Tag Archives: 2014 In Review

Via the Associated Press: An atmospheric image of a gay couple in Russia by Danish photographer Mads Nissen was crowned the World Press Photo of the Year 2014 on Thursday. The intimate image of Jon and Alex is part of a larger project by Nissen called “Homophobia in Russia” that highlights how life is increasingly difficult for sexual minorities in …

Via the Washington Post: It is official: According to both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the year 2014 was the hottest ever measured, based on records going back to the year 1880. It now surpasses all past scorchers, including 1998, 2005, and 2010. Indeed, except for 1998, says NASA, the 10 hottest years recorded have all occurred …

Via World Net Daily: Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has been a prolific conservative legislator despite strong resistance from establishment Republicans, including leaders of her own party, and despite the considerable challenge of passing legislation without cooperation from an obstructionist Senate controlled by Democrats. And, despite an outgoing personality and political boldness demonstrated by her willingness to go in front of …

Montreal-based PornHub has compiled their traffic stats for 2014 and created numerous infographics. They report over 78 billion videos views for 2014, which comes out to 11 videos for every person on the planet. The top search term for both the United States and the United Kingdom: lesbian. Hit the link for much more. Alexa ranks PornHub at #73 in …

Via Right Wing Watch: Congratulations to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has won this year’s Equine Posterior Achievement Award, People For the American Way’s annual prize for the country’s most extreme right-wing politician. Cruz won by a 21-point margin in a poll of PFAW members and Right Wing Watch readers, repeating his 2013 victory, when he beat out the likes …

Yet another eventful year has come and gone for this here website thingy, which hit the decade mark back in April. In 2014 we saw about 28 million pageviews on about 7000 posts on which you crazy kids left over a million comments. As I mention in this post every year, blogging is like a homework assignment that is never …

“The year 2014 in America saw an unprecedented overreach by the judiciary, with federal judges – contemptuous or at least dismissive of the people’s clearly-expressed will – striking down as ‘unconstitutional’ popular state ballot measures preserving the age-old definition of marriage as between husband and wife. Only an ‘evolving Constitution’ could countenance so-called rights and ‘marriage based on sexual deviancy. …

For the second year in a row, my favorite track of the year is by out and openly HIV+ singer/songwriter John Grant, whose collaboration with Hercules & Love Affair spawned a gorgeous modern dance video interpretation of Grant’s tale of coming out positive to a lover. Culled from my Spotify playlists, here’s my top ten for 2014. 1. John Grant …

Via Reuters: The U.S. population is seen at 320.09 million people as of Jan. 1, up 0.73 percent from a year earlier, the Census Bureau said on Monday. The Census Bureau said in a statement that the figure represents an increase of about 11.35 million people, or 3.67 percent, since the last population count on April 1, 2010. “In January …

Via the National Journal: Don’t doubt the influence of Matt Drudge. According to Quantcast, the Drudge Report sees a steady stream of more than 2 million unique visitors daily. For publishers, the distribution power of the Drudge Report—just like other content streams such as Facebook and Twitter—is hard to write off as trivial. Those 2 million daily visitors are sent …

3.8M views for this year’s news bloopers.

Via the Salt Lake Tribune: These six people put their names to the lawsuit challenging Amendment 3. They stood up, stood together and helped history along. Through 2014, they rode the legal roller coaster — to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Shelby’s ruling, and onto the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a stay on the ruling. …

Embiggen the above map from Freedom To Marry and marvel at this year’s progress. As seen in the graphic below, even more action is coming early in 2015.

(Via Towleroad)

People For The American Way and its affiliate Right Wing Watch invite your votes for the 2014 Equine Posterior Achievement Award. We can think of oh-so-many write-in candidates: Brian Brown, Scott Lively, Porno Pete, Mat Staver, Matt Barber, Tony Perkins, Josh Duggar, Linda Harvey, Phylis Schlafly, Monica Cole, Christopher Doyle, Franklin Graham, Austin Ruse, and on and on and on. …

1.3M views on the first day.

(Tipped by JMG reader Daddy Ray)

Via the Associated Press: A nation, a workplace, an ethnicity, a passion, an outsized personality. The people who comprise these things, who fawn or rail against them, are behind Merriam-Webster’s 2014 word of the year: culture. The word joins Oxford Dictionaries’ “vape,” a darling of the e-cigarette movement, and “exposure,” declared the year’s winner at Dictionary.com during a time of …