Over the river and through the woods —

We still don't know exactly what causes motion sickness. NASA has some working theories, though. — Maggie •

"The Gingershred Man," a creation of Boing Boing reader Brock Davis of Minneapolis, MN, shared in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool.

What to drink this winter — according to Smithsonian —

Smithsonian's Food and Think blog has a (Northern-hemispherically biased) list of ideal Christmas/wintertime drinks — along with some cool history about where those drinks come from and how they're made. For example, Imperial Stout beer was invented in the late 1690s as a way to help delicious English stout beer survive frigidly cold Russian winters. Raise the alcohol content — and bam! — beer fit for a czar. — Maggie •

It's true! Science proves it!

And it's more than just an effect of infrared imaging. If you duck over to Joseph Stromberg's post at the Surprising Science blog, you'll see a photo of a real, live reindeer with an adorably red nose (and upper lip).

Turns out, it's the result of an evolutionary adaptation. Some (but not all) reindeer have noses full of densely packed blood vessels — a difference that makes those reindeer better at regulating their own body temperatures.

To come to the findings, the scientists examined the noses of two reindeer and five human volunteers with a hand-held video microscope that allowed them to see individual blood vessels and the flow of blood in real time. They discovered that the reindeer had a 25% higher concentration of blood vessels in their noses, on average.

They also put the reindeer on a treadmill and used infrared imaging to measure what parts of their bodies shed the most heat after exercise. The nose, along with the hind legs, reached temperatures as high as 75°F—relatively hot for a reindeer—indicating that one of the main functions of all this blood flow is to help regulate temperature, bringing large volumes of blood close to the surface when the animals are overheated, so its heat can radiate out into the air.

Also: red-nosed reindeer on treadmills, you guys. This is clearly the most adorable science of the holiday season.

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Via Bart King

Breokz uploaded a photo of "Xmas at the lab of Avans University of Applied Science." Chemistry may all be "pretty colors and things that go bang," but it sure makes for a festive tree.

True Chemistree (imgur.com)

Photographer, animal-lover, and Boing Boing reader heiney shares this photograph in our Boing Boing Flickr pool, and explains that this was a shot from the Animal Network Holiday Adoption Low Cost Vaccination/chip Photo Event at Ann Road Animal Hospital, Las Vegas NV.

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Video Link. Dylan Mitchell-Funk and Slugabed remix a Wham! holiday classic, with a woman dancing erotically on cubes of melting butter or lard or something. Merry Chrimbus, everyone.

Update: the source video is Indonesian artist Melati Suryodarmo's "EXERGIE - butter dance," a performance she first gave in 2000. Material used: 20 blocks of butter.

Darryl Pickett, the Walt Disney Imagineering contract show writer whose videos about life in the trenches at Disney World I blogged in Jan 2011 has written a fun-sounding Christmas novel called The Secret Feast of Father Christmas. He writes,

The story seeks to reinvent the traditional Christmas gift giver. No toy-making elves or flying reindeer here. Father Christmas lives in a secret palace called Very North, and is married to Mother Solstice, a pantheistic demigoddess. (I suspect Father Christmas is Unitarian Universalist.) My hero is a 13 year-old New Zealander named Mannie, who has lost his beloved Aunt Audra, a free-spirited atheist. He struggles with the idea propounded by his Anglican family, that his aunt may have been relegated to Hell. The story has its bittersweet moments, and it's certainly heartfelt. Though it has no direct connection to anything Disney, I believe my Imagineering roots will become clear to anyone who reads through to the end.

The Secret Feast of Father Christmas (Thanks, Darryl!)

Cubicle Christmas
by jingle_balls123
Artist's statement: This wasn't really a tree... I just twisted the wires and moves around the components to make it look like a tree. The parts are just LEDs, resistors (i used 100 ohms) and a 9v battery. Wire structures are just the leads from the LEDs and resistors.

This is how I decorated my cubicle (imgur.com) (via Neatorama)