about people going to the moon, from Jules Verne's 1865 From the Earth to the Moon to the fantastic North Korean story of Kim Jong Il's heroic conquest of the moon as told by the North Korean propaganda ministry, to the Bernstain Bears on the Moon, to Michael Chaikin's A Man on the Moon: Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. Are Kim's and Chaikin's going to be equally credible because they both describe physical possibilities? Is Chaikin's story unbelievable just because Verne's, Kim's, and Bernstain's are incredible for various reasons? Should we discount Chaikin because of this book that says it was a hoax? Or should we believe it just because it's possible?

Edit: fixed a link

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

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

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

Aww thanks. I definitely encounter people who have more formal training and I'm just blown away by their vocabulary and some of the concepts they present. I like to try to simplify difficult concepts into things that are more easily digested.

Philosophers are not known for being accessible in their writing. There's a ton of people out there like me who try to make philosophy more accessible.

I've listened to podcasts that delve into singular ideas. I find these particularly enlightening. I listened to Ayn Rand audiobooks (lol). I've bought used college textbooks for next to nothing, because once teachers stop using that edition nobody wants them. I've read 3 different people who analyzed Nietzsche's work because he's so unapproachable in writing style. I really love Nietzsche because he would mirror my own thoughts and sometimes take me to the next level and sometimes I feel I'd be at the next level of his thoughts.

I wish I remembered all the good podcast/audio stuff to recommend for ya. For more accessible books, Bernard Reginster's "The Affirmation of Life" was a really good analysis of Nietzsche. It's good because he would essentially take one concept Nietzsche presented and just really hammer it out in a more logical form before moving onto the next. Moral philosophy is most fascinating to me. I highly recommend Michael Sandel's Justice for a really great overview of positions with great examples and things to think about.

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.

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

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

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

Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto

The opening essay of this short read is a condemnation of traditional schooling techniques---and it's also the speech he delivered when he (again) won the NY Teacher of the Year award. Gatto gets at the heart of why public schools consistently produce pencil pushers, not leaders. Every teacher should read this book.

How to Survive in Your Native Land by James Herndon

If Dumbing Us Down is the manifesto in favor of a more liberal pedagogy, Herdon's book is a memoir of someone trying to put that pedagogy in action. It's also a simple, beautiful easy to read book, the kind that is so good it reminds us just how good a book can be. I've read the teaching memoir that made Jonahton Kozol famous, this one is better.

The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori

In the early 1900s, Maria Montessori taught literacy to children that society had otherwise assumed were unreachable. She did this by using the scientific method to study each child's learning style. Some of what she introduced has been widely incorporated (like child-sized furniture) and some of it seems great but unworkable in overcrowded schools. The bottom line is that the Montessori method was one of the first pedagogical techniques that was backed by real results: both in test scores and in growing kids that thrive on learning and participation.

"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity by Beverly Daniel Tatum

While not precisely a book on how to teach, this book is incredibly helpful to any teacher working with a diverse student population, or one where the race they are teaching differs from their own. It explains the process that white, black, and children of other races go through in identifying themselves as part of a particular race. In the US, race is possibly the most taboo subject, so it is rare to find a book this honest and straightforward on a subject most educators try not to talk about at all. I highly recommend this book.

If there is any chance you will be teaching history, definitely read:

Lies My Teacher Told Me and A People's History of the United States (the latter book is a classic and, personally, changed my life).

Also recommend: The Multi-player Classroom by Lee Sheldon and Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov

Finally, anyone who plans to teach math should read this essay, "Lockhart's Lament" [PDF at the bottom of the page].

PS, I was tempted to use Amazon affiliate links, but my conscious wouldn't let me.

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?

>Should your wages go up three time because of nothing you did? Why?

I'll let Richard Wolff, a Phd economics professor elaborate why, and maybe... just maybe... you'll see the big underlying picture he's trying to convery. So pucker up that sphincter hole my friend:

From 1820 to 1970 the following sentence is true: The average level of wages ─ real wages what you actually got for an hours worth of work rose every decade for 150 years. There's' probably no capitalist country that can boast a record like that. It's absolutely stunning and unusual. even in the great depression, real wages went up because even though peoples money wages went down prices fell even more, so you ended up being able to buy more even though you had more dollars in your pocket, because prices fell.

What did this mean? It meant that Americans began to believe, and you know that how deeply that is in our political language, that we lived in a really blessed place. God, if you believe in that, must really like us, something magical about America: You came here, you worked hard, and amazingly, you got more. You could imagine to live in your own home. You could even dream at one point of sending your children to college. To have a car all your own. To wear nice clothes. It was amazing every family thought that it would live better than the generation before in the next generation better still. Parents got into the habit of offering their children to provide them with the education and the support that would make them have a better life.

And the irony here the United States and the marvel was that it was true... millions of people, the ancestors the most of us in this room if we're Americans came to the United states hoping to cash in on this operation, willing to work hard expecting that their life here would reward them with a higher standard of living then they would have gotten if they'd stayed where they came from, and mostly they were right. And it becomes part of the American culture in the American imagination. This is the place where if you work hard you get more pay. Yea... the work may not be pleasant. The work may be difficult, but the reward is at the mall. You'll earn more money and you'll buy more stuff.

Try to imagine with me what it would mean to a population that for a hundred and fifty years internalizes that image, that hope, that expectation if it were suddenly to stop being true. And I ask you to imagine that because that's what happened.

In the 1970's the rising real wage the United States came to an and, it has never resumed. The real wage of the American worker today, the average amount of goods and services you can buy with an hour of your labor is no greater today than it was in the 1978. You may be working harder. You may be working longer You may be working more efficiently because you work with a computer and all these other things. And indeed you are: You are delivering more goods and service per hour of your work to your employer. He's very happy about, but he doesn't pay you one iota more. This is an astonishing change, a sea change, a dramatic alteration in one's circumstance. It's all the more power in our country because it's unspoken. Because in the 1970's or 80's and 90's or to this day, nobody talks about this. Nobody confronts this. No one asks, "why did this happen?" "What do we do about it?" Instead as good Americans, we pretend that it isn't there. We imagine that if it's going on it's just about me and my job and my circumstance rather than a social process. And we imagine that it's not a social problem just my particular problem then I can solve it.

How did the American working class solve the problem. Two things they did, starting in the 1970's and right up until the crisis, and those two things are part of why this crisis happens which is why I'm gonna tell you about them now. The first thing Americans did is conclude,

>"Okay, I'm not getting anymore wages per hour, I know what, I'll do more hours."

Smart move.

>"And not only me the adult male in the house... but my wife. She's gonna go out, she may have been at home, she may have been a housewife... no more of that. She has to go out because we have to sustain the the family standard of living rising. And the old people have to come out of retirement and take at least a part-time job. And the teenager ought to do something on Saturday's at least, don't you think?

Here's a statistic to think about: the average number of hours worked per year by an American right now average, is 20% more than the average number of hours worked by a Swedish, French, German, or Italian worker. Think about it. For every 6 hours you work, they only work 5 or something like that. Some of you go to Europe and you enjoy lovely dinners with wine in an alfresco setting in an Italian town, and you say to yourself, "These people know how to live." And you imagine it's a matter of their culture they just love grapes. It isn't got much to do with culture:

What they have is... TIME.

They don't work like we do. They have time for long dinners. We are the country that invented fast food, and now you know why. It's a necessity, we don't have time to sit down. We need jobs to run by one of those takeout windows and yell something out at a disconsolate teenager who yells something back and hands you something you shouldn't put in your body in any case. And so Americans went to work most importantly the women. In 1970, 40% of American women worked outside the home for money. Today, double 80%. An absolutely fundamental change: those women had to do that. They merely thought of it as women's liberation and it certainly had those dimensions. They wanted to help the family, the point in fact is if the family was going to continue to consume to give its children what it had promised to live the American dream., since husband wasn't gonna get anymore wages ever again. She had to go out. But when the wife goes out all kinds of things change: Women in America, household women held together the emotional life of our society. They did the emotional work. They provided the solace. When that woman has to go out and do 8 hours of work and get dressed and do the travel and back home, she can't do it anymore. She may face that fact, but she can't.

Starting in the 1970's, the United States became the country with the highest rate of divorce, the relationships couldn't survive. We have 6% of the population in the world and consume over half the psychotropic drugs, the anti-depressants, what's going on? Are we crazy people? I don't think so. I think we are under extraordinary pressure. We work the longest hours on the face of the earth. We do more hours per average worker than the Japanese. That's saying something. And our families are stressed, deeply stressed, as anyone who has studied the situation knows. Our behavior has changed under the pressure of this extra work, and one way to describe it to you is to mention a book some of you may know. A Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam, wrote a famous book with a funny title, Bowling Alone, he studies Americans participation in anything other than making their life hang together.

• Bowling leagues used to absorb millions of Americans. No more.

• Trade unions used to be centers of collective life. No more.

• Community organizations used to get lots of people. PTA's did too. No more.

Americans turned inwards in the last 30 years, and it's not some mysterious cultural phenomenon. It has to do with you're working too hard, you're stressed out of your mind. Your relationships are falling apart. Your intimate life is a disaster. But you don't want to see it in terms of wages and the job, and that's what I'm gonna stress.

So the American people ever resourceful did something else which further traumatized them. To keep the consumption going to deliver the American dream to their children, they went on a borrowing binge the likes of which no working class in the history of the world ever undertook before. Starting in the 1970's the Americans savings rate collapsed. We stopped saving money, but much worse than that, we BORROWED money. We invented a new way to give everybody debts. It's called the credit card. Before the 1970's they didn't have that. only the rich people had an American Express card. After that we developed the American Express card for the masses, it's called Master and Visa, and you all have them, you have lots of them. You collect them. You max one out, you get another one. And you keep hoping that this Russian Roulette will not get you. And so in 2007 we came to the end of the line for the working class. They couldn't work anymore hours, they were exhaust, they were stressed beyond words. and now they were overwhelmed by having violated what their parents have told them, "Save money little boy." "Hold something back little girl for a difficult time. For a rainy day. For a special expense. For an illness." Not only did we not save anything, but we're in a hock up to our ears.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Classical liberalism isn't the only ism concerned with evidence and reasoning, but since it's apparently one of the reference points you happen to be familiar with you're just assuming that must be what I mean. Instead, I'm talking about the kind of modern liberalism described books such as Fear Itself by Ira Katznelson. You seem to be talking about the caricature of modern liberalism typically advanced by the likes of Jonah Goldberg which tends to be laughed out of the room by serious historians.

