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Go skiing with a parasail down Mt. Superior in Utah! A helmetcam puts you in the action. I watched with my thoughts bouncing between "This is awesome!" and "This is where I get caught on a tree and crack my head open." -via reddit

Look! Even Bobba Fett is in the Christmas spirit, with a wrapped gift ready for Jabba the Hutt! This strange Christmas figurine also comes in a snow globe version. It's part of a collection of 20 Geeky Christmas Decorations To Nerd Up Your Holidays at Oddee. Link

Illustrator Christoph Neimann made a holiday post out of what appears to be cookie dough! There's plenty of whimsy, sprinkles, and visual puns in the many panels at his New York Times blog. Link -via reddit

A recent meme is to mix up science fiction universes to provoke an indignant response from science fiction geeks. A quote from a movie, TV show, book, or video game will do, but make sure it's mis-attributed and laid over a picture that has nothing to do with the quote or the attribution! See 32 examples at Geekosystem. Link

They do things differently in Abu Dhabi. The Christmas tree gracing the atrium at the Emirates Palace Hotel is decked with real gold and precious gems.

The hotel's general manager, Hans Olbertz, was quoted in local newspapers Thursday as saying the 43-foot (13-meter) faux fir has 131 ornaments that include gold and precious stones such as diamonds and sapphires.

Olbertz told Dubai's Gulf News that he worked with one of the jewelers in the hotel to create a "unique tree and experience for our guests this year." The hotel may later contact Guinness World Records for a possible bid as the world's most expensive Christmas tree.

No, most people in Abu Dhabi do not celebrate Christmas, but why let that little detail get in the way of going for a Guinness record? http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=132108567 -via J-Walk Blog

All of us at Neatorama are excited about the New Car Giveaway this Tuesday in collaboration with mental_floss and resila.com. To help you prepare, David Israel posted a series of tutorials on QR codes which will be used in the contest: QR Codes, More About QR Codes, and QR Codes as Art. Even those who can't be in New York City for the giveaway will learn a lot about the new technology. David will have more information about the giveaway coming up Monday!

We started off the week with a real treat last Sunday. A successful viral video turned out to be a side effect of a holiday greeting Brian Kidd made for Neatorama! The result was Merry Christmas from the Unipiper!

Other holiday offerings included The Santa Chronicles from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

And Jill Harness took us on a holiday tour with Christmas Celebrations Around the World.

From the Museum of Possibilities, we got a look at different incarnations of The Yucksack.

Does the color red make a bull angry? The Annals of Improbable Research did some mythbusting in the article Red: Bull.

Does Rubbing a Boo-Boo Really Make It Better? (and Other Questions about Pain in the Brain) were answered by our friends at mental_floss magazine.

Over at NeatoBambino, this week's subjects included sex education, statistics on due dates, and an update on Erik Martin, aka Electron Boy!

We kept you busy with Neato-Puzzle #10, which you can still work on this weekend.

We had a great response to the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Ultimately Foosnark rose to the top with the name arBra, a clever palindrome. old_joe came in second with the Dance Enhancer. Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

Mal and Chad's Fill in the Bubble Frenzy came around on Wednesday. The winning line is "The overworked elfs on strike holding Santa will never suspect we attack with a Christmas trebuchet!" Congratulations, drewp, who wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop!

In the What Is It? game this week, the object is an old gambling die. shin knew what it is, and Sonnuvah had the funniest answer: a 35-pound dumbbell buried up to its neck! Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop.

If you ever get caught up on everything here at Neatorama, you'll find lots more links to keep you busy and to share with others at the NeatoHub!

(YouTube link) Maru has a Christmas stocking. It's almost as much fun as a box! He will now have a very Maru Christmas. -via Buzzfeed

The only total lunar eclipse of 2010 will be visible from all of North America on Monday night/Tuesday morning. That won't happen again until 2014.

The entire 72 minutes of the total lunar eclipse will be visible from all of North and South America, the northern and western part of Europe, and a small part of northeast Asia including Korea and much of Japan. Totality will also be visible in its entirety from the North Island of New Zealand and Hawaii.

In all, an estimated 1.5 billion people will have an opportunity to enjoy the best part of this lunar show.

