I'm the most recent in a long line of not very good impersonators of myself.

For the new year, thoughts from a neurobiologist:

I read about neural stem cells and think about how different I am from even a few years ago, and I get the weird feeling that I was right when I was little, that I'm the most recent in a long line of not very good impersonators of myself. Science (science!) confirms that parts of me are here now that weren't there even a little while ago (and that parts of me that were there before are gone forever). In other words: one night someone else went to sleep and woke up as me. I do a lot of the same things as him but I know that I'm not the one who came up with them. I like a lot of the same things as him but I know I didn't discover them. Otherwise I act in ways that he wouldn't have thought of and found new stuff to like that he wouldn't have recognized. I've taken that poor bastard's place and he barely even realized it was happening. It's awesome.

The new year is a good time to look back on one's past and reflect on all the different kinds of persons one has been - and I suspect I'm not alone in thinking that I have been very, very different kinds of me at different times in my life.

So, looking ahead to 2011 - who will I be this year? I've made four resolutions for the new year, which I am not going to reveal unless I actually keep them. But if I do keep them, I will be a different person on January 1, 2012. And if I don't keep them, I will still be a different person then.