The Year in Ideas (MY SECOND FAVE NYTIMES MAG OF THE YEAR...JUST A FUN ISSUE)

This issue marks the fifth anniversary of what is becoming a venerable tradition at the magazine:

Accredited Bliss
Anti-Paparazzi Flash, The
Anti-Rape Condom, The
Branding Nations
Cartoon Empathy
Celebrity Teeth
Cobblestones are Good for You
Collapsing the Distribution Window
Consensual Interruptions
Conservative Blogs are More Effective
Dialing Under the Influence
Do-It-Yourself Cartography
Dolphin Culture
Econophysics
Embryo Adoption
Ergomorphic Footwear
Fair Employment Mark, The
False-Memory Diet, The
Fleeting Relationship, The
Folksonomy
Forehead Billboards
Gastronomic Reversals
Genetic Theory of Harry Potter, The
Global Savings Glut, The
His-and-Her TV, The
Hollywood-Style Documentary, The
Hypomanic American, The
Fertile Red States
In Vitro Meat
Juvenile Cynics
Laptop That Will Save the World, The
Localized Food Aid
Making Global Warming Work for You
Medical Maggots
Microblindness
Monkey Pay-Per-View
National Smiles
Open-Source Reporting
Parking Meters That Don't Give You a Break
Playoff Paradigm, The
Pleistocene Rewilding
Porn Suffix, The
Preventing Suicide Bombing
Readable Medicine Bottle, The
Republican Elitism
Robot Jockeys
Runaway Alarm Clock, The
Scientific Free-Throw Distraction
Seeing With Your Ears
Self-Fulfilling Trade Rumor, The
Serialized Pop Song, The
Sitcom Loyalty Oath, The
Solar Sailing
Sonic Gunman Locator, The
Splogs
Stash Rocket, The
Stoic Redheads
Stream-of-Consciousness Newspaper, The
Subadolescent Queen Bees
Suburban Loft, The
Synesthetic Cookbook, The
Taxonomy Auctions
"The Crawl" Makes You Stupid
Toothbrush That Sings, The
Totally Religious, Absolutely Democratic Constitution, The
Touch Screens That Touch Back
Trial-Transcript Dramaturgy
Trust Spray
Two-Dimensional Food
Uneavesdroppable Phone Conversation, The
Urine-Powered Battery, The
Video Podcasts
Why Popcorn Doesn't Pop
Worldwide Flat Taxes
Yawn Contagion
Yoo Presidency, The
Zero-Emissions S.U.V., The
Zombie Dogs

This is my second-favorite issue of the year...the first being the year-end "The Lives They Lived" issue, which chronicles the lives of people who have passed on during the year.

This issue is just fun.

For the usual whiners...you have 2 login options:

1) Since you won't login as yourself...lie.
2) Try bugmenot.com.

Here's one of their ideas...however, LOL! they don't mention FR....

Conservative Blogs are More Effective

By MICHAEL CROWLEY Published: December 11, 2005

When the liberal activist Matt Stoller was running a blog for the Democrat Jon Corzine's 2005 campaign for governor, he saw the power of the conservative blogosphere firsthand. Shortly before the election, a conservative Web site claimed that politically damaging information about Corzine was about to surface in the media. It didn't. But New Jersey talk-radio shock jocks quoted the online speculation, inflicting public-relations damage on Corzine anyway. To Stoller, it was proof of how conservatives have mastered the art of using blogs as a deadly campaign weapon.

That might sound counterintuitive. After all, the Howard Dean campaign showed the power of the liberal blogosphere. And the liberal-activist Web site DailyKos counts hundreds of thousands of visitors each day. But Democrats say there's a key difference between liberals and conservatives online. Liberals use the Web to air ideas and vent grievances with one another, often ripping into Democratic leaders. (Hillary Clinton, for instance, is routinely vilified on liberal Web sites for supporting the Iraq war.) Conservatives, by contrast, skillfully use the Web to provide maximum benefit for their issues and candidates. They are generally less interested in examining every side of every issue and more focused on eliciting strong emotional responses from their supporters.

But what really makes conservatives effective is their pre-existing media infrastructure, composed of local and national talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, the Fox News Channel and sensationalist say-anything outlets like the Drudge Report - all of which are quick to pass on the latest tidbit from the blogosphere. "One blogger on the Republican side can have a real impact on a race because he can just plug right into the right-wing infrastructure that the Republicans have built," Stoller says.

I agree on all counts ... great fun and enlightening as always. But I have to quibble about "Republican Elitism." Our claim has never been that ordinary people know best for everyone ... it's that ordinary people know best for themselves. Crucial difference in how the right and the left see government.

Now, if you want to argue that distinction has been lost by most elected Republicans, feel free ...

Here's another good one:

Econophysics

By CHRISTOPHER SHEA Published: December 11, 2005

Victor Yakovenko, a physicist at the University of Maryland, happens to think that current patterns of economic inequality are as natural, and unalterable, as the properties of air molecules in your kitchen.

He is a self-described "econophysicist." Econophysics, the use of tools from physics to study markets and similar matters, isn't new, but the subfield devoted to analyzing how the economic pie is split acquired new legitimacy in March when the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, in Calcutta, held an international conference on wealth distribution.

Econophysicists point out that incomes and wealth behave suspiciously like atoms. In the United States, for example, beneath the 97th percentile (roughly $150,000), the dispersion of income fits a common distribution pattern known as "exponential" distribution. Exponential distribution happens to be the distribution pattern of the energy of atoms in gases that are at thermal equilibrium; it's a pattern that many closed, random systems gravitate toward. As for the wealthiest 3 percent, their incomes follow what's called a "power law": there is a very long tail in the distribution of data. (Consider the huge gap between a lawyer making $200,000 and Bill Gates.)

Other developed nations seem to display this two-tiered economic system as well, with the demarcation lines differing only slightly.

You guys...as I'm making my way through these "ideas," they are remarkably conservative!!! I can't believe it!!!

Try this one:

Embryo Adoption

By SARAH BLUSTAIN Published: December 11, 2005

This year, opponents of abortion stepped up their use of a carefully chosen phrase - "embryo adoption" - that describes a couples' decision to have a baby using the embryos of another couple.

The less loaded term for embryo adoption is "embryo donation." It typically signifies that a couple who have undergone in vitro fertilization, and have had as many children as they wish to, are releasing their leftover embryos for use by other would-be parents. Of some 400,000 frozen embryos in the country, according to the RAND Corporation, about 9,000 are designated for other families. (Another 11,000 are designated for research, while the balance remain unused in freezers.)

Medically, embryo adoption and embryo donation are identical. But to promoters of embryo adoption, which term you use makes all the difference: "We would like for embryos to be recognized as human life and therefore to be adopted as opposed to treated as property," explains Kathryn Deiters, director of development at the Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency, in California, which has been offering embryo adoptions since the late 1990's. Nightlight also favors the term "snowflakes." As the agency's executive director, Ron Stoddart, told The Washington Times: "Like snowflakes, these embryos are unique, they're fragile and, of course, they're frozen.. . .It's a perfect analogy."

In May, President Bush delighted the Nightlight agency when he met with some of its young success stories, who wore "Former Embryo" stickers on their chests. He used the occasion to stress his opposition to legislation supporting wider stem-cell research with embryos.

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