Time lapse sequences of photographs taken with a special low-light 4K-camera by the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011. Music: Jan Jelinek Editing: Michael König | koenigm.com Image Courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth 

Sebastopol is a bucolic little hamlet seated in the western portion of Sonoma County, California. Formerly known for its Gravenstein apples, most orchards have long been planted with vineyards, or converted into the corporate grounds of the tech publishing firm O’Reilly Media. But several years ago a heated battle served to overturn the relative serenity of this community. The conflict erupted over the town’s implementation of a contract for a public Wi-Fi network in its main plaza.

I'm watching a fish in my aquarium picking up rocks with his mouth, swimming a few inches away, and then depositing the pebble. He is making a space for himself, defining the dimensions of his habitat. You may ask, "How does this relate to anything?" The same way everything relates to everything. Pick any subject, and I'll tell you how it connects to that fish. "What about cosmology?", you may offer.

A NYTimes essay about a newly drafted logarithmic map of our entire known cosmology reminded me about a paradox of our existence. Each of us is insignificant in terms of magnitude, yet significant in terms of position as the center of our personal universe. The essayist writes: That is one of the lessons of Einstein's theory of relativity. Because light travels at a finite speed, to look out is to look back.