The Body: A Guide for Occupants

It is an arresting thought that all that makes you lovely is deceased. Where body meets air, we are all cadavers.

The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side, The one the other will include With ease, and you beside.

You are truly a wonder. But then so, it must be said, is an earthworm.

The great paradox of the brain is that everything you know about the world is provided to you by an organ that has itself never seen that world. The brain exists in silence and darkness, like a dungeoned prisoner.

An interesting thing about touch is that the brain doesn’t just tell you how something feels, but how it ought to feel. That’s why the caress of a lover feels wonderful, but the same touch by a stranger would feel creepy or horrible. It’s also why it is so hard to tickle yourself.

Your lungs, smoothed out, would cover a tennis court, and the airways within them would stretch nearly from coast to coast. The length of all your blood vessels would take you two and a half times around Earth. The most remarkable part of all is your DNA (or deoxyribonucleic acid). You have a meter of it packed into every cell, and so many cells th

DNA exists for just one purpose—to create more DNA.

“People act as if skin color is a determinant of character when all it is is a reaction to sunlight. Biologically, there is actually no such thing as race—nothing in terms of skin color, facial features, hair type, bone structure, or anything else that is a defining quality among peoples.

You are the product of three billion years of evolutionary tweaks.