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A little something to play while you kiss your sweetie, celebrate with friends, and drink a toast to the year ahead. Those of you who aren’t in the U.S. Eastern time zone, you can play this video at whatever time you find appropriate. May the new year be your best yet! -via Buzzfeed
Teddy gets all festive for New Year’s Eve. He’s happy and talkative, as long as he’s got his corn! This porcupine now has his own Facebook page. Link -via Buzzfeed
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A lonely cosmonaut has a very strange New Year celebration in this holiday animation by Anton Korolyuk and Artem Bizyaev. -via the Presurfer
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These images aren’t of pop culture statues being erected to spruce up city street corners in Ecuador, they’re giant effigies known as “años viejos”, many of which feature fan fav characters, that are burned to celebrate the coming of the new year.
Ricardo Bohorquez has taken some amazing pics of the effigies being built, many with people in the frame to show their massive scale, and I only wish there was a part 2 to this article showing them all going up in flames!
Link –via ComicsAlliance
Artist and musician Rhe De Ville had recorded a danceable update to her joyful holiday anthem “Happy New Year” for 2012, with a new video, too! Of course, the original is nice, too. -Thanks, Rhe!
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There are always tons of articles featuring the year in the review at the end of December, but for those of you who like to recall events in true geek style, don’t miss this great gallery featuring major 2011 events in Legos.
Link Via Geeks Are Sexy
Comments Off The Ein Prat Fountainheads welcome the High Holidays with a joyful adaptation of Shakira’s World Cup song “Waka Waka”. The lyrics are at the YouTube link. Dip your apple in the honey! Happy Rosh Hashanah! -via The Daily Beast
Hear New Year greetings in languages used all over the world. WojtekNYC assembled this with help from friends at Columbia University and the International House. If you can contribute any translation as to what was said, please leave them in the comments. -via The High Definite
Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #1584 by ApeLad
Happy New Year 2011, Neatoramanauts! I hope 2011 continue to bring you health, success, and happiness!
It's been a while since our pal Adam "ApeLad" Koford started drawing Pip and Kitteh, the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, and I'm happy to report that the series is still going on strong! If you haven't taken a look in a while, it's definitely worth a (regular) re-visit: Link
(YouTube link)
It’s already 2011 in Australia. They know how to celebrate Down Under! -via The Daily What
Of course you know about the big ball of crystal in New York City that drops in Times Square to ring in the New Year, but there are plenty of other cities and towns that took that tradition and made it their own. You’ll find peaches, ‘possums, and Peeps dropping as well. A Peep? Yes, in Pennsylvania.
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania’s New Year’s Eve tradition is fairly young, just like the 25 lb. illuminated Fiberglas baby Peep they’ve been lowering from a crane since 2005. If a Peep seems more in keeping with Easter, keep in mind that Just Born Inc., the company that makes the confection, is headquartered in Bethlehem and is one of the city’s major employers outside of the health care industry. A freshly-emerged baby chick is certainly a happier and more optimistic symbol of all things new than, say, a papier-mâché aspirin.
Read about a half dozen non-Times Square New Year drops at mental_floss. Link
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One of our New Year traditions is to kiss someone at midnight. No pressure there, right? A kiss is a great way to start out a new year on a high note, and there is a biological basis for the urge. A kiss works toward three things: sex, romantic love, and bonding.
Humans have evolved to use a number of signals – including taste, smell and possibly silent chemical messengers called pheromones – to help us figure out whether someone is a suitable partner and a good person to reproduce with. A kiss means getting close to someone – close enough to suss out important clues about chemistry and genetics. At this range, our noses can detect valuable information about another person’s health and perhaps even his or her DNA. Biologist Claus Wedekind has found, for instance, that women are most attracted to the scents of men with a different set of genetic coding for immunity than their own. This is probably because when there is greater genetic diversity between parents in this area, their children will have more versatile immune systems.
Sheril Kirshenbaum, who wrote the book The Science of Kissing, tells us how great kisses kick start our chemicals and hormones, and how a kiss’ effects on our brains and bodies promote relationships. Link -via The Intersection
Minnesotastan found this 1944 photograph titled “Alter Silvester in Urnäsch” at FOTOGRAFÍA and did some investigating. Silvester means New Years Eve, so the child is not asking for treats on Halloween, as one might assume. Commenters helped fill in the blanks.
