Helmets are for safety, but they're also about making a statement. Surely, if you're riding around the city in this helmet carved by a machine out of a single giant block of aluminum, bystanders will overlook your teal Vespa.

The hard part about writing News You Can Use isn't finding the solution; it's proving there's a problem to be solved. Consider today's Times, wherein dining reporter Julia Moskin has a nice Thanksgiving Eve article (accompanied online by a thrilling instructional video) about a new low-stress, expert-approved way to carve up your turkey. But is the old hack-and-slice regime really so problematic? Yes. "Before breakfast on Thanksgiving," begins Moskin's tale, "as the first Americans rise to preheat the oven, the question of who is going to carve the bird starts to ripple anxiously across the land." This being journalism (of sorts), the burden of proof requires at least some civilian testimony, which is where things take a decided turn toward the gothic.