Reddit mentions: The best trivia & fun facts books

Hello, Brother!

Okay, so if it's non-fiction you want, then I know just what you need.

If you want a good overview, Mysterious America by Loren Coleman, who's more or less the godfather of cryptozoology, is a superb first entry for anybody interested in cryptozoology. I especially liked the sections on "Panthera Atrox." There are sections on phantom ships and other more mystical elements of the Fortean, and some might find its focus on North America a bit limited, but I'd still recommend it.

Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation's Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures

I'd also recommend Coleman's "field guides." These don't go into quite as much detail as Mysterious America, but they do provide a rather intriguing look at the diversity in sightings of animals that do not belong. The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates and The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep are useful, as is the similar, if somewhat dated, Cryptozoology A To Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature.

The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates

The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep

Cryptozoology A To Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature

Coleman's written some other books as well, focused on individual cryptids. Bigfoot: The True Story of Apes in America and Mothman and Other Curious Encounters are among the most notable.

Bigfoot: The True Story of Apes in America

Mothman and Other Curious Encounters

Moving on, I found another book that functions as a good overview of cryptozoology is Jerome Clark's Unexplained!: Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena. Clark gets into a bit more Fortean elements than Coleman does, but his book also includes some cryptids that Coleman rarely pays attention to--including living dinosaurs.

Unexplained!: Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena

If you have a particular taste for feline cryptids--surviving Panthera Artox, surviving saber-toothed cats, whatever the heck the ones is--then I must recommend the writings of Karl Shuker. Shuker is a prolific writer, and to list his books would take up a lot more space, but if I had to choose one, I'd recommend Extraordinary Animals.

Extraordinary Animals: Revisited

You didn't mention whether you were an American, but Stackpole Books has a "Monsters Of" series that has the folklore of individual states in the United States.

Following up on that, if you live in California, or if you have a fondness for sea monsters, then you may also like the book Mysterious Sea Monsters of California's Central Coast.

Mysterious Sea Monsters of California's Central Coast

Now, I know you said you weren't looking for novels, but if you have kids of your own, or you have younger relatives who might like the material, there's always the works of Roland Smith. Sasquatch and the "Cryptid Quartet" which includes Cryptid Hunters, Tentacles, Chupacabra, and Mutation are all great reads for middle readers, or for the young at heart.

Sasquatch

Cryptid Hunters

Tentacles

Chupacabra

Mutation

I guess it really depends what part of New England you are in/intend to be in and how far you want to drive. New England is a pretty big place both in terms of space and variety of culture and things to do.

Here's a couple that come to mind as my girlfriend and I recently had a (relatively) cheap and romantic days doing these. It may not appeal or be practical for you though depending on where you are and how much money you can spend on gas or other expenses.

In New Hampshire the White Mountain National Forrest is pretty much one of the most beautiful places you can see in this part of the country. The Kancamagus Highway (scenic byway) winds through it. It's an incredible drive with many places to stop off and see the views or go exploring. You could find a hiking trail ahead of time if you like. It's the kind of place you could pull over and walk 50 feet from the road and find a gorgeous pool in river with mountains all around you and go skinny dipping. There's a lot of other stuff up there too like the Flume Gorge. It's $13.00 each to visit the Flume Gorge, but NH's State park system is entirely funded by user fees (no taxes) so no one's making money off your admission, it's just funding the upkeep of the park. It's a pretty amazing place. There's lot of other wonderful things to see up there. Just get lost driving around and don't be afraid to leave the car.

Whale watches are also relatively cheap. We took one out of Rye Harbor, NH this past weekend that took us up to Jeffery's Ledge off the coast a Maine which is a prime feeding ground right now. We saw two Fin whales right up close (apparently two together is a rarity) that were much larger than the boat we were on. They came right up to us so close that I got a good whiff of whale breath. We also got to see two humpbacks very close-up who were feeding together. They were doing a lot of bubble nets. Every few minutes we'd spot a bubble net, and then wait for the two to come lunging up out of the water head-first with their mouths wide open scooping up all of the fish. A Minke whale followed us around for a good long while too. There were naturalists on board cataloging the whales we saw and their behavior and able to identify and tell us about the history of the different individual whales we saw. Almost all of the whales were older than me (27) which for some reason I thought was really cool. Those tickets were thirty bucks each but still with a picnic lunch packed it was a fairly cheap and wonderful day together. Might be too rich for your blood right now, but if you can afford it, you could do worse than spend $60 for a day at sea together seeing freaking awesome whales. It was also a whale watch not run by a touring company but by the Blue Ocean Society which is a marine conservation non-profit so it's $60 that helps do a little extra good than some other activities you could spend that cash on.

Those excursions all require driving and gas, but otherwise, if you pack your own food are pretty cheap and lovely ways to spend a summer day. There's plenty of other ideas but those are two and now I must get back to work.

EDIT: I almost forgot. For something different and more interesting than just the scenic outdoors (but still outdoors) check out "Weird New England". Goto your local cooperate bookstore and get a coffee. Then sit down with a copy of this book and browse through stuff that's in your area or somewhere you're willing to drive to a make list of stuff to try to find and explore. No book purchase necessary. Or better yet, see if your local library has a copy to check-out.

