Let's start a new year by looking back at the year that was. It did go by so quickly!
MM's Person of the Year:
Time magazine's choice of Vladimir Putin as its Person of the Year has caused quite a stir. Admittedly, the choice rests on influence, not on whether that influence was positive or not.
I have my own choice for Person of the Year: I give you . . . General David Petraeus.
Honorable mention must go to the late, great professor Liviu Librescu.
A Year in the News:
What are your picks for most important news stories of the year?
The UK-Iran captured-sailors incident? The debut of the world's most famous polar bear cub? The EU's 50th birthday? The Don Imus snafu? Virginia Tech? The rise of Sarkozy in France? The wretched immigration bill that blew up in May-June? Tainted goods from China -- with poisonous lead in almost everything? Major war games in Taiwan with jet fighters on Sun Yat-sen Freeway? Enormous doping scandal at the Tour de France? The Live Earth concert madness? Petraeus's surge in Iraq? The assassination of Benazir Bhutto? The Spice Girls reunion as a sign of the coming apocalypse? The start of the fractious political horse race for the 2008 U.S. Presidency? The debut of the iPhone? The end of the Harry Potter saga? The self-parody of Al Gore and the Nobel Peace Prize? Bobby Jindal winning the Louisiana governor's election? The famous King Juan Carlos smackdown of Hugo Chavez? "Don't tase me, bro"? More rioting in Paris? Lee Myung-bak's new role as South Korea's president? The Frankenstein-like revival of the EU Constitution? Libel lawsuits by Arabs against academic presses in the UK and US? The baseball scandal? Oh, and news that didn't deserve to be news -- every single, stupid, degrading celebrity "story" that sullied the airwaves through the entire year.
The Best of MM in 2007:
This is quite a load of self-referential tripe, I'm afraid, but it might be fun to look back at 2007 in the blog. These aren't news links, per se. These are my picks from Quirky Asia Files, Quirky Euro Files, and various nerd notes. Here's a glance back at a year of rants, laughter, thoughts, and concerns.
January
- China's pork-flavored postage stamps
- A pig-free, politically correct Chinese New Year?
- Germany's monster bunnies
- Teaching Brits to use French gestures
- Courtesy and rudeness in Euro circles -- a big blog discussion
- Japanese eggs = ad space
- Pro-Shakespeare rant -- keep the Bard in the classroom!
- China: bulldozing history
- French professor explains how to talk about books you've never read
- Japan: excessive karaoke can be a health hazard
- Hong Kong's Hello Kitty Subway Wedding
- UK nanny government (literally) -- giving babies marks for crying
- Harvard updates undergraduate curriculum
- Buy infidelity offsets!
- Defending Wilberforce
- Cute Knut!
- Ode to a Spell Checker
- It's been fully 25 years since the Falklands War
- Goldfish in formation swimming!
- China's rediscovery of classical music
- Darth Vader comments on cellphone courtesy
- Harvard analysis of media bias of the Israeli-Hezbollah war
- Rice paddies cause global warming?
- The Wordsworth daffodil rap
- Italian town bans Chinese lanterns
- The Hello Kitty Manicure
- Thoughts on female voters and female political candidates
- How a computer mouse REALLY works
- Horrifying food from China -- the first major media report in a long string this year of dangerous Chinese imports.
- Plus . . . "Star Wars" and the Cinema-Mad Sibling turn 30 on the same day
- Hungry Planet!
- Harvard research suggests "diversity" can be negative
- UK-Israel academic boycott mess
- Romantic rabbits cause flight delays in Milan
- Jogging is an un-French, right-wing activity!
- A silly song about doping at the scandal-ridden Tour de France
- I want an iPhone!
- Rubber ducky armada invades England
- Irony alert: China censors British defender of . . . China
- Cambridge University Press and the suppression of books
- (see versus Yale University Press)
- Guitarist of Rock Band "Queen" Finishes Astronomy PhD
- Endangered Gummy Bears
- University rankings worldwide
- Hong Kong's 9-year-old university student
- The coolest statistics you'll ever see
- China's scandal of price-fixing noodles
- A tale of 2 campus speakers: Larry Summers versus Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
- A professor's final lecture
- Does affirmative action hurt minorities in law school?
- Sputnik's 50-year anniversary -- how Sputnik changed the world
- UK restaurant serves Peking-duck-style squirrel pancakes
- Berlin's museum of broken relationships
December
- Cloned Korean cats that glow in the dark
- Why is Harvard so expensive?
- World Bank: Chinese economy is 40% smaller than previously thought
- R.O.U.S.'s in Indonesia
- The war on cupcakes
- Some idiot thinks medieval English people were healthier than modern Brits
- The eye-poppingly bad Hello Kitty Christmas tree
- Japan's defense minister worries about Godzilla
- Egypt copyrights the pyramids
- "Beijingoism"
That was the year that was!
No comments:
Post a Comment