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Stuffed and mounted animals sing "Back in the Day" by The Erratic Man. Besides the video, there's a choir of singing animals that you can add your pet to! http://petchoir.com/ -Thanks, James!

Buzzfeed compiled a collection of images from the year's news stories that will remind you how many really big events happened in 2011, from natural disasters to citizen protests to legislation to war. Pictured is a girl in isolation in order to assess her exposure to radiation after Japan's nuclear facilities were compromised by the March earthquake. Link

(vimeo link)

Thirty-five years after Saigon changed it name, Ho Chi Minh City is a busy, modern metropolis. Rob Whitworth produced this time-lapse video.

Everyone who has visited Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam knows part of the magic (love it or hate it) is in the traffic. Ever since I first set foot in HCMC I have been captivated by the cities energy. Saigon is a city on the move unlike anything I have experienced before which I wanted to capture and share.

The music is "Mondo '77" by Looper. -via Arbroath

The Nintendo Company has been in business since 1889, but it took almost 100 years for Nintendo to become a global household name for its video games. Along the way, Nintendo branched out into all kinds of ventures, some of which will surprise you (like the love tester and the love hotels). One of their earlier toys is the plastic grabbing tool shown. See the rest at Ranker. Link -Thanks, Brian!

Oh look! We've made it to December 2011 already! Doesn't it seem like just yesterday that we were looking forward to the new millennium? You're probably busy this weekend, getting holiday preparations going in one way or another, but sit down and take some time to catch up on the great features this week at Neatorama. You'll be glad you did!

John Farrier told us 11 Facts You Might Not Know about Battlestar Galactica.

Jill Harness gave us 5 Inaccurate “Historical” Stories That Ended Up In History Books.

On the 10th anniversary of the Beatle's death, Eddie Deezen wrote A Few Things You Might Not Know About George Harrison.

From Uncle John's Bathroom Reader's newest book, we learned about The Curse of the Demon Core.

Color Preference in the Insane was a look at some screwball research from The Annals of Improbable Research.

And the world of modern art gives us Modern Problems, an article from mental_floss magazine.

If you haven't been to NeatoBambino lately, there are new videos, Christmas projects, stories, and as always, cute kids for your enjoyment!

In this week's What Is It? game, the object in question is indeed a set of manual hedge trimmers. Berhard was the first of many with the correct answer. The funniest answer cam from SisterMerryHellish, who declared this is a wookiee toenail clipper! Congratulations to both for winning t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

The post that got the most comments so far this week (besides the contest) is Denied a Job Because of Criminal Record: Is It Discrimination? However, the Manifesto for Life post is catching up quickly!

When you're caught up on everything from this week, you can access past feature articles at The Best of Neatorama. And have a great weekend!

Expect it every December: lists and more lists of the best and worst everything of the year. This photo gallery helps us to sum up some of the important events of 2011 with photographs that made us pay attention. Reuters covered those events and has a gallery of 100 of their best photos for your perusal. Shown is a protester recorded in January in Cairo. Link -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Reuters/Goran Tomasevic)

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The 1947 version Aesop's fable, produced by Encyclopedia Brittanica Films. Link -via Nag on the Lake

The Twist Bridge in Vlaardingen, the Netherlands, was built for bicycles and pedestrians to cross the canal, but it's also a work of art! Made of 400 steel tubes, the matrix that covers the bridge is eye-catching and also absorbs vibrations. See more pictures at Amusing Planet. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user Theo Lagendijk)

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From YouTube member bd594, the same geek who brought us "Bohemian Rhapsody" by The Gadget Orchestra a couple of years ago, we now have the classic "House of the Rising Sun" played by various vintage electronic gadgets. The instruments:

a. HP Scanjet 3P, Adaptec SCSI card and a computer powered by Ubuntu v9.10 OS as the Vocals. (hey, the scanner is old) b. Atari 800XL with an EiCO Oscilloscope as the Organ c. Texas instrument Ti-99/4A with a Tektronix Oscilloscope as the Guitar d. Hard-drive powered by a PiC16F84A microcontroller as the bass drum and cymbal

-via Metafilter

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The heartwarming tale of a shark with a peculiar talent! Caleb Hepler won first place in an editing competition for this remix of Jaws. -Thanks, Jessica Dunn!

You know the name, but you probably don't really know much about drug lord Pablo Escobar. Now you can read the short version of how he clawed his way up the ladder in the cocaine business.

The profits were astronomical at every step. In 1978 each kilo probably cost Escobar $2,000 but sold to Lehder and Jung for $22,000, clearing Escobar $20,000 per kilo. In the next stage they transported an average of 400 kilos to south Florida (incurring some additional expenses in hush money for local airport authorities) where mid-level dealers paid a wholesale price of $60,000 per kilo; thus in 1978 each 400-kilo load earned Escobar $8 million and Lehder, Ochoa, and Jung $5 million each in profits. Of course the mid-level dealers did just fine: after cutting the drug with baking soda each shipment retailed on the street for $210 million, almost ten times what they paid for it.

Soon Lehder was hiring American pilots to fly a steady stream of cocaine into the U.S., paying them $400,000 per trip. At one trip per week, in 1978 this translated into wholesale revenues of $1.3 billion and profits of $1 billion.

The profits and risks soared after that. The Jung in the quote is American George Jung, whose story was told in the 2001 film Blow. Read the rest of Escobar's astonishing biography at mental_floss. Link

With 10,000 people homeless in Budapest alone, Hungary has figured out how to solve the problem: make homelessness illegal.

According to an amendment to the local government act, passed by a strong majority in parliament last month, those found sleeping on the streets will first receive a warning.

They can subsequently be imprisoned or ordered to pay the fine.

The move has provoked widespread criticism, including from Hungary's human rights ombudsman, the BBC's Nick Thorpe reports.

Miklos Vecsei, deputy head of the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service, said the law had not been passed on the basis of any rational or professional criteria but because the public were fed up with the homeless.

Since people who cannot afford a home would likely be unable to pay a fine, one would assume that the state will have to incarcerate homeless people caught breaking the law. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Wikipedia user Nuclear Vacuum)

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Calorimetry, a word I never heard before today, is the science of measuring heat changes. GE Life Sciences explains calorimetry in this video, which is actually an ad for some hi-tech laboratory equipment. -Thanks, Stephen Clegg!

A new study from the Pew Research Center confirms what seem fairly obvious to most of us: people go on line for no reason at all.

That should explain all those kitten videos.

The report finds that the amount of time people spend tooling around on the Web doing nothing corresponds with age. Only 12 percent of people over 65 say they went online the previous day for no particular reason. Of those aged 50 to 64, the study found 27 percent answered yes to the same question.

In all, 58 percent of all adults said that they use the Internet to pass time or have fun at least occasionally. Of adults who use the Internet, nearly three-quarters surf the Web for no reason.

And those are the people we aim to serve. Link

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, on the planet Endor, under the forest canopy, lies a village made of chocolate, breakfast cereal, and gingerbread! And don't look now, but there's a Death Star lurking above. The Canadian baker who blogs under the name The Infinite Yums built this Ewok Village for a charity auction. The post about it has the building process and plenty of pictures of the details. Link -via Boing Boing