Modern liberalism is what we got with Roosevelt's reimagining of the role and purpose of government in managing civil society as he dealt with the after effects of the Great Depression and a World War, and the post Roosevelt task of establishing the post-world War II order. In Roosevelt's time liberal democracies were in competition with ascendant autocratic and authoritarian regimes around the world, and there was very much a sentiment among public intellectuals that democracy might not be able to compete with these other forms of governance. This liberalism uses institutions to effectively deal with large-scale demographic and economic trends, effectively support integrate technology into the modern world, and carefully manage international norms.

All of which requires careful, nuanced engagement with empirical realities and academic research, and requires fostering an environment respectful of the rule of law. And you can see expressions of this liberalism in the post-world War II order we helped establish in democracies in Western Europe, often cited as ideals by liberals that we should move toward. In short, it's a bit more nuanced than regulation loving terrorist sympathizers.

Meanwhile, during the same time conservative Democrats in the South were happy to make common cause with Roosevelt because New Deal programs meant the transfer of resources from wealthy Northeastern states to the South, which is fine with them so long as it could be executed in a way that didn't interfere with the prevailing racial order, which is why states rights was such a point of emphasis. Any federal administration of programs brought with it the possibility of sharing economic opportunities not just with poor white people but also poor black people. Once it became clear that the Democratic party was aligning itself with the civil rights movement, conservatives rebelled and embraced the Republican Party and gradually rolled back the New Deal and crushed the labor movement, allowing a constantly evolving structure of business and industry groups to become the animating forces of politics, especially on the Republican side.

The various forces of racial identity politics and business interests consolidated over a gradual process that spanned decades and culminated in the election of Reagan and the emergence of anti-intellectualism. The business-friendly nature of the party has made conservatives disdainful of research showing the hazards of smoking, and later dismissive of empirical research about the dangers of climate change or the truth of evolution.

And conservative leaders whipped up the passions of their base by stirring up animosity toward immigrants, foreigners, poor people who aren't white (eg welfare queens), and playing up fears for political advantage during the Cold War and War on Terror. The obsession with security, fear of some sort of apocalypse or world war or terrorist attack always on the verge of happening has indicated a desire for strong leaders, a strong sense of tribal patriotism, and a worship of strength and especially military leaders. Or authoritarian tough guy leaders in general such as Trump.

In a superficial sense it's true that anyone of any ideology could hypothetically be sympathetic toward authoritarianism. But it also ignores the facts on the ground about the dominant political passions that animate the two ideologies in the United States at the moment, which clearly indicate a strong desire for authoritarianism on the side of conservatives which simply isn't matched even remotely on the liberal side.

Further reading:

• Fear Itself
  
• Anything by John Dean on Authoritarianism
  
• The Republican Brain
  
• Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
  
  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

Well, what you're discussing here I make a living out of studying (theoretical political science). Just about all technology so far has been good technology, and anything in the not-too-distant future is going to be good technology, and anything in the way-distant future will probably be good technology.

The problem is not with technology, but the dissonance-gap created between the technology we develop, and our behavioral implementation of these technologies into society. Medicine was a good technology, and we've basically implemented it well (some states don't get common medicines, but overall we've been good with Medicine). Radio was a good technology and we've developed it well. Flight is a good technology and we've developed it well. The internet and miniaturized media devices? well, that's a complex one. Obviously it's a defining good of our age, and we could go on all day discussing how good it is for our society in various aspects. But, it's also bad in many -- again, not bad in itself, but in how we as a society have chosen to implement the technology of mobile media and the internet.


This will probably be my dissertation, so suffice it to say these technologies have driven us towards a more democratic political atmosphere (that's little-d democratic as in non-representative, not the party). Referendums, Senate election reform, 24hr. news cycles, daily polls, all serve to pressure elected officials as the democratic citizens pressure them for more instant results. The result is, effectively, an antagonist environment of partisanship, bickering, no-compromise, and misinformation. The evolution of immediacy-technologies (this includes flight, I suppose) has changed the pace of our world beyond what is responsible for most of us. To put it simply, what we have developed in terms of social-accessibility this past century is slightly beyond what we as a people are capable of working with maturely. Infotainment butchers credible news channels, misinformation and bias runs amok, fringe party movements dominate national election, the few qu'ran burning crazies grab headlines. This trend is not a result of human evolution, but a lack of. Our technology has improved and we haven't.

This goes beyond civics though, ironically we can socially flounder because of social media technologies. Just look at all the forever-alones on reddit/the internet, or when you go out with your friends for a drink and they all tap away on their smart phones texting other people instead of enjoying the real moment with eachother. Robert Putnam basically made this his focus of study which can be summed up politically here and more socially analyzed in his book Bowling Alone.

Fortunately, we've grown accordingly with technology where it really matters - international conflict and the nuclear bomb. We haven't had any nuclear winters because we were able to adapt to the new international atmosphere of Mutually Assured Destruction - we were smart enough to put aside our antagonistic nature towards our perceived enemies, and cooled our heads well enough to prevent a nuclear war for 60 years (and still into today!). There have been no major world-wars since we've developed mass-mobilization capabilities, and no crazy biological warfare (of course there are incidents like Hussein and his Kurds, or WW1 gas weapons, but those are regional events or in the case of WW1 an example of us toying with a new technology before truly understanding it)



So, thus far there's no real evidence that we've hit a breaking point where we've gone too far in terms of technological development. But we're getting pretty close. Historically there have been moments of technological development, and moments of social development. During the renaissance we began developing philosophy, human rights, and justice while simultaneously making huge strides in technology (industrial revolution anyone)? Maybe one sparked the other, maybe one allowed for the other, either way we and our technology grew together. I only hope that if we wish to continue our exponential push to singularity, we're able to kick our behavior/cognitive development along with it.

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.

Sure.

If evolution is of interest to you (and if you have interest in the intersection between theology and science), Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth Miller explores both sides of the debate and debunks many common misconceptions about evolution. I first read it in a college biology topics course.

If you like the topic of 'creationist attempts to dispute or disrupt the teaching of evolution in the classroom', Summer of the Gods, about the Scopes Monkey Trial, is a great book (although not explicitly about science).

You may find The Selfish Gene by Dawkins worth a read.

Books by Mary Roach can be fun; I've read Stiff and enjoyed it, and Packing for Mars was pretty good as well.

I have heard good things about The Emperor of All Maladies, though I haven't read it myself.

Our Stolen Future, about contamination of the environment by artificially produced estrogen and estrogen analogs, is dated but interesting.

The Discovery of Insulin by Bliss is a great story about how science happens and how scientific discovery occurs, and it lays out what may be the most important discovery in medical science during the 20th century.

Were those types of books what you were looking for?

I like Big History Project. I modify the work for my younger kids. It's free and covers from when the Earth was formed (not by God) to the present. It's free. There's also Crash Course. It has History and Science (and tons of other) videos that are very short and to the point. There's also CK-12 that has free textbooks, worksheets you can modify, and a ton of other stuff as well. The History of US is great too. My kids hated Story of the World. There is also A People's History of the United States. There's also some great podccasts like American History Tellers, and Forever Ago.

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I always tried to give my kids a big overview of history, and then we followed what they were interested in. At one point we did aAdd a Century Timeline and wrote out the most important dates in Roller Coaster and theme park history. Then they looked up what was going on historically and figured out if it effected what was going on in theme park history. It made it a lot more meaningful to them, I hope. We also visited as many historical places as we could.

> 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?

https://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Looks-Constitutional/dp/0465031331

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Right-Went-Wrong-Conservatism/dp/1476763801

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

These are 3 examples of significant literary works on American politics written in recent times. And although I only own one, I'm probably going to buy "It's even worse than it looks" I'm pretty sure they attest the asymmetrical polarization of American politics today, that allows extremists to thrive, whereas they couldn't have in previous decades.

The problem with Fox News, is for a major news organization, even they have a mixed record on reporting actual "facts". Edit: To be fair, CNN and MSNBC also sometimes misinform their viewers as well, but not nearly as bad as Fox does.



https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fox-news/

A study was done that found that people who don't watch news at all, were better informed on factually correct information, than people who religiously watched Fox News. One of our biggest media outlets in the nation, is routinely misinforming it's viewers on matters of national significance.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/07/21/a-rigorous-scientific-look-into-the-fox-news-effect/#443b3c5b12ab

Most the Right Wing media sources, play on stereotypes and emotionally driven headlines rather than factually reporting the news.

This is why now, in a country that has always honored Freedom of Speech, is now taking issue with "Fake News" making it's way into peoples facebook streams. Because a lot of media sites are now regularly failing to report factually correct information, and it's causing the electorate to vote for candidates who are consistently factually incorrect in what they say. And a major country like the United States, who leaders consistently believe in and base policy off of factually incorrect information, I don't see how that can possibly be good for my country, or the world for that matter.

It is no mere coincidence that for a Conservative party, globally speaking, only in America is the Republicans the only major Conservative party in a Western Democracy, that outright denies the realities of Climate Change.

This.

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

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 took APUSH to and there's actually a number of pitfalls to it. Remember that APUSH is focused towards the AP test, so while everyone else will be starting from the Civil War/WWI to the present, you'll be racing through American History from Columbus to Bush Jr all about a month before you have to take the test. The teachers that take AP responsibilities are good, but the knowledge is still incomplete. If you want to get more knowledge (going through my history BA right now) check out a couple of these resources:

A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn: https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0060838655

In the interest of impartiality, I'll mention the more right leaning version of the People's History, A Patriot's History of the United States: https://www.amazon.com/Patriots-History-United-States-Columbuss/dp/1595230327 Note that a large amount of it was written not by the centrist historian Michael Allen, but the more politically motivated Larry Schweikart. Regardless, both of these books are used by APUSH classes throughout the country. I'd just pick one.

