Personal Dork Assistant

Year End

With Christmas and New Year coming up, it's time for the annual lists. Lists of cool stuff are old-hat now, with sites like Engadget and Uncrate to keep you updated on all the latest gadgets year-round. But the New York Times breaks the mold with the high-brow Year In Ideas, covering things, memes, and happenings.

Some mysteries, of course, still remain. For instance, we do not yet have an entirely satisfying explanation for how Mark Cuban, the outspoken Internet mogul and N.B.A. owner, came to be connected with three of the year's most notable ideas ("Collapsing the Distribution Window," "Scientific Free-Throw Distraction" and "Splogs").

Okay, so maybe it's not that high-brow. My personal pick for the Idea Of The Year? Gotta be Cartoon Empathy.

Then without warning a group of warplanes arrives and starts carpet-bombing. As the Smurfs scatter, their mushroom village goes up in flames. After the last bomb falls, amid the burning rubble and surrounded by dead Smurfs, Baby Smurf sits alone, wailing.

Massacred Smurfs? Hell yeah. Watch that while eating In Vitro Meat for the goodness.