To specify further: technically the boy’s not carrying a cow bell but a trychel (Treichel in German, Treichle in Swiss German). Wikipedia puts the difference thus: “As opposed to regular cast metal bells, trychlen are made of hammered sheet metal. This results in a less clean, clanking sound, but at the same time results in a bell that is less heavy and thus easier to carry”.
What are little kids doing wearing masks and carrying cow bells on New Years Eve? Find out at TYWKIWDBI. Link
(Image credit: Hans Peter Klauser)
The Big Picture has photographs from all over the world illustrating the different ways people celebrate the new year. Yes, there are plenty of fireworks, but also bonfires, skits, costumes, swimming, praying, gunfire, and other customs. This picture was taken in Bhopal, India. Link -via the Presurfer
(image credit: REUTERS/Raj Patidar)
The people at "Twenty Not Two Thousand" are worried that because people said "two thousand and nine," this habit may carry over for the present year.
Don’t let it happen! It’s easily the most inefficient way to say the name of the year.
Say the year “1810″ out loud. Now say the year “1999″ out loud. See a pattern? It’s been easier, faster, and shorter to say years this way for every decade (except for the one that just ended) instead of saying the number the long way. However, many people are carrying the way they said years from last decade over to this decade as a bad habit. If we don’t fix this now, we’ll be stuck saying years the long way for the next 89 years. Don’t let that happen!
Link – via mentalfloss
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by nmiller.
From all of us at Neatorama, we hope 2010 will bring good luck, good health, and happiness to all of you (or simply a better year if 2009 wasn’t that nice to you).
We’ve got a lot of neat things planned for 2010, so stay tuned. Have a safe and happy New Year!
On December 31st, we will see the second full moon of the month, or the 13th full moon of the year. These rare occasions are called a blue moon, as in “once in a blue moon”. But that’s not the only thing special about New Year’s Eve this year. There will also be a partial lunar eclipse on the 31st (visible in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia)!
Only a very small portion of the Moon’s southern limb will be in the Earth’s umbral shadow, but there will be a noticeable darkening visible over the Moon’s face at the point of greatest eclipse. Need more? Then know this eclipse is the one of four lunar eclipses in a short-lived series. The lunar year series repeats after 12 lunations or 354 days. Afterwards it will begin shifting back about 10 days in sequential years. Because of the date change, the Earth’s shadow will be about 11 degrees west in sequential events.
For the eclipse, the duration of the partial phase will last within two seconds of a hour long, while the penumbral duration from beginning to end will run about four hours and eleven minutes. Penumbral contact will begin at 17:17:08 UT and umbral contact at 18:52:43 UT. The moment of greatest depth of shadow will occur at 19:22:39 UT, 31 December 2009.
Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
(image credit: Kostian Iftica)
Tariq Griffin’s twin boys are special. Not only because they’re twins, but because they’re twins born on different days, months, and years!
Twin brother Tarrance was born a bit earlier — 26 minutes to be exact.
Tarrance Kyle Griffin Jr. was born at 11:51 p.m. Wednesday, followed by Tariq Lamont Griffin at 12:17 a.m. Thursday.
That means the boys have the unique distinction of having been born on different days, months and years.
Link – Thanks Tiffany!
Back on December 24, 1968 the crew of the Apollo 8 space mission were to make history for two things. They were the first human beings to circle another celestial body in space and they were also to take one of the most iconic pictures of the Earth rising behind the Moon on Christmas Eve which can be seen here on the post Alex had put up: The First Earthrise. Here you’ll hear them wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Peace to everyone.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and any other holidays out there! Have a Happy New Year!
via – Wired
If you’ve woken up after a wild New Year’s Eve party with a nasty hangover, Angela Epstein of the Daily Mail has written this handy guide on (some strange) ways to minimize the symptoms and cure the headache, nausea and body aches:
RUB YOUR ARMPITS WITH LEMON
Puerto Ricans apparently swear by this holistic cure. The lemon juice supposedly stops you sweating and so helps you retain fluid and prevent the dehydration that contributes to hangover headaches. [...]
SNACK ON A BANANA
Bananas contain a lot of potassium, a mineral lost when we drink alcohol and a lack of which contributes to the dehydration symptoms of hangover, says Tom MacDonald, professor of immunology at Bart’s and The London School of Medicine.
Bananas are also a source of carbohydrates and eating one will raise blood sugar levels and so stave off nausea.
