The picture, titled “The Pale Blue Dot” and taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft at a distance of about 3.7 billion miles from Earth, always reminds me of the Total Perspective Vortex from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. The device in the books was used to destroy a victim’s mind by giving them a complete sense of perspective of their place in the universe; this picture is not quite that potent, but it certainly helps sober me from any sense of grandiose self-importance I harbor.