The New York Times Magazine: The 9th Annual Year in Ideas

I look forward to this issue every year. While I think other years have been better, there was still much to love in this edition.

Here’s a list of my 9 favorite ideas (you may have to scroll down a bit on each page):

1. Bicycle Highways

2. The Counterfeit Self

3. Forensic Polling Analysis

4. The Kitchen Sink That Puts Out Fires

5. Man-Made Greenery

6. Printable Batteries

7. Random Promotions

8. Subscription Artists

9. Weapons of Mosquito Destruction

On the shore of Lake Lucille, with wild fowl honking and the First Dude smiling, with Piper in the foreground and their Piper Cub in the background, the woman who took the Republican Party by storm only 10 months ago gave an incoherent, breathless and prickly stream of consciousness to a small group in her Wasilla yard. Gobsmacked Alaska politicians, Republican big shots, the national press, her brother, the D.C. lawyer who helped create her political action committee and yes, even Fox News, played catch-up.

- Maureen Dowd, The New York TImes, July 4, 2009

Kvetch Your Enthusiasm

The punch line turns out to be that Manhattan is an island of relative bliss in the bleak and hostile universe, but the tolerant, upbeat note on which Boris ends his ranting is as unconvincing as his habitual dyspepsia. None of it works. Or it works too hard. Whatever. (A.O. Scott, NY Times)

Um… not the greatest movie review. Still planning on seeing the movie though. It’s the first Woody Allen movie I’ve been excited about in awhile.