All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Watching Star Trek

Book Description

The paperback edition of the life-enhancing handbook that sold more than 100,000 copies in hardcover. An inspiring collection of down-to-earth philosophy on subjects ranging from skydiving to decision making, from what to do about a beer belly to how to treat house guests. "Could make even a Klingon grin."-- USA Weekend

Customer Reviews:

Fantastic!.......2007-08-23

We tend to forget all the lessons we learned watching the original Star Trek series, and Dave Marinaccio brings it all back with a lot of humor.

This book is a must for any original Star Trek fan. You can read it in one sitting, and then your friends will all be borrowing it. You may want to buy an extra just in case.

what hasn't already been said........2007-07-01

as the tittle says, i cant really say anything that the other reviewers haven't said themselves.
all i can say is that at first i was expecting it to be kind of corny, like if you encounter an alien energy life form set your phaser to heat to destroy it or if you encounter a giant rock thing use cement to heal its wounds.
but it wasn't anything like that, it was good, very entertaining thoughts and ideas about the lessons learned from star trek and how they are related to the authors real life.

defiantly a must read for any star trek fan.

misrepresented drivel.......2006-11-02

This is an almost completely self-regarding book. It has almost nothing to say about Star Trek, which is merely a vehicle for the discussion of the true subject, which is the author. It is also not very amusing or interesting, and is in fact pretty much a waste of time. I threw mine out with contempt; should have sent it back and at least got a partial refund.

A Horrendously Stupid Book.......2005-10-31

I love Star Trek, OK? This should have been a really great book, since there are so many important lessons in the series. But Marinaccio completely misses many important lessons, in my opinion, and gets several other lessons mixed up, and generally dilutes whatever lessons remain to the point of vapidity with his self-indulgence and self-absorption. Sorry, Dave, but not everything in Star Trek relates to some insignificant detail of your small little life in a Marketing company.

Not to mention that the book stops short. "I think there's a new series called DS9 or something, I'll have to keep an eye on that." Seriously, he says that. To me, watching the later series greatly expanded the "lessons that needed to be learned".

I threw this book away in disgust after reading it. Really. Lierally threw it in the trash. It was that bad, and I didn't want to be embarrassed by having it sit on the shelf as my complete DVD collections of all the Star Trek TV series.

Please do NOT buy this book. It's really HORRIBLY STUPID!

Words of Wisdom from TV? Amazing!.......2004-11-13

This is a fun little book chock full of wise sayings gleaned from episodes of the original Star Trek. The original was not a space opera, it was a futurized series of life's lessons, very carefully crafted. Each episode had a heavy-duty message embedded within--and not very hard to spot either. This book does not necessarily include these thematic messages, but it does excerpt a number of pithy, humorous quotes from the characters. It is highly reminiscent of a poster my dentist has in his office of Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. I expect there is also a book with that name, but I haven't read it. These words of wisdom also remind me of Dr. Akin's famous "Laws of Spacecraft Design" which you can access on the internet. With his permission, I used several in my book "The Knowledge Management and Information Technology Encyclopedia" (published by the Government and not for sale). My favorite submits from Marinaccio's delightful book are:

Gossip is often confused with conversation. In fact it often takes the place of conversation. Take gossip away from some folks and they would turn into mimes. p.61

When everyone is responsible, ultimately no one is responsible. p.52

Idiot-proofing is also genius-proofing. p.94

Great people talk about ideas. Average people talk about things. Small people talk about people. p.61

Attitude is the top priority; after attitude, talent or gifts are important. p.64

As Yogi Berra, the great Yankees catcher, once said, "You can observe a lot, just by watching." p.23

A person who understands a rule knows when to break it. p.50

Competent people know which rules to follow and which to ignore ... when people of good judgement are allowed to exercise their insights, good results usually follow. When people=s hands are tied, they are ineffective. p.94

The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play. pp. 8, 53, & 54

Difficult choices expose how we truly feel. What we believe deep inside. p.39

The most important time to help someone is when they need it. p.8

For man, Utopia is endless challenge. p.17

Average customer rating:

Endai: Divided World
J.A. Johnson
Manufacturer: PublishAmerica
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1424155460
Release Date: 2007-02-19

