Kelsey and I were walking around the Upper East Side of Manhattan this afternoon, and went into the 15 minutes before closing time. We only had time to see one exhibit ( ) , but it was a fantastic quick date for both of us.
I think 15 Minutes is a great idea for an ongoing photojournalism / photoblogging series.
Take a camera, give yourself 15 minutes to capture the essence of the place you re visiting, and pick the best shots of your experience. It s a wonderful exercise in , and it s a great deal of fun.
(For those of you who aren t aware, Kelsey and I recently moved to Manhattan.
More details coming soon.)
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot.
On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity in all this vastness there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.
It s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we ve ever known.
When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamt of changing the world.
As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country. But it too seemed immovable.
As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me. Alas, they would have none of it.
And now, as I lay on my deathbead, I suddenly realize - if only I had changed myself first, then by example I might have changed my family.
From their inspiration and encouragement I would then have been able to better my country, and who knows I may have changed the world.
In the universe there is never and nowhere stability and immobility. Change and transformation are essential features of life.
Each state of affairs is transient; each age is an age of transition. In human life there is never calm and repose. Life is a process, not a perseverance in a status quo.
Yet the human mind has always been deluded by the image of an unchangeable existence. The avowed aim of all utopian movements is to put an end to history and to establish a final and permanent calm.
The psychological reasons for this tendency are obvious.
Every change alters the external conditions of life and well-being and forces people to adjust themselves anew to the modification of their environments. It hurts vested interests and threatens traditional ways of production and consumption. It annoys all those who are intellectually inert and shrink from revising their modes of thinking.
I thought I had a great idea today, but it never really took off. In fact, it didn t even get on the runway. I guess you could say it exploded in the hangar.
In my opinion, Watterson is an inspiring model of persistence and integrity - check out the strip s for the story of how he kept Calvin and Hobbes true to his artistic principles and values for 10 years. (He is also the first cartoonist to use the word booger in a comic strip.)
(Fun fact: Calvin and I got the chicken pox on the same day - June 12, 1990.
As a little guy with an overactive imagination, I related with Calvin very well, and I ve loved the strip ever since. If you re in the mood to randomly buy me a Christmas present, 
, American orator, philosopher, writer, and poet:
Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances.
It is the outmost action of the inward life. It is God taking thought for oxen. It moves matter after the laws of matter.
It is content to seek health of body by complying with physical conditions, and health of mind by the laws of the intellect
We must not try to write the laws of any one virtue, looking at that only. Human nature loves no contradictions, but is symmetrical. The prudence which secures an outward well-being is not to be studied by one set of men, whilst heroism and holiness are studied by another, but they are reconcilable.
Prudence concerns the present time, persons, property, and existing forms. But as every fact hath its roots in the soul, and, if the soul were changed, would cease to be, or would become some other thing, the proper administration of outward things will always rest on a just apprehension of their cause and origin, that is, the good man will be the wise man, and the single-hearted, the politic man. Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.
On the most profitable lie, the course of events presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient footing, and makes their business a friendship. Trust men, and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great, though they make an exception in your favor to all their rules of trade.
, Renaissance genius, artist, inventor, and polymath:
Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing left to take away And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
You don t need to outdo the competition. It s expensive and defensive. Underdo your competition.
We need more simplicity and clarity.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
Unity and simplicity are the two true sources of beauty.
Thomas Aquinas, theologean:
“If a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments where one suffices.”
Nobody spends someone else s money as wisely as he spends his own.
I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Time will take your money, but money won t buy time.
, master investor, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and second wealthiest person in the world:
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
As many of you know, Kelsey and I were married on August 17th in Kelsey s hometown of Ft. Collins, Colorado. It was, without a doubt, one of the happiest days of my life.
Feel free to .
In an effort to give back to the internet community, here are a few things I learned while planning our wedding, as well as the full text of our ceremony. Hopefully they ll help you or someone you love plan a wonderful and memorable wedding someday.
1. Keep it just big enough. While preparing, I talked with a lot of people about their wedding experiences, and it amazed me how many people who had huge weddings thought the whole experience was extremely stressful.
When you have 300+ guests at your wedding, you and your husband/wife won t be able to spend any significant amount of time visiting with anyone, and the whole event will seem like a huge blur. If you keep the ceremony to family and a few close friends, everyone will have a much better time. We had around 100 guests at our wedding, which was the perfect size for us.
2. Work with vendors you like and trust. It s amazing how easy planning your wedding can be if you find great vendors and let them handle the details instead of micromanaging everything.
Our wedding was held at the , a wonderfully restored historic home right outside of Ft. Collins. They ve hosted a lot of weddings, and their staff superbly handled all of the logistic details, which let us focus on having fun.
