HNGN's writers weigh in on the biggest winners and losers of 2014 in entertainment, tech, science, sports, politics and more.
WORLD
Biggest Winner: Women
2014's biggest world winners are game-changing women who made history as civil rights and gender equality crusaders or made landmark career advances in traditionally male dominated fields.
In October, 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai (who is my "She-ro") made history by becoming the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor she may not have received had she given up on supporting women's education after being shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan at the age of 15. But she survived the shooting, went back to school - not to mention wrote a book - and launched a global campaign for girls' education.
The Church of England appointed Reverend Libby Lane as its first ever woman bishop in December, ending centuries of canon law that restricted the position to men. Another first woman position went to U.S. economist Janet Yellen, who became the first woman to serve as Chair of the Federal Reserve in February.
There's also Samantha Cristoforetti, Italy's first woman astronaut (who is still in space, by the way) and U.S. Lieutenant General Lori Robinson, who in January became the first woman to be in command of the Pacific Air Forces. Did I mention she's a four-star commander- the second ever in the Air Force.
In the immortal words of Beyoncé, "Who run the world? Girls!"
Biggest Loser: Vladimir Putin
2014's biggest world loser title goes to Russian President Vladimir Putin whose year was amounted to perpetual denial of Russia's meddling in Ukraine.
It all started in March when Putin annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula (to "protect" Russian citizens there), which plunged the West and Russia back into Cold War relations. Then all Hades broke loose and thousands were killed in clashes between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists – which Putin swore his people weren't supporting.
What did Russia gain besides a new peninsula? A tanking economy, thanks in part to a slew of economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the European Union in response to the debacle. Putin promised this week to save the economy but made it clear his actions had nothing to do with it tanking.
ENTERTAINMENT
Biggest Winner: Matthew McConaughey
Matthew McConaughey has made a career playing romantic leads opposite gorgeous actresses such as Jennifer Lopez ("The Wedding Planner") and Kate Hudson ("How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"). After a street of less successful romantic comedies, he changed course, taking roles in serious films like "The Lincoln Lawyer" and "Mud" ultimately ushering in a period of growth for him that has been dubbed the "McConaissance." The year culminated with critically-acclaimed roles on both the big and small screens.
His role in "Dallas Buyer's Club" earned him his first Oscar and Golden Globe awards. He played the electrician and hustler Ron Woodroof who worked around the healthcare system to secure medication for AIDS patients after being diagnosed with the disease himself.
McConaughey followed up that powerful role (and a memorable appearance in "The Wolf of Wall Street") in the HBO drama "True Detective" opposite pal Woody Harrelson. The two played Louisiana State homicide detectives on the hunt for a serial killer. The 45-year-old actor received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his part as Rust Cohle.
He also starred in some strange but introspective commercials for the new Lincoln MKC sports-utility vehicle. The ads spawned a slew of parody commercials from Ellen DeGeneres, Jim Carrey ("Saturday Night Live") and Comedy Central's "South Park".
Biggest Loser: Bill Cosby
The recent sexual assault allegations waged against the legendary comedian fly in the face of everything fans know and have loved about Cosby, the tough but lovable father on "The Cosby Show." But the allegations have become hard to ignore as more and more alleged victims step forward with new accusations.
Cosby escaped the first round of allegations nearly a decade ago by settling a civil lawsuit with accuser Andrea Constand, the former director of operations for Temple University's women's basketball team. In addition to Constand, 13 other women decided not to testify against "The Cosby Show" star.
But allegations resurfaced this year after comedian Hannibal Burress went on a tirade against Cosby during his stand-up act in Philadelphia on Oct. 16. The performance went viral online and led to almost two dozen women, so far, claiming Cosby raped them at some point in the last 50 years.
Cosby has kept relatively mum on the subject. He gave a brief interview to the New York Daily News, but ended the conversation short, claiming his team didn't want him "talking to the media." His wife Camille and daughter Evin have both come to his defense, and he received support early on from Whoopi Goldberg, Jill Scott and Ben Vereen but, so far, none of his former cast members has shown public support.
