Top Lists of the Noughties

At this time of year, journalists and bloggers start choosing topics and applying superlatives to them. Not wanting to shirk my duties, I decided to choose the lists which I thought best defined the noughties.

10. Top Words

It is said we represent ourselves through language, so looking at the words most frequently used in the media perhaps gives some idea of what we were thinking or at least what journalists thought we were thinking. I notice that "santorum" is not on the list.

9. Top Bushisms

Articulateness, or lack there of, was a key feature of the president who presided over most of the decade. His malapropisms, misinformation and generally mangled speech gave progressives something to at least laugh at while they waited for Bush's presidency to end. It also provided a sort of desk top activism. Why march when you can just forward another of his gaffs?

8. Top Anti Terror Patents

Beneath that simple-mindedness, there was a darker current to the Bush years which can be summed up in the word paranoia. Not all of the these were patented in the noughties, but most were. My favourite is the "Passenger Control System During Flight" because it "monitors [a passenger's] body for signs of falsehood and evil'. Thank you to Matt Stott for this one.

7. Top Ten Scientific Breakthroughs

Just a reminder that the faculty of imagination was not totally in the hands of lunatics in this era.

6. Top 21 Great Albums with Questionable Covers (2000-2009)

It's not a list without entertainment and it's good to see the guys and girls at the A.V. Club coming up with something more original and timely, since the album and the album cover are predicted to be a thing of the past. I also chose it since I wrote something similar on this site many months ago.

5. Top Real People Deaths

The folks at the Darwin Awards didn't choose a specific list, but by looking at this page you can compile your own. Personally, this story had me both amused and perplexed.

4. Top Ten Superhero Deaths

The noughties were in some respects the decade of the geek. Superhero movies dominated the cinemas and the once socially maligned were now hip, and the hip desperately tried to prove that they were once socially maligned. While two wars raged in the Middle East, the world economy tanked and our environment edged closer to disaster, spare a thought for some of our mightiest and tightliest - dressed that is - who said adieu to the noughties.

3. The Decade's Lost Species

On a more sober note, here are the species we won't see again.

2. The Decade's Worst Predictions

As an Indian proverb goes, "There are only three things in life which are real, God, human folly and laughter." Now, I'm not so certain about the first, but I think this link will go some way to confirm for the second. As for the last, I hope this post has contributed.

1. The List of the Decade's List

Why stop at ten? This Jason Kottke is trying to compile them all. I wonder if my little list will make it. More importantly, should they include his own list in his list? Something to debate in the wee hours of New Year's Day 2010.