I don’t really feel that sense of the end of something, and of something new beginning that we’re meant to feel at the start of a new year. I haven’t gone through any reflecting, and sizing up of 2005, because I don’t feel that usual sense of demarcation that the holiday season typically generates–I just feel each day as part of a continuum.
However, that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy looking at the year through other people’s eyes.
For example, Harper’s has their lovely Coles’ Note version of 2005 up on the web. Here’s a little bit of it:
Terrorists in London set off bombs on three trains and a bus, killing 52 people; President Bush condemned attacks on innocent folks by those with evil in their hearts. A 13-year-old boy in Kalamazoo accidentally burned down the family meth lab. New Orleans flooded after levees broke in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; many evacuees were not allowed to take their pets with them. “Snowball!” cried a little boy after police took away his dog. “Snowball!” At least 42,000 people died in an earthquake in Pakistan. It was announced that Cookie Monster would cut back on cookies. Authorities in Malaysia arrested 58 people who worship a giant teapot. Poor people rioted in France.
You’ve got to love the stream-of-consciousness, concise flow, and the way that the juxtaposition of elements of differing gravitas makes for comedy.
More seriously, and more indepth, is Gwynne Dyer‘s annual “Year-Ender” for 2005. Dyer’s write-up takes some time to get through–it’s only 3300 words, but it’s very dense with information– but it’s worth the effort. It paints a more globally focused picture than we normally get in the North American media.
Here’s an extract from the write-up:
The other potentially epochal event in the region was the opening of talks for Turkey’s membership in the European Union on 3 October. It may be a decade or more before these talks conclude, but if they are successful, they will begin heal a wound that has divided the old classical world around the Mediterranean ever since half of it fell under Muslim rule a millennium ago. Despite the setback to the EU in late May and early June, when France and the Netherlands voted against a new European constitution, thus dooming that project for the foreseeable future, the larger project of European unification continues. In the view of some idealists on both sides of the historic divide, it even begins to morph into a project for the reconstruction of the broader, older civilisation from which both Islam and “Christendom” are descended.
Developments elsewhere in the region were less dramatic. There were Egyptian elections in the autumn that brought the country perhaps ten percent closer to genuine democracy, but with no guarantee that it will ever cover the rest of the distance. In Iran’s presidential election in June, over half the population refused to vote for the heavily vetted list of candidates presented to it by the conservative religious authorities, and a simplistic nationalist and religious radical, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, managed to win the presidency with the votes of just one-third of the electors. The death in August of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd changed nothing, since his brother and heir Abdullah has already been running the kingdom ever since Fahd’s stroke ten years ago. The assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri in February (probably by Syrian intelligence operatives) triggered a non-violent democratic movement in Lebanon and forced a Syrian military withdrawal from the country, but the elections in May-June just restored the old Lebanese system of alliances and coalitions between different confessional groups. And then there was Iraq…
His notes on China and on the Middle East in particular, are very interesting.
Much less seriously, but rather a lot more amusingly, you can look at 2005 through the lens of Retrocrush‘s list of THE 100 Most Annoying Things Of 2005.
There are quite a few things on here that are pretty high on my personal annoyance list, as well, like Ann Coulter, or Fred “Wow, am I going to just stone cold cock-punch this guy if I ever meet him” Phelps, or:
74 NICK AND JESSICA
1,000 years from now, archaeologists will look at our news publications and figure that this celebrity duo must have been king and queen of the world. Why anyone is interested in these empty headed no-talent morons is a mystery to all mankind. I’m against The Patriot Act, but I’d be willing to sacrifice our civil liberties a bit to permit the government to put anyone who ever bought a Jessica Simpson record on a special island and do some bomb testing. Not only would you collectively increase the nation’s IQ, but you’d stick it to Wal-Mart by getting rid of 80% of their customer base.
or
18 TOM DELAY
I thought politicians this corrupt only existed in Dick Tracy comic strips.
Just for the record, though, I’ve got no beef with Dave Chappelle, Wikipedia (actually, I love Wikipedia), Cedric The Entertainer, or the people described by #13.