Our caterer was Michael Calocino from , an old friend of Kelsey s during the time she worked at a dinner theater in high school. We completely trusted Michael s taste in food, presentation, and wine, so we gave him free reign to work his creative magic with our reception. and Glenn Schull s Little Big Band provided the music, and we let them pick the majority of the playlist.
In all cases, giving our vendors the freedom to do a great job and bring their skills and creativity to the table made planning the wedding much simpler for us.
3. Find a great photographer.
did our wedding photos, and Kelsey and I are absolutely thrilled with his work. Mark is a photojournalist by background, and he is superb at capturing people in spontaneous and emotional moments. We kept up with Mark s website and blog for a long time before signing him on, and our research paid off big time after hiring Mark, we have some of the best photos of our family and friends ever taken.
Before hiring a photographer, make sure you know his/her work and understand exactly what you re getting for your money Mark provided digital retouching and rights to all electronic files as part of the package, which was a very big deal for us. Photographers can be pricey, but be prepared to pay for quality wedding photography isn t a good place to scrimp. You can
4.
Write your own ceremony. Sure, it s a little easier to just rip a ceremony out of a book, but the event will be more meaningful if you and your significant other design a ceremony to reflect your beliefs and philosophy of life. Instead of using a traditional ceremony, I wrote the ceremony myself, using the net to search for good ideas.
(I m forever in the debt of , who wrote what are perhaps the most perfect wedding vows in the history of the world.) Kelsey and I will remember the details of our ceremony for decades to come because we cared enough to craft the words ourselves. You can read our entire ceremony at the bottom of this post.
5. Seriously consider having a cocktail hour before the ceremony. At every wedding, there will always be a few people who will be running late, and they ll be worried that they ll miss the big event.
By having a little party before the ceremony, you build in a buffer that will allow all of your guests to be present, relaxed, and happy well before the main event. It also allows family and friends from both the bride and groom s side to meet each other in advance of the reception, which makes the reception even more fun for everyone! (Two quick tips: (1) don t put the cocktail hour on the invitation make it a surprise for your guests; (2) save the alcohol for the reception!
) Everyone who attended was thrilled about this wedding innovation .
6. Focus on your priorities so you don t break the bank.
It doesn t make much sense to start out your married life in crushing debt, so make sure you keep your spending within your means. Our wonderful parents helped out with the venue and the food, and we were careful to keep our priorities clear and reasonable: a beautiful but simple location, great food, and great music. Everything else was secondary.
By investigating our options, we were able to throw a great party without overspending. For example, the natural beauty of the Tapestry House grounds meant we didn t have to spend much money on extra flowers. We also decided to axe bridesmaids dresses and tuxedos there s no sense in spending money on clothing that will only be worn once, and that left our friends free to wear something they actually like.
7. Don t expect perfection. If you go overboard in planning each and every detail of your wedding in an effort to make everything 100% perfect, you ll only succeed in stressing yourself out and taking the fun out of the entire event.
(There s a reason the term exists, and grooms can sometimes be prone to equal levels of fickleness.) Inevitably, something will not go as planned, so be willing to go with the flow of things. Believe it or not, it rained and hailed 30 minutes before our outdoor ceremony.
Luckily, it only lasted for 15 minutes (yay for Colorado weather), but it could have been a huge source of stress if we had been in a perfection-oriented mindset. Because we weren t expecting sublime flawlessness, we stayed relaxed and happy, which made the wedding a lot more fun for both ourselves and our guests.
There you have it 7 tips to help you plan an enjoyable and stress-free wedding.
May all of your celebrations be happy, and all of your memories lasting.
If you re interested in reading the entire ceremony, here it is
Often, a comparison of Go and chess is used as a parallel to explain western versus eastern strategic thinking. Go begins with an empty board.
It is focused on building from the ground up (nothing to something) with multiple, simultaneous battles leading to a point-based win. Chess, one can say, is in the end centralized, as the predetermined object is to kill one individual piece (the king). Go is quite otherwise: individuals are only significant as they join or help determine the fate of larger forces, and what those are is worked out only as the game proceeds.
A similar comparison has been drawn among Go, chess and backgammon, perhaps the three oldest games that still enjoy worldwide popularity. Backgammon is a man vs. fate contest, with chance playing a strong role in determining the outcome.
Chess, with rows of soldiers marching forward to capture each other, embodies the conflict of man vs. man. Because the handicap system tells each Go player where he/she stands relative to other players, an honestly ranked player can expect to lose about half of his/her games; therefore, Go can be seen as embodying the quest for self-improvement — man vs.
self.
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