Musings on New Year's Resolutions

Incidental Comics

I see Grant Snider as a modern-day philosopher, astute about the ironies of the human condition but approachable enough for everyday people to grasp his musings.

Recently I marveled at a lone squirrel deftly scurrying up bare branches.  Very tall trees populate our backyard, and in this wintry landscape, dusting of snow fell off as the squirrel leaped from one branch to another.  The higher it goes, and the further it scurries, the thinner the branches.  But it managed to navigate it all skillfully, its furry tail like a graceful, billowing scarf in flight. 

Those branches would break, if we ourselves were to climb them and try to go as far as that squirrel.  The way I see Snider's latest offering is, those fallen geese, birds and squirrels are a metaphor for the imposition of our reality on them.  Left to their own device, these common creatures in our midst know instinctively what they need to do and they manage to do it well.    

New Year after New Year, we make resolutions, and I often wonder how serious we really are at fulfilling them and how quickly we dispense of them.  We may be determined to keep our resolve, and we may promise that our resolutions cannot be broken.  

But what is it really that permits us to do so?

I weigh this question in Theory of Algorithms and The Core Algorithm.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD