Happy New Year

Witnesses told CBS News reporter Kati Weis that a truck crashed into a crowd on Bourbon Street at high speed in the early hours of New Year's Day. Then the driver got out and started firing a weapon, with police returning fire.
The City of New Orleans said in a statement posted online that 30 people were transported to area hospitals with injuries and 10 people were confirmed dead.

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The energy industry employs more than 8 million Americans and accounts for more than $1.3 trillion in annual economic activity.

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The fiscal year 2024 data show that the Biden administration has overseen a record $926 billion in improper and unknown federal payments since 2021

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Happy New Year

One of the curiosities about New Year's Resolutions is the unspoken belief that new and better ideas are always coming to the fore. I hope that is true but my advice is always a hash of old suggestions:

Seek fulfillment. Emphasize safety.

The great Old and New Testament sin is pride, the great sin of the doomed Greek was anger engendered by pride. These geniuses were not kidding.

Do not go out of the house in your pajamas.

Spend less than you earn.

There are better ways to do military-type lifts that pressure bones and joints but no good reason to do them at all.

Find a good podcast.

Keep boundaries. Always reassess them.

One thing at a time. Multitasking is terribly inefficient.

Do not be on time, be early.

Never use the phone at social events, dinner, or in elevators.

Keep up-to-date phone numbers and addresses of friends. Use them. Keep up with old friends with a line or e-mail; do not let them slip away.

Get seven hours of sleep a day.

Use audiobooks.

The time before and after exercise is essential. Warm up and cool down.

People will not remember presents but they will remember how you made them feel.

Ours is a period of downgrading. Start a mild upgrade with more effort on appearance. It may catch on.

Do not phone from the bathroom.

A first date should always be coffee or lunch.

Do not read anything other than menus while eating a meal with others.

Regularly pay off your debt, even bit by bit.

Sign all petitions and always vote "no."

Build a good wardrobe, one good piece at a time.

Do not put ice in wine. If the wine is not cool enough, go to a better place.

Angry people are usually entertaining but avoid them after 6 o'clock.

Read a formal literary effort, a book, essay, or play, a little bit every day.

Wake up. Early. The day will be nice and long and full of opportunities.

Go to bed at a reasonable time. Anything that happens late at night is because the perpetrators think no one is watching.

Do not name your children after large cities in Texas. Or European cheeses.

If you are going to drink alcohol, drink only good alcohol. Never drink something because it is there.
Never drink alcohol because you "don't want to waste it."
Never forget, alcohol is a neurotoxin.

Generalizations are verboten in our time. Nonetheless, the Irish have an inordinate appreciation of alcohol. Watch it.

Memorize one insightful quote or poetry line every week.

Do not run at night wearing black.

Have your teeth cleaned every six months.

Make a budget. The discipline alone is helpful. 

Set aside a percentage for two groups of savings. Use one account to go to when necessary for a big purchase or a surprise problem. Use the other one for retirement. Never touch the second one.

People tend to like what they do when they are good at it. So, be good at your job and your diversions.

Always get the cost of goods or services upfront. This is especially true of lawyers.

When traveling:

Never travel without a phone that works.
Always, always get the harbormaster's number when you leave a ship.

Never travel alone to an area where you do not know the language or the alphabet.

Always travel with enough money.

Avoid areas where you might depend upon the goodwill of people with old political grudges towards some group you remotely resemble.

Again, always, always get the harbormaster's number when you leave a ship.
 

Buy one tailor-made piece of clothing to see the difference from retail.
 

Floss.
 

"To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying, and gives moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown - the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none." (Friedrich Nietzsche) 

Remember this when attacking another's beliefs. You are attacking more than his intellectual position, you are attacking his area of comfort and command.

Save 10% of your income for retirement.

And some book suggestions from a very limited reading year:

   A Coffin for Demetrios by Eric Ambler. The man who developed the mystery. This is his first big success. A bit congested.

   Drawing Life by Gelernter. With some of the population ambivalent--or overtly supporting--the murder of the insurance CEO, it might be time to revisit the Unabomber, a brilliant but horrible guy who captured the imagination of many academics and writers. This book is a nice antidote.

  Martin's Game of Thrones series is very good. It will be too violent/sadistic for some but very imaginative with consistent characters and intricate plots. Mainly it is fun.

  I reread some of Emerson's essays and he is fascinating. His new American voice from the 19th Century was picked up by Whitman.

  Brown's Red Rising was imaginative and relentless. Cliffhanger after cliffhanger. Not a great sci-fi/fantasy but pretty good.

  A Study in Scarlett is Doyle's first Holmes story. Very interesting. Half is set in the American West.

  Shaw's Saint Joan was arch and disappointing. Mostly a legal and jurisdictional argument.  One can see why the extraordinary story was ignored by Shakespeare. Read Twain's story instead.

  Patriotic Gore by Edmund Wilson. A fascinating book written by an elegant critic so disillusioned with war--all war--that he openly opposed American involvement in WWII and refused to pay his taxes. This book is long, involved, and academic. Because he believes all conflict is evil, his topic, The Civil War, is handled with a disarming evenhandedness through the analysis of many participants and observers, some obscure, some well known but with an obverse take. This book was published in 1962 and created a firestorm. One critic wrote its aim was to “criticize our myths and, even, to enrich them.” Long. My favorite this year.

 

Paul's Letter to the Galatians says that Christ on earth means that all men are adopted sons of God, heirs to His infinite creation.
So every man, regardless of station or circumstance, wealth or heritage, birthright or appearance, sickness or health is equal in the eyes of God. There have been a lot of notions--from nihilism to castes, from divine right to class conflict, from Freud to Malthus--that have come down the pike since the beginning of recorded time but has there ever been a more radical, more hopeful, more optimistic idea than that? And could there be a better thought to start the new year? 

And how could the vicious alternatives compete with it?

Happy New Year.