EDIT AGAIN: There's also this website to peruse. http://www.strangene.com/home.htm

YES! I studied Irish mythology in University, so here a few of my favorite texts :)

The Tain is a lovely translation of the Tain Bo Cuailnge ^(sounds like "toy'n bo cool") which is the primary source of written mythology. It's dense.

Over Nine Waves is also, in my opinion, an imperative supplementary text on the myths and legends as well. It feels less academic.

The Lore of Ireland is just that - a book of Irish lore.

As for Samhain ^(I can't figure out how to properly give you a "sounds like" since I don't have little phoneme symbols - but basically like "sahwin") itself, I'm not sure whether holidays are out-right discussed in these texts. I will say, if you do find it - it'll be mostly in lore as opposed to myth or legend. Most Celtic holidays are focused on the changing of the seasons (like all holidays, really) and their connection to the Land of Eternal Youth (Tir na nOg - you can actually pronounce this one like you might expect it to be said) and the Tuatha De Danann ^(sub a "w" for the "th").

If you're looking specifically for myths dealing with faeries, they'll also be in lore. Myths/legends usually refer to the great heroes like Cuchulain ^("cuh-cul-lin") (there's a statue of him in the post office of downtown Dublin in honor of the Easter Uprising during the Irish revolution! Probably one of, if not the, most important myth/legend. In the war between gods and man, he almost single-handidly defeated Madb ^("mave") and her sons in a battle that last weeks/months/yeards depending the variation. He tied himself to a post as he was dying in order to look like he was still alive and held off attacks until crows landed on his shoulders and started eating his body. Basically. It's way better than my telling lol..) and gods and the cycles of power over the land itself.

Okay, fine, I'm done. Sorry for being so long-winded!

Oh! If you're looking for less heady material, I would also recommend Lady Gregory and Yeats. They were mythology nerds and wrote tons of plays/poems/retellings. L.Gregory's Grania is my favorite retelling of Grania and Diarmuid! I actually got a tattoo of one of the lines from the play in Ireland the first time I visited :)

Happy reading!

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

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

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

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

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

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

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

"The World's Religions" by Huston Smith

"An Incomplete Education" by Judy Jones and Will Wilson

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

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

Great questions! (from both you and your kiddo!). I came across this article - http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/01/08/the-philosophical-child-a-book-for-when-your-child-asks-why-are-we-here/ - which recommends a book for parents, but that doesn't sound like exactly what you're looking for.

In terms of philosophical picture books, the closest thing I can think of would be I Wonder by Annaka Harris. You might also check out the Zen Shorts series, though I don't think any of them really address "nature of reality" type questions directly. Also, while not exactly a picture book, the book Is Nothing Something? might give you some good starting points for discussion. Big Questions for Little People is similar but aimed at slightly older kids. You're Here For A Reason could also be relevant, although maybe not philosophical in quite the way you're looking for.

You could also take "How am I alive?" in a more scientific direction - you might enjoy You Are Stardust and Older Than the Stars, or a simple introduction to evolution such as Our Family Tree. You could also explore simple books about the human body and discuss how her heart, lungs, brain, etc allow her to walk and talk and stay alive - something like See Inside Your Body or Outside-In - or even go into a bit more detail about how she got "in mom's tummy" with a book like Who Am I? Where Did I Come From? or Before You Were Born - or talk about past generations (i.e. mom came from HER mom's tummy!) with a book like Me and My Family Tree

Hope some of that is helpful - of course this is a discussion you can continue as she gets older, and there are lots of great books for older kids that more directly tackle different beliefs and ideas about why we are here.

I’ve been reading Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling and it is very interesting. I think people on this sub would like it since we all like snooping around and dissecting information haha. It’s almost like MTV’s Room Raiders but from a doctorate in psychology’s viewpoint. There’s subconscious meaning behind what types of pictures you hang on your walls and even which walls you hang said pictures on. He can go through someone’s room and paint a pretty accurate portrayal of their personality without ever meeting them. I would think it would be a good read if you’re dating around and want to get a better feel for someone haha. I’m only a few chapters in but it’s very interesting so far!!

I found out about Snoop because it was mentioned in another book I’ve been reading Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat by Hal Herzog. It’s a book on anthrozoology and talks about the history humans have had with animals, and some moral conundrums we have about them. Are we instinctually afraid of snakes or is it learned behavior? Do people really look like their dogs? (This one was interesting! Human couples that live together start to develop similar facial structures. That’s not true with dogs. We don’t start to look like our dogs but we may pick dogs that look like us. Women with shorter hair are more likely to adopt dogs with perky ears instead of floppy. And students were able to match humans with their dogs with a higher accuracy rate than they would by just random chance). Why do some cultures eat bugs but we think that’s gross, or why do some cultures eat animals that we keep as pets? They talk about the infamous trolly problem and replace it with animals and you can see your own morals start to shift and be questioned. With humans you’d think it’s better to pull the lever to save 5 lives instead of 1... but now replace that problem with 5 birds vs 1 dog and see if your answer is still the same. Very interesting.

Edit: oh oh! One more. And Then You're Dead: What Really Happens If You Get Swallowed by a Whale, Are Shot from a Cannon, or Go Barreling over Niagara. The author did an AMA on reddit which I found interesting so I bought the book and read it in a day. And the chapters are set up so you can just flip around and read what you’re interested in. My favorites include what happens if your window falls out of an airplane and you get sucked out, how many bees you’d have to get stung by at one time before you died (1,500 honeybees), and what happens if you’re in a free falling elevator (jumping won’t do anything. Lay down flat on the ground to disperse the impact... and because if you’re standing up once the elevator stops your intestines will continue to fall and impact themselves out your bottom. And then you die).

