Geek Culture is offering assemble-it-yourself snowglobe kits. One of the several scenes available is the Bill Gates snowglobe. The floating bits are gold coins and green bills! Link -via Gizmodo

Neatorama has posted several stories about animals that produce fluorescent proteins after gene splicing. Now South Korean scientists have produced cloned cats that produce RFP (Red Fluorescent Protein). The cats glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet rays! Three such cats were cloned, and two of the Turkish Angoras have survived to adulthood. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071212210021.3u7d8gpx&show_article=1%E2%84%91=large -via Metafilter

(YouTube link)
The Lindsay Lights in Thornhill, Ontario have been drawing crowds since 2002. Over 80,000 lights, most of them LEDs, blink to musical sequences that are broadcast on FM radio. The lights go on every night at 5PM through January 5th. The Lindsays and their lights have raised over $42,000 for local charities! Link to story. Link to website. -Thanks, Jerrold!

Earlier we posted the most Bizarre Christmas Albums, but those were real albums. Worth1000 has a collection of even worse cases, since they come from the imaginations of the submitters! Link -via J-Walk Blog

Tacky Christmas Yards collects and critiques photographs of homes decorated with Christmas lights. “Violations” include mixing themes, lawn characters of different sizes, unharmonious arrangements, multiple Clauses, and overdone lighting. Several houses in my town would put these to shame, especially the few that put Santa on the roof of the nativity stable. Link -via the Presurfer

(YouTube link)

STS-122 The space shuttle Atlantis will not launch until the new year.
A fuel tank glitch forced mission controllers to delay the launch.
And, fuel sensors weren't the only problem.
The shuttle was also attacked by a giant spider.

I can’t wait to see the comments on this one.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2007 is w00t. The term is the winner of the annual online poll conducted by the dictionary publisher.

Merriam-Webster's president, John Morse, said "w00t" was an ideal choice because it blends whimsy and new technology.

"It shows a really interesting thing that's going on in language. It's a term that's arrived only because we're now communicating electronically with each other," Morse said.

Gamers commonly substitute numbers and symbols for the letters they resemble, Morse says, creating what they call "l33t speak" that's "leet" when spoken, short for "elite" to the rest of the world.

Such recognition usually spells the end of the coolness factor for a slang term. The winner of the 2006 poll was “truthiness”. Link -via Fark

(YouTube link)
This delightful clip from The Muppet Show features Loretta Lyn (who had four children by the time she was 17 years old) doing her 1971 hit "One’s On The Way". I taught this song to my children to help them remember that Topeka is the capital of Kansas. -via Metafilter

Alexis Lemaire is a human calculator. He broke his own record for mental computing at the Science Museum in London by finding the 13th root of a 200-digit random number in 70.2 seconds.

Jane Wess, curator of mathematics at the London Science Museum said: "He sat down and it was all very quiet - and all of a sudden he amazingly just cracked it.

"It's quite remarkable to see it happen. A very small number of people have this extraordinary ability.

"I believe that it is the highest sum calculated mentally."

Link -via J-Walk Blog

Someday soon, you may be able to buy clothing made of spiderwebs!

Researchers at Shinshu University have succeeded in injecting spider genes into silkworms to create a thread that is stronger, softer and more durable than conventional silk. A Japanese manufacturer is already experimenting with the thread, and spider socks, stockings and even fishing lines are expected to appear on the market within a few years.

The possible applications of spider thread go beyond clothing. The material is biodegradable, and could replace synthetics used in such diverse items as tennis rackets, body armor, and medical sutures. Link -via Arbroath

Man, oh man! With all the great facts you guys provided, we had a doozy of a time picking the winners. For the holiday movie/music trivia fact, we narrowed it down to our two favorites: the submissions on It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story. When it came down to it, though, we had to give the decision to Kate Hansen for submitting this great fact:

When the movie A Christmas Story was being cast, Jack Nicholson was given the script and was very much interested in the role of Mr. Parker, “The Old Man”, according to director, Bob Clark. However, Clark didn’t learn of this until later, and the studio didn’t want to pay Nicholson’s fee anyway, which would have doubled the budget. Regardless, Clark says that Darren McGavin was still the better choice and was born to play the role.

And for the plant-themed day, Thomas surprised us with this great trivia nugget:

The vast majority of our breathable oxygen comes from oceanic plants and single-celled plantlike protists. Only about 20 percent comes from terrestrial plants.

We had our fact-checkers look into it and most sources say between 20 and 30 percent so we'll give him credit (and a shirt) for that one. Kate and Thomas, 2 great mental_floss T's will be coming your way. And thank you to everyone else for sharing your smarts with us. Don't forget, Neatorama readers can use the discount code "Neatorama" when you order from mentalfloss.com to get 10% off anything at our store.

(Live Leak link)
The long-eared jerboa has been caught on film in the Gobi desert for what scientists believe is the first time ever. The tiny nocturnal mammal is on the IUCN endangered species list. Link -via Arbroath

(YouTube link)

Cello trio Melo-M and the Liepaja Symphony Orchestra (of Latvia) perform Europe’s The Final Countdown. -via I-Am-Bored

(image credit: Flickr user petrst)
deputydog found some really impressive fire station designs from all over the world, and posted his seven favorites. I am partial to the Hill Street Fire Station in Singapore, in the photo above. http://deputy-dog.com/2007/12/06/7-of-the-coolest-fire-stations-on-earth/