The most interesting thing about resolutions is not that we make them, but the various ways we find to break them. We have entered the month where New Year's resolutions are laid to rest. My resolve is usually no match for this bleak stretch of midwinter. I suspect it is only matter of time until I resign myself to frozen inactivity. I will come to see the strange paradox of making promises to myself: I am not the same man I was at New Years, the man who promised to jog regardless of snowstorms or to forego my daily beer regardless of the craving. Philosophers have a name for this sort of situation: akrasia, or weakness of will in which one acts against his or her better judgment.