Especially if your primary communication in English is written, Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is really your indispensable resource. It's much more about composition than grammar specifically, but the two topics are so closely linked that you'll benefit from it.

The Well-Tempered Sentence is another good resource, with a much more lighthearted approach. It's also primarily focused on written forms.

Neither of these are deep resources for grammar structure or usage rules, but understanding and implementing them will put you head and shoulders above a great many native speakers. I think if you're more interested in speaking than writing you'll want a language course of some kind. I've no personal experience with them, so I can't recommend one on that basis.

Good luck.

Starting to build a personal library since I am quiet young at the moment. Wish is too to have a 30000+ library like Umberto Eco’s. But would be happy if I happen to manage 15000+ like Nassim Taleb since it takes lot of money to build a good library.

Have around 700+ physical books having started 4 years back. Many of them are in my mother tongue(not Hindi). Handpicked 1000+ books as epub/mobi/pdf since I was initially reading in a computer and Western books were very costly and were difficult to source to my tier-3 city(Thanks to amazon I get these days now-a-days and when deals like this are announced they are god-send).

I haven’t read completely though. I have skimmed and read here and there a minority of them so have a transactional memory of those stuff. Only read a few completely.

Another 30 GB of book dump(somewhat computer related stuff) is all also there but it includes lot of .txt and .doc other than pdf collected during my teenage years.

Personal rule is to buy books below 300 bucks( but RandomHouse or Penguin mark most of the books above 500+ esp Western ones or wait till I find a good deal).In book deals, Amazon beats all other sites hands-down) . Mostly into non-fiction.

Costliest purchase is An Incomplete Education by Judy Jones and Willam Wilson purchased back in 2008 when Flipkart was a newbie. If you like trivia stuff and non-fiction it is a pure diamond, which I heartily recommend.

Here is a quote from The Black Swan about library :
> The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have. How many of these books have you read?” and the others—a very small minority—who get the point is that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendages but a research tool. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means … allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at your menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

Another one by Arthur Schopenhauer on books:
> Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

I know, mea culpa :)

Hi NP, thanks for the question. I think it's fair to say that many people found living in urban areas more attractive at particular times of history - this wasn't always true. Since the frame of the discussion is 'modernity', I am talking about recent history. If you look back at the formation of most 'modern' cities there was an excitement and exuberance that is not there today - your correct challenge is evidence of this.

I think you might have a slight romantic view of agricultural life, compared to what I have read. Rather than a pastoral 'Eden' it was often a challenging seasonally effected lifestyle of famine and struggle. If you read an early posting I made, this has been linked to the evolution of the human brain - challenges made us smarter.

Cities actually, allow for less-manual work and a diversification of workforces; have been linked to a collection and centralisation, through markets of better quality and more reliable supplies of food; Michael Olmet http://www.amazon.com/Miltons-Teeth-Ovids-Umbrella-Adventures/dp/0684801647 actually links cities with better oral care.

However, you point of view does confirm my hypothesis that we aren't really thinking about our relationships with cities and how they make us feel. Thanks for reading.

I already made a post but I also have to recommend: You Are Not So Smart : http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-So-Smart/dp/1592406599

He has a website too (youarenotsosmart.com), but as far as "changing the way you see the world", well, this will definitely change your understanding of how your mind actually works, definitely changing the way you see EVERYTHING. Fascinating, fun read with LOTS of examples of studies and very wide range of topics. Lots of fun.

Serendipity! i've never been gifted (mostly because i just joined reedit like a week ago, and just did an intro post today), but something interesting about me is that i'm studying to be a cognitive scientist so that i can help people with brain damage improve their memories. this is a book on experimental design that i've been looking at. it's goes 22 cents over the 10 dollar limit, but i figured it was worth a shot!

http://amzn.com/0156031353

hope you have an awesome day!

I think what you're saying makes sense, but what you're trying to do doesn't. You seem to be approaching atheism/skepticism kind of like a religion, in saying that you're new, want to become an atheist and want to work towards mastery etc. This makes total sense if you've just come out of a religion, of course. I would've thought the same thing. But in fact it's more of a de-programming than a re-programming. I think what you mean is that you've decided to de-program yourself of certain ways of thinking.

If there's anything useful that could be mastered in this sphere, one thing would be developing a knowledge of the cognitive traps that people can fall into so you can avoid them (not just with religion, but any irrational glitch the brain tends to come up with). You may enjoy:

• David McRaney – You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself (this was life-changing for me – get the audiobook, it's fantastic)
  
• Michael Shermer – The Believing Brain: From Spiritual Faiths to Political Convictions – How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths (haven't read this myself but heard lots of good things)

Hi, I hope your day is going well! Thanks for connecting. Related to these topics, I would recommend the book Quadrivium, an article about the 'Octave of Energy', a collection of experiences by Stan Grof, titled "When the Impossible Happens" , and for online material you can tune into /r/holofractal, which has aggregated lots of material relevant to the quantum nature of reality.

This is the 'dry' approach. A stylistic and heartfelt seed can be sprouted by planting your attention in the gardens of Sufi mystic poetry, or say, by reading the stories of the Vedas and Upanishads.

