(Part 3) Top products from r/DepthHub

Perfect! You'll never look back once you go down this path.

Here's my favourite text of the year. It rambles near the end, but especially going through how we envisioned perspective before modern art it's just a fantastic little guide. You also get some basic background in theoretical physics from it, just as fascinating.

This one is more limited, but puts artistic developments of the early 20th century in perspective by drawing parallels between those and those of science. This and the above are very good if you still see art as painting pretty scenes.

Another by the same author, less involved with the parallels and more with the history.

This is a collection of essays, but they're brilliant. Nature of creativity and the creative process mostly.

These are the ones I know of offhand. Most of my library is a few hours away by car, but I'll be passing through there in a couple of weeks and can pick through titles if you'd like.

This is a pretty decent, simple treatment of the idea of comparative advantage, that countries are best off making the things they are most efficient at and trading for things they're less efficient at.

If you are looking for more clear explanations of basic economic theory for the layman, I recommend Naked Economics.

I don't know of any great online sources that directly answer "did Jesus exist?", but if you are interested check out The New Testament by Ehrman. It is a great introduction to "historical Jesus" studies and the origins of the New Testament documents. Also check out this Open Yale course. They both explain the historical tools used to answer these kinds of questions.

thats a good subreddit in general. I agree that some good documentary suggestions would be useful. i picked up up The Wisdom Books awhile back, which is interesting because of how well it's annotated. but its still dense reading. I could totally go for some documentaries

I don't think that the US war planners were really too interested in democracy in any real sense. They wanted democracy only insofar as they equated "democracy" with a government which would act as an "ally" to the United States--or rather one that would completely and utterly subordinate its political and economic interests to the US. The ultimate symbol of this was the absurdly immense US embassy complex planned for the "Emerald City." US interests were always primary during the entire process. They were so bent on making the liberated/conquered Iraq into a business bonanza for the United States, for example, that they opened the doors to legions of corrupt swindlers--criminals who emptied out the Iraqi treasury, leaving very little to show for it, all under US "supervision." Some of the "errors" made by the US--born of imperial hubris, and having little to do with the ability of Iraqis to govern themselves democratically--were detailed in this documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_End_in_Sight

Here's a good book on the subject: "The Checklist Manifesto" by surgeon Atul Gawande (M.D., M.P.H., FACS). He's written a lot on the subject of process and environment and the role they play in medicine and elsewhere.

The long and short of it is that checklists and repetition have huge positive influences on outcomes.

Pretty good little book I read a couple of years ago on the topic: Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization by Stuart Isacoff.

An accessible read, not overly technical, which describes the progression of music "science" within social and scientific historical contexts.

This is an intriguing idea, and is a great example of the main thesis of Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge. Of course, that book takes a wide societal look at what designers have known about for a long time - the concepts of affordances and cultural constraints.

Essentially, the possibilities we perceive a situation to offer, and our perception of the degree of effort required to achieve each possibility can impact our decisions. Therefore, situations (such as removing a cigarette from its packaging or choosing lunch from a display) can be designed so that the socially desirable possibility is that which is perceived to require the least amount of effort to achieve.

Ok. I don't have a lot of time. I especially do not have enough time to cover every instance over the decades, so I'm going to go with the most recent event - the current Iran-Israel-US issue. I will use reposts.

Typing it now....

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>US strategy in the Middle East (and indeed all over the world) is predicated on establishing security so that other nations do not have to, the idea being that it is better if there is one powerful military guaranteeing everyone's interests rather than several powerful militaries looking to individual state interests. The US plays the role of security guarantor in the Middle East (ensuring the flow of the oil supply, protecting sea lanes, etc.) to prevent European, Indian, and Chinese (areas which all rely heavily on the Middle East for oil, whereas the vast majority of oil used by the US comes from the Western Hemisphere which we can easily secure from others) from having to do so. Preventing Arab nations from uniting (which would not happen regardless of any foreign power's involvement in the region today) is absolutely not on the agenda.

