Around this time, as the old year tilts downward into darkness and chill, the human brain compensates with tinglings of novelty. This isn’t science, you understand: This is just the way it works. The eye of day opens onto winter bleakness; the shape of a leafless tree at evening disturbs us; and so we incline, quite naturally, in the opposite direction—to thoughts of new buds, thrilling debuts, burgeoning trends, and upward curves.
In America these things absorb us perennially, of course, but late December gives our need for new beginnings a special keenness. We arouse ourselves, with perhaps disproportionate zeal, at the news that Katy Perry is launching another fragrance (her third). Or that the pope has opened a Twitter account—he’s started tweeting! Hooray! We might even dream, in feeble audacity, of greeting the new year with a new self: a self that eats fewer doughnuts and reads a better class of book.
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2012 What Ended? Let's see..The US economy? The War on Terror? Global Warming?
....Republicans in office...
James Parker's expertise as a debate critic also ended in 2012. There were 3 presidential debates. President Obama did very poorly in the first and Governor Romney did very well. President Obam recouped very well in the succeeding two. Governor Romney's foreign policy responses seemed to be summed up in one word, "ditto," - not a good debate strategy. As I've said previously Governor Romney's 100's of changing positions make him the Political Kama Sutra. Happy New Year.