and if I were Ben Gibbard, I might not feel any different. But I do, just a little. Maybe it's three days of hikes in the sunny cold air, rearranging my office, lots of Yorkshire pudding, or the disquieting news that State Senator Don Perata got jacked in our neighborhood over the weekend, but the world looks a little more curious and clear in 2008. A little more full of all kinds of possibility.

Andrew is after me to post some New Year's resolutions and I'm tempted to just take his: get outside more and read good books. Both very satisfying pursuits but things I tend to do already. I'm good at the accomplishable resolution, one that's discrete and doable so I can check it off list. If that's really change I smell in the air, then it's time to think big. Which means its time to visit The Edge and pore over big ideas for this year's question: "What have you changed your mind about?"

All jobs are about changing minds to some extent, mine perhaps more expressly so. Our goal cannot only be to change the minds of others, but also to keep our own minds nimble and flexible, open to new evidence. In the case of the Edge, that also means ideas that are pretty arcane or inscrutable to me, though I have to assume someone out there is nodding their head as they read it. There are the contrarians who say they've changed their minds about their ability to change their minds. Then there are posts about measuring happiness, economics, and the biology of online communities. I don't recommend reading all 163 entries in one sitting, though if you wait long enough you can buy them as a book. Poke your head in the next time you're on a particularly dull conference call.

So what will I be resolving to do this year? To paraphrase an old grad school mentor: make new mistakes, and learn from them. If those educational experiences happen to take place in, say, the Queen Charlotte Islands, well, all the better.