Best2022

1. Chemistry in 100 Numbers by Joel Levy (2015). Not just Avogadro's number, but lots of others. A good way to learn some chemistry.

2. Korean dramas Anna and Stranger. These are modern dramas, not historical ones, but they're still good. Anna (2022) is about a girl who pretends to be a rich girl she meets. Stranger is about prosecutors fighting corruption. Both are gripping.

3. Weird Al Yankovic videos. The four funniest are: "Amish Paradise" (1996),"First World Problems" (2014),"White and Nerdy"(2006), and "Just Like a Surgeon" (1985).

4. Charles Portis books, even beyond True Grit (1968). That's the best; then the ranking is Gringos (1991), Lords of Atlantis (1985), Norwood (1966), and The Dog of the South (1979).

5. The MIT Free Speech Alliance (MFSA). I helped found this alumni organization in October 2021 and by now we've gotten a half-million dollar grant, 900 members, Peter Bonilla as executive director, and perceptible influence on MIT. We discovered that nine of the ten exec comm members have helped start corporations, which may account for how well we work together. See our website or follow us on Twitter-- lots of good stuff there.

6. A Book of French Quotations by Norbert Guterman (1963). French on one side, English on the other. Well chosen, translated, and indexed. Chronologically ordered like Bartlett's, for fun browsing.

7. The old quarters of Rome and Naples. Comfortable dilapidation, narrow streets, and layers of history. So much older than Paris and London! Nice people, good food, and we didn't get robbed.

8. The Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, where Amelia and Jadon are living, has the largest tyrannosaurus and triceratops collections in the world. Six T-Rex skulls are on display, including the largest ever found.

9. Cards.chess.io, solitaire chess. I win about 60% at the mid-level. The computer is bad at end games, but it's challenging to get that far.

10. The Great Gatsby movie with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow (1974). Faithful to the book.

11. Hum Do Hamare Do (Two of Us, Two of Ours) (2021). A Hindi comedy. Very sentimental, with a predictable happy ending, which probably accounts for bad reviews. A self-made man, an orphan, needs to come up with temporary parents when he wants to marry a doctor's daughter.

12. The November 2022 Stanford Academic Freedom conference. Amazingly good. Douglas Murray; John Cochrane, Tyler Cowen (economics); John Ioannadis, Bjorn Lomborg, Jay Bhattacharya, Dorian Abbot (science); Joshua Katz, Niall Ferguson; Amy Wax, Nadine Strossen, Eugene Volokh, Michael McConnell (law); Peter Thiel; Lee Jussim, Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, Jordan Peterson (Psychology). Lots of socializing, like a medium--sized academic conference. Video online.

For the dozen best articles of the year, see https://bit.ly/3PcyUUJ.