The backlash against the "Fat Albert" creator caused Netflix to shelf his comedy special "Bill Cosby 77", TV Land to pull reruns of "The Cosby Show", and NBC to cancel the project a Cosby had in development with the network. Venues have begun canceling planned performances and Spelman College dropped its endowed professor position named after Cosby, who had donated $20 million to the historically black college. He also resigned his position from the Temple University board of trustees.
The story continues to develop and Cosby's prospects for 2015 don't look much better.
TECH
Biggest Winner: Oculus VR
Virtual reality was among the many forms of technology to advance this year, especially Oculus VR.
Film was a big part of Oculus expanding its business, releasing the first 3D 360-degree documentary called "Zero Point," which tells the story of virtual reality's evolution, with VR studio Condition One in October, according to PC Magazine. Horror film "Banshee Chapter" also debuted this year as the first full-length movie designed for the Oculus Rift headset.
Oculus has been working with several companies to provide virtual experiences, such as Destination Columbia, which is testing the technology to let people go on virtual tours of different areas in Canada, ABC News reported. Runtastic joined in on the fun, recently launching workout programs for the headset so people can exercise in virtual settings and get in shape in the real world.
The future looks bright for Oculus, with CEO Iribe announcing in November that the company will continue to work on projects with Samsung just after the Korean tech giant released its own VR headset called Gear VR for $200. Iribe also announced some news that virtual reality fans will like to hear, which is that a consumer version of its headset will not be available in a matter of years, but a matter of months.
Biggest Loser: Uber
2014 was not a good year for Uber in its quest to grant the world an alternative to traditional taxis.
Most of the low points for the ride-sharing service took place overseas and lead to numerous bans. In one case, the company was forced to withdraw its services from the Indian capital New Delhi after one of its drivers allegedly raped a woman, according to The Verge. Other alleged incidents include a driver groping a female passenger's breast in Florida and claiming she was "asking" for it, and another driver in New York City telling a customer who cancelled her ride that she deserved her cancer. The driver also said she wasn't human.
Thailand and Spain joined in on Uber bans this year, with a Spainish judge arguing the company was using unauthorized drivers and Thailand's Department of Land Transportation arguing against the company's lack of licensed cars.
The San Francisco-based company faced trouble at home as well, shutting down its service in Nevada in November after a court issued a preliminary injunction due to decreased confidence in the cars' safety, CNET reported. Among the incidents used in the argument was the death of a 6-year-old girl who was hit and killed by an Uber driver in San Francisco on New Year's Eve.
Uber will need a massive change in the way it checks the driver backgrounds if it wants to regain international favor.
SCIENCE
Biggest Winner: The European Space Agency's Rosetta Mission
This year the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission made the first-ever soft landing on a comet after a decade-long journey through space.
"After more than 10 years travelling through space, we're now making the best ever scientific analysis of one of the oldest remnants of our Solar System," Alvaro Giménez, ESA's Director of Science and Robotic Exploration said in a news release.
The Philae lander touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Wednesday, Nov. 12, just after 11 a.m. EST. It has since detected water vapor that is very different from what is seen on Earth, fueling the debate on the origin of our oceans.
The key to understanding the origin of Earth's water is its "flavor," or proportion of deuterium (hydrogen with an additional neutron) to normal hydrogen. The findings suggest early water was most likely delivered to Earth via an asteroid, as opposed to a comet like this one.
Biggest Loser: Orbital Sciences' Catastrophic Rocket Launch
NASA has been reaching out to private companies such as Orbital Sciences to provide rockets for functions such as resupply missions to the International Space Station. This decision may have backfired when the unmanned Antares rocket exploded just after launch on Wallops Island, Virginia.
While nobody was hurt in the Tuesday, Oct. 28 catastrophe, 4,883 pounds of cargo such as: equipment, food and books for astronauts aboard the ISS, and material for experiments ranging from student-run to serious medical trials. The rocket and supplies that were destroyed in the explosion are believed to have been worth about $200 million, and following the disaster Orbital's stocks had dropped by more than 15 percent. The crash site is still closed for damage assessment.
The company plans to resume cargo flights to the ISS in late 2015 through 2016 in order to fulfill their commitment to NASA without imposing a cost increase.
"In the coming days and weeks ahead, we'll continue to assess the damage on the island and begin the process of moving forward to restore our space launch capabilities. There's no doubt in my mind that we will rebound stronger than ever," Bill Wrobel, Wallops director said in a news release.
