There was a recent discussion considering the idea of a monthly Book (later expanded to movies, links, etc) thread. The poll was pretty unanimous (Both before and after I was karmassassinated) that this was A Good Idea (tm), and daenerys's Janurary thread (from which I obviously stole a lot of this) was fairly successful, so let's see if we actually need one per month.
Post what you're reading or watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing!
Rules:
- Please avoid downvoting; this is a thread for sharing subjective experiences, and people should feel comfortable posting their personal opinion without fearing a karma backlash. If you disagree with a person's recommendation, please post a comment to that effect.
- If you see something that has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
- Please use the comment trees, which I was apparently too dumb to do.
I've actually been wondering about the value of fictional evidence. Particularly reading a pile of Hitchens book reviews, wherein he strongly advocates good fiction for its power to explore and teach you how humans work. Off the top of my head I can think of more accurate methods, but stories are natural to humans so may well be a much more powerful vector than popularisations of psychological research. I'm not entirely convinced by the Hitchens line but was surprised to see him pushing it so vehemently.
Edit: Wei Dai addressed this point a couple of years ago, with Fictional Evidence vs Fictional Insight.