2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 36,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 4 days for that many people to see it.

 

In 2010, there were 3142 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 3150 posts.

The busiest day of the year was December 3rd with 1,092 views. The most popular post that day was Surely the six best Leslie Nielsen lines | 24 Frames | Los Angeles Times.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were mail.yahoo.com, en.wordpress.com, facebook.com, blogs.ajc.com, and alphainventions.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for best leslie nielsen lines, nadia macri, patrick schwarzenegger, cordoba, and cartoon bed.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Surely the six best Leslie Nielsen lines | 24 Frames | Los Angeles Times December 2010
1 comment

2

Kanye West NUDE PHOTOS Being Shopped? Alleged Penis Pics Surface October 2010

3

This is obviously Arnold Schwarzenegger’s shirtless son October 2010
1 comment

4

Just in Case! How to Build Your Own Bedbug Detector at Home – TIME September 2010

5

Snyder vs. Phelps at the Supreme Court: a 1st Amendment test – latimes.com October 2010

Leslie Nielsen dies at 84; serious actor became a comic star – latimes.com

The Canada native, who seemed perfectly cast as a handsome leading man when he came to Hollywood in the 1950s, had career-changing roles in the ‘Airplane!‘ and ‘Naked Gun‘ comedies.

Leslie Nielsen, who starred in multiple spoof movies including “Wrongfully Accused,” has died. He was 84. (Doug Curran / The Associated Press)

Leslie Nielsen, a serious actor who became a comic star with his career-changing roles in “Airplane!” and the “Naked Gun” comedies, died Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 84.

Nielson died of complications from pneumonia at a hospital near his home, surrounded by his wife, Barbaree, and friends, his agent, John S. Kelly, said in a statement.

In “Airplane!,” the 1980 send-up of just about every disaster movie plot imaginable, Nielsen as Dr. Rumack was “an essentially serious actor taking essentially preposterous material very straight,” wrote Times Arts Editor Charles Champlin in his review.

Just how preposterous was it?

As the crew and passengers became ill, Nielsen said they needed to get the sick to a hospital.

“A hospital? What is it?” a flight attendant asked.

Nielsen: “It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now.”

And when Nielsen was told, “Surely you can’t be serious,” he answered: “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley.”

Nielsen followed up “Airplane!” with another goofy role delivered with deadpan conviction as Frank Drebin in the “Police Squad!” television show and “Naked Gun” movies.

It was quite a career shift for an actor who seemed perfectly cast as a handsome leading man when he came to Hollywood in the 1950s, already a veteran of live television appearances.

A typically serious early role was as the spaceship commander in “Forbidden Planet, ” the 1956 science-fiction classic. “It’s the reason I was never asked to do ‘Star Trek’ or ‘Twilight Zone’ for TV,” he told the Toronto Star in 2002. “I carried too much baggage with me from that movie.”

Nielsen played Debbie Reynolds‘ sweetheart in the 1957 film “Tammy and the Bachelor,” was the Revolutionary War fighter Francis Marion in the Disney TV adventure series “The Swamp Fox” and had roles in such TV series as “The New Breed” and “Bracken’s World.”

“I just always worked,” he said. “I played a lot of leaders, autocratic sorts. Perhaps it was my Canadian accent.”

Nielsen also was captain of the doomed ocean liner in the 1972 disaster movie “The Poseidon Adventure.”

All the while he “was a closet comedian,” he told The Times in 1991.

Then “Airplane!” changed his career.

Producers-directors-writers Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker hired Nielsen and other veteran actors Robert Stack, Peter Graves and Lloyd Bridges, all perfectly cast to spoof their own heroic and very serious images.

“I will be forever grateful to them,” Nielsen told The Times in 1991. “It is just an amazing roll of the dice. I am so lucky to be a representative of their humor.”

Nielsen then was cast in “Police Squad!,” which aimed to do to cop shows what “Airplane!” did to disaster movies.

It lasted all of six episodes on ABC, but Nielsen moved on as Drebin to the 1988 movie “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!,” with George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson and Priscilla Presley among his co-stars. Its success led to two sequels.

“Leslie has the idea to play it maybe not straight but deadly serious,” David Zucker told the L.A. Daily News in 1994. “You can take any one performance and just transfer it from a comedy to a drama. There’s just no difference — that’s what he can do.”

Nielsen was born Feb. 11, 1926, in Regina, Saskatchewan. His father was a Royal Canadian mounted police officer and one of his brothers became a deputy prime minister of Canada.

