Essay

Diary of a Roman Emperor The Meditations is a diary written by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius to himself. Actually, the long-established title Meditations is kind of misleading and not original. The book doesn’t have an emphasized and coherent argument but instead some recurring themes. A few topics are mentioned and discussed multiple times throughout the book. For example, the sense of mortality pervades the work. Marcus contemplates the topic of death and continually reminds himself that death is a natural process that is not to be feared, part of the continual change that forms the world. Not surprisingly, reading the Meditations for long periods can be conducive to melancholy. ...

A fun fact is that the name of this website comes from the book: Logicomix: an Epic Search for Truth. This article is more or less a review of the book. Logicomix is a graphic novel(or a comic book) depicting the life of the renowned British mathematician, philosopher, logician, writer, and public intellectual Bertrand Russell, particularly Russell’s quest for fundamental and absolute truth by attempting to establish a new rigid and provable foundation for mathematics. ...

Billy Graham probably is the greatest evangelist of the 20th century, and his teaching is ever-lasting, timeless, and of fundamental truth. I feel I am so glad our world had such a great preacher like Billy Graham, a living proof of God’ grace and glory. Speaking at TED in 1998, Billy Graham discussed the power of modern technologies to improve lives but pointed out three problems technology can’t solve: Human evil, suffering, and death. ...

Boring and Plainness of Modern Cities I often find modern cities not beautiful, sometimes even ugly. I held such feelings while I was in China. At that time, I thought it was understandable that China didn’t possess many classical and beautiful buildings, given most old buildings in China used wood and were vulnerable to fires, not to mention the intentional demolishing of old buildings during the Cultural Revolution. I was expecting something different from Canada but was quite disappointed by the harsh realities. From an architectural perspective, Toronto is nothing but an identical replica of modern cities in China: skyscrapers after skyscrapers, office buildings after office buildings. ...