Also (this is going to sound really stupid) but a series of documentaries entitled A Walk Through the 20th Century with Bill Moyers where LBJs press secretary Bill Moyers talks about history from a perspective that helps us understand what (in general) people were thinking at the time. Here's one episode on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7eg5TBwJ-Y

Finally, if you want to have some entertaining yet deep history, check out Dan Carlin. He has plenty of extremely informative (if slightly editorialized for entertainment purposes) podcasts. His Blueprint for Armageddon series is one of the most intriguing narratives of World War One I've ever seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFMT_BVBBsA

Google Has Become a Major Threat to Democracy in America - Michael Krieger - Aug 30, 2017

About 10 years ago, Tim Wu, the Columbia Law professor who coined the term network neutrality, made this prescient comment: “To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist, you have to have faith in the way people traditionally felt about the king.”

Wu was right. And now, Google has established a pattern of lobbying and threatening to acquire power.

It has reached a dangerous point common to many monarchs: The moment where it no longer wants to allow dissent.

When Google was founded in 1998, it famously committed itself to the motto: “Don’t be evil.”

It appears that Google may have lost sight of what being evil means, in the way that most monarchs do:

Once you reach a pinnacle of power, you start to believe that any threats to your authority are themselves villainous and that you are entitled to shut down dissent.

As Lord Acton famously said, “Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.”

Those with too much power cannot help but be evil.

Google, the company dedicated to free expression, has chosen to silence opposition, apparently without any sense of irony.

In recent years, Google has become greedy about owning not just search capacities, video and maps, but also the shape of public discourse.

As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Google has recruited and cultivated law professors who support its views.

And as the New York Times recently reported, it has become invested in building curriculum for our public schools, and has created political strategy to get schools to adopt its products.

It is time to call out Google for what it is: a monopolist in search, video, maps and browser, and a thin-skinned tyrant when it comes to ideas.

Google is forming into a government of itself, and it seems incapable of even seeing its own overreach.

We, as citizens, must respond in two ways.

First, support the brave researchers and journalists who stand up to overreaching power; and second, support traditional anti-monopoly laws that will allow us to have great, innovative companies — but not allow them to govern us.

From Zephyr Teachout’s powerful article: Google Is Coming After Critics in Academia and Journalism. It’s Time to Stop Them. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/30/zephyr-teachout-google-is-coming-after-critics-in-academia-and-journalism-its-time-to-stop-them]

The mask has finally come off Google’s face, and what lurks underneath looks pretty evil.

2017 has represented a coming out party of sorts for Google and the control-freaks who run it.

The company’s response to the James Damore controversy made it crystal clear that executives at Google are far more interested in shoving their particular worldview down the throats of the public, versus encouraging vibrant and lively debate.

This is not a good look for the dominant search engine.

The creeping evilness of Google has been obvious for quite some time, but this troubling reality has only recently started getting the attention it deserves.

The worst authoritarian impulses exhibited at the company appear to emanate from Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt, whose actions consistently seem to come from a very dark and unconscious place.

Today’s piece focuses on the breaking news that an important initiative known as Open Markets, housed within the think tank New America Foundation, has been booted from the think tank after major donor Google complained about its anti-monopoly stance.

Open Markets was led by a man named Barry Lynn, who all of you should become familiar with.

The Huffington Post profiled him last year. Here’s some of what we learned [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/barry-lynn-washington-corporations_us_57c8a6a7e4b0e60d31de6433?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004]:

There’s a solid economic rationale behind Washington’s new big thing. Monopolies and oligopolies are distorting the markets for everything from pet food to cable service. http://fortune.com/2015/05/19/cable-industry-becomes-a-monopoly/]

There’s a reason why cable companies have such persistently lousy customer-service ratings. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/17/AR2007101702359.html]

They know you have few (if any) alternatives.

Today, two-thirds of the 900 industries tracked by The Economist feature heavier concentration at the top than they did in 1997. [http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21695392-big-firms-united-states-have-never-had-it-so-good-time-more-competition-problem]

The global economy is in the middle of a merger wave big enough to make 2015 the biggest year in history for corporate consolidation. [http://www.wsj.com/articles/2015-becomes-the-biggest-m-a-year-ever-1449187101]

Most political junkies have never heard of the man chiefly responsible for the current Beltway antitrust revival: Barry C. Lynn.

A former business journalist, Lynn has spent more than a decade carving out his own fiefdom at a calm, centrist Washington think tank called the New America Foundation.

In the process, he has changed the way D.C. elites think about corporate power.

“Barry is the hub,” says Zephyr Teachout, a fiery progressive who recently clinched the Democratic nomination for a competitive House seat in New York. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/zephyr-teachout-democratic-primary_us_57728b8ee4b0f168323aee9d]

“He is at the center of a growing new ― I hesitate to call it a movement ― but a group of people who recognize that we have a problem with monopolies not only in our economy, but in our democracy.”

Many Southerners who relocate to the nation’s capital try to temper their accents for the elite crowd that dominates the District’s social scene.

Lynn, a South Florida native, never shed his drawl.

He pronounces “sonofabitch” as a single word, which he uses to describe both corrupt politicians and big corporations.

He is a blunt man in a town that rewards caginess and flexibility.

But like King, Lynn’s critique of monopolies does not reflect a disdain for business itself.

Lynn left Global Business for The New America Foundation in 2001 and began work on his first book, End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation, which argues that globalization and merger mania had injected a new fragility into international politics. [https://www.amazon.com/End-Line-Coming-Global-Corporation/dp/0767915879?tag=thehuffingtop-20]

Disruptive events ― earthquakes, coups, famines, or at worst, war ― could now wreak havoc on U.S. products that had once been safely manufactured domestically.

Production of anything from light bulbs to computers all could shut down without warning.

It was a frightening vision with implications for economic policy and national security alike.

It was also ideologically inconvenient for the techno-utopian zeitgeist of its day. Lynn’s book landed on shelves about the same time as Thomas Friedman’s better-known tome, The World Is Flat, which declared globalization a triumph of innovation and hard work for anyone willing to do the hard work of innovating. [https://www.amazon.com/World-Flat-History-Twenty-first-Century/dp/0374292884?tag=thehuffingtop-20]

Today, Lynn’s predictions of market disruption and political unrest appear to have been ahead of their time.

Early globalization champions, including Martin Wolf and Lawrence Summers, are rethinking their judgments of a decade ago. [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e46e8c00-6b72-11e6-ae5b-a7cc5dd5a28c.html#axzz4J2hMuhyq]

But Lynn turned several influential heads when his book was published. Thomas Frank, bestselling author of What’s The Matter With Kansas?, became a Lynn enthusiast. [https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_1]

So did food writer Michael Pollan.

“He was writing about an issue that nobody was paying attention to, and he was doing it with a very strong sense of history,” Pollan says.

“Barry understood antitrust going back to the trust-busters a century ago, and how our understanding of the issue shrank during the Reagan administration … The food movement is not very sophisticated on those issues.”

Lynn’s history nerd-dom is eccentric in a town that hyperventilates over every hour of the cable news cycle.

Ask about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, and Lynn will oblige you a polite sentence or two.

Ask him about former Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis or William Howard Taft, and you’ll need to reschedule your dinner plans.

“He once asked me to read about Roman law for a piece on common carriage,” says Lina Khan, referencing a plank of net neutrality policy not typically associated with the Code of Justinian.

After he published his second book in 2010, Lynn began bringing on his own staff within New America. Khan was one of his first hires.

Teachout, a Fordham University Law School professor, was another.

Teachout eventually ran for office and published a book of her own on the history of corruption in America. [https://www.amazon.com/Corruption-America-Benjamin-Franklin%E2%80%99s-Citizens/dp/0674659988/ref=sr_1_1?amp=&ie=UTF8&keywords=Zephyr+Teachout&qid=1472758645&sr=8-1&tag=thehuffingtop-20]

Another of Lynn’s associates, Christopher Leonard, published a book on meat industry monopolies around the same time.

These works shared a common theme: Monopolistic businesses create social problems beyond consumer price-gouging, from buying off politicians to degrading the quality of our food...

More: https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2017/08/30/google-has-become-a-major-threat-to-democracy-in-america/

> It'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.

This is something that takes a lot of practice, and many schools don't or can't teach it. Fear not, it's easier than it sounds.

First, some background:

http://www.amazon.com/Global-History-Modern-Historiography/dp/0582096065

This will introduce you to most of the historical method used today. It's quite boring, but if you're going to study history, you'll need to get used to reading some pretty dry material.

For a styleguide, use Diana Hacker's:
http://www.amazon.com/Pocket-Style-Manual-Diana-Hacker/dp/0312542542/

It will teach you everything you need to know about citations.

As far as getting better at source analysis, that's something that comes with time in class and practice with primary and secondary source documents. If you're just going into college, it's something you're going to learn naturally.

However, I do have some tips.
-The main goal of a piece of historiography is to bring you to a thesis and then clearly support that argument. All REAL historiography asks a historical question of some sort. I.E. not when and where, but a more contextual why and how.

-Real historiography is produced 99.9% of the time by a university press, NOT A PRIVATE FIRM. If a celebrity wrote it, it's probably not history.

-Most, if not all real historiography is going to spell out the thesis for you almost immediately.

-A lot of historiography is quite formulaic in terms of its layout and how it's put together on paper:

A. Introduction -- thesis statement and main argument followed by a brief review of past historiography on the subject.

B Section 1 of the argument with an a,b, and c point to make in support.

C just like B

D just like B again, but reinforces A a little more

E Conclusion, ties all sections together and fully reinforces A.

Not all works are like this, but almost every piece you will write in college is or should be.

