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Ask Slashdot: What Books Have Had a Significant Impact On Your Life?
gspec writes "A little background about me: 36-year-old computer engineer working in the Bay Area. While I bring in a comfortable salary, I consider myself an underachiever, and my career is stagnant (I have only been promoted four times in my 12-year career). I have led a couple projects, but I am not in any sort of leadership/management position. I realize I need to do something to enhance my career, and unfortunately, going back to school is not an option. One thing I can do is to read more quality books. My question: which books, of any type or genre, have had a significant impact on your life?"
How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. Great pointers for talking to people. Also I loved the art of war.
You must be new here. Your answer is not only "not helpful", but it plays to the Slashdot crowd. Your intent was to look intelligent and enlightened, but in reality you look intolerant and ignorant.
That being said, I'll take the bait. As a rebuttal to "not showing anything of actual import or meaning."(sic), a Christian would argue that its importance is that they are no longer damned by their sins. The historian would argue that its importance is that it provides historical context for various periods of time. The anthropologist would argue that its importance is that it provides insight into the culture and traditions of early Jewish people. And so on...
But being that you're an average twelve year old neoatheist, your intolerance causes you to spew out this garbage when it wasn't asked for. Specifically, nobody answered "The Bible", but you provided a preemptive "rebuttal" anyway.
by Richard Dawkins, a sure Eye Opener!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
This is very true. I like cycling and one thing that always comes up on cycling forums when people ask how they can improve, is to spend more time in the saddle. There's very little training alternates forms of training (or reading) can do to compare to spending 5 hours straight on a real ride. I know a lot of people in university did well in all their classes, learned everything they were supposed to, but couldn't actually program that well. Books are a good starting off point, to let you know what's possible, but you always have to follow up with using whatever you have learned for a real life project.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Well, except for the ones by Ayn Rand - those made me more stupid. So I had to read some Chomsky and Borges to fix that.
That is all.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.
A touching story about focusing one what matters in life from the point of view of a nerdy geek with months to live.
No, it *is* the Bible. It's the most influential book ever, and it affects you as well, whether you agree with its teachings or not. It's the very basis for Western civilization & morality (though that morality is under attack.) Now I'm going to surprise you and say I'm an atheist. I indeed am, but the Bible's influence on my life cannot be understated.
Do you realize that the bible is the literary basis for pretty much all of the western hemisphere? Ignorance is NOT bliss, and it's an invaluable source of understanding the perticular predicements we are currently finding ourselves in too.
It doesn't matter if it's a valid basis for morality. The question was if it had an impact and it's had a major one on you as seen in the very phrasing of what you said. The FSM is a riposte to it. "fuck god" is said as an example of a disagreement with it. It's embedded in many of the very idioms of the language you happen to use (obviously it would be different if you spoke Chinese rather than English).
No matter whether it is a valid basis or not, it's been used to define much of culture in many countries and the ideas in it shaped history. Sometimes it did so in pretty bad ways, such as the Crusades. Sometimes it led to better things.
You could say the same about the Koran for those in Islamic countries. Regardless of whether someone had read it or agreed with it, it had tremendous impact on the society around them.