and this, too, shall pass

Nguyen-Ba Thanh (surname last), the writer of these pages, is a believer in stages, cycles and ET, influenced perhaps by (1) the Taoist philosophers he read in high school, (2) his years in the West that showed him the evolution of human society (3) books about the universe, where a bigger story is being told, (4) sci-fi movies like ET, Contact… A native of Vietnam, he now lives in Hanoi and can be reached at endingspecies@yahoo.com.