Book Description

In a dream of a soon-to-be future of our world, a place where wars have raged and men fight against themselves, a young scientist knows that his vision of peace can be brought about with the use of his newest invention. As he is charismatic and charming, others believe in his dream, so much that he is sabotaged by his closest ally, under the guise of his protection. When he awakens, three centuries have passed, and he finds himself on a foreign planet, a planet dedicated to his philosophies, though perverted and distorted by time. Awakened by one side of this world plunged into civil war, he is charged with leading and bringing back together a world alien to him. Surrounded by allies he cannot trust, forced into living a lie he never envisioned, he must face man's greatest challenge, the search within himself to discover if he can become the leader even he is unsure he can be.

Average customer rating:

they beamed it up brill:)
overrated
Fascinating...
An interesting background book for "Star Trek" fans

Religions of Star Trek
Ross Shepard Kraemer , William Cassidy , and Susan Schwartz
Manufacturer: Westview Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0813341159
Release Date: 2003-08-12

Book Description

The religious themes present in the phenomenally popular sci-fi series and presented here will engage Star Trek fans and the culturally curious.

Is there a God? What evil lurks beyond the stars? Can science save one's soul? Profound questions like these have consumed human thought over the ages; they also inspired the original creators of the Star Trek canon of TV series and films. Religions of Star Trek tackles these challenging questions head-on in a remarkable look at one of sci-fi's great success stories.

Analyzing more than three decades of screen adventure, the authors depict a Star Trek transformed, corresponding to the resurgence of religion in American public discourse. The authors identify the many religious characters in Star Trek, tracing the roots of scientific humanism to more contemporary aspects of religion and spirituality. Through it all, the creators' visionary outlook remains constant: a humanistic faith in free will and the salvific nature of dispassionate scientific inquiry.

This book was not prepared, licensed, approved, or endorsed by any entity involved in creating or producing the Star Trek television series or films.

Customer Reviews:

they beamed it up brill:).......2005-09-21

Star Trek book came quick- greatly packed and much appreciated:) chryss xx

overrated.......2004-01-25

Basically, I was recommended this book since I am a big Star Trek fan and someone interested in religious theory. The title is catchy, but the book has several shortcomings.
First, the arguments posed and the analysis conducted are the kind that any true Star Trek fan could conjure up just by watching the episodes. For examples used, the authors pick the most blatantly obvious episodes with which to work with (i.e. TNG's "Who Watches the Watchers")and throw loose theories together which are made quite apparent by simply watching the episode itself! In fact, throughout the book, no truly original theory is argued fully - here and there we catch bits and pieces from characters such as the Prophets, or Q, and how they are "godlike" - a point which the script writers obviously include.
In addition to this, there are also several errors which any true fan would never fail to notice!
Overall, save your money, and watch the shows and movies and judge for yourself.

Fascinating..........2002-10-22

As a student of religious sciences (in Germany) and a fan of Star Trek I just couldn't pass this book and wasn't disappointed.

It's surprising, how many religious topics are covered in Star Trek movies (albeit often in rather clouded forms), and how the series developped from a simple agnostic, positivist form into inquiries into spirituality and questions of life...

You will be surprised and entertained at the same time - but I missed pictures and their analysis in the book, because I think that especially in movies, messages are sent by these, not just by themes, dialogues and characters. That's the only objection I have for an otherwise fascinating book!

An interesting background book for "Star Trek" fans.......2002-06-13

This is not an exploration of individual religions in the "Star Trek" mythos, but an examination of the Big Questions about religion as they are answered by Star Trek. I found the writing interesting, with lots of examples to back up the theories within.

Religion has changed a lot in "Star Trek" since Kirk's day. This book traces that change through chapters regarding the existence of God and evil. How the different races in Star Trek view these questions is also presented and contrasted with humanity. Since "Next Generation" is the longest-running series, naturally it is represented more than TOS, DS9 and Voyager. This was printed before "Enterprise", but I hope it will be updated a few years from now to include "Enterprise"'s viewpoints. Frankly, it's fascinating to see religious-theory experts take on a project of this nature. I'd love to see more.

