I love how playfully cantankerous he is in this interview.

(http://youtu.be/Fl07UfRkPas)

When people talk about American Exceptionalism, the space program is probably one of the most exceptional American things that we have. Not just going to the moon, but reaching the outer limits of the solar system. This photograph still amazes me:

The dot in the brown band of light (a bit more than halfway down) is Earth. This was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990, 3.7 billion miles away.

Carl Sagan’s reflection on this (from Pale Blue Dot) is one of my favorite pieces of writing:

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. 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.

Here are the things I chose, in no particular order:

• March of Dimes (Supporting Pete and Rachel in their walks)

• Lutheran Volunteer Corps (my brother worked for them!)
• Make A Wish Foundation (Actually, I donated to them because I wanted to do a standup bit about donating to them, and didn’t like the thought of joking about it without actually helping. Not kidding.)
• San Francisco Food Bank
• Larkin Street Services (transitional housing, medical care, job training and scholarship assistance to homeless kids in SF)
• Haitian Health Foundation
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (especially given SOPA and other terrible legislation floating around)
• ACLU (given Obama’s lackluster civil liberties record, I wanted to support this)
• Doctors Without Borders
• Freedom to Marry (as a gift for Abe and Irina’s wedding)
• Alzheimer’s Association (supporting Emily B’s walk)
• Delancey Street Foundation (“residential self-help organization for former substance abusers, ex-convicts, homeless and others who have hit bottom.”)
• Wikipedia
• This American Life (podcast)
• Radiolab (podcast)

Don’t forget to donate before the year is out!

I mean, really, almost nobody is looking at the camera.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-70qMhLfjLI)

Try 20 new restaurants in San Francisco.
Done! Here’s the list, along with the neighborhood for each:

1. Ti Couz (Mission)

2. Urbun Burger (Mission)
3. Pork Store Cafe (Mission)
4. Truly Mediterranean (Mission)
5. Crepevine (Castro)
6. Chow (Castro/Sunset)
7. Grand Mission Donuts & Bakery (Mission)
8. Clare’s Deli (Mission)
9. Art’s Cafe (Sunset)
10. Le Cafe Du Soleil (Lower Haight)
11. Super Duper (Castro/Downtown)
12. Squat & Gobble (Haight)
13. Thirsty Bear (SOMA)
14. Thrill of the Grill (Mission)
15. Wooly Pig (Sunset)
16. 5A5 (Financial District)
17. Toast Eatery (Noe Valley)
18. Range (Mission)
19. L’Osteria Del Forno (North Beach)
20. Viva Pizza (North Beach)
21. Farina (Mission)

Many of these were one-time visits, though I’ve been multiple times to Urbun Burger, Super Duper, Chow, Clare’s and L’Osteria Del Forno. I think Super Duper is my favorite new place on this list.. their burgers are excellent.

Write 100 blog posts.
I don’t know how many I wrote, but I certainly don’t think I accomplished this goal.

Run a half marathon.

Nope.

Learn new recipes.

I cooked sporadically, and tried some new things but can’t think of any new recipes that I really mastered. I took a cocktail class and learned to make some drinks, but I’m not sure if that counts. Hoping to improve upon that next year.

Visit at least 1 country I haven’t been to before. (Italy, …?)

Done! I spent most of a day in Brussels and spent a long weekend with my friends Jim and Ashley in Rome.

Visit at least 2 U.S. cities I haven’t been to before (Portland? Chicago? LA?)

Done! I visited Portland, Chicago and LA this year. I really want to get back to Portland this year, I had a great time.

Read 20 books, including some fiction.

Read 12 books, none fiction. Here’s the list:

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

2. The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
3. Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
4. The Savage City – Race, Murder and a Generation on the Edge by T.J. English
5. Bossypants by Tina Fey
6. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer
7. Comic Insights by Franklyn Ajaye
8. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
9. At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
10. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
11. Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
12. The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy by Bill Carter

Favorite book of the year probably goes to Outliers. I liked that way more than The Tipping Point.

Learn a new programming language. (Go?)

Nope.

Learn the basics of a new spoken language. (German?)

Haven’t had as much time for this as I’d like, but I’m partially through level 2 of rosetta stone German. I’ve been trying to keep up with Italian (level 4) and Spanish (level 5) too.

Write something fun with HTML5 or other new web stuff.

Nope.

Overall, not too bad, especially since comedy took time away from a lot of these. I think some of them will carry over to next year.. will write that up in January.

Christmas celebrations in Puritan New England (1620–1850?) were culturally and legally suppressed and thus, virtually non-existent. The Puritan community found no Scriptural justification for celebrating Christmas, and associated such celebrations with paganism and idolatry. The earliest years of the Plymouth colony were troubled with non-Puritans attempting to make merry, and Governor William Bradford was forced to reprimand offenders.

I didn’t really know much about early Christmas celebrations (or lack thereof) until relatively recently. I wonder if there are good nonfiction books about Puritains.

(http://youtu.be/B8WHKRzkCOY)

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kRnA8BLrCg)

I really like how things build up to the last quarter of this song.