Dr. Pete Ludovice is a funny man. It doesn’t matter that he has a Ph.D. from MIT, and that his day job includes being an associate professor at the School of Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology; he still draws a crowd to his comedy shows. In fact, he calls his humor, geek humor. He’s a regular performer at the Red Door Playhouse in Roswell as part of the “Behind the Red Door” show. The show is described as “stand-up comedy for grown-ups that occasionally requires the use of their brain.”

As we begin a new year, it is customary for us to reflect on the previous year, however, this year also marks the end of a decade. A look back at the first decade of the first century of the third millennium is humbling. The ‘00s decade began with a frenzy of fear about the Y2k millennium bug, which many technology experts said would crash computers, crash jets and wreak chaos in every corner of the globe. As that non-emergency passed, a genuine threat quietly gathered in the form of a plot to destroy the twin towers. Later, we scoured Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, which we did not find. As we searched, we built weapons of financial wipeouts. Fortunes and a staggering number of jobs have vanished, inflicting misery in this country and others on a scale not seen since the Depression era. Yes, the first 10 years of this century may go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through, yet, I still believe a new year is always a season for looking ahead, with a renewed sense of hope and optimism. As we head into a new decade, consider the following: