YouTube Now Comprises 25 Percent Of All Google Searches
TechCrunch: "Video search on YouTube accounts for a quarter of all Google search queries in the U.S., according to the latest search engine numbers from comScore. Its monthly qSearch report, which was released on December 18, breaks out the number of searches conducted on YouTube. If it were a standalone site, YouTube would be the second largest search engine after Google. More searches are done through YouTube than through Yahoo, which has been the case for the past few months."

4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... 1 ... Happy New Year!
On New Year’s Eve, the international authorities charged with keeping precise time will add a single second to our lives. It will be the 24th “leap second” since 1972, and the first since 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/weekinreview/28vinciguerra.html

Venus leads a planetary parade that ushers in a new year. Find Venus high above the southwestern horizon at nightfall now, the brightest beacon in the heavens
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/27/AR2008122701246.html

New York City Travel Guide http://www.newyorkology.com/index.php

Informatics encompasses the study of systems that represent, process, and communicate information, including all computational, cognitive and social aspects. The central notion is the transformation of information—whether by computation or communication, whether by organisms or artifacts. The first example of a degree level qualification in Informatics occurred in 1982 when Plymouth Polytechnic (now the University of Plymouth) offered a four year BSc(Honours) degree in Computing and Informatics with an initial intake of only 35 students. The course still runs today making it the longest available qualification in the subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics

Composer John Morton’s new album, Solo Traveler: Music for Music Boxes (Innova), reveals some of the sonic possibilities he has discovered buried inside these simple machines. "I really love experimenting and going as far as it can go in terms of sound quality. If there's that innocent sound, I want to go to the opposite extreme which is a loud, distorted, sort of numbing sound. And everything in between attracts me as well."
In addition to altering the music boxes physically, he also works with electronics and Max/MSP when composing a new piece. The resulting sounds often do conjure a certain childhood innocence, but they can also rattle the ear as if a gamelan ensemble were leveraging a full-on sonic assault. For his part, Morton serves as more of a music box shaman than a dictator. http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=5159

What country is it? It borders the Bay of Bengal between Burma and India. It is slightly smaller than Iowa. About a third of this extremely poor country floods annually during the monsoon rainy season, hampering economic development. Find the answer here: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bg.html

Keepers (books I would read again)
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Beakless Bluebirds & Featherless Penguins, Observations of a Naturalist by Sister Barbara Ann
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Good Omens, the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

December 29 is the anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee, which took place in South Dakota in 1891. Twenty-two years earlier, the local tribes had signed a treaty with the United States government that guaranteed them the rights to the land around the Black Hills, which was sacred land. But in the 1870s, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, and the treaty was broken. People from the Sioux tribe were forced onto a reservation, with a promise of more food and supplies, which never came. Then in 1889, a prophet named Wovoka, from the Paiute tribe in Nevada, had a vision of a ceremony that would renew the earth, return the buffalo, and cause the white men to disappear. This ceremony was called the Ghost Dance. The Ghost Dance scared the white Indian Agents, and they moved in to arrest Chief Sitting Bull, who was killed in the attempt. The next leader they focused on was Sitting Bull's half-brother, Chief Big Foot. He was leading his people to the Pine Ridge reservation, seeking safety there. But it was winter, 40 degrees below zero, and he contracted pneumonia.
Big Foot was sick, he was flying a white flag, and he was one of the leaders who had actually renounced the Ghost Dance. But the Army didn't make distinctions. They intercepted Big Foot's band and ordered them into the camp on the banks of the Wounded Knee Creek. The next morning, federal soldiers began confiscating their weapons, and a scuffle broke out between a soldier and an Indian. The federal soldiers opened fire, killing almost 300 men, women, and children, including Big Foot. One of the survivors was the famous medicine man Black Elk, who told his story to John Neihardt in Black Elk Speaks (1932). The Writer’s Almanac