The mysterious, most-interesting, super-sexy North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. (And if you believe all that, you may be reading too many reports from Chinese media.)
Credit ISAF / Reuters /Landov
David Petraeus, while he was the top commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, and Paula Broadwell in July 2011. He resigned from his post as CIA director because of an extramarital affair they had.
Originally published on Sun December 30, 2012 5:58 pm
For those inclined toward nostalgia, forgetfulness or with a fondness for accounting, it's the season of The Lists: The excellent and execrable, winners and losers, scoundrels and heroes, the hot and the not.
We've searched through such lists so that, as they say, you don't have to. Here are 21, in no particular order, that touch on some of the outliers and prognostications of our times.
I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE, from NPR News. Coming up, are you invited to any parties for Kwanzaa, which is going on now? If the answer is yes, you're not alone. If the answer is no, you're not alone, either. We'll ask just how widely observed is this inspired-by-Africa, made-in-America celebration.
Originally published on Fri December 28, 2012 1:49 pm
You folks were busy this year.
According to our friend Kate Myers, by the start of this week there had been about 200,200 comments posted in this blog's threads in 2012. She tells us that about 21,000 different people shared their thoughts.
The person who had the most to say (and this won't be a surprise to frequent readers) was "Art Aficionado." He shared his thoughts nearly 2,000 times this year.
Once upon a time, there was one screen that TV broadcasters needed to fill. These days, it's all about the two-screen experience.
People have been watching television with their laptops, smartphones and tablets in hand for a while now. But this year, big business tried harder than ever to bring television to a second screen.
A screengrab from the "Kony 2012" online video about the Central African warlord Joseph Kony, which skyrocketed in popularity after its release in March. It was criticized, then forgotten, just as quickly.
Credit via YouTube
"JB Fan Video" got more than 1 million views in 48 hours. Within weeks, it was largely forgotten.
2012 has been a strange year for content creators — authors, producers, musicians. It was a year when the very idea of physical ownership of a book or CD or even a song file became almost passe.
It was also the year in which music-streaming services like Spotify and Pandora launched major efforts to convince people to pay for something they didn't own. But it's been slow going.
Music-streaming services have been trying to win over two types of customers: a younger generation that doesn't buy at all and an older generation that still likes owning physical albums.