Some history books that do real history (by proper historians) and are easy to find arguments in, just off the top of my head:

http://www.amazon.com/Wages-Whiteness-American-Working-Haymarket/dp/1844671453

http://www.amazon.com/Economists-Guns-Authoritarian-Development-U-S--Indonesian/dp/0804771820/

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Battalions-Crisis-American-Nationality/dp/0805081380

For the primer on social histories, read Howard Zinn:
http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Present/dp/0060838655/

What you're going to come across MORE often than books is a series of articles that make different (sometimes conflicting) points about a historical issue: (I can't really link the ones I have because of copyright [they won't load without a password], but check out google scholar until you have access to a university library)

Virtually any subject can be researched, you just have to look in the right place and keep an open mind about your thesis. Just because you've found a source that blows away your thesis doesn't mean it's invalid. If you find a wealth of that kind of stuff, you might want to rethink your position, though.


This isn't comprehensive, but I hope it helps. Get into a methods class AS FAST AS POSSIBLE and your degree program will go much, much smoother for you.

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

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

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

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

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

The thing is, I think representatives have always been influenced by special interests ever since before the inception of the United States. However, the way in which special interests have influenced representatives has certainly changed through time.

When the Constitution was signed, "we the people" was not meant to include blacks, Indians, women, or indentured servants. The main reason why George Washington was elected as the first president was because he was by far the wealthiest American at the time. And all of those who signed the Constitution has their vested interests.

That's just one example. Right now I'm reading A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. And he makes it clear that oligarchic powers have always had a heavy influence on policy.

I guess I'm wondering when we were closest to having a representative democracy in the United States. I'm honestly not sure.

Instead of talking yourself out of becoming educated, imagine what would happen to society if everyone did so. Everyone, people like you included, has the potential to transform society through education, dialogue, and activism. Judging from some of your comments, I'm gonna go ahead and recommend that you start with Karl Marx. If you're worried about exploitation, interested in socialism, etc., go to the source. Either the Communist Manifesto or Capital, depending on how heavy you're willing to get. If you want something that covers a wide selection of Marx and Engels, I highly recommend this reader. This includes the Manifesto, book 1 of Capital, and some other important essays. Maybe you'll like it. Maybe you'll hate it. But it's a great place to start if you want first hand exposure to the foundation of critical theory. Keep in mind that everyone you talk to, even philosophy majors, even philosophy professors, are going to have a bias in one way or another. You have to pursue the truth yourself and don't let anyone scare you out of getting educated and engaged with improving society. Your silence supports the status quo, so if you're comfortable with things being the way they are, by all means stay at home.

It sounds like you have an Intro Geology book.

For a nice overview of historical geology, I was enraptured by "The Earth: An Intimate History" by Richard Fortey. It starts slow but delves into the major developments and ideas of geology as the author visits many significant locales around the world.

Stephen Jay Gould was a very prolific science-writer across paleontology and evolution.

John McPhee has several excellent books related to geology. I would recommend "Rising from the Plains" and "The Control of Nature."

Mark Welland's book "SAND" is excellent, covering topics of sedimentology and geomorphology.

If you are interested in how society manages geologic issues, I would recommend Geo-Logic, The Control of Nature mentioned before, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, and Cadillac Desert.

These are some of the texts I used in university:

• Nesse's Introduction to Mineralogy
  
• Winter's Principles of Metamorphic and Igneous Petrology
  
• Twiss and Moore's Structural Geology
  
• Bogg's Sedimentology and Stratigraphy
  
• Burbank and Anderson's Tectonic Geomorphology
  
• Davis's Statistics and Data Analysis in Geology
  
• Burbank and Anderson's Tectonic Geomorphology
  
• Fetter's Applied Hydrogeology
  
• White's Geochemistry (pdf online)
  
• Shearer's Seismology
  
• Copeland's Communicating Rocks
  

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.

So I would second Integrald's list as great, and I think everyone should read all of the books in the Core section. If you're interested in political economy, I'd specifically point out these from it as nice general-interest introductions:

• Guns Germs and Steel
  
• Why Nations Fail
  
• The Mystery of Capital
  
  If you're interested in alternative models, there are two particular works that I'd recommend reading. The first is probably obvious - get yourself the big old Marx reader. Marxist thought is less important than it used to be, but still worth getting acquainted with.
  
  The second might be less familiar but I think is also very important - Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation. It is basically a sociologically-oriented history of the rise of capitalism. Polanyi's argument is that the "free market" is no less a utopian vision than the communist one, and that in many times and places people seek protection from the market rather than a desire to participate in it. This is one of the very few books I've read as an adult that actually changed my perspective in a meaningful way, and if you're interested in the "big questions" of politics and economics I can't recommend it highly enough.

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.

Not totally accurate, but if you’re looking for popular science/entertainment that’s somewhat anthropology related.... Kathy Reichs is a board certified forensic anthropologist and has written a lot of books. They (she) are what the TV show Bones was based on.

Stiff by Mary Roach is a good one

For nonfiction, and if you’re interested in things highly relevant politically now, these are some incredible works on immigration.

Becoming Legal
They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields

I’m pretty sure this author is a sociologist, but still a great book. imagined communities

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

The principle of Fürherprinzip is mostly organic. Humans naturally look towards strong leaders. And while the Third Reich was not completely organic, it was a substantial improvement over the liberal Judeo-Capitalist Weimar Republic. Adolf Hitler's long-term plans for Germany would have fully brought about the National Socialist ideal.

\>Have you had many bad experiences with people outside of your cultural background?

Yes, I went to a high school full of Negroes and mestizos, but that's purely anecdotal evidence, no? I'm intellectually honest, so I'll give you something more substantial. It's a study by Dr. Robert Putnam, entitled Bowling Alone. In it, he initially set out to prove the axiom that "diversity is our greatest strength", but quickly discovered quite the opposite. While studying the great cities of America, he found that ethnic diversity is strongly correlated with loss of social cohesion, diminishment of social capital, and a decrease in overall community engagement, not just between ethnic groups, but within them.

This is the book. I can't find a free PDF anywhere, but I have no doubt that you'll be able to find a torrent of it somewhere.

This last point addressed your other queries, too. The reason society must be organized along racial and ethnic lines, without getting into the spiritual side of things, is that human nature ensures that that's the only kind of organization that WILL work.

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

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

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

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

Yes, there were no direct aid programs targeting the working people on america who were devastated, hence the Bernie rhetoric; "Socialism for the rich, Rugged Individualism for the working class" Martin Luther King said the same in his time.

Devos is secretary of education, and yes she had an investment basket full of education profiteers that was caught during the confirmation process, including a collection agency that specialized in student loans.

She said ok you caught me, I'll divest, but would you trust her?

>“My family is the biggest contributor of soft money to the Republican National Committee,” she wrote in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. “I have decided to stop taking offense,” she wrote, “at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues. We expect a return on our investment."

You sound like you have your eyes open. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn is a great read for the progressive-minded. Most libraries carry this book.

In the Heart of the Sea tells the true story that inspired Moby Dick, and is a great read.

If you like non-fiction, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage and The Perfect Storm are also very good.

Salon founder David Talbot chronicles the cultural history of San Francisco and from the late 1960s to the early 1980s when figures such as Harvey Milk, Janis Joplin, Jim Jones, and Bill Walsh helped usher from backwater city to thriving metropolis.

http://www.amazon.com/Season-Witch-Enchantment-Terror-Deliverance-ebook/dp/B005C6FDFY/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Cool, Gray City of Love brings together an exuberant combination of personal insight, deeply researched history, in-depth reporting, and lyrical prose to create an unparalleled portrait of San Francisco. Each of its 49 chapters explores a specific site or intersection in the city, from the mighty Golden Gate Bridge to the raunchy Tenderloin to the soaring sea cliffs at Land's End.

http://www.amazon.com/Cool-Gray-City-Love-Francisco-ebook/dp/B00D78R550/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1451757678&sr=1-1&keywords=cool+grey+city+of+love

Not a book, but this American Experiance episode is fantastic.

In 1957, decades before Steve Jobs dreamed up Apple or Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, a group of eight brilliant young men defected from the Shockley Semiconductor Company in order to start their own transistor business. Their leader was 29-year-old Robert Noyce, a physicist with a brilliant mind and the affability of a born salesman who would co-invent the microchip -- an essential component of nearly all modern electronics today, including computers, motor vehicles, cell phones and household appliances.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/

Also, not related to San Francisco directly, but focusing on California and the west, if you want to understand why California is the way it is today, this is on the list of essential reading material.

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

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. :)

How? With what money? With what resources? With what education? You're talking about an entire population that was intentionally deprived of familial connections, cultural connections, the ability to organize, the ability to build wealth, the ability to exercise any autonomy, literacy, and education.

Africa is not exactly a small place, and most ex-slaves didn't even know where their ancestors had been kidnapped from.

Also keep in mind how much different things looked at the end of the Civil War than much later. Ex-slaves were promised equality with whites, full rights as citizens of the US, and given the promise of reparations for slavery. Congress passed a law in 1865 that guaranteed full citizenship regardless of race and the 14th amendment was circulated starting in 1866 and became part of the constitution in 1868. For a decade following the end of the Civil War Reconstruction proceeded at a fast pace. Laws were changed, progress was made, historical iniquities were being redressed. The vast majority of ex-slaves in this situation who were offered the possibility of staying wherever they were and using the labor skills they already had to attempt to make a living in America (either through sharecropping or on their own) seemed enormously enticing.

At a minimum the situation looked to be superior to their previous situation of enslavement. They were ostensibly free. They could keep their families together, they could build their lives up (in terms of wealth, community, education, skills, ambition, etc.), and they had the prospect of attaining true equality of stature and accomplishment with whites in perhaps a generation or so.

It was not until two or three decades later when Reconstruction had been destroyed and dismantled, when slavery had been replaced with a racial caste system that was becoming enshrined in custom and law (Jim Crow et al), and when it became abundantly clear that the end of slavery did not mean the end of white supremacy in America that black Americans began to comprehend that the society they lived in was going to limit the extent of their advancements to a very narrowly defined box not much expanded from where it had been before. And then there really was a huge debate on what to do. Black communities felt the oppression, understood the long-term implications and generally understood that the status quo was untenable.

Eventually they did take action and move, out of the South and into the North and the West in one of the most significant demographic shifts in the 20th century called The Great Migration. By then they had more money, more resources, more education, much greater literacy, and greater ability to move around (due to the advent of automobiles and the advancement of railroads). But even so, and even moving within the US alone, it was an enormously challenging endeavor that not all African-Americans undertook.

