Pygmalion.

The complete text of George Bernard Shaw's play 'Pygmalion', perhaps better known as the basis for 'My Fair Lady', is available at wikipedia.org. I've always liked this story, mainly for its object lessons in the importance of language to the structure of society.

The original play contains a completely different ending, which alters the meaning of the entire story. This is not some flimsy love story, but rather a story about strength of character. If you read and appreciate this version, the watered down 'My Fair Lady' will disgust you to no end.

Watchmen.

"This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not god who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us."

In the last quarter of the 20th Century, a few brave souls ventured into the territory of graphical literature, or comic books for the reasonably intelligent. These individuals proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that brilliant writing is not medium dependent. This year is the 20th anniversary of the original publication of Alan Moore's Watchmen.

Watchmen, though not my favorite comic book ( that dubious honor is bestowed upon From Hell, also by Alan Moore ), is arguably the most important work in the recent evolution of the medium. Watchmen was perhaps the first comic book to attribute real dimension and personality to super-heroes, giving them identifiable flaws and human characteristics, as well as a wide spectrum of intelligence. Furthermore, it explores issues which are very much in people's minds today, including the American government's attitude toward terrorism, freedom vs. control, the good of society vs. the good of the individual and the abuse of power. Watchmen deals with these topics on a very personal level, illustrating the effects of the issues on the lives of twelve principle characters. The story examines the different attitudes and opinions of those characters and how these attitudes developed.

One of the largest overriding themes of the story is that of the existence or absence of god in the affairs of man. Two characters in the story examine this issue from the perspective of the atheist, and are driven to two different extremes as a result. One "hero", known as the Comedian, sees life as a joke told by men to an audience of one, to be appreciated only by him. The other, Rorschach, is driven to madness by the shape which he sees in the world. One character, Dr. Manhattan, has powers which approach those of a god, and finds himself distanced from humanity as a result.

I recommend this book to anyone who feels that comics are shallow, as well as anyone who enjoys orchestra level storytelling and well conceived characters. I also recommend it to anyone who sees on a macro scale, or anyone who struggles with atheism.

Edge: Dangerous Ideas.

Every year, the Edge Foundation asks several dozen of the world's most brilliant people one question. This year, the question is What is your dangerous idea?. These people make people like me look like mental midgets. I don't pretend to understand every word of this stuff, but this article is seriously worth reading.

A few brilliant gems from the first page:

"The banality of evil is matched by the banality of heroism... This view implies that any of us could as easily become heroes as perpetrators of evil depending on how we are impacted by situational forces. We then want to discover how to limit, constrain, and prevent those situational and systemic forces that propel some of us toward social pathology."

-- PHILIP ZIMBARDO
Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University; Author: Shynes


"Marx was right: the 'state' will evaporate and cease to have useful meaning as a form of human organization. Technologies of communication and transportation now make geographically-defined communities increasingly irrelevant and provide the new elites and new entrepreneurs with ample opportunity to stand outside them. Economies construct themselves in spite of state management and money flees taxation as relentlessly as water follows gravity."

-- JAMES O'DONNELL
Classicist; Cultural Historian; Provost, Georgetown University; Author, Avatars of the Word


"The self is a conceptual chimera. This is, of course, Hume's idea -- and Buddha's as well -- that the self is an ever-changing collection of beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes, that it is not an essential and persistent entity."

-- JOHN ALLEN PAULOS
Professor of Mathematics, Temple University, Philadelphia; Author, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market


"We are all virtual... It will be easy to create seemingly realistic virtual realities because we don't have to be perfect or even good with respect to the accuracy of our simulations in order to make them seem real. After all, our nightly dreams usually seem quite real even if upon awakening we realize that logical or structural inconsistencies existed in the dream... In the future, for each of your own real lives, you will personally create ten simulated lives. Your day job is a computer programmer for IBM. However, after work, you'll be a knight with shining armor in the Middle Ages, attending lavish banquets, and smiling at wandering minstrels and beautiful princesses. The next night, you'll be in the Renaissance, living in your home on the Amalfi coast of Italy, enjoying a dinner of plover, pigeon, and heron."

-- CLIFFORD PICKOVER
Author, Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves