Happy New Year

 I'm eager for New Year reading and podcast suggestions anyone has.

7.5 earthquake in Japan. 

 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. 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.

Keep boundaries. Always reassess them.

One thing at a time. Multitasking has been shown to be 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 allow them to slip away.

Get seven hours of sleep a day.

The time before and after exercise is very important. 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. Maybe it will catch on.

Do not phone from the bathroom.

First dates should always be coffee or lunch.

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

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, or 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.

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 so you can 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 limited reading year.
Hail Mary by Weir. The guy who wrote The Martian. Fun and interesting and bittersweet.
Peter Zeihan's The End of the World is Just the Beginning is one of those Grand Unifying Theory books, like Sapien, that I tend to be very suspicious of. This book, though, is fascinating. It looks at the available public statistical publications by nations and projects them into the future. Filled with ideas for futurist fiction writers. Provocative and fun.
Kaung. The genius-of-the-month. A polymath, multiple degrees, a number of books and still in her mid-twenties. Her fantasy series starts with The Poppy War and is good, although she has a long description that is directly from her preoccupation with The Rape of Nanking. Not for the squeamish. Her Babel is very creative and will be interesting to anyone fascinated with words, which in the story provides literal magic. Most recent is Yellowface, which I haven't read yet. She is interested in colonialism and bigotry. (She's opposed.)
Olga Tokarczuk is a bit of a problem. She just won the Nobel Prize and is dead serious. She writes in Polish and is translated. Flights is a very good, if complex, book on the search for place and being. Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a funny story with big aims and a very good main female character. Her recent is The Books of Jacob, War and Peace in size and ambition I have not ginned up the energy for yet. Her Nobel Prize lecture is really worth reading.
Some others: Jailbird by Vonnegut, English Music by Ackroyd, Classic Krakaur had some good essays; hated Patterson's book with Clinton and his more recent Mistress.

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?

Happy New Year.