He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force after graduating from high school and after the service studied at a Toronto radio school operated by Lorne Greene — who would become a TV star with the series “Bonanza”— before moving to New York to start working in television.

Nielsen’s later movies included “All I Want for Christmas” in 1991, “Dracula: Dead and Loving It” in 1995, “Spy Hard” in 1996 and “Mr. Magoo” in 1997.

He also toured with his one-man show on the life of defense lawyer Clarence Darrow.

Nielsen had two daughters and was married three times previously, according to the Associated Press. A complete list of survivors was not available.

Leslie Nielsen dies at 84; serious actor became a comic star – latimes.com.

EGYPT: Doubts about fairness and competitiveness of elections | Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times

With elections for the lower house of parliament scheduled for Nov. 28 and for the presidency in 2011, Egyptian officials are emphasizing that the country does not need international observers. Its elections, they say, will proceed according to well-established laws and constitutional precepts.

Unfortunately, these statements don’t reflect the country’s history: one with rigged and often violent elections. In fact, Egyptians’ trust in formal politics — never great — has deteriorated to the point that several opposition parties will boycott the elections, and many members of participating parties do not want to legitimize the existing system.

Assuming no international observers are present, how can Egyptians and outsiders tell how fair the elections are in the end? One important signal will be whether the Higher Electoral Commission extends credentials to the approximately 14,000 Egyptian civil society activists seeking to monitor them. In June elections for the small upper house of parliament, the commission gave credentials to only a small percentage of monitors at the eleventh hour, and then failed to instruct poll workers to let them in.

Other factors — including violence — also raise doubts about how fair and competitive the elections will be. In the past, the Ministry of Interior has surrounded certain polling places — where a prominent pro-government candidate faced a strong opposition competitor — with security cordons, leading to violence as voters attempted to get in. In addition, voters, monitors and journalists have been intimidated and physically assaulted by thugs supporting specific candidates while police looked away.

New measures targeting Egypt‘s largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, present another concern. In 2005, the Brotherhood’s members campaigned openly, using the slogan “Islam is the solution,” and contesting almost one-third of the parliamentary seats. Now the government has outlawed its slogan, police are rounding up its supporters, and the electoral commission has denied registration to one-quarter of its proposed candidates.

The government, meanwhile, has registered all of the hopefuls of co-opted or weak secular opposition parties. This presents the ruling National Democratic Party with a dilemma: It needs to win at least two-thirds of the parliament, but it also wants to create the image of real competition. With the Brotherhood on the run and more credible secular parties — such as the liberal Ghad and Democratic Front parties — staging a boycott, a strong electoral showing by captive or weakened parties such as the Tagammu and the Wafd would be a sure sign of electoral meddling.

Media coverage is emerging as another major issue, given the government’s recent measures, such as requiring official clearance before satellite television channels can report live from anywhere in Egypt and before cellphone providers can send aggregate text messages to their users, a technique the opposition relies on to mobilize supporters. Initial reports by Egyptian non-governmental organizations also indicate a clear bias in media coverage toward the NDP and its candidates.

Perhaps the most interesting outcome this weekend will be the U.S. reaction to Egypt’s elections. Washington tried unsuccessfully to persuade President Hosni Mubarak to accept international monitors and to lift the state of emergency under which Egypt has been ruled for three decades. Although Mubarak — age 82 and ailing — continues to stonewall these efforts, they have real value for the U.S. administration. Not only does the Egyptian public follow President Obama’s statements closely, but Mubarak’s successor — whoever he will be — undoubtedly does as well, as he gauges whether external actors support citizens’ demands for democratic change and to what extent he must accommodate them.

EGYPT: Doubts about fairness and competitiveness of elections | Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times.

Related Articles

• On eve of Egypt polls, Mubarak’s ruling party tightens grip on opposition – Christian Science Monitor (news.google.com)

Airport pat-downs strike a nerve – USATODAY.com

he Washington Times, in an editorial: “The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has crossed the line (by) subjecting millions of Americans to X-rated X-ray scans and public groping sessions. … No matter how invasive TSA searches become, there’s no guarantee anything the agency does will prevent a terrorist attack. A balance must be struck between reasonable security measures and the maintenance of a free society. These decisions cannot be made by Obama administration officials without involving the public in the discussions. Many Tea Party candidates standing for election earlier this month promised they were going to ‘take our country back.’ Stopping TSA would be a good first step.”

