JWM: Best of 2007

Category: Random Observations Bin

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

As we get near the end of the year, I thought I’d go back and round up what I think are the best posts on this blog from 2007 for your reading pleasure.

And the winners aaaaare:

• "Surge": A Bad Idea by Any Name (January 10): "We can expect to hear bromides from the President tonight about how we all need to sacrifice, how the task is hard but worthy, and so on. But if actions speak louder than words, the President's cowardice is practically deafening."
• The Hidden Danger of Escalation (January 14): "War with Iran could mean losing all 150,000 troops we currently have committed in Iraq."
• How To Get a Free Credit Report That's Actually Free (February 28): "What they don't tell you (except in the fine print) is that FreeCreditReport.com's reports aren't actually free."
  
• How To Stop Getting Credit Card Offers in the Mail (March 4): "There's only one place you need to go to get off the lists of Experian, TransUnion, Equifax, and a couple of others too."
• Peter Jackson's 'King Kong' (April 25): "Jean-Luc Godard once famously observed that 'the history of cinema is boys photographing girls', and I'm hard pressed to think of a modern film that more vividly illustrates Godard's point than Jackson's Kong does."
• Bikes are Bullshit (May 7): "Yes. Apparently an 'entry-level' bike these days costs five hundred dollars. That's American dollars, too, Jack."
• “Coasting” is Also Bullshit (May 9): "Their big insight into why people don't ride bikes is that it's too hard to ride a bike. Which explains why you never see kids on bikes, right? 'Cuz it's too hard."
• “Bring a Change of Clothes With You to Work”? (June 24): "What struck me about the Alli page is that it acknowleges things that no Marketer would ever voluntarily acknowledge."
• Why I Don’t Write Much About Iraq Anymore (July 22): "None of the plans that I've heard floated strike me as having any realistic chance of keeping Iraq from sliding into chaos as we pull out."
  
• When I Hear “Web 2.0” I Reach for My Revolver (July 25): "We expect you to work 80 hour weeks without bitching about things like 'food' or 'rest' or 'pay'. You're a rock star! Rock stars don't worry about shit like that!"
  
• The Most Dangerous Weapon of Mass Destruction (August 15): "When the Soviet Union collapsed, a tidal wave of AK-47s that had been stored in Soviet armories was unleashed upon the world by cagey Russians out to make a buck."
  
• What Did You Expect, Exactly? (September 3): "Facebook is training an entire generation of users that it's a good idea to hand out your passwords to random Web sites."
  
• It's Not Just the M16 (December 18): "Why do we have so much trouble getting reliable weapons into the hands of our fighting men and women?"

If you want more highlights, check out the complete Best of Just Well Mixed Archive.