Joel Stein's 100 Things

I can’t tell if TIME‘s proto-blogger Joel Stein is mocking his list-happy employer with the sheer presence of this “100 Most Influential Things” list or not – but it’s funny and smart either way…

5. Protests
Still far more effective than petitions. Glenn Beck tried one; Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert pretended they were mocking it but really just wanted to throw one too. Wisconsin teachers couldn’t stop doing it. Then the “Arab Street” actually went to the streets in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Bahrain, Iran, Djibouti, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Oman and Yemen. And the U.S. somehow managed to get only one war out of it.

6. Tweets
Ending a painful past in which people went on and on in bursts longer than 140 characters. Now they go on and on all day in burst of 140 characters. Much improved.

7. Diplomatic cables
Like e-mail but sexier. Thanks to WikiLeaks’ exposure of American diplomatic cables, we learned that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi sleeps in a tent when in hotel rooms and travels with a voluptuous blond Ukrainian nurse. Making him the world’s most powerful 12-year-old.

8. The government shutdown
Seemed so scary, and yet all anyone could say would happen was that we wouldn’t be able to go to national parks. I bet we could have still gotten into national parks. They’re pretty big, and those gates are pretty small.

Go read ’em all, worth a few minutes.  Someone (besides me) should do a top 100 Most Influential Things on the markets.

Source:

The TIME 100 Most Influential Things in the World (TIME)