In no particular order, the best essays of last year:
Roger Ebert – Win Ben Stein’s mind
Charles Murray – For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time
Benjamin Powell – Japan
Timothy Carney – T. Boone Pickens wants your water
Timothy Carney – Windmill Owner wants subsidies
Michael Lewis – The End of Wall Streets Boom
Bob Murphy – Why Aren’t the Fed Injections Leading to Massive Price Inflation?
Bob Murphy – The Importance of Capital Theory
Peter Klein – Price Gouging – the latest victims
Robert Higgs – The Fed versus the Bank: Who Will Blink First?
Robert Higgs – Buck Higgs Coming Closer to Becoming a Bank
Andy Kessler – Internet Wrecking Ball
John Tierney – Let the Games be Doped
Michael Shermer – The Mind of the Market
Bloggers keeping up the good fight:
John Carney both at DealBreaker and ClusterStock
Declan McCullagh both at CNet and CBS
Richard Bennett – both at Navel of the Internet and The Register
Warren Meyer – Coyote Blog
Richard Vedder – CCAP
Mike Masnick – TechDirt
Best submitters:
Robin Tovson and DJC. Keep sending the stuff my way
Best comic:
XKCD – Duty Calls
Best action movie:
Ironman. Because Downey Jr., is funny, dapper and uses a computer semi-realistically. The Bat couldn’t conceivably link all the cell phones the way he did in an echo patter.
Best baseline hip hop song:
4 Minutes – Madonna and Timberlake
Best video from The Onion:
Should the Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?
Best Wikipedia entries I haven’t linked to:
Islamic Golden Age :: European colonization of the Americas :: Extrasolar planet :: Ming Dynasty :: PT extinction event
Best blast from the past:
Wired’s spring piece on Air Hostesses of Yesteryear — and you wonder why every guy likes flying Thai Air.
Least favorite blog that you have to still read:
BoingBoing
You should know better:
Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble for advocating a CTO, your common-sense cards have been revoked.
Fizzle:
Chris Anderson’s Petabyte theory fell apart when all the quant firms fell apart on Wallstreet.
Hardest hyperlink workers:
Jason Ditz and Jeremy Sapienza of AWC for reading more news than you knew existed.