If you want to get some additional perspective on what things were like I'd suggest reading "The Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson.

This isn't heavily science-y and a bit journalized, but I really enjoyed Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadaver's by Mary Roach. I also like Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne. There's a lot of overlap with what he teaches at his UChicago Eco & Evo course. Bad Science by Ben Goldacre is also wonderful, but will likely make you angry. Yet another interesting read is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

"The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below." - Hyperion, Dan Simmons

"Joe Gould is a blithe and emaciated little man who has been a notable in the cafeterias, diners, barrooms, and dumps of Greenwhich Village for a quarter of a century" - Up In The Old Hotel - Joseph Mitchell

"He told them he loved them" - Columbine - Dave Cullen

"Kazbek Misikov stared at the bomb hanging above his family. It was a simple device, a plastic bucket packed with explosive paste, nails, and small metal balls. It weighed perhaps eight pounds. The existence of this bomb had become a central focus of his life." - The School - C.J. Chivers

"It was summer; it was winter." The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy - MICHAEL PATERNITI

"The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken. I have never before had occasion to make the comparison, for never before today have I seen a head in a roasting pan" Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers - Mary Roach

Classism definitely exists, but like everything else doesn't exist in a bubble. Class, race, gender, sex, age...these things all intersect and interact in ways that make social realities for people. Academics (which I am not) have different opinions about the extent to which one is more important than another. I would say yes, historically it has been far more difficult for a person of color to move up in American society and yes, that is still the case today. But I'm just a guy on reddit who likes to read. If you're interested in this stuff here's where I started: The Color of Law, New Jim Crow, Ta-Nehisi Coates, the autobiography of Malcolm X, The Warmth of Other Suns

The first theories on this appeared in the states after Bush II got elected:

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

https://www.amazon.com/dp/080507774X/

But it’s basically identity politics. The world has gotten to complex for many to understand so they’ve retreated back to a single strategy

If they are like me they will care about what I care about and handle things the way I would handle them if I was in charge

So BJs and trumps primary strategy is looking and sounding like the people whose votes they want. Trump even watches Fox News (Murdoch) as research to better know what that is.

This is a great question that I have thought about a million times. I have actually spent a lot of time trying to find a book on it, but I have not come across one that is specifically about Sociology or Psychology.

I first started to think about this when I was getting my masters degree (in Sociology). Often times I was super excited to share the things I would learn with my family and friends, and how the things I was (and still am) learning are often in contradiction to the things I was told/learned growing up. For context, I'm a white girl who grew up in an upper-middle class politically conservative suburb in a large city with successful parents, and I was always given everything I wanted/needed. I considered myself a Christian and I told people that I was a republican (although I knew nothing about politics and was just identifying with my parents).

Then I started studying Soci and my entire perspective on the world changed. It opened my eyes and forced me to look beyond my tunnel vision of society. It was really hard at times to come to terms with things that I thought I already understood, especially social issues that I had never thought about before or issues that had always been presented to me in a one-sided, biased manner.

A good example of this is the trope of the Welfare Queen. I was told that poor people, esp. poor black people, were moochers and only wanted handouts because they were lazy and didn't want to get a job. Of course, I learned that the Welfare Queen (and welfare "fraud") is a myth that was promulgated by Ronald Regan in order to stigmatize people in poverty so that he could convince Americans that rolling back the social safety net was justified because it was only being used by poor black (read: undeserving) citizens. The truth is that most people on welfare do have jobs (i.e. the 'working poor'). Also, the welfare reforms of 1996 created a 5-year maximum lifetime cap on benefits so that welfare "cheaters" (which did not exist anywhere near the level that we're often told) were literally unable to collect benefits for life (also, contrary to popular opinion, women do not have more babies to get more benefits. In fact, if a woman has a child while receiving benefits, she and her family will be removed from the rolls). Welfare is probably one of the least understood/mischaracterized social issue in American society.

Science in general is often met with the sting of anti-intellectualism, which is part of the answer to your question. However, I think social science in particular gets it worse than the 'natural' sciences like Biology and Chemistry. I used to say that it was because people were generally more suspect of social sciences, but I think it's more than that. People like to dismiss facts about social issues that they don't agree with or have a different view on because it's much easier to disagree that we live in a post-racial society (we don't) than it is to disagree on the functions of bodily organs. People also tend to conflate their individual life experiences with overall reality (i.e. "well, i've never experienced [blank] so it must not be true or its exaggerated" or "well, I know someone who is [blank] but [blank] doesn't happen to them"). You get what I am saying here? Most people don't question or critically think about social norms or commonsense 'truths' because these 'truths' are so embedded in our milieu that its hard to imagine otherwise. So instead of thinking critically, people dismiss sociological knowledge as either "elitist" or "not real science" so that they can remain undisturbed in their own little worlds.

Once I saw a question on r/askreddit that asked what the slogan of your college major or job would be. I would say, "Sociology: reminding people of uncomfortable truths since 1838" or "Sociology: everything you were taught about society was a big lie" lol.

I'm sorry I can't find any literature for you, but I can recommend these instead:

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters.

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

Here are a few of my favorites:

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

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

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

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.

"Smart" people learn to deal with boredom. Being educated takes rigor and a drive to appreciate things for more than just the plot.

This means you will be frequently bored sifting through some painfully tedious prose, but the payoff is that your brain will get some practice at synthesizing information and not just regurgitating surface-level stuff than any rube can pull out of a novel or a popsci book.

That said, I can't recommend the r/askhistorians booklist enough. This list was assembled by people who are experts in their fields and the books are mostly scholarly in nature, so they can be pretty dense, but they are highly informative and well-researched. You can be assured that these are people who follow the sources so the information is

I also recommend reading Moby Dick and following along with NYU's recorded lecture. It's slow and difficult to follow along with at times but it's a seminal work of American literature. Many would argue that it's America's first modern novel.

Plus it's just a manly fucking book. And after you finish reading it, you can follow up with In the Heart of the Sea for historical context. This is one of the few pop history books that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Philbrick is an excellent writer and his sources are accurate.

Final recommendation would be The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Ginsburg translation).

Both Master and Margarita and Moby Dick are novels with philosophical themes, but I would say that Master and Margarita is more readable on its own, and Moby Dick is better if you follow the lecture that I linked.

I am not a scientist, I am a historian, however... if you would like to know some academic titles that go to the route of the problem I can suggest Coming Out Under Fire and Gay New York. Neither book is directly about the now debunked decision that homosexuality was a mental disorder but both make multiple references to it and Coming Out Under Fire is a book that deals with some of the immediate backlash of that not-so-scientific, scientific claim.

the short version of the history here though is that in 1952 it was put into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders from the APA. This was a political move and a result of 60 years of cultural shift. What had happened since 1890 is really the birth of a gay identity. Until this time, people had discussed homosexuality in obscure medical contexts or works like Krafft-Ebing's work Psychopathia Sexualis with Especial Reference to the Antipathic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-Forensic Study (1886) which concluded that it was a degeneration and talked about it more like a fetish. Later in his life after more work on the subject he retracted that hypothesis. A bit later Havelock Ellis and John Symonds came along. Their work concluded that Homosexuality was definitely not a disease but instead variation of sexuality. Then in 1948 the first Kinsey Report came out in which he definitively stated "Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual." The findings of his research was that sexuality is a range, its not black and white. This was all well before the APA's ruling.

Shortly after the ruling the work of Evelyn Hooker, The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual came out which determined that homosexuals could be perfectly well adjusted humans. The next Kinsey Report came out in 1953 and with that he once again concluded that sexuality was not black and white. According to him 37% of males and 13% of females had some sort of homosexual experience to orgasm in their lifetime. So to say somebody was exclusively heterosexual would be difficult.

Further supporting evidence of the political or social nature of the initial decision can be see in the APA's decision to remove it from their list of mental disorders. Stonewall has happened in 1969 and the entire gay liberation and gay rights movement has become very visible in media and in the public eye. Probably because of this, when the decision was made to remove it as an officially classified disorder it was also accompanied with a statement from the APA that supported the civil rights of homosexuals.

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

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

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

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

I was confused at first when I read your post. You seemed to be saying that Juice_lix was using a rhetorical deflection (which is true -- it's called the But What About Gambit). But instead, you're saying that the people he's talking to have diverted the subject.

But that is not even the case. The original point was about rich countries versus poor countries. Which rich country do you think of first? For most people in the world, it's the United States.

So when someone points out the things the United States has done, your friend pulls out the Gambit and you accuse his opponents of changing the subject.

Repeatedly reminding people of the crimes of a person or group of people is not a rhetorical device, nor should it be considered overused. The fact is, someone is saying something that you don't like. Because meanwhile, Matt Taibbi is doing the same thing to Wall Street, and he's practically a folk hero because of it.

You can't just declare something as a rhetorical device because you don't want to hear it, disagree with it, or are uncomfortable with its implications. Truth is not a matter of personal choice. It has to be countered with facts, not accusations.

Besides, there's no such thing as an objective history book. Your friend is setting up an impossible standard so he can easily dismiss all comers. But if you want some stories on the subject, you'll find plenty of that to go around.

I'm glad you liked it. Here is his Youtube channel. Here is a recent speech given by Wolff about a month ago with a colleague of his.

After a long speech like that, it's nice to see people take action. Here is a nice documentary of workers taking action by occupying factories in Argentina, and taking them over. Subtitles available in the video.

Here is the website for the Rosa-Luxemburg foundation in NYC, the foundation of Die Linke in Germany.

Here is a website with documentaries that cover a variety of political issues.

Here is a book that I strongly recommend you read. You can read it for free here.

If you have any other questions or comments, I'll be happy to respond.

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.

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

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

> After the war, the Great Migration caused thousands to leave their homes for a better life in the North and in Canada.

One of the best books I've read on the Great Migration is The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. A wonderful read, it's about three individuals who do just as you say, move to find a better life away from the oppression of Jim Crow.

edit: accidentally some words

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.

