 The best thing that can be said about the five "promise zones" announced by US President Obama as the War on Poverty turned 50 this week is that they probably won't do any harm. They might even do some tiny amount of good for people in the targeted areas: neighbourhoods in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Antonio, and parts of southeastern Kentucky and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. But they sure don't address the root causes of poverty, insofar as such things can be said to exist.
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 A couple of years ago, my girlfriend and I had the great pleasure of spending several hours visiting the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, home to many gorgeous Impressionist artworks. Getting up close to all those paintings by Monet, Degas, Renoir, and the rest, seeing their visible brushstrokes, their mastery of light, was a real thrill. Excellence is so inspiring. That these geniuses had to fight just to be noticed back in the day makes their outsized achievements that much more impressive.
 Another online petition, another misleading fear campaign. The latest to catch my eye is one from causes.com opposed to "the approval of Dow's genetically engineered (GE) 'Agent Orange' corn and soybeans designed to survive repeated spraying of the toxic herbicide 2,4-D, half of the highly toxic chemical mixture Agent Orange." Sounds scary, but a sober second look at this petition's emotional language and sins of omission tells a different story.
 We humans sure do like to meddle. No sooner does legal recreational marijuana go on sale in Colorado than a new study calls for the tripling of tobacco taxes. Indeed, the growing cultural acceptability of pot has gone hand in hand with the increasing stigmatization of cigarettes. For those of us who believe that what other adults choose to put into their own bodies is none of our business, it almost seems that any ground gained on one front is matched with an equivalent retreat on another.
 It's a brand new year, and here we all are with our resolutions, committed to bigger, better, faster, more; to onward and upward, or to turning it around. Following through on those resolutions is not easy, though. There are upfront costs to be paid, and benefits that are at least somewhat deferred. That's why we call them resolutions; they require resolve. But some people seem to have tons of self-control. How do they do it? And how can we mere mortals increase the odds that we'll stick to our goals?
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