12/8 NYT Magazine

Last Sunday's magazine section reviews 90 of the most intriguing ideas of the year. Some are wacky (like the beer gut flask), some are entertaining and some just shine with brilliance. I'll feature a few over the course of the next week but just collecting the ideas into one issue is a wonderful idea in itself.

As an "Endpaper", the magazine rates some of the wildest patents taken out during the year from a scale of "yuck" to "brilliant." An expandable vomit container and a method of and apparatus for producing endless rolls of a resilient food stuff are examples are tagges as "yuck" for obvious reasons. An umbrella having a sprinkler device is "missing the point." A design for an ornamental cucumber sandwich "reinvents the wheel." A magic trick of illusion of inserting a cigarette into a nostril is catetgorized as "We all Want something different in life." A beard-trimmer with internal vacuum is "How did I live without it?" and sleep-inducing toothpaste and a head-nodding alarm to avert sleep while driving are called "brilliant."