This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.
Rules:
- Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
- If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
- Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.
- Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.
- Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.
NOTE: The rules this month have been edited slightly, for the purpose of greater clarity. Their intended meaning hasn't changed, just the wording. Please discuss any disagreement/objection under the "Meta" thread.
I am (still) listening to an audio-book called "Command and Control" by Eric Schlosser. It's mainly dealing with a Titan II missile incident in the US. I know the Stanislav Petrov and Vasili Arkhipov incidents, but very little about just how badly America managed her own stockpile. I was prepared this would send a few shivers down my spine and I was not disappointed.
What I don't like about it is that first and foremost it's written in a way to tell a gripping story, so the juicy information is embedded in a narrative that spends too much time describing things I don't care about. It jumps around too much, it cuts just like a movie - the overarching plot is the Titan II incident and the narrative jumps back and forth from this red thread to how the first bomb was built and tested, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, how the bombers worked, how Eisenhower saw it, how Kennedy saw it, how the safety and failsafe mechanisms were slowly developed and added, how NATO became the dumping ground for missiles that were just about as likely to blow up somewhere you didn't want as they were to hit anywhere close to a Soviet target...
I'm not quite finished with it yet but I mainly enjoyed listening so far and learned quite a deal despite the suboptimal "story-presentation". Also I can only recommend audio-books in general, they are really good while you have to do tedious chores that require more working with your hands than with your head.
Oh no I cocked that one up. I wanted to copy-paste this under "Meta", as audio-books aren't listed yet. I thought to retract this post meant to delete it entirely. Captain?