In other parts of the world, either only the partial stages of the eclipse will be visible or the eclipse will occur when it's daytime and the moon is not above their local horizon.

The moon might take on some odd colors during the eclipse. This is the first lunar eclipse during the winter solstice in almost 500 years. Link -via reddit

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I was wondering just this week when we'll get a new animation from PES. Here it is! The Deep looks like an underwater wildlife film, except its made with everyday objects instead of marine animals. -via The Daily What

Google has a new tool in which you can search the books that Google has digitized for a keyword and get statistics from as far back as the 16th century. The Google Book Ngram Viewer gives you data you can use to track the popularity of ...just about anything. For example, Geeks Are Sexy looked as terms like "geek", "computer geek", and "computer hacker" to ascertain that geeks are indeed, gaining in popularity. Link

Noted founding father Benjamin Franklin published a list of different ways we refer to someone as drunk in the Pennsylvania Gazette on January 6, 1737. Franklin said he collected these phrases at -what else- a tavern. Here are just a few:

Got the Indian Vapours,
Topsy Turvey,
As Drunk as David’s Sow,
He’s got his Top Gallant Sails out,
Seen the yellow Star,
As Stiff as a Ring-bolt,
The King is his Cousin,
Got Kib’d Heels,
As Dizzy as a Goose,
Had a Kick in the Guts,
Spoke with his Friend,
Cherubimical,
He’s kiss’d black Betty,
He’s had a Thump over the Head with Sampson’s Jawbone

Of course, that's far from 200. See the rest at mental_floss. Link

McClain County Operation Christmas in Purcell, Oklahoma collected hundreds of toys and other gifts for children from low-income families. They were ruined when a skunk invaded the storage building and sprayed scent on the packages, according to project spokesperson Peggy Christian. Volunteers laid about $15,000 worth of gifts outside to air out.

As for the gifts that were sprayed, it's unclear whether they can be salvaged.

"The ones laying out, they have been sprayed with Febreeze many, many times," Christian said.

Volunteers took the wrapped presents outside to air out.

The organization sent an appeal for donations of replacement gifts. The party scheduled for the toy giveaway is today. Link -via Arbroath

Spoiler alert, in case you haven't seen the 1973 movie Soylent Green {wiki}. Soylent Green is made of people. However, you have to remember that the world in the movie is horribly overcrowded and underfed. After all, it is set in 2022!

First, a quick recap: In the movie, the earth is overpopulated and over-polluted. Global warming is in full swing and even rich people have to eat crummy food. The government hands out rations of Soylent products, which are awful, flavorless cubes and loafs of “soy” (actually plankton but really it’s irrelevant cause it’s people) foodstuff that look like red, blue, or green Play-Doh. When you die, you go to a death-a-torium of sorts where you pay a small fee, then watch a really pretty movie filled with scenes from nature and peaceful music. You die quickly and painlessly from a colorless, odorless gas.

Then your body is shipped off and turned into Soylent Green which everyone loves to eat.

Would you eat Soylent Green under those conditions? How about in other science fiction scenarios? Several are spelled out at Science Not Fiction, where you are asked to leave your thoughts. Link

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How cool is this? We don't post a lot of iPhone apps, because so many people do not have iPhones (myself for one). However, this is the first app I've seen that actually makes me want an iPhone (not that I'm going to buy one). The Word Lens app is a free download, but the dictionaries are $5 each. So far, English to Spanish and Spanish to English are the only dictionaries available. It works with short phrases like signs, not with large blocks of text, like books. Link -via reddit

It's time for the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of wacky inventions in his weekly Museum of Possibilities posts. Can you come up with a name for this one? I can't even figure out what it's for! The commenter suggesting the funniest and wittiest name will win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don't select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Good luck!

Update: Congratulations to qwhacker, who called this "The Long Arm of the Law". Qwhacker wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The second place entry was from cs, who did not specify a t-shirt:

"The future of traffic enforcement - The Self-Service Ticketing Lane Response Vehicle and Revenue Generator. No longer will officers have to be inconvenienced by weather or in danger from other vehicles on the highway. They will be able to work comfortably from the nearest coffee shop and use Facetime to issue tickets while sipping their latte.