The Errant Æsthete

The NY Times Magazine is out with its annual Year in Ideas issue. It’s got everything from an obsession with all things green to Craigslist Vengeance. See all 100 items next page and explore to your heart’s content. A sampling:

Ambiguity Promotes Liking. Sometimes the more you learn about a person or a situation, the more likely you are to be disappointed:
Why? For starters, initial information is open to interpretation. “And people are so motivated to find somebody they like that they read things into the profiles,” Norton says. If a man writes that he likes the outdoors, his would-be mate imagines her perfect skiing companion, but when she learns more, she discovers “the outdoors” refers to nude beaches. And “once you see one dissimilarity, everything you learn afterward gets colored by that,” Norton says.

Airborne Wind Turbines, Alzheimer’s Telephone Screening, Ambiguity Promotes Liking, Appendix Rationale, Best Way to Deflect an Asteroid, Biodegradable Coffins, Biofuel Race, Braille Tattoo, Cardboard Bridge, ‘Cat Lady’ Conundrum, Climate Conflicts, Community Urinalysis, Craigslist Vengeance, Criminal Recycling, Crowdware , Culinary Orientalism, Death of Checkers, Digital Search Parties, Edible Cocktail, Electric Hockey Skate, Faces Decide Elections, Fake Tilt-Shift Photography, Fish-Flavored Fish, God Effect, Handshake Sex Appeal, Height Tax, Honeycomb Vase, Hope Can Be Worse Than Hopelessness, Iconic-Performance-Network Player, Indie-Rock Musicals, Interstellar Ramadan, Jogging Politique, Knot Physics, Lap-Dance Science, Left-Hand-Turn Elimination, Lightning Farms, Lite-Brite Fashion, Marijuana Mansions, Mindful Exercise, Minimal Chair, Mob Jurisprudence, Murphy Balcony, Neurorealism, Next Violin, Office-Chair Exercise (for Men and Women), Pixelated Stained Glass, Pop Fecundity, Posthumous E-Mail, Postnuptial Agreements, Prison Poker, Quitting Can Be Good for You, Radiohead Payment Model, Right to Medical Self-Defense, Rock-Paper-Scissors Is Universal, Second-World Solidarity, Self-Righting Object, Smog-Eating Cement, Starch Made Us Human, Suing God, Telltale Food Wrapping, 24/7 Alibi, Two-Birds-With-One-Stone Resistance, Unadapted Theatrical Adaptation, Vegansexuality, Wave Energy, Weapon-Proof School Gear, Wikiscanning, Wireless Energy, Youtube (Accidental) Audition, Zygotic Social Networking