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

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

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

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

I did actually, back when I didn't pay attention to how the real world worked, and just thought that the general, vague concept of "more freedom" sounded good. Maybe I didn't go full tilt into internet Libertarian where the closest thing to a structural critique comes down to "taxation is theft!!" and "Dale gets it!" and all real analysis is predicated on thought experiments, hypothetical fantasy worlds, and have no real foundation in the reality in which we live. Like honestly, if you do any actual examination of how society is structured, and you STILL think that government and taxation, as a concept, are the most oppressive forces in the world keeping you from success rather than the moneyed interests that manipulate and fuel legislative policy, then your vicious meme takedowns are going to contribute nothing to discussion or understanding beyond giving yourself a temporary right-wing dopamine rush of 0wn1ng the l1bz.

If you'd like a chance to broaden your understanding of some of the structural concepts I am referring to, rather than just a general title of "liberal" or whatever, here are just a couple pretty basic reading options to get you started.

​

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn (1980)

The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem (1968)

The Shock Doctrine: Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein (2006)

​

​

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.

It's not World War Z, or an action type book. This book is called Stiff. It's a very interesting and informative book about cadavers. I went into this book with much skepticism, but was intrigued by her personal recollection and delivery. The book made me go from laughing out loud to cringing by the subject at hand. I highly recommend this book, and it's available on kindle.

The off-chance you read it, (Let me know how you like it!)

My wishlist - http://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/2S2J4Y7OHPGTH/ref=cm_pdp_wish_all_itms (Only one item below $15.)

It's weird you're asking for academic sources for someone's armchair analysis and opinion that politics are best handled moderately. It's not really a thesis. If you mean you'd like academic sources about how certain sides get popular votes because of backlash from the other party, and how party alignment can lead to incredible bias, well that's kind of common sense. But here are some interesting academic articles and books about the subject.


https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/party_over_policy.pdf


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


http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS234/articles/bartels.pdf


http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/williamson/files/tea_party_pop.pdf


https://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS125/articles/pomper.htm

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.

I'm a big fan of the economist Richard Wolff and his podcast, Economic Update.

Some organizations to consider joining or supporting are
Democratic Socialists of America and Socialist Alternative.

I also encourage everyone to read Bernie's book, if you haven't already.

I would also highly recommend everyone read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

Finally, I encourage everyone to watch the Noam Chomsky documentary, Requiem for The American Dream, on Netflix.

Wings by Tom D. Crouch is good. He was the curator of the National Air & Space Museum (Smithsonian), and it's basically a history of all development of flight and flying machines.

If you liked The Right Stuff, I'd also recommend Man on the Moon. It's more specific to what follows the Mercury astronauts obviously (Gemini and Apollo), but it is quite good.

The Right Stuff movie is pretty good, too, if you haven't seen it. It's on Netflix Instant View (or at least was as recently as a few months ago).

Thanks for the recommendation! It's on Kindle Unlimited, so I just snagged it for "FREE".

I'd recommend anything by Mary Roach. She delves into the "WHY's?" and curious little bits of background information while having a lot of fun.

Mary Roach

• Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
  
• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
  
• Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

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.

Becoming politically literate is not like learning how to fix a car. There is no "unbiased" how-to manual. The reason for this is that political discussions consist of claims about: a) what the facts are, b) which facts matter and how they matter, c) whose claims about the facts are trustworthy, and d) what justice consists of. Most of these disputes are ideological, and so you will not find an ideologically netural ("unbiased") account of politics.

I would suggest immersing yourself in different political media and then see which points of view tend to best account for the facts and to best correspond to your sense of justice. Spend some time watching Fox news (hard-right), skimming through the NY Times (center-right), and and then listen to FAIR's Counterspin (hard-left).

Here are some books I would recommend. (These are all written from a hard-left to center-left perspective, but their authors are all serious scholars/intellectuals, and you will learn a lot from them.)

-Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States

-Vijay Prashad's The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World

-Joseph Stiglitz's The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them

-Doug Henwood's After the New Economy

All history you learn in high school is that kind of bullshit. Unfortunately, a lot of history books will give you the propaganda dissipated at the time as fact, much as I imagine nationalistic history books written in 200 years will quote from CNN and Fox to describe Bush's great war against the terrorists who hate our freedom. People don't like questioning nationalistic mythologies. Especially when they explain that we're all great heroes of idealistic freedom.

Given that you're on /r/Anarchism, you'd probably enjoy A People's History of the United States. Or really anything by Howard Zinn. The Populist Movement by Lawrence Goodwyn is good for talking about the post-Civil War era economic bullshit. Any biographies or autobiographies of the founders (even those written from a nationalistic point of view) will be unable to hide their business dealings and positions of power before, during, and after the revolution.

Any decent US history class you take should have a good list of readings. Better than I can remember off the top of my head.

If you have a Kindle The Autobiography of Ben Franklin is free and goes into great detail about his wealth, his positions in the Pennsylvania colonial government before the revolution, and his terms as President of Pennsylvania after the revolution (before the Constitution was adopted abolishing such positions). It does, of course, completely gloss over the fact that he knocked up a prostitute at 19, or that he was constantly having affairs. But often history is about recognizing what people aren't saying.

>I really dislike this need for a perfect, Platonic ideal of a hero.

http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868

This book handles the concept really well. I think the argument Loewen is making is that we actually, in some way, diminish the accomplishments of great people by presenting them as completely entirely flawless, rather than human.

It's interesting how exposure influences perception of language. I found that word as a young child because I read books for teenagers, I think it was in a British novel from a few decades ago. Maybe CS Lewis, Narnia and such. It would've been from that generation and it had to be fiction.

On the one hand you've got someone that thinks it sounds derogatory and the other hand I think that sounds a bit silly. But it's down to experience and familiarity. Relative stuff. It doesn't make them dumb, it merely displays their thought process.

Yesterday I found someone that thought something was being falsely wordy and just throwing a thesaurus at a paragraph. It was actually a very specific and efficient description of a programming library and the environment/data it was designed for. It made sense to me apart from some terms relating to neural networks, it didn't even use many complex words, but he just thought it was someone being disingenuous.

That perception issue is a large driving force behind anti-intellectualism. Perceiving intelligent or complicated things as negative, bad, or of ill intent/purpose. Through the right light even this comment could find issue with someone due to the verbosity in the midst of the thread. But it's just late and I blab when I'm tired!

If you find perception at all interesting in this context I highly recommend the classic 'Anti-intellectualism in American Life' (wikipedia, Amazon) for an observation of political and social thought up to the 1950s. A really novel bit of nonfiction. Today the idea is still alive and well, but you may know of it now from mainstream media as a "Cult of Ignorance".

I'd like to also CYA because /u/CAPS_IS_LOCKED is definitely not related to that. It was just tangentially related to the initial view of something. I don't want people thinking I think this is actually about them!

I'm assuming you're American.

The Basics of American Politics together with Politics in Action and some regular political news reading would be a firm introduction to politics.

If you want to dig deep, then buy some books on economics and history. One thing I haven't seen in the answers yet is philosophy. It may not sound important, but it very much is. I would recommend Justice by Michael Sandel. It is a great introduction to different moral theories and ties them together with politics quite well. I left the book finally understanding why conservatives and liberals think the way they do.

Those 3 books should also introduce you to more resources that will take you down as far as you'd like to go.

A Man on the Moon by Andy Chaiken is considered THE text on the Apollo program. If formed the basis of the mini series From the Earth to the Moon

Failure is not an Option by Gene Kranz is a wonderful first hand account of life in the trenches from Mercury thru Apollo.

And my personal favorite space book - Roving Mars which was turned into a great IMAX movie as well.

> "all Bernie supporters are young college idiots who know nothing and just want free shit"

Just for the record, not that it will convince your father of anything, I'm 52 (probably older than he is), have read a lot and support Bernie. Though, Bernie is far more centrist than I am. I'm fiscally left of and more socially liberal than any of Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, or the Dalai Lama.

So, not all of us radical left-wingers (and yes I know I'm radical) are young or ignorant of what's going on in the world.

And, I'm retired rather young, not taking government money, not asking for government money, not even asking for lower taxes. I don't mind paying higher taxes than those who earn less than me. I just hate that the uber-wealthy making tons more than me pay less (in percentage) than I do.

I don't know why your father wants his own tax dollars to subsidize the Koch brothers. But, if anyone is ignorant, it is those who are not super-wealthy and support lower taxes for the wealthy. Why on earth would someone vote so strongly against their own self-interest??!!?

Please ask your father nicely to commit to spending just 20 minutes listening to an actual self-proclaimed plutocrat, a genuine billionaire, explaining why he supports liberal policies.

Beware Plutocrats, the Pitchforks are Coming

Then, if he's actually willing to read, point him at a couple of excellent books. This first is just a collection of essays, so doesn't require the same attention span as the second I will recommend.

What's the Matter with Kansas?

This next book is by a former managing director of Goldman Sachs (a rather high title if you've never worked on Wall Street, I have). This one explains how Wall Street privatized profit and socialized risk to bring down the global economy.

It Takes a Pillage

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.

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

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

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

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

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.

So it took a year of on-and-off reading, but I finally finished Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

Anybody here ever give it a read? I think the salient takeaway I had was that almost all of the social issues discussed via old and new media today (racism, economic freedom, war, politics) have occurred and been solved -- to an extent -- with relative frequency over the history of the US. There's a lot to take away from our history that grants perspective regarding modern struggle, which in turns has a calming effect.

Time is a flat circle, I guess. Everything we have done or will do we will do over and over, forever. Something comforting in knowing that.

just some of my standard answers.


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


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


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


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


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

I hope these help... Cheers.

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

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

Yes! For those interested, it's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. She has several others out (6 books and one compilation). Gulp might be my favorite but I really enjoyed Packing for Mars and Bonk. This sub would also really appreciate Spook!

That's a great question. I'm not a sociologist, but even many researchers will tell you there isn't a single answer for the definitive rise in social isolation. To make some sweeping, general claims, it largely has to do with:

• Moving from tight-knit communities to large cities
  
• More Americans living alone (25% of the US population.)
  
• Less involvement in community institutions (church, synagogue, community centers, supper clubs, etc.) – Bowling Alone is a great read on this.
  
