Favorite Posts of 2009
My best pieces this year. If I write an outstanding post in the next three days, I’ll cheat and add it to this list later.
Top Five
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Why being offended is a starting point for examination, not an argument in itself. I’m proud of this piece because it expressed reasonably well something that had been going around in my head for quite some time. 03 Aug 2009.
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Language, ‘sexting’, bullying, agency, and cultural toxicity. I’m proud of this essay because, again, it expressed well what I thought on the subject matter. 03 Dec 2009.
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How the movie’s treatment of violence removes significant complexity from the narrative. I’m proud of this because it’s a good piece of criticism. 10 Mar 2009.
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Poetry about running. I’m proud of this because it captures that run quite well. 03 Sep 2009.
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Tennis-based, but really about the larger controversy. I’m proud of it because it’s a strong refutation of arguments I saw around the net and disagreed with. 11 Dec 2009.
Honorable Mention
A bunch of good stuff that I couldn’t quite put in the top five. In chronological order:
- Some Thoughts on Racism and Science Fiction/Fantasy 13 Mar 2009.
- My Take on Twitter 08 May 2009.
- I Think I Think, Therefore I Think I Am Sun 10 May 2009.
- Wimbledon, Women’s Tennis, and Sexism 30 Jun 2009.
- Considering Carnivorism 20 Jul 2009.
- An Instructive Example of CIA Wiretap Use 21 Jul 2009.
- Don’t Watch Taken 10 Aug 2009.
- NCAA Ethics Violation: Bagels with Cream Cheese 21 Aug 2009.
- Yankee Stadium and What’s Wrong with America 09 Oct 2009.
- A Photo From Yosemite 27 Oct 2009.
- How Do Magic Weapons Work? 16 Nov 2009
Special Interest
These posts are good, but perhaps somewhat narrowly focused.
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I like this a lot and think it’s a shame that most of my non-gamer readers won’t appreciate it; on the other hand, I understand that it’s rather long (especially for a “sketch”). 09 Mar 2009.
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I like to think that this captures something of what was a great match (and a tremendous achievement). 05 Jul 2009.
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Because it is, and I didn’t see this point made anywhere else. 27 Nov 2009.
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I strongly urge anyone who deals with text frequently to consider make a similar move. I wish I’d done it years ago. 12 Jul 2009.
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Useful to anyone trying to get away from Word/RTF, and something of a milestone for my personal document handling. 24 Sep 2009.
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My Related Posts plugin for WordPress is a good addition to any WP blog using tagging. 01 Feb 2009.
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A handy script for anyone using Subversion. 02 Aug 2009.
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Useful for anyone using both reST and WordPress, and a good example of the kind of thing made easier by a format like reStructuredText. 28 Jul 2009.
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Tricks I like in Python. 01 Oct 2009 and 21 Dec 2009.
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I care about word count, so I did it properly myself. 19 Jul 2009.