(Part 2) Best products from r/wikipedia

I think I've shared this before but I also recommend you read Kill Anything That Moves. It goes through how and why things like Mai Lai happened (and there was an atrocity like this almost every single day during the war).

I imagine they have. Many times over.

I have the utmost respect for the Marine Corps (both US and UK) - they were grown-ass men at the same age I was still a kid.

Generation Kill is a great insight into the potential, strength, humanity, and short comings of the military.

This is a pretty good explanation

In addition, as govts grow larger they get spread thinner and as a result anything that is contributed by the individual does not see a tangiable marginal benefit in the long run. Even economist Mancur Olsen's (not a libertarian or anarchist in the least) Rise and Decline of nations explains collective action and its poor outcomes when scaled.

If you want more examples there are more than enough sources out there to credit.

Not a subreddit, but you can submit stuff like that to this blog.

They publish the best stuff they get as books

You might be interested in DMT: The Spirit Molecule.

Yes, the title is very eye-catching (and somewhat misleading), but the book concerns the experiences of a scientist who did a large government-sponsored study on DMT. It's well-written, scientifically-minded, and gives a really interesting insight into DMT.

The documentary of the same name is also good, but not as good as the book.

Sometimes people just reflexively downvote by username. Other times it's just easier to deny and downvote challenges to complacent groupthink than to engage in dialogue. Thanks for the links. I was thinking more of Heilbron's work on astronomy and others, but those are great references.

I found this comic book to be pretty informative and entertaining on the subject. Not 100% historical, but probably as close as Crichton gets.

EDIT: Nice, it's referenced in this wikipedia article, and has its own page as well.

Fascinating account of Clarence Saunders's attempt to manipulate the share price of Piggly Wiggly, and his eventual bankruptcy in Boy Plunger, the wonderful book about Jesse Livermore by Tom Rubython. Also details of how he introduced shopping baskets etc.

If you are interested in this type of stuff, check out Blitzed. It details all Nazi drug use, especially Hitlers. Pretty easy read too.

The French, Polish et al resistances were incredibly brave. They continued to act as a vital intelligence network in occupied Europe and to support those suffering under the dispotic regime, despite the constant risk of torture and death at Nazi hands.

For a personal apccount I highly recommend reading Jan Karski's "Story of a Secret State", https://www.amazon.com/Story-Secret-State-Report-World/dp/1626160317. Karski was a spy in occupied Poland, and his account is as fascinating as it is breathtaking.

If you find this topic interesting, I highly recommend 'The Tsar of Love and Techno' by Anthony Marra: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0770436455/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_6rdJybXG1YBVV

One of the characters is a censor, plus it's just generally a great book.

Horney's great. Her best book is the unfortunately titled Neurosis and Human Growth (I say unfortunately because it's captivating and easily readable by any college-educated layperson, but the title makes it sound dense). Anybody who wants to understand better themselves and the people around them should read that book.

I have read almost everything she's written, and Bernard Paris' biography of her. I really gobbled up her works. I created the subreddit /r/horney a while back in her honor, although it never took off.

She made her contributions to feminine psychology in the 1920s and early 30s, but her most important contributions (including the book I mentioned), in my opinion, are the works of her later career, in the 40s and early 50s. By that time she had switched her focus to the study of neurosis, which in those days was a catch-all term for any mental illness that does not involve full-blown delusion and hallucination (which would be termed psychosis). Many of the illnesses in the DSM would have been classed as neurosis in those days. And Horney's genius is showing that it was in fact right to lump them in the same category: most of these mental illnesses that span the DSM are like so many branches of a tree with a common trunk. And she studies the trunk. And how the different branches develop from it.

Read the Amazon reviews for Neurosis and Human Growth. That book is really something else.

I came here to state that her book is one of the better ones on the historical event. Her mom's biography of her daughter(Iris) was excellent as well.

I bought this album on this awesome USB stick from a short lived promotion they were running for it. Its a really awesome album, and all the backstory makes for a fun story.

Seems like it may have actually worked to an extent. Here's the passage from Richard Holmes' Falling Upwards, where I first read about the tempest prognosticator:

> "It was based on the well-known response to leeches to sudden changes in barometric pressure. Their soft, gelatinous bodies were squeezed and made drowsy and inactive by normal air pressure, but low pressure refreshed and awoke them. As Cowper wrote: 'I have a leech in a bottle that foretells all these prodigies and convulsions of Nature. No change in the weather surprises him...he is worth all the barometers in the world.'

>Dr. Merryweather's Prognosticator was in fact an ingenious form of multiple leech barometer. It consisted of a circular display of twelve glass flasks, each containing a prize leech partially immersed in rainwater. The flasks were cunningly enclosed at t he top with a system of whalebone springs, and these in turn were linked to a set of counterweights connected to metal hammers arranged to strike against an impressive brass bell mounted in the centre of the apparatus. It was another arrangement that would have delighted Heath Robinson.

>When a sudden drop in barometric pressure occurred, indicating the arrival of a severe low-pressure system and hence the likelihood of a storm in the North Sea, all the leeches became animated and climbed rapidly to the tops of their individual glass prisons. Their combined upward pressure trigged the whalebone springs, which in turn released the series of counterweights, which then drove the chime of small hammers against the bell. Thus a tempest was ringingly prognosticated. To add to its mystic appeal, Merryweather decorated the instrument with flutings, chains, and curlicues, making it look like a cross between an Indian temple and a gypsy merry-go-round.

>Ingenious and attractive as Dr Merryweather's device might appear, it did not greatly advance the theoretical understanding of pressure systems. In fact it rather obscured it, by introducing a false animating principle, and vaguely suggesting that the leeches consciously 'knew' about storms and were anxious to import this valuable information to mankind."

There's a great book about Heyerdahl's crossing, written by Thor himself. It's AWESOME. I read it when I was about 10, and have have wanted to make a raft like that one ever since.

Such an incredible story--if you haven't read it, then I recommend The Fossil Hunter. It's a good read, although I wish the author had written a lot more about the scientific papers Anning wrote. Anning was simply extraordinary--and a lot of her work is still visible in the completed skeletons on display in museums around the world.

In 1976, and underachieving 3rd year physics student at Princeton designed an atomic bomb in just a few months. It was his independent study term project.

The biggest problem he faced was determining the geometric configuration of the explosives used to implode the fissile core. After weeks of fruitless work, he had the crazy idea to call up DuPont and just ask them about it. They gave him the information over the phone.

He published a very entertaining book about the experience and the ensuing media frenzy. It's well worth reading.

As a companion piece, check out The Curve of Binding Energy, an investigation into just how astoundingly poorly secured nuclear material was in the 70's. I remember one description of a storage site where a chain link fence and an window with no alarm were the only barriers to entering a room full of containers of enriched uranium. The only security was a guard post around the corner, 1/4 mile away. Hopefully security is better now.

It's absolutely amazing there has not yet been a nuclear terrorist attack.

Anybody interested in reading about more in depth topics related to this should read Fritjof Capra's The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems (Amazon link here). As with anything written by Capra, it's an awesome read.