Inventing Our Age

ENLARGE PHOTO+

The 2009 blue ribbon for inventiveness goes to the Ares I rocket.

Nasa

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Since 9/11, we've worried a lot about al-Qaeda's exporting terrorism to American soil. Call it the germ theory of terrorism--the idea that a foreign agent somehow infects people in America, creating hidden and diseased cells of domestic terrorists. From the Najibullah Zazi case to the Fort Dix Six, we've relentlessly analyzed whether these men are so-called homegrown terrorists. But we've been looking at these cases through the same microscope, always asking the same question: Were these men infected by exotic terrorists from abroad? Which is why the tragic actions of Major Nidal Malik Hasan present a different model. What if the infection happens from within? Is that still terrorism--or is it more like insanity? Or something we can't even name? In Nancy Gibbs' moving and provocative cover essay on the Fort Hood massacre, she poses the new questions we need to be asking: Is this a new form of terrorism? Is this the future we need to guard against? And are we up to it?

For this year's Best Inventions package, green innovations dominate the selection in a way that no single category has ever done in the 10 years we've been making this list. There's a smart thermostat, solar shingles, the new Philips lightbulb, the edible race car, electric bacteria, lots of electric vehicles and farm-raised bluefin tuna. The remarkable ingenuity shown in the hunt for new materials and products that don't stress the environment is reflected in our list, once again ably edited by senior writer Lev Grossman. One glowing exception to the trend is our invention of the year. We chose the Ares I rocket not only because it's a marvel of engineering but also for a symbolic reason: it's a link between a horrific past (the V-2 rocket used by Germany during World War II) and an optimistic future, in which we reclaim the dream of traveling to other planets.

This issue features the debut of what we hope will be another annuity: our ranking of the 10 Best College Presidents. These days, college presidents are no longer leaders of insular academic institutions. They are CEOs of knowledge businesses that spur the local and national economies and foster innovation on a global scale. Yes, they still do a lot of fundraising (which is even harder in a down economy), but every entrepreneur needs to do that, and the best college presidents are forward-looking entrepreneurs of education. At the center of the package is a profile of Ohio State University president E. Gordon Gee by editor-at-large David Von Drehle, who rode along with the irrepressible Gee on a barnstorming tour of small Ohio towns. Gee is the model of what we were looking for. "University presidents," he says, "must be involved in the great questions of our times." To come up with this year's dean's list, we talked to a broad cross section of education experts, including other college presidents, and from their recommendations we selected a diverse group of educators. We plan to do another list next year and open the process to nominations from educators, students and parents.