"2015? You mean we're in the future?!"

"What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?"

By Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt:

31 unanswered questions

Slate lists 31 questions submitted by readers to The Explainer that still haven't been answered.

My favorite:

17. Why don't they ever use “presents” in advertisements? It’s always about “gift”-giving, and “gift” ideas, never a “they'll love these as presents.”

IN THE COMMENTS: My mom, Ann Althouse, answers that question:

"Gifts' is clearly the better word. Lots of crisp consonants. One short vowel.

"Presents" has a near homophone: "presence." So it can be confusing. It also has other meanings. And if people are reading the ad, their brain might pronounce it "pree-ZENTS" and that would make it hard to construct the meaning.

"Gift" also has much nicer connotations. I think of "gift of God" and a "gifted artist." There's something exalted and in touch with the divine.

Summing up the decade on New Year's Eve 2009

"The decade where people communicate as indirectly as possible but as often as possible while sharing as much information as possible and as useless of information as possible." — a friend on Facebook

"Throughout the decade, the real world pursued, hectored, harassed. Ignorance was punished. Hubris found its comeuppance. The optimists were routed, the pessimists validated. . . . This was a decade when things you didn't know about could really hurt you." — Joel Achenbach

"The aughts were ruined by not letting good crises go to waste." — Will Wilkinson