More Ideas of the Year

Newly Conventional Ideas That Were Once Unthinkable
•You might have slept with Tiger Woods
•There’s a Ford in your future
•Your mom is too cool for Facebook
•Republicans to Democrats: Hands off our Medicare!
•Russians suck at winter sports
•Gay marriage
•Inspector Clouseau: Mossad agent
•The white minority
•Eliot Spitzer, public figure

Most Worrying Fads
•Piracy
•Memoirs
•Sarah Palin
•Sexting
•Gastric bypass
•Avatars
•ChatRoulette
•The Snuggie

Ideas We’re Having Second Thoughts About
•Elizabeth Edwards
•Special envoys
•Quants
•California
•Capitalism
•E-mail
•The Senate
•The euro

Once-Discredited Ideas Staging Comebacks
•Savings accounts
•New Orleans
•Populism
•Mustaches
•3-D
•Nuclear power
•Moonshine
•The sitcom
•Michael Vick

Seemingly Horrifying Ideas That Have Potential
•AOL
•Taxes
•TARP
•Pay walls
•Walmart

Exceptions That Prove the Rule
•The gender composition of the contributors to The Atlantic’s 2010 Ideas List (See Idea No. 1.)

Ideas That Have Outlived Their Usefulness
•The mortgage-interest deduction
•Jared from Subway
•Publicly financed stadiums
•Internal combustion
•Corn syrup
•Ticketmaster
•Wall Street
•Brett Favre, QB

Ideas Gone But Not Forgotten
•Privacy
•Conan O’Brien
•Moderation
•Employment
•Attention spans
•Bipartisanship

Ideas Forgotten But Not Gone
•Poor people
•Communism
•New Kids on the Block
•Central America
•Hockey
•MySpace
•Guantánamo Bay

Modest Proposals for the Year Ahead
•The Ice-T Party, supporting gun rights and a return to other hip-hop values
•Subsidies for movies not based on comic books
•“Saudi justice” for texting while driving
•A two-state solution in the Middle East
•Filibustering senators must read aloud entire Twilight series
•Flying cars