Your video, M.C. Escher Interview, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Yey, Escher!

Although I greatly admire his work, I've never seen Escher in an interview like that. Thanks.

...MC Escher, yeah, that's my favorite MC...

Ah, from the 3rd episode The M.C. Escher apartment was the moment I decided I love this show.

It made me think of artist M.C. Escher's work:

http://www.santarosa.edu/~mmcginni/myart/invention/superplexus/escher/RelativityESCHER-410px.jpg

OK, so I'll make a list now, and then read everybody elses and see if it reminds me of other books that really stick with me

1 Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter
2 1984 - George Orwell
3 A Deepness In The Sky - Vernor Vinge
4 Interview With A Vampire - Ann Rice
5 Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier - Katie Hafner and John Markoff
6 The Tuning of The World - R. Murray Schafer
7 The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
8 National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our Universe - Roy A. Gallant and Margaret Sedeen
9 The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine - Rudolph Chelminski
10 The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Michael Pollan

OK, read others' and realize that I should have put Dune, for sure. I'm glad to see I'm not the only Hofstadter fan, and thrilled to see another Vinge on the list.

I feel kind of weird to have 1984 and Interview with a Vampire on my list. 1984, just because it really did stick and resonate, and well... I've probably read IwaV a few dozen times. Back in junior high I read it almost monthly.

I actually was considering putting The Star Wars Sourcebook by Bill Slavicsek & Curtis Smith on my list. That book blew my mind when I was young, and it definitely will always have a special place in my heart. Now that I look at a picture of the cover on Amazon, I wish that I had. Such an awesome book.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Dune - Frank Herbert
Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut
Live from Golgotha - Gore Vidal
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller


Those are 10 off the top of my head, in no particular order. Some I consider favorites, others made a strong enough impression that they always come to mind when someone asks a question like this.

damn - how did I miss this conversation?!?! Must've been when I had the videogames channel filtered. I thought that was only for videos.

Anyway, have you read Gödel, Escher, Bach? If not, you should. It demonstrates the "completeness" of programming languages as well as showing why they're not enough. Also, check out Roger Penrose's thought's on consciousness, and how it relates to quantum mechanics. I don't necessarily buy what he's selling, but it's worth thinking about.

Your video, Escher's Relativity, has made it into your personal Highest Rated Videos listing. Congratulations on a job well done. For you contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I'm just going to keep adding to my list as I remember them. And I don't know how I could have forgotten one of the most important books of the 20th century, and one that quite literally changed my life:

Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter


This book is not for the feeble-minded.

Escher did more than 3D impossible artwork. One of his more well known pictures was of a flock of black and a flock of white birds flying in opposite directions, where they all fit together perfectly.

If you notice, all the pieces of the larger and larger cubes are the same small piece. Each layer of the cube is made from a bunch of the same small shapes. He "cheats" a couple times by putting 4 or more of them at once on in a panel, but they are all built from the same small swastika-shaped pieces.

That was the title of the video on youtube, so I thought it would correlate.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:
Why Escher? I was expecting some kind of optical illusion...

Why Escher? I was expecting some kind of optical illusion...

Tags for this video have been changed from 'echocrome, puzzle, cool, unique' to 'echocrome, puzzle, cool, unique, escher, perspective' - edited by silvercord