Screaming Penguin

It is that time. Time for people to make lists of shit. Shit they liked or didn't like this year. Shit they aren't going to actually do next year (though I would love to see a reporter ask Bush what his NY resolutions are, since admitting he has one would require admission of imperfection). Anyway, let us see what people are saying about 2k5: MIT Tech Review has this list of Top 5 infotech stories of the year. The short version is

1. Muni-WiFi
2. Silicon photonics and optical switching
3. Web 2.0 *rolleyes*
4. Search
5. Feeds

The Beeb has their list of 100 things we didn't know last year. Couple of favs:

18. If all the Smarties eaten in one year were laid end to end it would equal almost 63,380 miles, more than two-and-a-half times around the Earth's equator. [ed: Always hated the things myself. SweeTarts r0xx0r] 19. The = sign was invented by 16th Century Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing "is equal to" in his equations. He chose the two lines because "noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle". [ed: Did you know the word Algegra comes from al Ajabr, the Arab who invented long division? Learded that myself this year.] 41. Tactically, the best Monopoly properties to buy are the orange ones: Vine Street, Marlborough Street and Bow Street. [ed: Always suspected it was the Maroon ones, myself] 54. Deep Throat is reportedly the most profitable film ever. It was made for $25,000 (£13,700) and has grossed more than $600m.

New Sci Space gives us This year in the Solar System. Cassini Huygens did a mans work. Deep Impact showed us that life might indeed be a product of comet impacts. Bad TV was immortalized in Xena and Gabrielle. Apophis looks like it won't kills us all in 2029, but maybe 5 years later. Pluto has a bunch of space crap around it. A string of stuff broke down, including Japan's solar sail project (for those of you keeping score at home, that is a launch failure, not a design failure.) Google continues to remind us that the internet is used for useless shit Your Top 10 Google News searches:

1. Ms. Jackson if you're nasty... It would seem we are.
2. Hurricane Katrina
3. Tsunami
4. Xbox 360
5. Brad Pitt (and presumably who is is fucking today)
6. Michael Jackson (see above)
7. American Idol (people still give a shit?)
8. Britney Spears (see above)
9. Angelina Jolie (I'm guessing this isn't about world hunger)
10. Harry Potter (Satan worshipper)

K5 hits us with the Assholes of the Year. Mother Nature tops the list (see 2 and 3 above) with a backing band of Judy (WMD AND a Martyr) Miller, Tom "You don't know... I DO!" Cruise, whoever inflicted the Natalee Holloway shit upon us, "The Culture of Life", Brownie, Harriet Myers, the hippies, Marguerite "God Warrior" Perrin, the Minutemen, Sony "Teabag a mime" Corp., Big Oil, and Time's (Do you believe this shit?) Co-Person of the Year... Bono. Bookslut Jessica Crispin, brings us What your list says about you...

If you share more than ten books on the New York Times Notable Books of the Year list . . . . . . then you, too, have been bought out by corporate interests. With almost no books from small presses, only a handful of books by women, a whole lot of books by their own writers, and almost every single book published by one division of Random House or another, the New York Times Notable Books of the Year is quite possibly the most predictable best-of list put out every year. If you include a book written by a former blogger . . . . . . then you must be a blogger, too. Several books by former bloggers were released this year, and not a single one of them worked as a book. There are talented writers in the blog world, but the translation from blog to book has not quite worked out yet. The most disappointing example was Julie & Julia, based on the "Julie/Julia Project," one woman's quest to cook her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking. When you're reading a blog, asides about friends' love lives and apartment troubles are understandable and occasionally interesting. In a book, it feels wildly unedited and unformed. It reads, therefore, like a blog. One you just paid $25 for. If you did not include at least one graphic novel . . . . . . your reading must be stunted. This year saw the publication of three not just-solid but approaching-genius comic books: Epileptic, by David B.; Black Hole, by Charles Burns; and Ice Haven, by Daniel Clowes. While memoirs like Sean Wilsey's Oh the Glory of It All are actually being treated like they were real books in these end-of-the-year lists, Epileptic, a beautiful, superbly written and illustrated, can't-throw-enough-adjectives-at-it memoir about growing up in a family desperate to save their eldest son from epilepsy, is being left out. Same with Ice Haven, a wonderfully structured story that starts with the Leopold and Loeb murder and ends in a small town with dueling poets laureate. If the only women on your list are Mary Gaitskill and Joan Didion . . . . . . or perhaps a token mention of Zadie Smith, whose On Beauty is not as good as everyone says it is, you need to be reprogrammed. This year, a survey was released saying men do not read books by women, especially not fiction. That, I suppose, explains why books like A.L. Kennedy's Paradise, Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl and Maureen McHugh's Mothers and Other Monsters have gotten almost no love. When books like Ian McEwan's Saturday keep popping up on these best-of lists, it makes you wonder what a girl has to do beyond writing a stunning book. But once again, only the books by the legend (Didion), the pretty girl (Smith) and—wait—Mary Gaitskill are actually really good. Someone must have fucked up there when they let her get through.

Wired brings us the Best/Worst Punditry... obviously it is about tech because Michelle Malkin doesn't get the asswhipping she so richly deserves. Speaking of deserves, they manage to give perennial IT know-nothing John Dvorak credit for...

But Apple's decision to end an 11-year partnership with IBM wasn't the only bombshell. The other surprise: Apple's move marked one of the few memorable occasions in which a technology pundit's prediction came true. Back in early 2003, tech columnist and prognosticator John Dvorak first predicted that Apple would announce a switch to Intel chips within 18 months. While off by a few months, the forecast otherwise came to fruition just as Dvorak detailed.

Ok.. He hands down beat me on that, but even a millennial clock... Finally, Time's TV critic brings us the Top 10 TV shows. I have to admit, I don't watch enough TV to have even SEEN a lot of the shows on the list. However, Huff isn't on there, so he can't bee 100% right. However, I couldn't agree more with the #1 slot...

Battlestar Galactica Most of you probably think this entry has got to be a joke. The rest of you have actually watched the show. Adapted from a cheesy '70s Star Wars clone of the same name, Galactica (returning in January) is a ripping sci-fi allegory of the war on terror, complete with religious fundamentalists (here, genocidal robots called Cylons), sleeper cells, civil-liberties crackdowns and even a prisoner-torture scandal. The basic-cable budget sometimes shows in the production, but the writing and performances are first-class, especially Edward James Olmos as the noble but authoritarian commander in charge of saving the last remnants of humanity. Laugh if you want, but this story of enemies within is dead serious, and seriously good.