(Part 3) Top products from r/thatHappened

You should check out "No Easy Answers" by Brooks Brown (https://www.amazon.com/No-Easy-Answers-Behind-Columbine/dp/1590560310). Pretty good book. Brooks is the one that Eric (iirc) said to "... go home. I like you today" just before the attacks started. He was good friends with Eric growing up. Some real talk in the book.

I suspect that the number of Trekkies who would have you believe that they're fluent in Klingon is much higher than the actual number of Trekkies who are fluent in Klingon.

I mean, the media seems really fascinated by the notion that there are a bunch of nerds running around speaking some fictional nerd language (hence the portrayal of such in shows like The Big Bang Theory), but it just doesn't make any sense. Yes, Klingon is a fully realized language constructed by a real-ass linguist and all that, but all that means is that it takes just as much time and effort to learn as a real language, and without the benefit of being able to find any real level of immersion (the snippets of Klingon in the show certainly aren't enough, so you're pretty much stuck with reading Hamlet in Klingon). And anyone who's devoting all those hundreds or thousands of hours to learning a fictional language, as opposed to the many actual useful skills or languages that a nerd could learn in that same amount of time, probably isn't getting outside enough for you to ever actually meet them.

Yeah, books in the ancient world were luxury items that cost the equivalent of hundreds of dollars each; writing materials were not cheap, and each copy of a book required the services of a skilled scribe to write it out by hand. (E. Randolph Richards estimates prices for some of these goods and services in Paul and First-Century Letter Writing.) The evangelists would probably each have wanted a copy of their gospel for themselves, plus a few to send to the churches in Christian centres like Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria in the hope they would disseminate it further. A few chapters of extraneous information about Jesus' teenage years = $$$$

I could believe it. Me and a few friends convinced a slightly sheltered girl that saying "its all Gucci" or something along those lines and throwing up the shocker was a cool thing and she got many weird looks and stares until we told her what that hand gesture was.

No More Mr. Nice Guy is a great book that explains why if you/anyone are/is interested. This is a actually a very serious and prevalent issue that has an unhealthy influence on both (or more, if kids etc.) people in the relationship.

Here you go.
Only $5.50, and well worth it. They even accept payment in Federal Reserve notes!

Dear OP: I have a book recommendation for you!

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks (Amazon link)

>individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; patients no longer able to recognize people and common objects; patients whose limbs have become alien

Understand that, of course, even the authors first impulse is "bullshit".

Then he started doing clinical tests and ... just read the book.

Brains ARE weird.

Completely off topic, I had to read a book called "The Peculiar Institution" in college. Quite the interesting read, and I hadn't even thought about it in decades. https://www.amazon.com/Peculiar-Institution-Slavery-Ante-Bellum-South/dp/0679723072

Also: "peculiar" is a hard word to type.

That's from the Alan Partridge book, and is comedy.

My son is 12 and he's been shown flat earth clips. I showed him my copies of The Smoking God and The Missing Diary of Admiral Byrd and he threw out his Flat Earth booklets. Discs are for playing with Frisbees, the Earth is hollow.

I can't speak for the child/adult-pretending-to-be-a-child's mindset when it was written, but I am confident these are notes from a Christian children's book.

These seem word-for-word from one I've read recently. I even think it may be The Squire and the Scroll, though I am not sure.

Quick Edit: I'm not a creep that reads children's books on sex. I'm just an atheist that works for several Christian order lines and sometimes I like to find reasons to get pissed off.

https://www.amazon.com/National-Geographic-Readers-Sea-Otters/dp/1426317514

It exists, apparently. https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Physics-Babies-Baby-University/dp/1492656224

It could be a recipe from [Cooking with Semen] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/social/swf/1481227041/o=ShareProduct/ref=tsm_1_aw_swf_d_sp?vs=1). Perhaps cum tartare atop the shrimp alfredo.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805053549/

Specifically, this one.

It's actually a short summary of his book. He wouldn't want to give too much away.

Amusingly mirrors (with the "moral" of the story reversed) the opening anecdote of the chapter about Microsoft in Cringely's Accidental Empires, probably equally apocryphal, but at least with the pedigree of being printed 25 years ago in a real book by an author who at least claimed to have done contemporary research.

> William H. Gates III stood in the checkout line at an all-night convenience store near his home in the Laurelhurst section of Seattle. It was about midnight, and he was holding a carton of butter pecan ice cream. The line inched forward, and eventually it was his turn to pay. He put some money on the counter, along with the ice cream, and then began to search his pockets.
>
> "I've got 50-cents-off coupon here somewhere," he said, giving up on his pants pockets and moving up to search the pockets of his plaid shirt.
>
> The clerk waited, the ice cream melted, the other customers, standing in line with their root beer Slurpies and six-packs of beer, fumed as Gates searched in vain for the coupon.
>
> "Here," said the next shopper in line, throwing down two quarters.
>
> Gates took the money.
>
> "Pay me back when you earn your first million," the 7-11 philanthropist called as Gates and his ice cream faded into the night.
>
> The shoppers just shook their heads. They all knew it was Bill Gates, who on that night in 1990 was approximately a three billion dollar man.
>
> I figure there's some real information in this story of Bill Gates and the ice cream. He took the money. What kind of person is this? What kind of person wouldn't dig his own 50 cents out and pay for the ice cream? A person who didn't have the money? Bill Gates has the money. A starving person? Bill Gates has never starved. Some paranoid schizophrenics would have taken the money (some wouldn't, too), but I've heard no claims that Bill Gates is mentally ill. And a kid might take the money -- some bright but poorly socialized kid under, say, the age of 9.
>
> Bingo.

A lot of what Bush did was played up because the man came off as an absolute moron. He was a terrible public speaker, and literally filled books with his oratory blunders. This raised the profile of his mistakes and poor decisions, as everyone was searching through everything he said to find more comedy gold.

That said, (and completely leaving out everything regarding the Iraq War and WMDs) there were a few other major reasons he was hated:

1. He wasn't elected in 2000, yet became the President anyway.
   
   
2. He skipped out on going to Vietnam.
   
   
3. His Death Penalty fetish. "As Texas governor from 1995-2000, he signed the most execution orders of any governor in U.S. history—152 people, including the mentally ill and women who were domestic abuse victims. He spared one man’s life, a serial killer."
   
   
4. He ignored the Aug. 6, 2001 White House intelligence briefing titled, “Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S.”
   
   
5. He kept reading a picture book to grade-schoolers for seven minutes after his top aides told him that the World Trade Centers had been attacked in 9/11. Then Air Force One flew away from Washington, D.C., vanishing for hours after the attack.
   
   
6. He cut veterans’ healthcare funding.
   
   
7. Cut Pell Grant loans for poor students.
   
   
8. Fired seven U.S. attorneys who did not pursue overtly political cases because of lack of evidence.
   
   
9. When Bill Clinton left office, 31.6 million Americans were living in poverty. When Bush left office, there were 39.8 million, according to the U.S. Census, an increase of 26.1 percent. The Census said two-thirds of that growth occurred before the economic downturn of 2008. The Census also found that 11.6 million children lived below the poverty line when Clinton left office. Under Bush, that number grew by 21 percent to 14.1 million.
   
   
10. He set the record for the fewest press coferences and the record for the most vacation time. Reporters analyzing Bush’s record found that he took off 1,020 days in two four-year terms— more than one out of every three days. No other modern president comes close. Bush also set the record for the longest vacation among modern presidents—five weeks.
    
    Despite everything, he was never held accountable for his actions. This list was heavily edited down to make it only 10 items.