Stephen Mitchell has done amazing work translating the Tao te Ching and the Bhagavad Gita.


"Deluded by identification with the ego, a person
thinks, 'I am the doer.'"

Krishna; Chapter 3, verse 27

I don't really know anything about this myself, but fibonacci sequences definitely do appear in nature, and according to wikipedia, tree branching is one of the places they pop up.

That said, the assertion isn't really sourced in the wikipedia article, unless the seventh citation (this book), is meant to apply to that entire preceding list of examples. I don't know anything about the reliability of the source. Seems like it's decent, but everything has good reviews on its Amazon page, so it's tough to say.

Hopefully someone else has more direct knowledge...

The basic idea here is actually more true than you think. In a psychological sense, communism doesn't fall apart because humans are innately greedy -- it's because humans have a strong sense of fairness and strongly resent cheaters.

In games meant to simulate a sharing economy, everyone is perfectly happy splitting winnings evenly until they notice someone else cheat. All it takes is a single person taking more than they put in to set off a chain reaction of cheating where people are suddenly angry and indignant at only getting their fair share because other people are getting more.

While this is obviously a simplified situation, what it implies is that while humans are for the most part innately generous, the impulse to make sure others get their fair share is weaker than the one to make sure our own share is fair... which makes perfect sense, evolutionary.

What this means for governments is complex, but it's basically why the human race as it stands now probably would never be able to function under a true communistic state -- all it takes is one weak link to destroy the whole thing. A basal income where you could then earn on top of it would be more likely to succeed.

source -- not on their website, unfortunately, the article is only in print. This is a super-interesting article about a modified version of the game and the difference between how American and Japanese subjects played -- basically, Japanese players start more spiteful but ultimately collaborate better, while Americans start okay and are more likely to go off the rails later.

They're probably not so much quiet as much as you two have no mutual interests to talk about beyond whatever small and random event that inspired you to add them in the first place.

I can say with confidence my friend's list was composed largely with people who I found, during the brief encounter, very pleasant to converse with, be it at a fishing spot or camping a slayer monster.

However, usually the effects those random circumstances that bring about your initial affinity for the other party are typically very short lived and you realize you don't actually have much of a real connection with them. So you end up not talking to or deleting them very soon thereafter.

It happens all the time.

I now personally have 12 friends on my friends list, one who is a jmod I have on there for novelty because I saw them myself in-game and talked with and another is a random person I remember giving me full bronze, which I thought was the absolute most ballingest shit when I first started, so I would leave him and his e-gf alone. The other 10 people I talk to very regularly, about very diverse topics, from RS balance to politics to preferences of gum.

Have a look at this book to get an idea of why you may have so many people you don't actually talk with.

I did a lot of stuff out of this book

Visiting the "haunted" places with a friend was the best part. Nothing all that scary (besides melonheads) but hanging out was the best part.

Also, check out Derby. Like the whole city.

Oh man. There's a series of exactly this. They're fairly big tomes on cheap paper with about 3 pages at a time dedicated to some obscure and interesting fact or piece of history. They're like Cracked on paper, and slightly classier (very slightly).

Actually, Cracked has a few books. Like this and this. Buy, chain to the toilet and become the most loved man in your building.

Found it. The Bathroom Reader's Institute.

I haven't read the new updated edition yet but the original "An Incomplete Education" was brilliant and very entertaining. http://www.amazon.ca/An-Incomplete-Education-Learned-Probably/dp/0345468902

If it comes up again, this is a great explanation that kids can understand.

Edit: Seriously though, she might not be ready for this yet, but I've heard good things about this book for helping kids at least gain a rudimentary understanding of some complex questions.

Well, you can start by learning what a run-on sentence is.

I kid, I kid.

• Try reading An Incomplete Education. I haven't read it, but I've met people who swear by it.
  
  
• If you're worried about how to approach conversations, try reading up on etiquette. Basic table-manners are also useful. I'm always amazed by how many people know nothing about the societal conventions around dining out.
  
  
• General-purpose books on world history and science are always good; they'll give you a foundation to work from for a lot of other things.
  
  
• Practice, practice, practice. You can read all the books you want but if you don't talk to people you'll never get better at conversation.
  
  edit: SHE_LOVES_YOU had another great idea: Read up on greek/roman myths and history. The references pop up all the time. You don't need to know all the little details (Like what Pompeiius of Ganymede taught in his school at Megatron); knowing that Odysseus made his men pour wax in their ears to stop them from hearing the sirens' song,or that the Oracle of Delphi had plaques above its entrance that said "Know Thyself" and "Avoid Excess" is enough.

I think you're going to have to find a balance between accuracy and ease. most academic books are dense because 50 years of theoretical work went into understanding a very minute phenomenon. For example, there are books (Locke & Latham, 1990) written on just goal setting and how important it is to set a difficult goal. On the other hand, you have books written by folks like Malcolm Gladwell, while easy to read, are often incorrect because they omit many important nuances in academic literature.

Your best bet is to find books written by academics but made for laymen, two I recommend are:

You are not so smart

Thinking fast and slow

You could try this book: Big Questions From Little People and Simple Answers From Great Minds. I bought it for my son but he’s 4 and I haven’t needed it yet. Some of the reviewers stated that it helped them with their 5-yr-olds. Good luck!

