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== Constraints == | == Constraints == |
Revision as of 20:11, 6 February 2009
This page was used in the planning and documentation of the wedding of Benjamin Mako Hill and Mika Matsuzaki. on May 29, 2006. Please take care when editing these pages -- they are kept here for historical purposes only. |
Our wedding vows were written under constraint. The constraint is explained at the bottom of this page. At our wedding, we asked people to read the vows and try to guess the constraint before we revealed it to them. You might find it fun to do the same.
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Constraints
In addition to being wedding vows that describe our feelings accurately -- a tough enough constraint for most -- the numbers of letters in each word in each vow matches consecutive digit in the decimal expansion of a famous mathematical constant. Mika used π and Mako used φ. Where the digit was zero, a word with ten letters were used. No words over ten letters were used at all. Punctuation (e.g., hyphens and apostrophes) were not counted as letters. A slightly modified version of this constraint has been used by Mike Keith in the production of, among other pieces of writing, Near A Raven.
We selected each constant for symbolic reasons. To explain our choices, we included this piece of explanatory text on the printed version at our wedding:
- π symbolizes the enduring, cyclical nature of our relationship. φ, also known as the golden ratio, symbolizes balance and proportion. Like love, both numbers are irrational.
Blogs!
Many people have thought our wedding vows were funny or interesting. Here is a very incomplete list of some of the people and news organizations that have written about our vows. Feel free to add your own blog entry here:
- Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing.net
- Seth Schoen on Vita Nuova
- John Derbyshire on New English Review
- George Murray on BookNinja
- Ioeil Aindreas
- Another Livejournal Page
- Gan's Weblog
- Colin Sng
- Outside Context Journal
- Madeline on Viviane212
- Emily Katherine
- Double Viking
- Real Acid
- Anarchaia
- Effect Measure's Free Thinker Sermonette
- All Your Wedding Are Belong To Us