>It's not a narrative; it's established US strategy. That strategy is currently in flux because the transition in the international environment away from unipolarity, but that's what it has been since the Cold War.

To start this informal reply, there is going to be a serious inherent flaw when trying to look at one narrative as a monolithic strategy that spans decades. Theres considerable push and pull within the US government that needs to me accounted for. As promised, this will only focus on the current Iranian issue. I'm low on time, so..

Basically, you have a large fight that occurs between the oil interests you mention and people with ideological leanings with Israel. You simply cannot view even our current issues with Iran simply through your lens as it omits a massive portion of US foreign policy. There are clear breaks with oil interests and changes in US foreign policy. Sanctions are a key point during the change in policy in the mid 1990's to now. American companies were pushed out of Iran from the AIPAC sanctions when they were the biggest customers by far. Cheney, in the 1990's was against the neoconservative plan for invasion in the 1990's, he was fighting to drop the Iranian sanctions, as much of the companies were. Cheney changed his position later. Repost. look for links and a bunch of expanded points. Luckily, I have some important excerpts of Parsis book here that should help start you off. This is another short PDF you should read, as it also covers how oil interests came to dominate US policy, and then lost out to Israeli interests in the mid 1990's. During Clintons second term, Clinton shifted back to oil interests to an extent.

Then (repost)

>“Indecision 2000”had deprived the Bush administration ofmore than six badly needed weeks to organize the administration and fill key posts in the State Department and elsewhere.More than three months into his presidency,Bush still had not found many ofthe people who would head his government agencies, including those who would be responsible for policies on Iran.AIPAC’s machinery, however,was in great shape.The pro-Israel lobby began laying the groundwork for ILSA’s renewal on Capitol Hill,and by mid-March—before Bush had even formulated a position on ILSA—AIPAC had gathered more than three hundred cosponsors in the House (the bill needed only 218 votes to pass).Though the sanctions had failed to change Iran’s foreign policy,AIPAC still hailed ILSA as a great success.AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr urged the House International Relations Committee to renew ILSA because it had “met the test and proven its effectiveness over time”and because “Iranian behavior demands it.” The pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy argued that ILSA’s renewal would help Iran’s “real moderates”and hurt the “so-called moderates”around President Mohammad Khatami,who shared the “anti-Israel policies set by Iran’s hard-line clerical leadership.” The Bush administration was quickly outmaneuvered; through its preemptive work on Capitol Hill,AIPAC checkmated Bush and saw the sanctions bill pass with overwhelming numbers in both chambers.Still,cautious optimism characterized Iran’s approach to the United States during the first months of the Bush administration,and a lull reigned in the war ofwords between Tehran and Tel Aviv. All that was to change on the morning of September 11,2001

View the parsi link above for an expansion of what occurred between 2001 and now. If people forget whey the sanctions are relevant today, Remember that the Obama administration just recently, expended a chunk of political capital on releasing oil from the strategic oil reserves to drive down prices to help boost the economy. In come the AIPAC sanctions, and Obama pleads to ease the impact of the penalties to avoid driving up oil prices. He loses. Oil prices go up over the nonsense that occurs afterwards, negatively affecting the US economy. Bonus? China gets cheaper Iranian Oil as the U.S. Pays for the expensive Hormuz patrols. A varied group of other people, with the run up to the Iraq war fresh on their minds, arent too happy with this and with the televison media coverage. For example, check out Robert Baer and Richard Engel on Hardball talking openly about how Israel is escalating hostilities with Iran to provoke an attack that will justify a military response. Baer is figure with some gravitas on this subject, and covering this on Hardball is very significant. Heres more.

More links

The delay and the sensitive negotiations over language may presage tensions with Democrats as AIPAC leads the drive among pro-Israel groups to ratchet up pressure on Iran this year.

As U.S. and Israeli officials talk publicly about the prospect of a military strike against Iran's nuclear program, one fact is often overlooked: U.S. intelligence agencies don't believe Iran is actively trying to build an atomic bomb.