Sports
Biggest Winner: San Antonio Spurs' Big Three
San Antonio's Big Three – veterans Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili – were the biggest winners in 2014 because they proved skeptics wrong, toppled an empire and shifted the NBA landscape.
If you listened to critics, the Spurs' Big Three were done three seasons ago. They were lambasted for their age, for being past their prime; during the 2013-14 season, they were called out for sitting out and not playing big minutes. Still, the Gregg Popovich-led veterans fought and battled alongside their teammates and reached the NBA finals for the second straight year. There, they completely dominated the Miami Heat and won the championship in five games.
While the win was of course significant for the Spurs franchise, it was even more significant for the NBA. San Antonio's win proved "team basketball" could still win, disproving the popular trend of "throw a bunch of megastars onto a team and win" trend that the Miami Heat made popular.
Duncan, Parker and Ginobili aren't superstars by themselves. But together – along with Popovich's blue-collar team of specialists and role players – toppled a dynasty-in-the-making. Their win even changed the landscape of the Eastern Conference, playing a part in LeBron James's decision to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers, a young team that will likely need at least a season to gel before becoming a title-contender.
Biggest Loser: Ray Rice and the NFL
Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was, without a doubt, the biggest loser in sports for 2014. We all know the story, and almost all of us have seen the gruesome video of Ricke knocking his wife out and then dragging her out of an elevator.
If you want to give Rice the benefit of the doubt, then it was a one-time incident. But even if it were, it shined a light on two bigger issues: the prevalence of domestic violence and the NFL's poorly written policy to discipline its players who commit such crimes.
The NFL likes to see itself as the Moral Police, but when Rice's videotaped incident blew up in the media, the league was ill equipped to handle it. They floundered when they could have taken a stand right from the start and set the tone for how professional sports organizations should handle such incidents, which are almost certainly under-reported to both police and the news media.
The league not only failed to handle the situation properly, they completely botched it. It became a "he said she said" media back-and-forth between Rice, the team, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Depending on which party you believe, the league gave Rice a small suspension as punishment – seemingly knowing exactly what he – and only changed it to an indefinite suspension in response to public outcry when the elevator video was made public.
Rice's indefinite suspension was ultimately overturned, and the league did go on to implement a harsher player conduct policy. But the damage was already done: Rice went from a star running back to a villain without a team and the NFL went from beloved to maligned almost overnight.
POLITICS
Biggest Winner: The GOP
In the run up to the critical mid-term Congressional elections, Democrat incumbents and challengers alike ran from Obama like he was infected with deadly Ebola. And when he crowed that his policies were, indeed, on the voting ballots across the nation, Democrat party spin and further distancing went into overdrive. None of it worked – the GOP won handily, continuing a states-level trend toward Republican governance and legislatures. Republicans held onto the House while making gains and also took the Senate, signaling a major rebuke of the president's scandal-plagued and debt-ridden failed policies.
Biggest Loser: The American People
Despite major opposition party gains, the American people – the "We" of "We the People" – are the biggest losers of 2014. The GOP leadership team of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, whom everyone is looking to for principled leadership, are just as lacking in leadership skills as Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Like that destructive Machiavellian trio, Boehner and McConnell have fought only to preserve their positions of power – even to the extent of trampling their own significant base.
Eight years of Bush's spending and overreach followed by six years of Obama's "fundamental transformation" coupled with even more spending and executive-branch overreach has ushered in a bleak post-constitution era. Unelected and unreachable bureaucrats churn out tens of thousands of pages of restrictive regulations per month (Taxation without representation, anyone?), while ambitious judges legislate their views from the bench and a stubborn president furthers his divisive ideology – in defiance of the constitution and the oath he twice swore to uphold – by deciding to enforce some laws while ignoring others. Even worse: "We the people" are buying it all – dividing ourselves on the basis of race, income and gender instead of uniting to oppose those who believe they are ruling "over us" instead of "by our permission" and within clearly enumerated limits.
Oulimata Ba, Emily Morgan, John Nassivera, Rebekah Marcarelli, Jordan Webb and Michael Q. Bullerdick contributed to this roundup.
