Of course, this is not New Year's Day for much of the world's population and, for them, not a day to bemoan last night's drunken indulgence. On this day in 1660, Samuel Pepys reflected on the crisis of the Puritan Revolution and, on this day in 2004 in Hong Kong, 100,000 people marched to demand democratic reforms there. On the latter, see the thoughts of Patrick Belton and David Adesnik at Oxblog.

On the net, both left and right are in holiday good humor. For the Left, what would we do without Kieran Healy and his reading of some righty bloggers? On the Right, the best act going is Daniel Drezner and Jacob Levy amused by Drezner dragging in the New Year as Andrew Sullivan. It's conservatism without all the gay/Catholic sturm und drang. And, speaking of good humor, is LA Dude a parody of some comments on the HNN mainpage or is he actually so dim? Caleb, Phil Daly, Michael Meo, and other inquiring minds want to know. You may have done your work too well!