[Nigel Rees's A Word in Your Shell] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/A-Word-In-Your-Shell-Like/dp/0007220871) is a very good one. It is structured by entry, like a dictionary, rather than having an overall narrative arc. But, each entry is interesting and insightful and actually quite enjoyable to read.

The book also tackles phrases rather than individual words.

I'm quoting a reply / post of yours from below because I hate long chains of replies that get buried, and because you seem to be lacking some information (or at least assuming your argument is stronger than it is).

>I think it's fair to say that many people found living in urban areas more attractive at particular times of history

Based on what? The presence of people in cities? By that metric, if 80% of the planet's population currently lives in cities, we freaking love our cities.

>Since the frame of the discussion is 'modernity', I am talking about recent history. If you look back at the formation of most 'modern' cities there was an excitement and exuberance that is not there today

How are you defining / quantifying "excitement and exuberance" in the past versus today such that you can make a statement like this?

>Cities actually, allow for less-manual work and a diversification of workforces; have been linked to a collection and centralisation, through markets of better quality and more reliable supplies of food; Michael Olmet http://www.amazon.com/Miltons-Teeth-Ovids-Umbrella-Adventures/dp/0684801647 actually links cities with better oral care.

You seem to have things a little backward here. Archaeological evidence indicates that specialization, markets, and centralization didn't develop because of cities. Rather, cities appear to have formed as a consequence of increased centralization and hierarchy, and surplus production, which in turn contribute to greater degrees of specialization.

This may sound like a chicken-egg argument, but it's not, really. We see archaeological evidence for the things you're describing as resulting from city formation well before the formation of cities in most of those regions.

Now you can argue about what a city is, but that's an entire body of literature in and of itself.

Check amazon for reviews.
Don't forget that Urban Legends are the contemporary version of myth and folklore and there are some great books on the subject. Encyclopedia of Urban Legends. This is the one I own. It's pretty comprehensive.

I also recently read it in the book "you are not so smart" by David McRaney. Very, very enjoyable read.

Amazon link: (no referral link, don't worry): http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-So-Smart/dp/1592406599

Apparently the human tendency to create memories out of thin air is huge. Therefore, suppressed memories often are more the result of guidance by the psychologist, counsellor,... than they are based on the truth.

>This is Now I Know. A bunch of redditors already subscribe total and I'm a long-eight-year redditor myself. Last year, the Now I Know book came out and my second book, Now I Know More comes out November 1 and is available for pre-order now.
>
>What I write about is idiosyncratic -- if it's new to me and fascinating, I write about it. Here are five recent ones, to give you a taste:
>
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> One of the flaws on the ceiling of Grand Central Terminal is also a hidden health message.
> You actually can die from a broken heart.
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> And from my first book, reprinted in the newsletter: Where your luggage goes after the airline loses it.
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>Keep the questions to Now I Know and I'll answer just about anything. I'll also answer questions about baseball, just because. And most other stuff as well.
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>My Proof:
>(Coming once I tweet!)

I love Adam Ruins Everything.

I'd really like to see the actual study where they pulled the "wine pranks", so, let's go on an adventure!

I found the article they referenced in the video.

Which, in turn, cites this book as a reference, which I then "sailed the high seas and plundered".

Here is the chapter, copied and pasted from the book.

I read that, found that it was an experiment conducted by Frédéric Brochet at the Univerité de Bordeaux, and then searched for "frederic brochet bordeaux study wine", which gave me this article, which in turn had a link to a pdf of the actual study.

)

-------
TL;DR: here is the link to the pdf of the "wine prank" study.

I was a huge fan and loved reading these. I have over 10 of them, some of them read multiple times. But after finding a number of inaccuracies mostly in the little footnotes at the bottom of each page I was disillusioned to the point I stopped reading them.
http://www.amazon.com/Uncle-Johns-Bathroom-Reader-Extraordinary/dp/1592236057/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278707817&sr=1-3

They were all in this book in particular. I have never found anything wrong with the others. The longer stories in particular are quite excellent reading.

If you can get your hands on this, then I strongly recommend it. Albeit, it's worth noting that this deals with mythology (Gaelic, Celtic) from a distinctly Irish paradigm (most Celtic mythology is actually quite generic and can be seen repeating itself in different descended societies). Anyway, this was our bible whilst studying folklore here in Ireland. I'm not too sure about an online source, but I hope it helps nonetheless.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lore-Ireland-Encyclopaedia-Romance/dp/1843832151

What? I'm talking about those books you get as gifts sometimes or find at garage sales. Like Elephants on Acid or books about extraordinary people, high times has one about people doing stupid stuff when they were high... I'm not talking about a specific publication. These things are hard to look for, you just kind of run across them places. Are you talking about something specific that you can share?

I'd share more specific titles with you, but I always give them away when I'm done. I had one about Circus Side Show people called Circus Freaks I think. I really hope I'm coming across clear. I don't know what they're called.

The Book of General Ignorance is the one I would like if I win.
Book is available in hardcover, paperback, new and used. :)

31 is my number.

I really don't have a favorite book. I read lots of biographies and history books.

EDIT:Formatting

thanks ;) By the way, it's free today on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GQRGE6E

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

Another great book is An incomplete Education

It covers many subjects including history and is fun to read.

Here's a book you might be interested in.

While states haven't changed yet, most of them look pretty different from their original background as a colony or territory.

I highly recommend you read When The Impossible Happens - Stanislav Grof, which talks about experiences like yours and other very similar phenomenon.

