Fun and Links

Shoveling it as fast as they can. But not just snow.

Hollywood tricks. Instead of busting my bubble, these revelations only make me respect the actor's skills all the more.

A little boy gets stuck behind the couch. If adorable explanations could get him out, he wouldn't need anyone's help!

Enjoy a new holiday song, "Happy New Year"! This should eventually become a standard because of the emphasis on "happy".

Anatidaephobia, the fear that you are being watched by a duck. It's more common than you might think. (via Bits and Pieces)

Some may not realize that you don't have to be actually driving a car to get a DUI. Read 11 bizarre stories of people arrested for driving other things while drunk. (via Gorilla Mask)

10 Things You Might Not Know About the New Year. Of course we don't know anything about the year 2010 yet; this is about the New Year holiday and how we celebrate it.

Good Reads and Information

The moon is ringing in the New Year by shining full for the second time this month, and giving us a partial lunar eclipse on the 31st. Too bad we won't see it in the Western Hemisphere. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Anatomy of A Brain Fart. Excuse me, I mean “maladaptive brain activity changes,” you know, doing something stupid when you know better.

The 6 Stupidest Things Ever Done With Historic Treasures. "Reuse and recycle" may be chic, but this is going too far!

Archaeology's Hoaxes, Fakes, and Strange Sites. As long as people will fall for them, these shenanigans will continue. (via Metafilter)

Everything you ever wanted to know about the ball that drops from One Times Square to count down to the New Year. What was once a few light bulbs is now a one-of-a-kind work of art.

Zinc fingers is the name given to a new technique for altering genes with proteins instead of viruses. It could eventually lead to cures for genetic diseases or even AIDS.

The Mysterious History of Gumbo. The original recipe came from the Africans, the French, or maybe the Native Americans, depending on which ingredient you like best.

Leonid Rogozov served as doctor to an Antarctic expedition in 1961 when he fell sick with pain and fever. As the only doctor, he had no choice but to remove his own appendix using only local anesthesia. (via Cynical-C)

New Year Greetings

From 1947, but still sincere.

Fun Links

I'm on a Mac. NSFW language.

Starbucks launched their campaign against AIDS in Africa by putting together singers from 156 countries in one video performing "All You Need is Love". Kind of like "We Are The World" with less ego and more world.

Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. For those who are too busy thinking about how the world works to get a haircut.

In this episode of Shimura Zoo, Pan-kun the chimpanzee must pick up and deliver a cake. It's not that simple! (via Random Good Stuff)

A Statistical "Proof" of the Odd Even Star Trek Movie Rule. If you are going to watch only one, make sure it's an even numbered film. (via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories)

Never A Year Like '09. Jib Jab puts all the silliness of the past year into one animated video, like they do every year.

The Ultimate List of End-of-the-Decade Lists. This should keep you busy for, oh, about a year!

6 New Year Traditions from Around the World. You can start 2010 by eating grapes, burning effigies, or watching reruns on TV.

Stairway to Heaven

By Rolf Harris. (via WeirdWorm)

Lovable Frog

(via Arbroath)

Fun and Funny Links

5 Gaping Plot Holes Hollywood Knows You Won't Notice. Mainly because moviegoers swallowed them whole before, so they may as well use them over and over again.

Alma is an award-winning animated short film by Pixar animator Rodrigo Blaas. All children's stories should be this traumatizing. (via Neatorama)

Pacman vs. Mario. Who has the slickest moves to win the game?

The 13 Cutest Animals of 2009. Sure, you could argue with this opinion-based list, but why bother... hey, where's Maru? (via Buzzfeed)

Gravity Swarm. Click and drag this for minutes of mindless fun! (via Gorilla Mask)

Japan's Strangest Man. Not exactly a sight for sore eyes, I couldn't help but keep watching because he's enjoying himself so.

These Canadian ice fishermen are tough. Completely insane, but still tough.

Who knew you, or rather someone with talent, could do such things with a tape measure! I can't even get mine to meet around my waist.

TROOPS

A parody of the old TV show COPS.

Cotton-eyed Rock

By the Reggaetwins. (via The Heatwave)

Christmas Day Links

Lapland, a region of Fenno-Scandinavia that lies mostly within the Arctic Circle, is where tourists go to find Santa Claus, reindeer, dog sledding, skiing, the Northern Lights, and unbelievable scenery.

32 Astounding Gingerbread Houses. Don't you wish you could make an awesome gingerbread treehouse, mansion, or castle, instead of a lopsided hut?

Balthazar, Melchior, and Casper. How did a few lines in the book of Matthew turn into these three kings?

The Smoking Gun presents the top 5 strangest holiday moments. Santa is drunk, Mrs. Claus goes on a rampage, and yes, the cops get involved in these five videos.

25 Awesome Holiday Cards from way cool families. I laughed out loud at #9 and coveted #18.

Two engineers fight with their Christmas laser beam cats. Things get ugly when the nuclear hairball is deployed!

Christmas Greetings from the 50s

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Good Reads

What happens on Facebook doesn't always stay on Facebook, and sometimes those misadventures make the national news. Here are ten stories of how Facebook is affecting the lives of people outside the internet. (via Unique Daily)

Why do our siblings drive us crazy? As the mother of a half-dozen teenagers on vacation, I was disappointed to find that competitiveness is natural and probably unavoidable.

