Gabbro B-Sides

So I actually have multiple posts in the draft queue that will outshine this year’s entire output combined with their dazzlingly pure incomprehensibility pretentiousness wit and insight. But I’m just on the edge of sick, my head feels like one of those fluffy, dynamically unstable rings around Uranus*, I probably won’t finish any of ‘em until 2020. So. Best posts of the year:

• Prettiest: Travelogue: Icelandic Edition
• Most useful: Where Are All the Earth Science Bloggers? - though it could probably use another round of updating
• On bodily fluids: What I Hate About Menstruating, with The Joys of Nasal Irrigation a distant runner up.
• Funniest: Mr. Clean on the Path to Anti-Feminism
• The best Friday Rock Blogging was by Wolfangel - who can resist rock candy?
• Best celebrity visit was to Science Friday, Translated and Summarized
• Paragraph that most deserves a better post to be in, originally from Defining Feminism Redux:
  

  Feminism is also about the context surrounding people’s choices. Two beliefs pretty much all contemporary feminists have in common are that social, cultural, and economic contexts are really important, and that it’s improper to speak of someone’s “choice” as if its presence somehow absolves us all of our roles in creating those contexts. Many feminists, myself included, would characterize social pressure as a lesser cousin to forcible coercion, which doesn’t need to meet the same standards as the use of force but still ought not to be applied willy-nilly.

That just about covers it, I think. Happy New Year to all, and to all a good night!

*Implied poor-quality puns intended.