I really like Grof because he observes these phenomenon without trying to explain it away with reason and logic that obviously leaves one wanting, instead proposing we need to find a new way of understanding to account for these phenomenon.

this is one of the best collections i've come across. maybe it can help you find what you're looking for...

http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Urban-Legends-Harold-Brunvand/dp/0393323587/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1344007310&sr=8-3&keywords=urban+legends+jan+harold

Some of these occurences are called Synchronicities and there's a great read on it from the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof - When the impossible happens.

He also did a lot of work on pacients through working with LSD and does have quite some books about it and knows his stuff.
But this book concerns the things you want to know, I think you should definitely read it and as a man with a scientific mind have your world shaken up some more.

http://www.amazon.com/When-Impossible-Happens-Adventures-Non-Ordinary/dp/159179420X

From a book I own, The Book Of General Ignorance, Under section What are violin strings made from? page 140:

>Violin strings are not made of catgut, and never have been.

>This is a myth started by medieval Italian violin makers who had discovered that sheep intestines made good strings for their instruments. Killing a cat brought terribly bad luck, so they protected their invention by telling everyone else their strings were made from the intestines of cats.

>The legend was that a saddle maker called Erasmo, in the Abruzzi mountain village of Salle, near Pescara, heard the wiund blowing through the strands of drying sheeps' guts one day and throught that they might make a good string for the early violin known as the renaissance fiddle.

Yeah, that's just "legend," but it sounds plausible enough. Unexpected outcome for a product. I mean, it seems like the fibrous tissue comes out pretty stringy in the first place. It's not a far leap from fibrous tissue to string to stringed instrument.

I agree read a lot of great non-fiction books.

You can start with the series and related books of this:
http://www.amazon.com/A-Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/076790818X

http://www.amazon.com/Book-General-Ignorance-John-Mitchinson/dp/0307394913#immersive-view_1457311562058

As someone who is more years out of college than I care to admit, I find that for most of the subjects outside of my major I can really only give brief overviews. I understand how things work in context, but there is just a whole lot of detail that is lost.

With that in mind, I absolutely love An Incomplete Education, it gives you that high level overview of a lot of subjects to fill in the gaps you are missing and pique your interest to dig deeper into subjects you may have never given much thought to.

Relevant, and an excellent bathroom companion.

Also, it seems like the counter-intuitive stuff is the kind of ignorance that really sticks. For instance, someone -- a reasonably intelligent someone -- once tried at length to convince me that blood is blue until it meets air, something I hadn't heard since elementary school.

Hint: that is false.

If you like to read, this book looks fun!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0156031353/ref=aw_wl_ov_dp_3_9?colid=36GQC3I4W7DBK&coliid=I1Q1HT1JAET2YG

What got me started this year was a fun little book that my ex recommended me called "And Then You're Dead: What Really Happens If You Get Swallowed by a Whale, Are Shot from a Cannon, or Go Barreling over Niagara" Fun little book that describes different scenarios that lead to your death. Really fun and very funny. https://www.amazon.com/Then-Youre-Dead-Swallowed-Barreling/dp/0143108441/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527565315&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=what+happens+when+you+get+swallowed+by+a+whatle

A long time ago, there was a scientist, Dr. MacDougall.
interesting book about death,
also this, also that. The reasoning is legit, but it was not scientific and was unable to be reproduced. So the commentor's statement of "poop" is more accurate :)

Hmm, how about some sort of book to keep him/her engaged in educating themselves even though they're a retired teacher?

This book springs to mind :)

Read The General Book of Ignorance
and The Second Book of General Ignorance. They have perhaps the most awesome list of random facts you could imagine. They were written by the buys who work on QI and they are freaking hilarious.

When the Impossible Happens

Amazon description of the book:

Feelings of oneness with other people, nature, and the universe. Encounters with extraterrestrials, deities, and demons. Out-of-body experiences and past-life memories. Science casts a skeptical eye. But Dr. Stanislav Grof—the psychiatric researcher who cofounded transpersonal psychology—believes otherwise.
When the Impossible Happens presents Dr. Grof 's mesmerizing firsthand account of over 50 years of inquiry into waters uncharted by classical psychology, one that will leave readers questioning the very fabric of our existence.
From his first LSD session that gave him a glimpse of cosmic consciousness to his latest work with Holotropic Breathwork, When the Impossible Happens will amaze readers with vivid explorations of topics such as:

· Temptations of a Non-Local Universe—experiments in astral projection

· Praying Mantis in Manhattan and other tales of synchronicity

· Trailing Clouds of Glory—remembering birth and prenatal life

· Dying and Beyond—survival of consciousness after death

When the Impossible Happens is an incredible opportunity to journey beyond ordinary consciousness, guaranteed to shake the foundations of what we assume to be reality, and sure to offer a new vision of our human potential.

Something by Karen Elizabeth Gordon perhaps? She uses amusingly macabre example sentences juxtaposed with weird public domain illustrations. Some of her titles are Torn Wings and Faux Pas: A Flashbook of Style, a Beastly Guide Through the Writer's Labyrinth, The Transitive Vampire: a Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed and The Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook

I would highly recommend a book from this series. You can open it to anywhere and find something interesting.

It's the name of a children's book that was popular for a while... I think the author had ties to the state (from there, went to school there, something like that)

You'd probably like Unexplained! Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena...I read it years ago and enjoyed it.

