Good ideas
12/12/2004
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The New York Times Magazine has its annual "Year in Ideas" issue today, and it's full of interesting vignettes from around the intellectual sphere. Among the more intriguing:
- Guerilla retail: Shops that pop up in too-hip-to-be-known neighborhoods and open for a limited amount of time.
- Keyboard eavesdropping: Computers with the ability to eavesdrop on typing by analyzing the sounds of a keyboard.
- Stone-skipping: French scientists are working with robots to perfect stone-skipping.
- Celebrity flaws: Celebrity mags have hit a new low in pointing out stars' slightly large ears or "snaggleteeth."
- eBay law-enforcement: Some eBay surfers are making it a mission to smoke out fraudulent sellers.
Eyeball jewelry: For $4,000, you can have a little bauble inserted onto your eyeball. Prediction: Will take off if rappers start using it as a status symbol.
- The micropolis: (n.) An area consisting of between 10,000 and 50,000 people, far from hub airports, and a fertile ground for Republican voters.
- Purple marks: Red is too angry of a color, so teachers are tending toward purple when correcting pupils' papers.
- Football sabermetrics: The same approaches to sports that made Billy Beane famous in baseball are coming into play in football. Read: Bill Belichick.
- Cheap hotels: $10/night for a space the size of a jail cell in central London.
- Soccer warfare: Football is the current model of warfare, but maybe soccer is the next generation.
- No threes: The NBA is looking into eliminating the three-pointer. Some think it is hurting the game.
- No superstars: The Detroit Pistons and the Greek national soccer team are showing that superstars don't always equal championships.
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