Los Angeles Times, in an editorial: “We’re not wild about the new methods, but they’re a necessary evil in the era of suicide bombers who board planes with chemical explosives in their underwear. … There’s no bright line to indicate where our quest for security becomes intolerably invasive of our privacy, but we’re still pretty sure the TSA hasn’t yet crossed it. Although the pat-downs are … embarrassing, they’re also usually voluntary — to avoid them, you just have to go through the scanner. And fears about the scanners have been overblown. … The new scans might not be foolproof, but they’ll spot more dangerous materials than the old detectors and keep passengers safer. If you can’t handle such a minor inconvenience, perhaps you should stay on the ground.”

K.T. McFarland, analyst, on Fox News: “Why don’t we start profiling for terrorists and stop trying to put everyone from toddlers to granny through the same security procedures at airports? We’re wasting money, time and the people’s patience in an effort to be politically correct. In the end, it’s not keeping us any safer; if anything, it’s making us less safe since it’s diverting resources that could otherwise be used on better intelligence gathering, or developing screening devices for cargo on commercial and civilian aircraft, or checking containers before they enter U.S. ports. Ultimately, though, the debate over whether to use the new scanners or not isn’t a choice between privacy and security — because we’re not getting security where we need it — we’re reacting to the last type of terrorist threat, not the current one or the next one.”

The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, in an editorial: “Clearly, in light of all the misgivings, the message about the body scanners was not disseminated effectively enough to make a dent or even an impression on many people who fly. The Department of Homeland Security and TSA should make it their immediate mission to do so. … Certainly there are legitimate health questions for those — such as pilots and flight attendants — who might face the scanners every day, and those questions should be answered. But those who fly occasionally should acknowledge the new layer of security is a sign of the times, even if they don’t welcome their roles in the ‘Invasion of the Body Scanners.’ “

The Christian Science Monitor, in an editorial: “Privacy issues, of course, should always be of concern. Congress is right to ask TSA to keep looking for ways to reduce invasive screening. … Intrusive screening is indeed a challenge to social norms — but then terrorism is an even bigger and abnormal challenge to society. Airline security is thus a shared responsibility, one that requires all citizens and the government to work together as threats change, as new screening technology emerges, and as more fliers see that their own sacrifice at checkpoints can help all fliers feel safe — and be safe.”

Airport pat-downs strike a nerve – USATODAY.com.

The Fab One: Susan Boyle now as successful as the Beatles | Music | The Guardian

Less than two years ago she was, as the Los Angeles Times rather indelicately put it, “just another 47-year-old Scottish virgin”, a wild-haired eccentric whose biggest audience to date had been the congregation of her parish church.

Fast forward 19 months and Susan Boyle has been watched at least 400 million times on YouTube, appeared on Oprah and even sung for the pope (sort of: he made a break for the popemobile before she really got going at Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park this September).

To that list of achievements we can now add being as popular as the Beatles. Unlike numerous overhyped musicians over the years, Boyle has never claimed to want to be as big as McCartney and co – she fancied herself as the new Elaine Page.

But she has managed it anyway, by having the No 1 album in the US and UK at the same time for the second time in a year. Only the Monkees and the Beatles have managed the same feat, in 1967 and 1969 respectively. Boyle is the first ever woman to do it, her record company, Sony, said.

Her album The Gift reached No 1 in the UK on Sunday, and took the top spot across the Atlantic today. It comes after her debut album I Dreamed a Dream achieved the same success following its release last year.

Reacting to the news, Boyle said: “I’ve never felt happier in all my life. This is an amazing result and one I never expected.”

Boyle was catapulted from obscurity to global stardom after appearing on last year’s Britain’s Got Talent contest. The singer, from Blackburn in West Lothian, became an international star after her performance of I Dreamed a Dream from the musical Les Misérables stunned the audience and judges on the ITV1 show.

Britain’s Got Talent judge Simon Cowell said: “I’m thrilled for Susan. She has once again defied the odds. She is my superwoman.”

The star – who still lives with her cat, Pebbles, in Blackburn – suffered a series of problems as she buckled under the pressure of becoming a worldwide phenomenon. But it didn’t hurt record sales. In 2009 I Dreamed a Dream became the fastest-selling debut album in the history of the charts and – with more than 10m copies sold – the biggest-selling album in the world in the last year.

Boyle’s reign at the top of the UK album charts will be brief, however. Take That’s new album, Progress, came out on Monday and, after selling 235,000 copies on the day of release, seems certain to topple her from the top spot.

The Fab One: Susan Boyle now as successful as the Beatles | Music | The Guardian.