2005

in POP:
- Art (Friedlander, German Pop Art, The Disco-style lighting of Brooklyn Borough Hall)
- Books (Benjamin Kunkel, Jay McInerney, Tony Judt)
- Concerts (Neil Diamond, Doves, Lady Sovereign)
- Food (360, Fred, Taku)
- Movies (Match Point, Murderball, Syriana)

and POLITICS:
- Northeastern US (Nine states voluntarily adapting the Kyoto Protocol)
- Pennsylvania (Putting a lid on the Intelligent Design farce)
- Roger Toussaint (Bringing back the working class hero)
- Les Banlieues (Rocking the boat)
- South America (Electing governments which actually represent the interests of their citizens)

in POP:
- Records (I don’t think I kept a single album that came out in 2005. Ok, a few - D'Nell, Doves, Jamiroquai)
- Geriatric Sex (Jagger's gyrating, Madonna’s cameltoe, the depictions of teenage lust in recent works by the elderly like Larry Clark, John Irving and Tom Wolfe)
- Apple (Reducing everything to content and content to palmsize crap)

and POLITICS:
- The US (Guantanamo, Katrina, NSA)
- Germany (Gerhard Schröder pimping German pacifism to his mass-murdering autocrat buddy Putin)
- China (Two massive ecological desasters in six weeks? )