If you enjoy reading stories like this, I highly recommend reading "Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments " by Alex Boese, its chock full of weird stuff like this. http://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Acid-Bizarre-Experiments-Original/dp/0156031353

Relevant.

I loved that book as a kid.

Start with googling "What you didn't learn in high school history" and then follow the path to what interests you.

Incomplete Education is good - it touches on more than history though

http://www.amazon.com/Incomplete-Education-Things-Learned-Probably/dp/0345468902/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1457314579&sr=8-2&keywords=what+you+didn%27t+high+school+history

Ah yes... I've found just the book for you :)

http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-So-Smart/dp/1592406599

one of my all time favs, and an important read for humanity.

I read in this book that cats can survive falls from more than 7 stories because they need that amount of falling time to relax their body. IIRC the claim was backed up by cat hospitalization data, but I don't have the book on hand to check.
Anyway I thought it added sort-of an interesting twist to all the falling arguments.

I meant primary school as in k-12, not before high school.

I think that High school should be about Intro-electives, where kids can learn about a subject in an intro class, and then if they write papers, do research, and do other things (like get an internship/apprenticeship) that could count too. That would encourage kids to learn more on their own, and be curious about what interests them.

> Weird, because I clearly remember being forced to sit and listen to the fucking explanations on how to learn to understand and remember things from a book, how to understand and remember things the teacher was explaining etc.

K, then maybe your experience was atypical. Most teachers are full of shit, btw.

> What the fuck does this even mean? To think for themselves? Who the fuck else are they thinking for? Their parents? Their teachers? Their friends?

Yeah. They're being taught how to think like their teachers, parents, friends, etc. Which is what the government likes, because it's easier to pander to a class of people when they all know/think the same way. Also, calm down a bit, will ya?

> By learning to read and understand what you've read in primary school you can fill out your fucking tax forms yourself.

Then why do so many people hire accountants? Do you know how to calculate your capital gains taxes on short term and long-term investments, and how that impacts your taxable income? What about the myriad of write-offs and tax-breaks/benefits that the government allows?

> I get really fucking pissed of at people whining about the fact that they learn nothing in school, more often than not those are kids who don't put in any fucking effort in school and then whine that they don't know shit when they're done.

I'm "whining" because most of the shit I learned in school was completely fucking wrong or outright propaganda.

You should try to find The Well-tempered Sentence. It's a fun English grammar book that you could use as a reference for English punctuation.

It’s a book rather than a subreddit, but I have it and can recommend it.

Not the same, but check out Weird New England

http://www.amazon.com/Weird-New-England-Englands-Legends/dp/1402733305

You used to be able to find these in like every bookstore ever

Not entering, but you might like And Then You're Dead.

Buy this, it will take care of your desires.

You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney.

Very interesting stuff.

Yeah, that's the one I was looking for. My bad, sorry. I recommend this book and blog because this stuff is really interesting.

You should check out "Lost States" by Michael J Trinklein, it's awesome coffee table literature.
http://www.amazon.com/Lost-States-Michael-J-Trinklein/dp/1594744106

Can't wait for the book, I've booked marked it so I wont forget.

You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

Found one on The Pirate Bay, but this looks like it's worth it to have a copy on the shelf, so buy it from Amazon.

Read. The book to start with is An Incomplete Education. Build from there, reading widely in many fields and using your reading to find new areas of inquiry. Be curious. Talk to smart people, follows the news and cultural criticism, read The Atlantic, The Economist, The New Yorker, and a dozen other magazines, read a few papers every day, etc etc. etc. Do this for a couple of decades and you'll have a start.

I highly recommend You Are Not So Smart. Excellent book about how your brain works and how it's constantly trying to trick you. Everyone should read it.

If you think your actions are 100% personal choice, you might want to research that a bit.

http://smile.amazon.com/dp/1592406599/ref=cm_sw_su_dp?sa-no-redirect=1

I recommend this book as a fun/horror read (depending in your personal critical thinking ability): you are not so smart

Plenty of sample chapters on the site: http://youarenotsosmart.com/

huehuehue

Relevant

'Do penguins have knees' is the name of a book

Read the book The Book of General Ignorance.

When the Impossible Happens - Stanislav Grof http://www.amazon.com/When-Impossible-Happens-Adventures-Non-Ordinary/dp/159179420X

Uncle John's Bathroom Reader

Accirding to this bookyour death is most likely to be from internal injuries, so you should position yourself flat on the floor of the elevator. The authors did an AMA

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0156031353/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_3jtQAbXHKG1WN

https://www.amazon.com/Penguins-Have-Knees-Imponderables-Book/dp/0060740914

So it's just a typed up version of this book?

Penguins do have knees

Actually, got this one from a book

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0156031353

Here is the mobile version of your link

And Then You're Dead

Great book I own on this called Elephants on Acid...

Talks about all kinds of crazy shit scientists have done through the years in the name of science...

Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments

I think that you should inform them that paranormal phenomena are just not as common as they presume and to exhaust all possibility before concluding that it is quite simply paranormal phenomenon. That includes questioning one's own sanity.

As for banishing:

• Laughter
  
• Bathing, with intent
  
  The above suggested already by my fellow /r/occult ists
  
  
• Meditating and imagining the self and room filling with supernal light
  
• Tracing the area of the room(s) with lit incense of any type
  
• Drawing an X over every external door and window
  
• The LBRP, its derivatives and especially invented rituals by the practitioner
  
  If I think of more, I'll add them.
  