AIPAC and the Push Toward War

Bibi or Barak: Who will plunge us into Mideast war?

I have to wrap this up. Even looking at just the most recent US issue in the middle east highlights how this perspective you bring does not cover decades of US foreign policy because it simply is not monolithic. People could have made this argument during the cold war, but even this was starting to erode by the Early 1990's.

So they're looking for a new explanation in the form of a new common enemy. And so they've invented one, which we're going to hear a great deal more about in the future, and that is Islamic fundamentalism, which they say is the great wave that's threatening the West.

-George Ball 1993


We needed some new glue for the alliance [with America].
And the new glue . . . was radical Islam.And Iran was radical Islam.

-Efraim Inbar, Begin-Sadat Center

It's ironic how we try to limit the offenders to a certain subreddit. The internet creates an anonymity which unconsciously pushes us towards associating/identifying with others like us on the internet. This is what Reddit so popular and at times so formulaic with the: DAE and constant circle jerk of certain ideas.

The crowd creates a togetherness but this togetherness leads to a emotional based decision-making and views of issues , vast simplifications of problems and rash decisions as less people challenge the views of the masses or choose not to go against the grain. Things like KONY 2012, #Occupy, SOPA, few people online truly understand, but many have an emotional response to.

This is not a trait that we can merely throw on a few outcasts and go about our business, a lot of us have to take responsibility for acting in a similar fashion to one degree or another. If we look at Reddit's reaction to: Chris Brown, Woody Harrelson, whichever mod is deemed to be unpopular today, or even the way the majority of the people will react to the member deemed 'responsible' for someone else committing suicide, it is clear that this thought process is something that affects the entire website. The idea of vigilante justice assumes that you have the moral high ground just as much as the culprits at the latest event that has everyone up in arms.

We all have these little cliques that are supposed to do XYZ. r/funny makes a joke out of everything, r/atheism looks down on religion, etc etc ad nausem. Let's not try and blame one subset of individuals for something the whole site is guilty of. They are of the same mindset as everyone else, it is just their mindset and circle-jerk is deemed as less productive from our own 'moral high grounds'.


TL;DR: Read The Crowd by Gustav Le Bon

Try this: Foundations of Economics - Yanis Varoufakis. Very nicely written.

I would also recommend reading Captains of Consciousness by Stuart Ewen.

Link to The Century of The Self

Link to Captains of Consciousness on amazon

I'm also currently reading "The Source Field Investigations" by David Wilcock which is chock full of scientific facts not widely talked about, relating to all aspects of inventions.

Or further back, to Norman Spinrad's Little Heroes, which looks more and more prescient every year.

That was the premise of "Not Even Wrong", that string theory remains outside the scope of science due to its complete lack of testability.

So that leaves the string theorist with "ad hominem" attacks like this post essentially calling everyone who disagrees with them "stupid" i.e. "non-specialist".

I just want to point out a few things :

• Hindenburg was President of the Wiemar Republic. Not, I repeat not, Chancellor. ^1
  
  
• As president Hindenburg could call for new elections every six weeks. This power is given to him under the Wiemar Constitution. It was used regularly in order to take out unpopular governments. This can be seen with the replacement of Brüning by Von Papen. (It should be noted that the Brüning government was an austerity government.)^2
  
  
• An argument can be made against Hitler having a 'plan'. I would argue that Hitler was the luckiest man in the world. Hindenburg had suspended the government and called for the elections. Six weeks had to pass before the elections could be held. In those six weeks Hindenburg died. This allowed Hitler to push over the government without killing the hero of the First World War. ^3
  
  I can expand on any of this if anyone wants.
  
  Sources:
  
  1.)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Germany_%281919%E2%80%931945%29#List_of_officeholders
  
  2.)http://www.amazon.com/Defying-Hitler-Memoir-Sebastian-Haffner/dp/0374161577
  
  3.)http://www.amazon.com/The-Nazi-Seizure-Power-experience/dp/0531056333