Book Description

Drawing on a number of methodologies and disciplinary perspectives, this book boldly goes where none has gone before by focusing on the interplay between Star Trek, religion, and American culture as revealed in the four different Trek television series, and the major motion pictures as well. Explored from a Trek perspective are the portrayal and treatment of religion; the religious and mythic elements; the ritual aspects of the fan following; and the relationship between religion and other issues of contemporary concern.

The subject of religion/myth/spirituality has long been a favorite of Trek scholars and fans; this book gives the subject the serious treatment it deserves. (Elyce Rae Helford, editor of Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek)

Customer Reviews:

Buy it, but read it back to front........2000-04-23

This book is an ambitious collection of theme-sorted essays, all relating various aspects of Star Trek to those of religious life. Most of the essays are considered and well researched, and the occasional good idea does creep in. Tagged throughout with Christian outlook, this rarely oppresses a reader not sharing that view, though the book might level better by adding input from other great faiths (many ayaat from the Qur'an make pertinent connections to Trek for example).

One problem I've found infecting similar attempts is a detectable bias of the author. Taken as a whole the work does not suffer this, although a few exceptions do greet the reader like a coffee table on the shins. (The title of my review reveals several such bruises; the original series is maligned repeatedly, with misquoted, selective evidence, as anti-theistic.) And this book does suffer from a plenitude of sloppy editorial errors, including a bibliographical howler - it *must* be a joke, right? - in misspelling Phil Farrand's name.

All in all though, this book remains an impressive achievement and a credit to the contributors. This one's worth the time and the purchase for the true Trekker.

Average customer rating:
Star wars Star trek: And the 21st century Christians
Winkie Pratney
Manufacturer: Bible Voice
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: B0006YIL3I

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God's Ancestors; The Story
Wayne & Carolyn Thornton
Manufacturer: BookSurge Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1419648241
Release Date: 2007-04-23

Book Description

Is it fiction? Is it science? Is it religion? Or, is it simply a story that combines them to find the truth; the truth that Little George Bush will never tell you, the truth that you witness on a daily basis, when not being distracted by political, scientific, or religious empires.******* Yes, the real self-explaining story of the origin of life on Earth; evolution, technology, and God. If this book does not change your life (attitude), the authors will return your purchase price. *****Please go to LuLu or BookSurge for(sample) pages.

Billy, we hardly knew ye.(Secular Humorism)(Star Trek actor William Shatner's reluctance to promote manned space exploration ): An article from: The Humanist

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Billy, we hardly knew ye.(Secular Humorism)(Star Trek actor William Shatner's reluctance to promote manned space exploration ): An article from: The Humanist
William I., III Lengeman
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Humanist, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2007. The length of the article is 930 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Billy, we hardly knew ye.(Secular Humorism)(Star Trek actor William Shatner's reluctance to promote manned space exploration )
Author: William I., III Lengeman
Publication: The Humanist (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 67 Issue: 1 Page: 38(2)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Final frontier covers old ground. (influence of television program 'Star Trek'): An article from: U.S. Catholic

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Final frontier covers old ground. (influence of television program 'Star Trek'): An article from: U.S. Catholic
Patrick McCormick
Manufacturer: Claretian Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from U.S. Catholic, published by Claretian Publications on March 1, 1996. The length of the article is 2686 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: 'Star Trek' and its spin-off series seem to be popular because they portray the future from a humanist perspective. The shows are optimistic about the future and deal with issues such as morality. One negative aspect of these programs is that they portray religious faith as an outdated concept.

Citation Details
Title: Final frontier covers old ground. (influence of television program 'Star Trek')
Author: Patrick McCormick
Publication: U.S. Catholic (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 1996
Publisher: Claretian Publications
Volume: v61 Issue: n3 Page: p46(4)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Script of 'The Secretariat'
Norman Corwin
Manufacturer: LodeStone Media
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Plastic Comb

History | Business & Culture | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Transcript of Mr. Corwin's Thanksgiving story about prayer, as performed by William Shatner, Hume Cronyn, and Tandy Cronyn. The transcripts we offer are copies of Mr. Corwin's production scripts, with occasional changes indicated, and sometimes containing text not found in the final broadcast.

