The Burmese are retreating from the outside world. They are isolating themselves in a bunker mentality.

There could have been some background to the rumor. And if not, Burma right now is at a point where it is probably ripe for some kind of change.

It is not practical to build super-tall office buildings in the post-9/11 world,

It is not so for art in appreciation because art is concerned with human behavior. And science is concerned with the behavior of metal or energy. It depends on what the fashion is. Now today it's energy. It's the same soul behind it. The same soul, you see.

Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover, it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition.

That is what is meant by the proposition omne ens est verum (everything that is, is true)—though we have almost ceased to understand it—and by the complementary proposition that being and truth are interchangeable concepts. (What does truth mean, where things are concerned, the truth of things? “A thing is true” means: it is known and knowable, known to the absolute spirit, knowable to the spirit that is not absolute.