My Beliefs

As I navigate life, it is fruitful to capture, refine, and challenge what I believe. My beliefs have evolved, and some have completely changed. Here’s what I believe today.

• My fellow humans are good. We all yearn for the same things.

• I alone am responsible for my happiness and well-being.

• Few things are as important as how we build our places.

• With a few exceptions, all places should be designed first to serve humans who walk.

• Time is our most precious, finite, and nonrenewable resource.

• Humans exist within the whole of the universe. Considering ourselves separate from nature and our fellow species is done at our species’s great peril.

• To whom much is given, much is required.

• A good life strives to reduce suffering, deepen empathy for others, and improve the world for the next generation.

• A beautiful day begins with a cup of coffee brewed with caramel-colored roasted beans, ground and weighed on a scale capable of tenth-of-a-gram precision. My Coffee Golden Ratio is 1:17 grams of grounds to milliliters of water, though, to maintain marital harmony, I typically brew at 1:20.

• The mind that is not baffled is not employed. (thank you, Wendell Berry)

• Every day is a good day to be on a bicycle, though some days are better than others.

• The Cincinnati Reds, our oldest professional baseball team, should throw the first pitch that begins every Major League Baseball season.

• Base ten numbering is the only sane system for weights & measures.

• Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. (thank you, William Bruce Cameron).

• These are the greatest songs ever recorded.