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The Secretariat
Norman Corwin
Manufacturer: LodeStone Media
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

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Book Description

MORE BY CORWIN: Hume Cronyn, William Shatner, and Tandy Cronyn star in a brand-new program about prayer for Thanksgiving 1997. This inventive, carefully researched 'mosaic for radio' features other wonderful voices, including Firesign's Phil Proctor. Take a new look at man's relationship with God in this uplifting, inspiring production, full of insight, humor, and Corwin's wonderful way with words.

Amazon.com

Whether you're administering a Web site, managing an intranet, or just browsing the Web, performance should be a chief concern. In Web Performance Tuning, author Patrick Killelea tackles this challenging topic with a methodical string of problems and possible solutions. This title is most beneficial for those maintaining Web sites but offers several browser-related tips and solid technical background for users of any level.

The first part of this book discusses the basic performance challenges for both the browser and server sides of the equation and advises on an overall approach for identifying and attacking performance bottlenecks. The author offers many important questions for you to keep in mind and some useful techniques for measuring Web performance. This section wraps up with a few case studies that exhibit common problems.

The meat of the book is an in-depth look at all of the aspects of Web performance. The author begins with the client browser and operating-system software, discusses network hardware and protocols, and finally addresses the complex nature of server configurations. He finishes with a discussion of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) and Java scripts and some quick coverage of tuning Web databases.

Throughout the book, Killelea addresses popular application software titles, but with an emphasis on Unix servers. While Web Performance Tuning is a helpful tool for tweaking your Web connections, it also serves as an excellent primer on the technical details of the Web. --Stephen Plain

Book Description

As long as there's been a Web, people have been trying to make it faster. The maturation of the Web has meant more users, more data, more features, and consequently longer waits on the Web. Improved performance has become a critical factor in determining the usability of the Web in general and of individual sites in particular. Web Performance Tuning, 2nd Edition is about getting the best possible performance from the Web. This book isn't just about tuning web server software; it's also about streamlining web content, getting optimal performance from a browser, tuning both client and server hardware, and maximizing the capacity of the network itself. Web Performance Tuning hits the ground running, giving concrete advice for quick results -- the "blunt instruments" for improving crippled performance right away. The book then shifts gears to give a conceptual background of the principles of computing performance. The latter half of the book examines each element of a web transaction -- from client to network to server -- to find the weak links in the chain and show how to strengthen them. In this second edition, the book has been significantly expanded to include:

New chapters on Web site architecture, security, reliability, and their impact on performance
Detailed discussion of scalability of Java on multi-processor servers
Perl scripts for writing web performance spiders that handle logins, cookies, SSL, and more
Detailed instructions on how to use Perl DBI and the open source program gnuplot to generate performance graphs on the fly
Coverage of rstat, a Unix-based open source utility for gathering performance statistics remotely

In addition, the book includes many more examples and graphs of real-world performance problems and their solutions, and has been updated for Java 2. This book is for anyone who has waited too long for a web page to display, or watched the servers they manage slow to a crawl. It's about making the Web more usable for everyone.

Customer Reviews:

A classic reference for every engineers library.......2004-06-09

Published in 1998, this book is one of the best for web performance testing, covering the technical basics for everything you need to know in order to really understand performance tuning. It includes such required information as definitions of various performance metrics, and what those should be in the real world, and moves along through networks, hardware, and operating systems. It goes to great pains to cover a variety of systems, including Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and a variety of web servers.

Michael Czeiszperger
Web Performance, Inc. Stress Testing Software
http://www.webperformanceinc.com

Classic O'Reilly marred by thin dynamic web coverage.......2003-04-04

Pragmatic and opinionated in the best of old-time O'Reilly style, this book is a colorful guided tour by an old-hand.

The thing is, if you need this book, your website is probably a high-traffic professional/commercial site. And in these days this means (1) dynamic content, (2) database, (3) a content-management/templating system, (4) user identity tracking. Perhaps even interface to legacy client/server systems. Unfortunately, this book goes only as far as CGI, Java, and general DB issues. Messaging middleware is briefly considered. Distributed OO (CORBA, EJB) is discussed and dismissed (a luxury in real world). No coverage of other popular dynamic web technologies (e.g. ASP, ColdFusion) or content-management systems. In particular, a serious discussion of trade-offs between performance and content/workflow manageability would ground the whole discussion in real life.

