New Year's Resolutions (or, How to Make 2008 Memorable)

Here is the short list of New Year's Resolutions I'm contemplating for 2008.

Staging a coup in a small island nation, becoming a benevolent but curious dictator, free to conduct a wide variety of social and economic experiments.

Taking a year off to spend 10 hours a day sitting in a small office focused on one task and one task only: crafting the world’s best ever philosophical joke. (The one about Descartes that seems to me the best is wonderful, but perhaps could be improved on. The joke? The waitress asked Descartes if he’d like more coffee. “I think not,” Rene replied and poof, he disappeared.)

Performing an autopsy on George Bush in an attempt to figure out how his brain works (just think about living in a world where we had a cure for thinking like his).

Starting my own variety show on YouTube, to include monologues, music, and interviews with intellectual celebrities – all done with finger puppets.

Design a project to move earth's orbit away from the sun about 3 million miles. This will have two benefits: one, it'll will make a year longer by about 3 days and two, it'll reduce global temperatures by about 3 degrees.

Investing my portfolio in politicians who will, in turn, make grants to me for all of the above.

Playing advocate and pioneer (read, getting product endorsements and coverage on ESPN) for the new sport of power snorkeling, finally proving to my high school crush Shawn Gibbs beyond a shadow of doubt that I really had never intended to “get up” on water skis, thereby making my incompetence look intentional.

Getting fake ID so that I can sneak into AARP and begin collecting social security payments 20 years early.

Go back to grad school on the pretence of getting my PhD but actually to become the oldest ever walk on player to try out for the baseball team.

Sponsoring the first virtual primary to finally begin the election process of determining who, really, is the king or queen of CyberLand. (Of course, if hits are votes, we all know who is queen: it’s Britney. Sigh.)

Given that this particular set of goals is probably more than I could hope to accomplish, feel free to borrow from the list (but do have the decency to let me know which you choose so as to avoid duplication.)

For those of you seriously looking into New Year's Resolutions, this Guardian article about Quirkology author's Richard Wiseman's recent study on New Year's Resolutions can be found here.

Does TV Give the Edge to Lying Politicians?

In Richard Wiseman's delightful book, Quirkology, he reports on a study on lying. He and a colleague had the British equivalent of Walter Cronkite - Sir Robin Day - conduct two interviews. In one, he told the truth. In the other, a series of lies.

As it turns out, people who watched the interview on TV could discern the version that was a lie only 52% of the time - not much better results than if they'd flipped a coin. But interestingly, 64 of newspaper readers could discern the lie, as could 73 percent of radio listeners. (As it turns out, the classic signs of lying - averting one's gaze and fidgeting more - don't actually predict lies. Vague answers and failure to inject one's self into the story (rarely using "I" for instance) are actually better predictors of lies and listeners not distracted by body language are more apt to detect this.)

Wisemen doesn't pick up on this point, but it seems to me that this has serious implications for our own time. As more people consume media from TV and less from newspapers and radio, we may be more vulnerable to lying politicians. So, next time you're watching a politician speak, you may be best to close your eyes. (And distrust any politician who refuses to do radio interviews.)

[And thanks to my son Blake for the great gift - Wiseman's new book is a fascinating and amusing read.]