The issue at hand.

A NEW LOOK can make anybody feel good. Maybe it's the haircut or a good night's sleep. Maybe it's the way your new shirt brings out the color of your eyes. Maybe it's more internally motivated--a brightening occasioned by a memory or an innovation ignited.

Whatever a change may be, with it comes potential: the opportunity to approach ideas and events from a different angle, to move forward on the paths to which we are drawn, and, in a very humanistic sense, a responsibility to entertain while upholding our ethics and keeping our reason and our heart in supreme shape.

And so, as we move into a new year, things are looking a little different in the pages of the Humanist. And we'll be the first to tell you we're feeling good.

It is in this mood that we examine future possibilities for modern transportation in the cover story by John Buell. "There is no truth but in transit," Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said (and of course there's the line about a foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds). Big-minded truth seekers that we are, humanists will be especially interested in Buell's call to move on, so to speak, and recast the image of modern transportation not only for environmental reasons but also for the improvement of our personal lives and relations with fellow terrestrials. The theme of egalitarianism is extended in Karen Frantz' look at new research suggesting that, while gender differences exist in spatial ability (feeding the "men are better at math" cliche), the elimination of the "stereotype threat" can level the playing field. How then, Frantz asks, does it all add up outside the experimental lab?

Continuing in the spirit of science and progress, this issue features an article by Nobel laureate and 2006 American Humanist Association science honoree Herbert A. Hauptman, who illustrates the potential of basic science by connecting a series of past discoveries to a modern application--x-ray crystallography--and its ultimate contribution to the betterment of human health. (Dr. Hauptman humbly neglects to mention his role in the story and so we gladly fill that gap in the accompanying sidebar.)

The Humanist Interview returns in this issue with renowned linguist, skeptic, and social critic Noam Chomsky, who remains consistently (although never foolishly) opinionated on matters of U.S. foreign policy. Here he discusses more broadly the human animal, the religious right, a collapse of secular nationalism, and the politics of fear. Perhaps the biggest question is this: is Noam Chomsky a humanist? See for yourself (page 20).

As I settle in to the editorship, I invite you to explore this new issue of the Humanist and all its changes--notably to the Up Front section where we feature various research results of interest; quotes from notable humanists, freethinkers, and other like-minded luminaries; and also take you back with classic twenty-five and fifty-year-old Humanist musings.

Long-time readers will be glad to see former editor Fred Edwords return in the Humanism 101 column. He chronicles the recent wave of hip secularism in the publishing world and issues a call to harness its energy while humanizing the ride. After all, it's time for New Year's resolutions--why not a humanist revolution?