And the architecture chapter, while very insightful, is simply too thin. After all it is much better and easier to plan for performance from the start, then to try tweaking an existing system. The chapter discusses architectures of varying complexity - without including a single diagram! Complete case studies along the line of the mod_perl white paper .... would be invaluable - perhaps broken down by type (e.g. news/portal/B2C) where unique usage patterns will drive unique architecture and optimization.

Despite the tilt towards monitoring and diagnosis, this is still a very valuable book in an under-served but important area. Generous references enable the reader to explore individual topics further.

Is not just server performance tuning you know..........2003-02-17

This is one book with wide appeal because it is useful to anyone that uses the Internet; so if you are reading this review - chances are very good that you will find this book of some use. The subtitle sums up the book very nicely... it is full of tips to help you speed up the web, regardless of how you usually go about using it.

I've had the pleasure of owning both copies of Web Performance Tuning and I must say the second edition was quite a dramatic rewrite, adding over 100 pages of new and updated information - it was about time for an update considering the age of the book.

Of course, if you are both a web user and a web developer you will derive the most benefit as pretty much everything in the book will apply to you to some degree. Part I focuses on detailing the problems that can occur, and only the first chapter has any useful information for anyone who is simply the web visitor. But if you've got any interest in knowing about server and connection failures and monitoring web performance then it would be worth taking a look at.

Part II of Web Performance Tuning actually looks at how you can improve your web experience; starting from the browser and working all the way through to the technologies that power the web. This makes it easy to follow as well as to help identify exactly where any major problems you may be experiencing are caused.

For those wanting quick answers to their browsing or server problems, then you will find help in the form of questions you might want to ask yourself right at the start of the book. I preferred the old way this quick reference was done, as it was a list of recommendations rather than a list of questions; you don't know you have a problem if you don't know the questions to ask!

Speed Racer.......2002-10-29

Four years in the making, the second edition of "Web Performance Tuning" is some 30% larger (456 vs. 351 pages) than the first, but don't let the increased size slow you down. Patrick Killelea makes good use of it by showing you how to get the best possible performance out of your web server, site, and browser. The primary emphasis is on tuning web server software, but tuning client and server hardware, streamlining content, getting the most bang for your byte are also covered.

Aimed at more advanced system administrators and webmasters, this book provides the tools and techniques you can use to maximize the speed and throughput of your server. The emphasis is on performance monitoring, analysis, and planning. You can't attack a performance problem until you understand it and that means measuring what's actually happening. Lucky for us, Killelea provides free scripts you can use to measure the performance of your web site at his own site patrick dot net.

There you'll find scripts you can use on your Unix server to measure, monitor, and debug any performance problems you're having. Killelea also provides a web-based version of his analysis.cgi script that breaks down the components of web site response time into DNS, connect time, server silence (load), transmission (content size), and close time. Type in your URL and up pops a graph of transmission times, broken down into the above components, complete with a bottleneck analysis and some recommendations.

Speaking of bottlenecks, when it comes to web performance, smoothing out bottlenecks is the name of the game. If your server is low on memory excessive swapping can occur. If you spawn too many processes without mod_perl on board you've got a problem. Killelea's tools and prose show you where the slowdowns occur, and how to fix them for maximum speed.

Everything from low volume sites (1-10,000 hits/day) to high (over 1 million hits/day) can benefit from this in-depth book. Techniques that may work well at lower traffic levels can fall apart once the server heats up. Killelea takes a pragmatic approach to performance tuning with an emphasis on actual testing and measurement rather than overplanning, mathematical modeling, and simple yet expensive solutions.

While bandwidth is steadily increasing, latency stubbornly refuses to decrease. The speed of light isn't changing anytime soon, so addressing latency, especially on the Web, is a high priority. The other parameters of performance are throughput, utilization, and efficiency. This book will help you fine tune them all to make your web site sing.

High Performance Book.......2002-06-08

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