No. 5: 7 Tech Trends
Inspired by John Naisbitt’s eerily accurate 1980 book, “Megatrends,” Stephen Abram, a leading international librarian, looks ahead 20 years to make his predictions about trends that will change the world. Here’s what he says will likely go down in 2012: 1. We’ll switch to virtual payment systems. The way we…
No. 10: Tiger Mom
If the Wall Street Journal hadn’t titled its January 8 interview with Amy Chua “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” the Yale professor’s book (“Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother“) might have never hit a nerve. But such a Murdochian headline was bound to get attention — pricklish, divisive, and heated…
No. 9: Government Shutdown
The national debt hit $14.9 trillion in 2011 and threatened to bring the government to a halt. As long as the U.S. operated at a deficit, spending more than it was taking in, the government had to borrow — and how much it could borrow was limited by the debt…
No. 8: “Game of Thrones”
If you focused only on the literary side of things, 2011 would have been a fantastic year for George R.R. Martin‘s series, “A Song of Ice and Fire.” The epic fantasy saga began in 1996, with Martin — a veteran of both fiction and television writing — penning thousand-page tomes…
No. 7: Planking
In the fitness world, a “plank” is a move designed to work your core. The 2011 planking trend, however, did nothing for our cores (or our dignity), but it was addictive. Lying face-down on the ground may sound more like a police procedure than a fad. Yet curiously, the position…
No. 6: Angry Birds
Pickle-green pig faces meet their matches in the form of wingless, decidedly non-aerodynamic birds. Said birds are hurled through the air by slingshot, sending them crashing into bricks and blocks. A proper trajectory that causes a proper collapse ends all oinking. If you have no idea what any of that…
No. 3: “Friday” (Rebecca Black)
What song comes before Saturday and after Thursday? Why, the “worst song ever,”according to countless critics, bloggers, and online viewers across social media. The inane lyrics, nasal vocals put through Auto-Tune, and hilariously awkward acting in the music video made Rebecca Black’s song “Friday” one of this year’s most unexpected…
No. 4: Mortgage Rates
Five years after the housing market peaked, the obsession with mortgages rates went up, but the appetite for home ownership and home buying declined. Throughout the year, existing home sales generally rose compared with 2010, although in the first 10 months of 2011, new home sales were off 6.9% from…
No. 2: The Rapture
The end of the world came on May 21, 2011, and again on October 21. Tough times can beget obsessions with end times. Natural disasters, for instance, shake the doomsayers loose online, as do political shifts, blockbuster thrillers, Mayan prophecies, and a Dolly Parton song. Those two 2011 dates, though,…
No. 1: Charlie Sheen
Leave it to Charlie Sheen to turn an addiction into an obsession. The actor’s drug-addled shenanigans made headlines in 2010, so when Sheen was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center complaining of “severe abdominal pains” on January 27, 2011, it looked like one more step toward a total meltdown. The next…