461–470 of 529 posts
Also disappointed that George Saunders didn't make the list. His essays in The Brain-dead Megaphone are great and his short stories, especially Isabelle and others is The Tenth of December, are heart-warming.
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The Black Swan is on my list too.
Is it really that good? I've started it a few times. Nassim Nicholas Taleb seems to make sure never to use one word when ten could possibly be used, especially if some of them about himself.
Taleb's Antifragile I did, unfortunately, finish, and it's way, way worse.
Now that I think about it, both books have a similar pattern: the first dozen or so pages present an interesting idea, which does give you a fresh and useful mental model in understanding the world. The rest of the book, unfortunately, meanders off into superficial redundant applications of it and pounding into the reader's head how anti-establishment Taleb is.
* High Output Management by Andy Grove https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679762884/
* Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591846404/
* The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591843472/
For interns I give out these two books:
* The Pragmatic Programmer https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Maste...
* The Passionate Programmer https://pragprog.com/book/cfcar2/the-passionate-programmer
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I'm sure there are some who complained of that, but nobody I know did. Look up "Bush Hitler" and you'll see plenty of images. It's the American national past-time to compare our president to either Hitler or the Antichrist, depending on your persuasion.
As I said, I'm sure that plenty of people did. Fringe groups will always have extreme opinions. That's different than mainstream news sources and even multiple historians making the comparison. No credible argument could be made for Bush (or any other Republican) being a fascist, but Trump's campaign follows many fascist criteria. Compare the results, to see for yourself that it's obviously a whole different degree:…
If you consider MSNBC a fringe group:
http://www.mrc.org/biasalerts/chris-matthews-compares-bushs-...
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>Exploitation of the public's fear, >promises to make the country great again, So any politician running for an election? > rejection by their own party once they figured out that they might come to power. You mean, the basic reason the democrats invented the super delegate to begin with? Not sure how old you are, but when Bush 2 was in power the same comments were made. I guess Bush didn't turn into Hitler so now it…
> Not sure how old you are, but when Bush 2 was in power the same comments were made. I'm sure there are some who complained of that, but nobody I know did. There is a categorical difference between merely having a different policy agenda (most Republicans) and outright rejecting basic Constitutional principles (ex. religious equality, free press, no torture). I didn't vote for Romney in 2012, but I certainly didn't…
A politician using fear of something and promising something else is their bread and butter. It does not make that politician like Hitler.
Every President skirts around the constitution. You can look up numerous examples where Obama has bypassed it or took a very liberal reading. Does that make Obama Hitler now?
The DNC emails recently came out where journalist were making sure their stories were okay with the DNC before publishing. That is the opposite of a free press, yet no one is calling them the Nazi party.
Picking and choosing pieces of history in a vacuum ignores how that history came to be. Trump/Hilary may be terrible candidates and/or Presidents, but neither of them is Hitler. The US has survived bad Presidents before and it will survive one again.
I've given this as a gift several times -- "What Should I Do with My Life" by Po Bronson. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBFMKC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... Had a run-in with serious burn-out about 12 years ago and had considered leaving software entirely and starting a landscaping business. This book was inspirational in that it helped me figure out what I might LOVE doing, and then made me realize it was right under m…
what are you doing now?
That's what I meant by "right under my nose". I still loved what I DID, I just wasn't in the right place or right industry.
To be more specific - I was writing code, but in advertising. Being a programmer in advertising is a brutal, thankless, experience. When I figured that out and left for software consulting, it got better.
I don't think it's possible to read Siddhartha without coming just a little bit closer to enlightenment.
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Examples please.
Calling Ender's Game pro-genocide is a riot, but I guess if you didn't read the next 3 novels where Ender is trying to atone for his unwitting participation through an allegory on the book of Mormon, it works. There's Pastwatch which is so pro-genocide that it has a future civilization go back in time to inoculate the Americas against European diseases, and they successfully Westernize their technology just enough to…
This actually supports my hunch that Card has been pressured to make a public pronouncement of homophobic values, since the messages in the Ender series are largely subversive and pacifistic.
I'm not too familiar with the Book of Mormon, so any detail you care to share about the allegory would be appreciated.