5 Famous Missing Fingers. All on (or were once on) different famous hands.

Thorium, the Green Nuke. Uranium worked best for nuclear weapons, but it is rare, dangerous, and produces lots of nuclear waste, whereas thorium can bypass those problems.

Machine Translates Thoughts into Speech in Real Time. A brain-machine interface has been developed that has been successfully tested on a patient with Locked-In Syndrome. (via J-Walk Blog)

Kim Peek, the inspiration for Rain Man, died Saturday at age 58. Take a look back at the life of an extraordinary man.

Pyramids exist not only in Egypt, but all over the world. Some are ancient and mysterious, while others are gaudy and profitable.

20 Things that Happen Every Minute. Facts about our world that might make you stop and think, "whoa!"

Fun Links

A gallery of the 20 funniest snowmen of all time.

Shorewood High made a lip dub video, but there's something not quite right about it.

The Top 100 Weird News Stories of 2009 on Digg.

The weather as explained in Star Wars terms. Enter a city and see what the current conditions are like, compared to planets in the Star Wars universe. (via b3ta)

Proof That Anything Can Be Deep Fried. The Oreos look delicious, but the deep-fried strawberries caused me a moment of cognitive dissonance. (via Gorilla Mask)

The TV Show. This is one downright neat animation montage.

A 70-minute review of The Phantom Menace is more worth your time than the movie itself. Who needs to kick Jar Jar when there are so many other problems with this film?

The Top Celebrity Baby Names of 2009. Meaning the weirdest, of course.

6 Animals That Show Mother Nature’s Sense of Humor

You’ve heard jokes like these all your life: What do you get if you cross an octopus with a cow? An animal that can milk itself. I didn’t find such an animal, but the world has plenty of strange species that at first glance appear to be hybrids of unrelated species because they have attributes that surprise us. However, we are only surprised because our personal experiences don’t encompass all that nature offers. Learn about six of these animals in this article I wrote for mental_floss.

Informative Links

A Fabulous Journey Through The Known Universe. You're welcome.

People with mirror-touch synaesthesia can actually feel what they see other people experiencing, such as touch or pain. It's much more common than you might think.

A former police officer sees myriad flaws in TSA airport screening procedures. Foiling terrorists seems to have taken a back seat to compliance and efficiency.

The 15 Best Time Travel Stories Of All Time. Or, at least until someone travels back in time and retroactively tells a better one.

The holidays are shaping up to be a grim time for food charities. There are too many people to feed and smaller budgets to feed them.

The Physics of Space Battles. Here are some of the many reasons real life space wars wouldn't be anything like what we see in the movies.

Dark Liquor Makes For Worse Hangovers. The old timers told you; now there's science to back them up.

Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up. People (even scientists) prefer to pick up and start over fresh than learn from their failures, even though failures often bring a wealth of useful information.

Fun and Funny Links

This is Why I Don't Watch TV. Witness the most ridiculous plot twist in the history of television.

The 15 Worst, Weirdest, Tackiest and Sickest Christmas Presents To Spoil The Season. For those people you want to break your yearly gift obligation to.

24 Public Expressions Of Broken Love. This is the way you do it when there's no chance whatsoever you'll change your mind. Slightly NSFW.

The 50 Funniest Headlines Of 2009. Copy editors spent the year putting their stamp on even the most tragic stories.

Simon's Cat encounters snow for the first time. Also take a look at how Simon Tofield creates his animations.

8 Great TV Christmas Specials (But Not The Ones You’re Probably Thinking). These won't come around every year, but they are worth seeking out.

13 Plush Toys Grownups Will Love. Often for other-than-cuddly reasons.

A palindromic conversation between two owls. Keep in mind that these owls are not intelligent or eloquent, just palindromic. (via J-Walk Blog)

Zombie Kittens!

Illustrated by Sarah Brown. (via b3ta)

Kitty Coin Box

This cute Japanese coin bank has a kitten inside with its hand raised just like Maneki Neko! In this case, money does come to him. Get one here. (via Buzzfeed)

Friday Fun Links

Brother Bill designed an animated Christmas greeting for his company that turns out a little different from what you'd expect. Check it out here!

An adorable puppy tries to whistle. He may not be exactly whistling, but his skills at imitation are excellent!

The Christmas version of Civiballs ate up my evening last night. My understanding of physics is OK, but my hand-eye coordination and memory are handicaps.

Product, a Jon Phillips production. Click this to full size and read the whole thing, as harrowing as it is. You'll be glad you stuck with it.

The End of the World. College Humor takes the R.E.M. song and makes the song relate to the world as we really know it.

The Morgan Freeman Chain of Command. Even at the bottom of the pecking order, he commands our attention.

6 Terrible Names People Are Trying to Give This Decade. Funny how we've had ten years to think about this and didn't.

The 27 Craziest Menorahs. I wonder how many of these are actually used to celebrate Hanukkah.

The Friendly Robin

Apparently this is not the first time this particular robin has eaten out of the man's hand. (via Arbroath)