The list-making has begun. No, not gift wish lists—I mean those end of year lists of the top, best, or most important. In recent days there have been three new lists of notable women in tech. The Wall Street Journal published a list of The 50 Women to Watch 2008. While WSJ is focused on women in the business world, I found it interesting to scan this list for women whose businesses were high tech leaders. For example:

I spent my first 18 years in the northern suburbs of Chicago. My family was your average mild class Jewish clan clinging to the American dream; my grandparents worked in factories, as secretaries, and skilled construction. My parents were the first generation to obtain college degrees. Vacations as I knew them involved stuffing my parents, grandparents, sister, and me into our rusted blue sedan, then driving four hours to a resort in Michigan filled with elderly Jews and mold. World travel was not something I ever expected to do.

Loads of media types are already wondering aloud, what kind of parents the Obamas will be. For me, that question is sort of silly -- won't they continue to be the same kind of parents they've always been?

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the US, and in my post about it, I cited some alarming statistics. While it is horrifying that an average of one in six American women will be abused in her lifetime, it is even more outrageous that this rate doubles for women around the globe: 33% of women and girls are beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused, according to the United Nations Development Programme for Women (UNIFEM).

By the time dusk fell on the evening of November 4th, the GOP party looked at their Reaganite ideal of a "shining city on a hill" now dust under their feet. History was made, in more ways than one.

I am so glad that Michael Barone finally explained this all to me, because I really wasn't sure why I disliked Sarah Palin so much. Apparently, I just resented her for having had a baby that I - being a pro-choice zealot and all - would have aborted. Maybe if she'd been more willing to kill her baby, I would have liked her more. Because, you know, I just can't trust any woman who would pass up the opportunity to terminate a pregnancy. Terminating pregnancies is AWESOME.

A long time ago I was a Deputy County Clerk for the County of Los Angeles. Part of my job was to issue marriage licenses. I think that was the best part of the job. There were specific tasks I had to perform, questions to ask and I watched as the couple swore or affirmed what they said was the truth. Sometimes I looked at a couple and thought “For the love of humanity dude, run, do not marry this chick!” or maybe “Hell, they don’t need a license, they are already married in their hearts.”

Meet Maria Webster, aka ubergeeke, an engineering student, geek, and chronicler of what women in tech are doing at .51. She answered some questions for me to give the BlogHer readers an opportunity to learn more about this interesting woman. Q: I noticed your blog, .51, or dotFiveOne, when you first registered at BlogHer and have been following you ever since. Your blog's tagline is "Geekspace for Women." Tell us a little about your reasons for starting the blog.

Do television shows like "Sex and the City" and "Gossip Girl" encourage teen girls to get pregnant?  Well that's the finding of a Rand Health study published last week in the November issue of Pediatrics.  According to a New York Daily news article by Jane H. Furse about the study: Rand Corp. behavioral scientist Anita Chandra found teens who watched the sexiest shows were twice as likely to become pregnant over the next three years as those who watched few such programs.

Miriam Makeba, the South African singer and vocal critic of apartheid, died last night after performing in Italy. She was 76 years old. After she left for a tour in 1960, the South African government revoked her passport, forcing her into exile for over 30 years. In those years, Ms. Makeba lived in United States, France, Guinea and Belgium, and served as a constant reminder and voice to the outside world of the struggles for justice, freedom, and equality for black South Africans.

 I was going to talk about the rather chilly racial climate in Toronto post-presidential election, but this piece caught my eye. Sex columnist Dan Savage opined over the demise of Proposition 8 in California -and guess who is accused of its downfall?

Although the title of this post sounds like the sort of theme that Playboy occasionally runs (except that Playboy calls their models "girls," which grosses me out because we shouldn't see pictures of naked female children, but I digress), the women of mainstream media's op-ed pages really helped me get through the last year of the election. To be fair, just as we legitimately complain that women are grossly underrepresented in elected office, it is equally true that we are woefully represented on the op-ed pages.