2010 in Review: Favorite Posts

What can be more narcissistic than reading a year of one's own posts?  I don't know, but writing about a year of one's own blog posts may count.  I went through my last year of pondering and spewing and came up with these as some of my faves for a variety of reasons.

• I admit the mistakes many folks make when writing about Afghanistan and how guilty I am of the various mistakes.
• How to be a Military Dictatorship--powerpoint can be used for good or evil.
• Manners in the academic world;  I could sure use some.
• Re-casting Gilligan's Island: Just to prove my pop culture cred.
• Republican Homophobe Outing of the Year; aren't we do for another one?
• Writers on Writing;
• Powerpoint debate;
• Thinking about Stephen Hawking's take on aliens;
• Trust Me, I Have a Beard;
• April was a time for posts about Obama and Realism, spawned by an article by a journalist I used to know.  Gave me a nice chance to spew about people getting IR theory wrong.
• Hoverboards, baby!
• Tactical Nuclear penguin--best name for a beer!
• I was right about one thing this past year, but it was pretty obvious: where to split the last HP book for the two movies.
• Generation Text;
• How to give a high five; 
• Google and your soul;
• Forget the Karate Kid remake and watch these instead;
• Don't Use Jesus as Crazy Glue--best example of friend passing on a link just to trigger a rant;
• Worst theme parks;
• I am pretty happy about this comparison between the Republican Party and the Greater Romania Party;
• I really enjoy Wayne Norman's blog on sports, as they inspire me to think about ultimate from new perspectives;
• Star Wars meets Baseball;
• Best Pizza/Zombie ad;
• More IR theory with the limits of realism;
• My take on intermarriage;
• Zombie Survival Guide;
• The title says it all: Taking Shots at the Tea Party;
• The Quality of Education is not always related to size of school;
• My rant about people wanting to make announcements in my big lecture class;
• I love it when theory meets reality: that the Taliban has some serious principal-agent problemos.
• The trend of xtranormal.com videos about profs dis-illusioning undergrads about becoming profs.
• What do we know in IR?  At least ten things;
• When you say you are the something of something, it means you are not the anything of anything--one of my most popular posts, based on the number of hits it received.
• One of my friends tweeted that now that DADT is repealed, the US military should get over its refusual to put women into combat.  Well, as this post suggests, the future may already be here, thanks to the sexism inherent in Afghan culture.
• SecDef Gates on wikileaks;
• Jesus Made Me Fumble;
• I enjoy de-mything the Afghan war;
• How to be a good pop culture parent;
• Is Stephen Harper a Weenie gets my vote for most immature title for a blog post;
• Most positive negative political ad;
• Favorite graphic;
• Duck and Cover was right?!;
• Marveling at the procrastinators in my big class;
• Posting videos from the Zurich airport;

As I reviewed the posts, I realized that I had several recurring themes: concussions, education in English in Quebec, the academic job market, confirmation bias, Lost, Mad Men, Zombies as always, DADT, and corruption in Afghanistan and the Karzai challenge.  With the end of Lost and the repeal of DADT, it is very likely that my blogging volume will decline.

One last list: Lowlights of the year.

• Ending up on a conspiracy theory radio program.

Ok, only one item--it was a pretty good year: Australia, New Zealand, Copenhagen, Zurich, Konstanz, plus talks in the US and Canada. My daughter is skiing really well and her ultimate is now pretty good.  If only we could get a couple of hoverboards ....