Category Archive: 2010

Jan 01

2010 Year-end Review

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2010, Wreckollection

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The Chinese called it the Year of the Tiger. The United Nations dubbed 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity.  It was also celebrated as the International Year of the Nurse. It was the year that the Flintstones turned 50.  Hallmark greeting cards turned 100 years old.  2010 also marked the 100th anniversary of:

  • The Royal Canadian Navy
  • Black & Decker
  • The motion picture stuntman when a man jumps into the Hudson river from a burning balloon;
  • The North American Monster movie genre when Edison Studios produced the first film version of Frankenstein;
  • The Vatican’s oath against modernism (any interpretation of the Bible focusing on the text itself, but ignoring what the Church Fathers had traditionally taught about it).

As I remember all the news that was news, 2010 proved that mother nature was better equipped to take care of herself than person-kind (I blame the women too) is of taking care of itself.  My “grounds” for this observation are based on “grounded” airlines and a whole lot of under-“ground” movements that shook (Earthquakes in Haiti & Chile), swallowed (sinkholes in Canada & Mexico) and threw up (33 miners in Chile) people of the world.

 

Notwithstanding my understanding of the outstanding impact that the above-mentioned events stood for,  I am nevertheless going to dub 2010 my International Year of the Nerd Herd.  Yes, it was the year that herds of nerds lined up to buy iPads and see a movie about a nerd who created web sites designed to herd more nerds (who we shall refer to as the masses) into virtual holding pens where they could be properly labeled and appreciated by their adoring (albeit artificial) ‘friends’ and ‘frenemies.’

But I am getting ahead of myself.  Brace yourselves everyone for another ground-breaking (and sometimes shaky) run through the events of the year as I recall them.

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Jan 01

Story of the Year for 2010

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2010, Wreckollection

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“China scores a TKO in Tokyo”

The Japanese seized the crew of a Chinese fishing boat that rammed two Japanese coast guard vessels on Sept 7.  The dispute escalated but although Japan appeared willing to challenge the brunt of China’s military might, they quickly backed down when they realized that,  when it came to the actual fight,  China meant “business.”  When China rolled out its weapons of mass production and threatened to cut off their supply of dysprosium, the Japanese surrendered outright. Dysprosium is the lifeblood of Japan’s vaunted high-tech industries.  It is used in everything from iPhone screens to the electric motor of the Toyota Prius. China produces 93 per cent of the world’s supply.  Although no shots were fired and no-one got hurt, I think we can safely score this one a Technical Knock Out in favour of the Chinese (and for Japan a technical knockout is tantamount to failure of the most heinous proportion).   More details (a.k.a. the facts) are available here.

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Jan 01

Sleeper Story of the Year 2010

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2010, Wreckollection

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I “herd” it, but I am not sure I believe what I “herd” (but apparently everyone else does).

Time Magazine names Mark Zuckerberg their “Person of the Year” for his role in convincing the world that it’s okay to flock to a virtual zoo cage where you can mill about with unseen (and often unknown) friends and “frenemies” while mulling over your likes and dislikes while “others” watch and tweak your needs and perceptions to their benefit.   In a related story, Time Magazine (and just about every other publication) calls the Apple iPad, that new gadget that has everyone who already has a desktop computer, laptop computer, iPod, eReader, smart-phone and dumb-head herding their wallets down to the local lineup in order to place an order for the opportunity to perhaps buy one in hopes that it might be delivered before it becomes obsolete when the next best apple iNeed for the iNeedy comes along.

 

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Jan 01

Innovation of the Year 2010

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2010, Wreckollection

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The AquaPro Holland Groasis Waterboxx

The Groasis Waterboxx is an irrigation-free plant incubator that is designed to make the world’s arid and semi-arid lands fertile again. It’s nothing more than an exceptionally well-designed bucket. Place the tub around a freshly planted seedling, and fill the evaporation-proof basin—just once—with four gallons of water. The Waterboxx does the rest. At night, its top cools faster than the air, collecting condensation to supplement those initial gallons. The tub drips about three tablespoons of water a day into the soil, sustaining the plant while encouraging its roots to grow deeper in search of more water. Once the plant reaches the moist soil layer, usually after a year, the farmer lifts the box off the plant and reuses it on the next sapling. Each Waterboxx is expected to last 10 years, and, for about a buck or two per tree grown, is cheap enough to use in poor nations.  In tests in the Sahara, 88 percent of Waterboxx-sheltered trees survived, versus 10 percent of trees with traditional cultivation.

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Jan 01

Re-run of the Year

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2010, Wreckollection

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The Final Solution – Part 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion)

Step aside Mr. Sagan, the Universe with just billions and billions of stars is suddenly finite, if not a rural backwater when compared to the Trillions and Trillions of bailout packages that are being wheeled out to shore up the continued collapse of sundry institutions and/or economies.  Just when we thought that only the U.S. Economy could deep six the currencies of the G-8 we learn that that slippery slope can also be greased by… Greece.  A proposed trillion dollar bailout should suffice to get their house in order.  Elsewhere in Europe, we hear yet another country saying, “Irish we had a trillion too.”

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Jan 01

Statistic of the Year 2010

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2010, Wreckollection

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In 2009, when millionaires were lining up at the welfare office (oops) Capitol Hill begging other millionaires for bailout packages (at the expense of their struggling taxpayers), the number of millionaires in the United States actually grew by 16%.  But wait, there’s more! The total worth of the members of the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans rose to an estimated $1.37 trillion in 2010, up 8% from 2009.

 

Runners up:

In 2010 people watched more than 700 billion “YouTube” videos. Over 35 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

In 2009, health spending hit an all-time high of 11.9% of Canada’s gross domestic product. That’s $183.1 billion, $9.5 billion more than in 2008, or $5,452 per person.   Two-thirds of Canadians over 65 have five or more prescriptions.

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Jan 01

Movie of the Year 2010

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2010, Wreckollection

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Avatar a genre defining 3-D sci-fi of epic proportion.

 

Runners Up:  Zombieland, a survival guide for the apocalypse (and the  flood of other zombie movies and video-games that were destined to eat our brains over the past year).  RED (Retired & Extremely Dangerous) and From Paris with Love also provided fun for the whole family.

From the archive: Memento, a surprise thriller from some years ago that was perhaps the best (defined as most unique) movie I saw last  year.

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Jan 01

Creepiest (& Most Ominous) Commercial of the Year 2010

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2010, Wreckollection

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… goes to Sony PlayStation 3 for their invasive “to hell with subliminal seduction, let me get right in your face“ rendering of a Sony executive moving (or barging) in with a typical family to make fun of how hopelessly engrossed they have become in mindless video games at the expense of traditional family norms.  This is one part arrogance, one part a natural progression from reality television to reality television commercials; and all parts WRONG!!

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Jan 01

Song of the Year 2010

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2010, Wreckollection

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“Need You Now” by Lady Antebellum

 

Honorable Mention:  “Love the Way You Lie” by Eminem with Rihanna

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Jan 01

Book (and longest title) of the Year 2010

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2010, Wreckollection

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Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanche, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by Dale L. Walker

 

The story of a white boy captured and raised by the Comanche to become their most famous and feared war chief (and the last to surrender).  He would then become one of the most successful cattle ranchers in Texas.

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