• More controversial, but our reliance on technology for connection. We all have a tendency to conflate surface connections with true intimacy, but the size of your network has no effect on your level of loneliness. Loneliness is better understood by a lack of supportive outlets, instead of simply not being around people. Technology can be great for intimate or surface connections, but social media is generally geared toward the latter.
  
  And right! The study you reference might be the General Social Survey from U Chicago. It's really astounding that it's hard to talk about loneliness publicly, considering the former surgeon general labeled it an epidemic. Hard to believe there can still be a stigma about something affecting so many people.
  
  If you're interested in this, two great books I recommend are The Village Effect and The Lonely American. Both have excellent theories and explanations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edit: spelling is hard.

This is frustrating. I agree with Maher on his point, but he really should have prepared himself to explain it. He just made a statement and didn't really bother to discuss it further... and in my opinion, that's probably part of the problem of American stupidity. Nobody has the patience to listen to further explanations or intellectual discussions.

I suggest to anyone interested in this topic to read Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. It was written in 1964, and won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction that year... but it is still extremely relevant today.

I'm from New England and never had a lobster 'til I went to Africa in my 30s :(

I would imagine this is true of lots of salt- and freshwater foods, oysters, scallops, crabs, tuna, salmon...I'm not real sure about the state of the lobster population, but I think high prices for this kind of stuff can be a good thing (depending on how the money is used and the fishing is carried out).

Reminds me of something I read in In the Heart of the Sea, an awesome book about the shipwreck that inspired Moby Dick, but also more generally about the Nantucket Whaling industry. Nantucket was the world's whaling capital in the early 1800s, some days they could practically do their harpooning from the docks. A few decades later, they're sailing from Massachusetts to the Pacific to make their catches.

Then again, I'm sure some of that pricing is just high because it can be. There are weeds in my yard that fetch insane prices at microgreeneries and heirloom farms.

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.

Mary Roach! Mary Roach Mary Roach!

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

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

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

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

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

If you haven't read it, you should check out Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Each chapter is about a different use for bodies that have been donated to science. It's humorous, engaging informative, and fun. Really great read!

>When Justice has been achieved and society is perfect.

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

Here's one for you

>Progressives are the conservatives of the future.

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

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.








>

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

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

Well yeah because they ruin the experience, for the most part they are new to all of this. It's like a frat party with kegs and people just going to get fucked up and get laid. I've been guilty of being a snob too, I just want to see things progress. I think music has an effect on society as well. It's complicated but I think if we can get a good combination of fun and deep music it will have a profound effect. I saw what happened when hip hop became all about vip and same thing is happening with dance music.

I think the problem with music in general is that commercial side becomes anti-intellectual and the underground get's marginalized, and can then become elitist, which sometimes leads to the death of both and that's why we have cycles in music. It's so much more complicated, but you can blame big business like live nation and clear channel for that, the agencies, the artists..greed in general.

Check this stuff out, want to see more of this

http://www.businessinsider.com/bottle-service-is-over-at-nyc-clubs-2013-3

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/arts/music/pacha-in-ibiza-feels-dance-clubs-center-of-gravity-shift.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Less of this.

http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370284623&sr=8-1&keywords=hofstadter+anti-intellectualism

Basically it all needs to come together, and I'd like to think we are headed in that direction. Thanks to the Interwebs.

Black people are concentrated in urban areas in the US as a direct consequence of discriminatory mortgage lending and realty practices in the mid 20th century that forced them into de-facto segregated neighborhoods.

Now, granted. Dems have taken advantage of that concentration to use these folks as a power base constituency. But those neighborhood circumstances were not created for political advantage. They were created to marginalize black people as much as possible during the period now known as the Great Migration when so many were fleeing the Jim Crow south.

Sources:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679763880/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_vlJkDbTN6HPGS

I'm assuming here that you haven't really studied any history since high school, and at the time you likely found it dreadfully boring (don't we all). If this is correct, take solace in the fact that you were being taught history in likely the worst way possible, and the system almost seems designed to bore you and the rest of the students to death.

One tactic, then, would be for you to work on thinking about history more as it is: seeking answers to the fundamental "why" questions that tell what it means, collectively, to be us. It's a study of choices and struggles and understanding the challenging, horrible, daunting circumstances they faced. High school curriculum drives out such notions of struggle and difficulty because they invite controversial questions, like why the rich manipulated the poor or why the white mistreated and killed the black/Native American. In doing so they deny any of the historical actors, whether oppressed or oppressor, their humanity, and without that who cares about studying them?

I would hope that once you get more exposed to actual history and not names and dates, that you'll grow more of a natural interest for the subject. As such, I have two books to recommend you:

1. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. This book, initially controversial, will turn your initially learned narrative of American history on its head. The good people are usually bad and the quiet people are loud. Be careful, though. It's a new, highly useful angle from which to view American history but its not some gospel of truth either, just because it has a forbidden fruit feel, like you're learning what they don't want you to know.
   
   
2. Lies my Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. This book says in better words that I mentioned already, how school textbooks water down American history into nothing so that everyone swallows it without complaint. It'll also shake up a bunch of assumptions and, hopefully, leave you wanting more.
   
   These books won't give you a complete view of American history but my hope is that they'll introduce you to a form of history that's interesting while also exposing you to a wide array of American history topics. From there you can see what you actually enjoy learning about and pick better books from there.

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.

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

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

____

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

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

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.

I started to read more when I was trying to unplug. TV/Netflix/phones can really pull you out of reality, make your brain weak as you begin to lose control of your thoughts. Just try not watching TV/youtube for 3 days...why is it so hard? Are we addicted to screens or are we just lazy. Research neuroplasticity, and how you can make your brain work for you (any how you fall into additive traps when you lose control of your attention). A lot of people on here are recommending meditation, I can't stress how important this is.

Start by reading someting that interests you...check out r/suggestmeabook if you need some help. Also, I can recommend some great books:

• Snow Crash - Neil Stephenson // The best cyberpunk/sci-fi roller-coaster of a read I have come across.
  
• The Iliad - Homer / Fagles translaition // Read this to understand the mankind's greatest story about war, violence and masculinity - this is about the Trojan war (well 4 days near the end), and was widely considered to be the Bible for ancient Greeks.
  
• A Man on the Moon - Andrew Chaikin // Fascinating (and accurate) account of NASA's Apollo space program from start to finish.
  
• Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed - Ben Rich // Behind-the-scenes account of the Skunk Works program and the incredible achievements they made back in the day.
  
  Best of luck.
  
  

> hundred year old talking points

Official redlining didn't start until 1934. Other forms of discrimination and segregation existed during that same time period. For example, the realtors association of Grosse Pointe had an informal racial point system until the 1960s. This is hardly a hundred-year-old issue. Elderly people alive today spent a good portion of their lives living under these conditions. There are plenty of excellent, thoroughly-sourced books on the subject. Enjoy!

1 2 3 4

p.s. Wealth may not last for three generations, but that doesn't necessarily mean that poverty (and its effect) also does not last for three generations. It's much easier to lose wealth than it is to gain it in the first place.

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

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.

>because the rapid demographic shifts from rural to urban areas would have threatened the Republicans' majority in the House.

Ahhh, the Great Migration. Anytime I hear mention of it I feel compelled to recommend The Warmth of Other Suns. It's a fantastic book that's well worth the read.

Be forewarned though; don't read this if you don't want to end up empathizing with black folk, because it'll getcha in the feels.

I appreciate your desire to find the good in this person, but seriously, do yourself a favor and read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. You'll be appalled.

We don't celebrate Genghis Khan, Caesar, or Alexander the way we do Columbus, because we're not blindly following some revisionist agenda and jingoist bullshit. We should give up celebrating him too. We can celebrate the music of Mexico, the food of Italy, the poetry of Chile, the dancing of Brazil and the books of the United States without bringing his name up.

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 did a search for the term books in this sub and compiled this list from the dozens of previous answers:

How to Read the Solar System: A Guide to the Stars and Planets by Christ North and Paul Abel.


A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.


A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.


Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan.


Foundations of Astrophysics by Barbara Ryden and Bradley Peterson.


Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program by Pat Duggins.


An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything by Chris Hadfield.


You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes: Photographs from the International Space Station by Chris Hadfield.


Space Shuttle: The History of Developing the Space Transportation System by Dennis Jenkins.


Wings in Orbit: Scientific and Engineering Legacies of the Space Shuttle, 1971-2010 by Chapline, Hale, Lane, and Lula.


No Downlink: A Dramatic Narrative About the Challenger Accident and Our Time by Claus Jensen.


Voices from the Moon: Apollo Astronauts Describe Their Lunar Experiences by Andrew Chaikin.


A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin.


Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA by Amy Teitel.


Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module by Thomas Kelly.


The Scientific Exploration of Venus by Fredric Taylor.


The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe.


Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her by Rowland White and Richard Truly.


An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Bradley Carroll and Dale Ostlie.


Rockets, Missiles, and Men in Space by Willy Ley.


Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Clark.


A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.


Russia in Space by Anatoly Zak.


Rain Of Iron And Ice: The Very Real Threat Of Comet And Asteroid Bombardment by John Lewis.


Mining the Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets by John Lewis.


Asteroid Mining: Wealth for the New Space Economy by John Lewis.


Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris.


The Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe Report by Timothy Ferris.


Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandries by Neil deGrasse Tyson.


Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson.


Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon by Craig Nelson.


The Martian by Andy Weir.


Packing for Mars:The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach.


The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution by Frank White.


Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler.


The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne.


Entering Space: An Astronaut’s Oddyssey by Joseph Allen.


International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems by Hopkins, Hopkins, and Isakowitz.


The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene.


How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space by Janna Levin.


This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age by William Burrows.


The Last Man on the Moon by Eugene Cernan.


Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond by Gene Kranz.


Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.

The end

Fair question. I think genocide is universally offensive. Although, I will admit to laughing repeatedly at Bill Burr's population control jokes, particularly the one where he says we should randomly take out cruise ships.