  
• Procuring "holy water" and flicking it throughout the home
  
• Completing X amount of prayers to any Deity
  
  How many prayers do you have to complete? Well, the square root of your income. Round up. That is, your gross income before deductions and exemptions and including bonuses and stock options. You can cheat on your taxes, but I warn you not to cheat God and the like. I tried it when I was younger, bad move, wild times and nothing but regrets. Anyways, donations made in good faith (not to politicians) are deductible, and strangely Dogecoin is exempt unless outright stolen. I don't make the rules. Blah blah blah stuff about Mammon blah blah passing through the eye of a needle yada yada.
  
  
• Psychic pimp-slapping the so-called spirit
  
• Make it worse and sell the script to Hollywood?
  
• Study You Are Not So Smart and consider if perhaps the supernatural world-view isn't for you
  
• Buy a candle from a nearby witchcraft store and leave a generous tip. Then of course use the candle wherever the concern is.

Magnetars are the only place in the universe you can find magnets strong enough to kill a person. Approaching one would stretch out your atoms.

Source: And Then You're Dead: What Really Happens If You Get Swallowed by a Whale, Are Shot from a Cannon, or Go Barreling over Niagara https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143108441/ref=cm_sw_r_api_-YaQzbSCZPJGM

I'm sorry, but that's one of the most useless guides ever written. Truss knows nothing about the rules of English and I found a factual error on the very first page I randomly read. Even worse, there's no way to look up a rule if you want to find out what she says. Entertaining read, but Truss is stuck in the 1940s and doesn't understand her subject one bit.

For what you're looking for, get Karen Elizabeth Goonan's "The Well-Tempered Sentence." Her "The Transitive Vampire" is also excellent for grammar.

https://www.amazon.com/New-Well-Tempered-Sentence-Punctuation-Handbook/dp/0618382011

> I meant primary school as in k-12, not before high school.

Ah, misunderstandings happen. I thought primary school in the US was up to 12 years and after that is secondary school.

> I think that High school should be about Intro-electives, where kids can learn about a subject in an intro class, and then if they write papers, do research, and do other things (like get an internship/apprenticeship) that could count too. That would encourage kids to learn more on their own, and be curious about what interests them.

It's a good idea, but you'll be missing a lot of the basics if every student just does some projects during their school time. You get to do projects now either way, I've never heard of a school where you just sit all day making calculations for math, or reciting grammar rules in some language course, or just recite year numbers for history etc.

For every course there are always projects you have to do. It's kind of hard for math to have fun and engaging projects, but you use all of your math knowledge for physics (which has loads of awesome stuff you can engage in outside of just making calculations) and chemistry. For language courses you'll have to debate stuff in that language, write letters to foreign students, make posters about famous monuments/cities in that country (this applies more to foreign languages + is also done in geography), read awesome literature from that book and analyze it. Researching history is always a big part of the course, you have to write essays on why and how specific events happened in history.

>> Weird, because I clearly remember being forced to sit and listen to the fucking explanations on how to learn to understand and remember things from a book, how to understand and remember things the teacher was explaining etc.

> K, then maybe your experience was atypical. Most teachers are full of shit, btw.

I very much doubt my experience was atypical, because every single person I've known has had these lessons. Every foreign student I've met has had these lessons. What relevance has your statement that most teachers are full shit? And you link a book published by Cracked ffs? Wow. The first thing I read is that we do not have five senses. No shit? Has any teacher of you told you that we have only five senses? Or that those are the five traditional senses? Anyone with half a brain understands that you have more, like your balance sense? Temperature sense? Pain sense? That's practically self-explanatory.

>> What the fuck does this even mean? To think for themselves? Who the fuck else are they thinking for? Their parents? Their teachers? Their friends?

>Yeah. They're being taught how to think like their teachers, parents, friends, etc. Which is what the government likes, because it's easier to pander to a class of people when they all know/think the same way. Also, calm down a bit, will ya?

Being taught how to think like my teachers, parents and friends is wrong? Then maybe you associate with the wrong people? Take that tinfoil hat off, please. I don't even know how to answer to this. The government is keeping you complacent and stupid? Maybe that's more your own fault.

>> By learning to read and understand what you've read in primary school you can fill out your fucking tax forms yourself.

>Then why do so many people hire accountants? Do you know how to calculate your capital gains taxes on short term and long-term investments, and how that impacts your taxable income? What about the myriad of write-offs and tax-breaks/benefits that the government allows?

Why do people hire cleaners? They don't want to spend the time doing the cleaning? The same with accountants. Yes I know how to do my own taxes, I've done it a couple of times already, and it really is not that hard. If you want to find out tax-breaks/benefits that are not listed on the forms, you just google around a bit, maybe go loan a book on taxes from the library. Information is available everywhere in this day and age, it's not that hard if you've learnt the basic skills of reading comprehension.

>> I get really fucking pissed of at people whining about the fact that they learn nothing in school, more often than not those are kids who don't put in any fucking effort in school and then whine that they don't know shit when they're done.

>I'm "whining" because most of the shit I learned in school was completely fucking wrong or outright propaganda.

Propaganda in school? Where the fuck did you go to school to? Fucking North Korea? I hope you're not saying that most of the shit you learned in school was wrong based on that one very 'nice' book by cracked.