Best Blog Posts of 2008?

Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Steven Johnson is the author of six books, most recently The Invention Of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth Of America, for which he is currently on book tour. He's also the co-founder of the hyperlocal community site outside.in.

I have the distinct honor of editing this year's edition of Best Of Technology Writing, which has in past years featured many BoingBoing regulars. We're putting together the final submissions, and while we have a great supply of magazine writing to choose from, the blogosphere pile seems a little thin to me. So I thought it might be a nice end-of-year exercise for all of us to think back on the blog posts from 2008 that most intrigued and inspired us. Slightly longer posts will be more likely to make it into the collection, but who knows -- perhaps there's a particularly momentous tweet that deserves a place in the 2009 book. Obviously, posts that originated here at BoingBoing will have a special place in my heart. So feel free to share amongst yourselves in the threads below: what was the most memorable blog post you read last year? Surely, some of you remember last year...?

• [musicman]

  +1 for Mark’s efforts in psychedelic exploration that is “untitled” as mentioned by AFO@17. boingboing goes 4chan-esque, the happy mutants respond superlatively.

• [Anonymous]

  The Street as Platform
  Of White Whales & Dark Energies
  How Soil Types Determined the 2008 Election in the Deep South
  Repaired Data Drives Restoring the Moon
  They Told You Not to Reply
  How to Buy Your Own Missile Silo
  Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
  Comment: Outside is Overrated
  The Great Unbundling
  Heavy Load-Exerting Concrete Body
  Talking to Pirates

• [montauk]

  It probably doesn’t count because it’s a vlog post, but Shamus Young’s piece on how video games inadvertently punish new beginners (such as myself) has meant a lot to me. I’m sure he could supply a transcript.

  http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2048

• [robulus]

  Phoenix’s final twitter from Mars.

  http://twitter.com/Marsphoenix

• [Steven Johnson]

  Well, for my selfish purposes, I’m interested in technology-themed posts, but I’m loving all the suggestions so no reason not to have this thread open to recommended posts on all topics…

• [Paul Charteris]

  You probably already have this one – but the hole found in the Internet article via Wired Magazine was great…

  http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-12/ff_kaminsky?currentPage=all

• [Anonymous]

  Clearly, it’s Kermit/Bale.
  http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/27350111.html

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Kermit/Bale is, in and of itself, justification for the existence of the internet.

• [Anonymous]

  Oh, this is easy. Here it is:

  http://fyngyrz.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/on-privacy/

  That post utterly destroys the government’s 4th amendment shenanigans, provides a framework for understanding privacy, manages to be funny and absolutely correct all at the same time.

• [travelina]

  the story about India’s superhighway:
  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/16/indias-superhighway.html

  the photo of a sailfish attacking a school of sardines: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/08/21/underwater-photos-of.html

  the video of the man jumping on eggs without breaking them:
  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/08/14/man-jumps-on-eggs-wi.html

  the story about the largest ghost mall in the world:
  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/15/south-china-mall-the.html

  the fake bus stop that keeps Alzheimers patients from escaping:
  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/05/fake-bus-stop-keeps.html

  the nudibranch glamour shots: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/14/enchanting-nudibrach.html

  the 1955 “My LIfe in Forbidden Lhasa”: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/21/my-life-in-forbidden.html

  the strange Polish postcards prank:
  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/21/outcomes-from-the-st.html

  biomimetics: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/10/national-geographic-2.html

  Japanese design solutions to ugly barcodes:
  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/04/japanese-creative-pa.html

  China’s instant cities:
  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/03/chinas-instant-citie.html

  map clothing art:
  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/01/map-clothing-art.html

  plastic bag animal sculptures on subway gratings:
  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/31/plastic-bag-animal-s.html

  Aussie comedy duo explain subprime meltdown:
  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/20/aussie-comedy-duo-ex.html

  John Stanmeyer’s photo feature on malaria:
  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/20/aussie-comedy-duo-ex.html

  the guy who overdubbed his own atrocious guitar playing over Clapton concert: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/20/aussie-comedy-duo-ex.html

  L. Ron Hubbard plagiarized Scientology: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/27/l-ron-hubbard-plagia.html

  man busted for installing DIY crosswalk:
  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/02/man-busted-for-insta.html

• [Marcelo]

  The guy who used Twitter to free his Egyptian driver from prison should get some sort of mention. It’s a great story unique to 2008.

• [acipolone]

  If it doesn’t have to be technology-related, this one still has me laughing.

  http://somehedgehog.livejournal.com/245807.html

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  Moderator note

  If you’re newish or anonymous, I recommend one URL per comment to avoid getting sucked into the spam filter.

• [Patrick Dodds]

  The comments thread on the post ^upstairs deserves a mention.

• [arkizzle]

  Seconding Joel’s GTA4 love note.

• [afo]

  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/24/untitled-1.html

• [odannyboy]

  “I have seen the future of urban life” by Adam Greenfield

• [rayven]

  @17: Damn, AFO beat me to it. LOL
  It may not be the best, but it sure was most memorable.

• [Steven Johnson]

  I’ll start things off myself — I loved this post from Clay last month. Probably too short to include in the book, but it just cracks me up every time I read it:

  http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/08/the-newspaper-indust.html

• [TheChickenAndTheRice]

  Boingboing’s current guest blogger Steven Johnson is the author of six books, most recently The Invention Of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth Of America, for which he is currently on book tour. He’s also the co-founder of the hyperlocal community site outside.in.

• [jknight]

  Best, by far: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2008/06/12/fox-news-would-like-to-take-a-moment-to-remind-you-that-the-obamas-are-as-black-as-satans-festering-baby-eating-soul/

• [Takuan]

  ooooooh, toughie…..

• [ridl]

  For Techie writing? Something from Infomercia, please.

• [Anonymous]

  Since we have kids, follow a lot of our friends family blogs, and this is our favorite of the past year. It so well sums up what having a toddler around is like.

  http://maguiremadness-katharine.blogspot.com/2008/09/monday-monday.html

• [arkizzle]

  AFO and Rayven FTW!

  I didn’t even think of it :)

• [mdh]

  I think the first twitter sent out by a fetal-monitor belt was probably more momentous than it first appeared. At the very least it’s the youngest blogger?

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  Are these only supposed to be for technology writing?

• [Halazoon]

  Two posts that really got me thinking that are at least partially technology-related were:

  The Steffen piece on the ‘Outquisition’:
  http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008208.html

  And, if it counts as a blog post, ‘The Last Viridian Note’:
  http://craphound.com/lastviridian.txt

  Both of which I discovered via BB.

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  Grand Theft Auto IV thoughts by our own Joel Johnson. Never before has shooting people in the face seemed so romantic.

• [Trevor Stone]

  Adventuring Party Politics: The Campaign Gets Ugly

  Tracking the original down took a while. Seems every D&D fan with a blog reposted the whole thing without proper attribution.

• [deantak]

  I’d like to submit my own six-part story on the history of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 defects, which resulted in a $1.1 billion write-off. Our story chronicled the inside story that no one knew.

  http://venturebeat.com/2008/09/05/xbox-360-defects-an-inside-history-of-microsofts-video-game-console-woes/