Wishing everyone a Happy Holidays!

The Spectrum Letters To The Editor for December 8, 2008, Parowan Prophet, In Utah, the Parowan Prophet predicts disaster will prevent Obama from taking office, O.J. Simpson Behind Bars on MyNetworkTV’s “Jail”, Lucky Man, My way, A view, Al Gore, The OLPC Children’s Machine XO, Closeup of keyboard, Do you often see a headline like this?, Hippo Eats Dwarf on Snopes, Rocketboom coverage of Joyful Trees in a Park, Urban Play: NL - Moving Forest, Veggie mouse with a taste for albatross threatens island bird, Playing with food, Lively Eyes on a Lifeless Corpse, Gotcha! / Te pillé!, Enid the Mouse, Time for Take Off by Debbie Purser of Classic Sailing, Albatross roosting, Awesome space launch sound and video, Versace to create world’s first refrigerated beach in Dubai, Kid plays in water and sand on Morro Strand State Beach, Sand between the Toes, Know Your Meme. music: multi color stresstab by Podington Bear

Rocketboom Field Correspondent Ruud Elmendorp investigates banking through mobile phones in Kenya.

Rocketboom visits the opening of the Epithelium Studio Exhibition at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture.

December 2008 Leap Second, Embloggery, 1,300 graduate students who struggle to sell the pork ashamed? (via China Smack), China Gets World of Warcraft Themed Restaurant, Pickle Sickle, Anyone?, Zoo animals need to slim down (via ScienceBlogs), Stars orbiting the Supermassive Black Hole at our Galactic Center (video), Scientists baffled by mysterious acorn shortage, Firebreathing Dog Robot Will Ruin Your Day, Chris Christmas Rodriguez Videos

Joanne visits BugLabs a manufacturer of open-source DIY electronics kits for hacking and physical computing.

Rocketboom Field Correspondent Ruud Elmendorp looks into the growing trend of designing minibuses in Kenya. MatatuMania website.

WANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me, Robot First Test, MechRC Humanoid Robot, 46 days left, Bush approval ratings climb, China’s .cn Now the Second Most Popular TLD, Live webcam in Inglewood, United States, Randy’s Donuts

Why Men Are Superior to Fish (Nov, 1931), World guitar speed record: starts at 170 and reaches 320bpm!, Tiago Della Vega, Chrysler’s 800-unit hybrid program, How The Not-So Big Three Rolled Into Washington, D.C., First draft of Automaker Bailout Bill is out, G.M.’s Latest Great Green Hope Is a Tall Order , Half of U.S. Consumers Delaying New Car Purchases, Top 10 Most Useless Body Parts, Why do males have nipples?, Your Weekly Address from the President-Elect: December 6, 2008

Joanne interviews Andre Heller of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) about Condition: Critical, a project documenting the plight of the civilians caught in 15 years of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Rocketboom spotlight: Iran: A nation of bloggers by Aaron Chiesa, Toru Kageyama, Hendy Sukarya, and Lisa Temes, students the Vancouver Film School.

Stacking Routine, Obama-Biden transition site Change.gov now under a Creative Commons license, Change.gov, 92 nations sign cluster-bomb ban; US, Russia don’t, Do we really need to bring back the mammoth?, Planet of the Neanderthals, Early Popped Collars, Blackboard, May Ball, May Bumps, Axel F Human Version, Extreme Ironing, Strange statues around the world, The Friction Harp, Immersed Music Concerts at ICMC 2007, Blaster vs Saber

Ellie interviews Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital.

Motoman industrial robot cooks okonomiyaki, See-saw bike, NASA Mars photo leaked - wood found on mars!, NASA, Edna Parker dies at 115, Portugal, Supercentenarian, Oldest people, Maria de Jesus, The Big Picture by Helen Marshall, Arthur James Bunce, NY Times Obama Newspaper - Brand new - never opened, Chris Christmas Rodriguez

Joanne visits Global Nomads Group, a non-profit organization using video conferencing technology by Polycom to connect schools with scientists working on the Offshore New Harbor Project in East Antarctica.

The 2008 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from New York City. Music: Symphonie Fantastique (1830) by Hector Berlioz, The Planets by Gustav Holst

The Annual Rocketboom Thanksgiving Day Parade Special. See also, The Bluies vs. The Peachies, The Imperial March

Joanne takes at look at Wavefunction and Less Than Three, two interactive sculptures by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at the Bitforms Gallery in New York City. Music by Podington Bear.

Ellie Rountree visits the redesigned Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada. Music by Podington Bear.

Assam, Lachit Borphukan, Mughal Empire, Battle of Lottorf, Happy Evolution Day!, Welcome Back, World’s first truly blue roses go on display in Japan, Shiba Inu Puppy Cam, Shuba Inu Dude Cam Parody, Color changing house by Italo Rota, Upside-Down Sky Planters Save Water and Space, Guerilla gardening, Le plus horrible jour de ma vie, KTUU 2008 Sarah Palin turkey interview

Explaining Evolution. An animation in collaboration with Adam Quirk of Wreck and Salvage

Ocean Dead Zones Growing; May Be Linked to Warming, Ocean ‘Dead Zones’ on the Rise , Scientists alarmed by ocean dead-zone growth, Ocean ‘dead zones’ expanding worldwide: study, What are Dead Zones?, Caspian Sea from orbit, Potomac River, Couleurs, Phosphate, Nitrate ion, Surface runoff, Stream, Algae, Pacific Ocean at Cannon Beach, Oregon, Ocean Bluffs, Nitrogen molecule, under the ocean, A Fish and the Floor, Bubbles rising past the reef, Sand Crabs, Shore Crab - Carcinus maenas, Snaps and the Crab 2, Another Crab, ugly fish, Cairo, IL from space, Mississippi River on the edge of Lake Itasca, Mr Angry is back…lol..:O))), Reef Squid, Minke whale surfacing, Air bubbles coming to the surface., The Descent, Tidal wetlands of Chesapeake Bay, Wadden Sea near Wilhelmshaven, Portrait of a Dungeness crab, Delfini, Watching the gulls and waves at sunset after the big winter storm

Joanne visits mechanical sculptor Steve Gerberich. Music: Miles Davis Video Game Music by Tyler Riggs

What will life be like in the Year 2008?, Steve Rubel: The End of Tangible Media is Clearly in Sight, Ji Lee’s Dead Bull, Space Shuttle Mission ST-126, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Steve Bowen and Shane Kimbrough to spacewalk, Amazon Kindle & Sony eBook, Finger Forks, Hands Help, Macbook Pros and Playstation Controllers in Windows Vista Ads, Your Weekly Address from the President-Elect

OpenID, Internet 2, Sick guitar trio video, IE 8 Beta, History of video game consoles (fourth generation), IPv4, Unseen 64, Team 128: Genetics of common neurological diseases, day two fifty six. we were framed, Finger binary, Browser Display Statistics, Intel predicts singularity by 2048, Making 4,096 Noodles, eBay search results for 8192, The Prime Database: Phi(3,-2322573^16384), Googlism for: 32768, 65,536 Lashes for Microsoft, Microsoft Excel Calculation Issue Update, Cactus runs on 131,072 cores on Blue Gene/P at ANL, Apple claims 262144 is the same as millions, 524,288 kiriban - Binary Girl , Megabyte, - United States Patent 2097152, Mongolia on a Map, Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted, Hexday, All in the Family