You know the reason why that's funny? It's because cruises are expensive and people who tend to go on them are kind of the epitome of wastefulness, just eating and shitting everywhere on a boat. They can therefore be the butt of jokes until the end of time. If, on the other hand, Bill Burr tried to make a joke about taking out flotillas of migrant refugees in the Mediterranean, his career would probably end quickly. Those migrants are a vulnerable population of people who need help. It just isn't funny no matter how to spin it.

Now, I understand that Native Americans are not currently in such a dire state. However, the political situation with Native Americans depends on the acknowledgment of their culture and their sovereignty. It's a sensitive situation. It's not cut and dry. It's not one guy's word over another. Yes, they do have protections under the law, but are their leaders done negotiating? No. Constant lobbying is going on. Why do you think this mascot thing keeps coming up every year? It's usually during the playoffs, when the Braves come under national attention. Every single year. Why is this happening? It's because of the delicate political situation with the Native Americans. I cannot possibly explain it here. All I can say is that you would do yourself a service by reading up on it. You might want to start with Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. While there may be many things wrong with American society, there is absolutely no valid historical parallel between American society in 1960 and American society in 2011 that would predict the emergence of mass social movements. The causes for the New Left and the sixties were many, and almost none of those causes are shared today:

• Frustration with a culture of political repression (the McCarthy era) and general conformity.
  
• A decade-long economic boom, which allowed, for the first time, a critical mass of Americans to consider issues less directly pertinent to their lives. You don't have much time, energy, or interest in the morality of a war or the ethics of an existing social system when you're barely scraping together enough money to eat.
  
• A pre-existing mass social and political movement which had involved millions of Americans and already laid much of the groundwork for much of the later movements (from the New Left, to the feminist movement, to the gay rights movement), almost all of which had direct connections to the African-American civil rights movement, which exposed people to the systemic violence, widespread poverty, and racial injustice throughout the South.
  
• There was a high level of political capital and engagement. In the 1960s, political campaigns depended almost entirely on a volunteer staff, and were much cheaper to run. More people voted, more people attended places of religious worship on a regular basis, more people were involved in local organizations (from the local bridge club to the PTA to the bowling league). This meant that not only were people aware of what was going on in the world -- it meant that they trusted each other more, and they trusted government more. If you look at the 1960s, people wanted the government to fix problems in their lives; ever since Watergate, trust in government and other Americans has plummeted.
  
• There was a huge expansion in the number of university students. Between 1960 and 1975, the percent of Americans with a bachelor's degree or higher more than doubled. That's not the percentage of people attending college, that's the percentage of the total American population with a college degree, including old people. The number of MAs and PhDs granted per year tripled in that period. Numerous studies have demonstrated that people with a college education tend to be more socially liberal -- the backlash against the repressive and socially conservative society of the 1950s should therefore come as little surprise as this new generation of young Americans entered the workforce.
  
• There was also a huge number of young people. The baby boom that followed World War II had produced a huge cohort of 18-29 year-olds -- the exact group which also tends to be the most liberal.
  
  The current climate is far different.
  
  
• Until 2007, apathy was the primary defining characteristic of the American political climate. Since then, we have seen spurts of outrage or excitement, but there has been nothing akin to the political repression that we saw in the 1950s, nor do we see anything akin to the political engagement of the 1950s and 1960s.
  
• Since the 1970s, the United States economy has been largely stagnant, with a brief surge of prosperity in the 1990s. In 2008, we entered the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
  
• There has been no sustained mass grassroots movement since the 1960s. Attempts have been made -- the feminist movement, the environmentalist movement, the gay rights movement, &c. -- but none of these efforts were able to sustain the requisite commitment on the part of everyday people. Sure, all three of those movements remain as at least recognizable political influences in the United States today, but as insider politicos: people who raise money for candidates, who hire lobbyists, who send out mass e-mails, and who run issue ads. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is most certainly not a parallel to the groundwork and widespread radicalizing social effects of the civil rights movement.
  
• No one votes anymore, no one is politically, socially, or even culturally engaged anymore. Even on college campuses, it's difficult to get people to turn out for events without bribing them with free food. Books have been written on the decline of the American public sphere (see: Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community).
  
• There has been little change in the percentage of Americans with a BA since the mid 1980s, and what changes have taken place has been the result of older Americans dying off. Moreover, the United States is an aging society -- hence our problems with funding social security and medicare.
  
  While I certainly agree that much has to change, you make the fundamental errors of assuming that it will change, that it will change rapidly, and that it will change as the result of people waking up and realizing what is going on.
  
  EDIT: wanted to expand some more on what I said.

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

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

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

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

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

I'm traditionally more into literary fiction, but I've been exploring non-fiction recently.

Currently Reading: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Recently Finished: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration and Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy

Next on the List: Either Guns Germs and Steel or Devil in the White City. Haven't decided yet

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.

Not a strictly educational read, but a very entertaining and enlightening exploration into something you'll probably become very familiar with in your near future...

Stiff by Mary Roach

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

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

people will have their problems with these but they are good additions or jumping off points for further research.

A People's History of the World

A People's History of the US - I don't remember if this book talks about Latin American relations specifically but it would be hard to tell this story without at least talking about it tangentially.

(i thought there was one for latin america but I'm not finding one in that series but if there is one, pick that up)

and of course pretty much anything by Chomsky, especially:

Manufacturing Consent

Caution: this is not only a long book but a DENSE one as well. Noam is not known as a storyteller. This book is no different. Every sentence is packed with gravity. It's looking specifically at the media's relationship with the US's relationship with Latin America but that's a good lens to go at that field of study.

In most of his work he focuses a lot on the Monroe Doctrine and its aftermath so you can pick up almost any of his work and you'll get some of it. Especially the earlier stuff.

Thank you :) If you're looking for some rabbit holes, and if it's not gauche to recommend my own work, I've written at length about a few different aspects of the Apollo program:

Going boldly: Behind the scenes at NASA’s hallowed Mission Control Center

Apollo Flight Controller 101: Every console explained

No, a “checklist error” did not almost derail the first moon landing

45 years after Apollo 13: Ars looks at what went wrong and why

How NASA brought the monstrous F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life

Putting my own writing aside and focusing on real authoritative sources, there's also the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. Between that and its companion site, the Apollo Flight Journal, you have a carefully annotated and curated collection of every transmission, photograph, spoken word, and artifact from the entire Apollo program. Warning: you can lose entire weeks of your life here, especially in the high-rez photo galleries (much of the photography was done on 70mm medium format Hasselblad cameras, and the restored and digitized images are astonishingly beautiful and detailed).

If you prefer your space facts in printed form, I very much recommend Woods' How Apollo Flew to the Moon as an excellent one-stop-shop for understanding everything that happened in the Apollo program.

There are two must-have books that completely and totally capture the human adventure that was Apollo. The first is Chaikin's A Man on the Moon, which focuses on the crews and the landings (and was used as the primary source for the excellent HBO mini, [From the Earth to the Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon_(miniseries), which everybody should watch because it's basically "Band of Brothers in space" and has awesome scenes like this). The second is Cox & Murray's Apollo: Race to the Moon, which focuses on Mission Control and the almost unbelievable amount of work that had to happen on the ground to make Apollo happen.

There are lots of other excellent Apollo books, but those two (Chaikin and Cox & Murray) are the two to buy if you want some absolutely mind-blowing reading.

Sorry to saturate you with links, but Apollo is kind of my thing :D

The brilliant, A People's History of the United States. Here's the Amazon link.

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Present/dp/0060838655/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377020709&sr=8-1&keywords=howard+zinn

Enjoy!!!

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

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

A Treasury of Deception by Michael Farguhar.

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

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

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

And of course,
Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

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

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

It's not about Stonewall, but Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 explores a lot of interesting stuff most people don't know about. I took Chauncey's queer history class at Yale. It was amazing.

As for trans* stuff, I'd recommend a lot of theory. Judith Butler mainly. I'd also recommend Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity.

Believe it or not, up to about the 1990s it was perfectly acceptable to take a woman bowling on a date. There are simply many better entertainment options now.

There's also this phenomenon - https://amzn.com/0743203046

Have you seen their Highlights for High School feature?

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

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

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

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

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've been on a non-fiction kick myself.

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

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

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

You can also read his book.

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

> It shouldn't be hard to find a link then to back your claim, sources please

I don't have time to walk you through all of this. I'm not a high school history teacher. That said, here are a couple of quick sources to illustrate the point that workers get screwed, government intervention can be a positive, and your fantasy of free negotiation is absurd: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4822a1.htm

http://www.history.com/topics/labor

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/capitalism/landmark_westcoast.html (I'd recommend you read the actual case, as it's an example of lived experiences informing a legal decision to reduce freedom of contract).

If you want to know more I recommend picking up a real book, since it's difficult to get a comprehensive idea of what employment relationships have really been like just from webpages and snapshots of time. Some ideas:

http://www.amazon.com/A-Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0060838655

Or selected chapters from this book http://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421953073&sr=8-1&keywords=the+new+jim+crow&pebp=1421953075409&peasin=1595586431

Or you could even spend time on Google, since it's free.

> I found multiple countries, hardly scattered.

Except that none of those countries actually support your claim. When I said that you could find scattered examples, I was speaking hypothetically, because you haven't provided any, and "yeah but Sweden" isn't an argument, especially when: http://work.sweden.se/living-in-sweden/workers-rights-and-unions/

And again, you're saying that all government intervention should be abolished. You made the claim, now stop trying to pigeonhole the conversation into a discussion about the minimum wage.

There are some great books and articles on this subject. I think that you should avoid the 1950s onwards, because that would be like confirmation for Peterson fans.

For the gay identity that the books that I recommend are:

https://www.amazon.com/Gay-New-York-Culture-1890-1940/dp/0465026214/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522048690&sr=8-1&keywords=gay+new+york
https://www.amazon.com/Gay-Berlin-Birthplace-Modern-Identity/product-reviews/0307473139/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_hist_1?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&reviewerType=all_reviews#reviews-filter-bar
https://www.amazon.com/Homintern-Culture-Liberated-Modern-World/dp/0300218036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522048869&sr=8-1&keywords=Homintern


A free source that is full of primary sources.
http://rictornorton.co.uk

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

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

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

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