The Science Essayist

故曰:知彼知己,百戰不殆。不知彼而知己,一勝一負。不知彼,不知己,每戰必殆。 So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself. —Sun Yat Sen, [...]

There are a few themes that preoccupy me in my life above all others: Death, if you know me, you know is primary. I can’t place when I first learned the word or grasped the perfect emptiness it contains, but I do remember (at the age of five or six or seven) regularly dampening my [...]