I link to herothings again. This time, its a nice piece on Superman written by Neil Gaiman and Adam Rogers. It also addresses some of the questions I found when reading this thread.

He has evolved into a folk hero, a fable, and the public feels like it has a stake in who Superman really is. Schwartz quit writing Superman because his bosses were telling him to put in things that he thought were out of character. That was admirable, but really, the specific stories we tell about Superman - the what-happened and what-he-did - don’t matter that much. Superman transcends plot. We retell his tales because we wish he were here, real, to keep us safe.

Long ago, when I small, tiny, miniscule, microscopic (you get the idea), I used to tuck a twig in the back of my shirt and climb some place high (two or three stairs for example) and cry, “Wha wha whaaah wha wha wha!” holding the twig aloft.

Much later, I figured it was actually, “By the power of Grayskull!” I watched He-Man on Sundays and thought about it for the rest of the week. That was the time when there was little else on TV by way of kiddie entertainment. So I was really nice to read this piece by Sam Anderson on Slate.

Ursula Le Guin makes a spirited case for virtuous words. Few have put it this magically. Very inspiring. The uninitiated can start by reading The Dispossesed.

To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth.

Ursula K. Le Guin: A Few Words to a Young Writer

Trust Asimov to be what he is…

Asimov, Isaac(1920-1992) b. Petrovichi, Russia.(With reference to a correspondent)The young specialist in English Lit, …lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern “knowledge” is that it is wrong….

My answer to him was, “… when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”