As we say goodbye to the year 2011, we reminisce on what came before us, and look forward to what is still to come. In order, according to this Baarbarian illustration, that is: Stonehenge, and giant robots.

In this video, we kick off the festivities with a Phantom ultra-slow-motion camera and a hyper-powerful Vitamix blender.

In honor of this festive holiday season, we've included in this week's roundup of amazing science and tech galleries some festive shots of our own. Pictured above is a nearby spiral galaxy that looks, if you're a NASA scientist who has been recently bonked on the head, like an outer-space wreath. There are also cute baby animals this week. Enjoy, and happy holidays!

Biometric security is often focused on the more boring anatomical parts, like the pads of the fingers (ehhh) or the eyes (who cares). So little attention has been paid to the security possibilities of the butt. Well, not anymore: researchers at the Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology in Tokyo have come up with a car seat that measures the precise contours and pressures left by your posterior.

A team of veterinarians have taken time away from helping fluffy animals to focus on what's really important: dinner. Specifically, what's the best way to sew your holiday bird back up after you've deboned and stuffed it?

No. The charm has nothing to do with the music and everything to do with the charmer waving a pungi, a reed instrument carved out of a gourd, in the snake’s face. Snakes don’t have external ears and can perceive little more than low-frequency rumbles. But when they see something threatening, they rise up in a defensive pose. “The movement of the snake is completely keyed in on the guy playing the toodley thing,” says Robert Drewes, chairman of the department of herpetology (the study of amphibians and reptiles) at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

Today in pretty space pics: Comet Lovejoy, still alive and heading back out toward the far reaches of the solar system, as seen from the International Space Station. This photograph was snapped yesterday as the ISS passed over Australia by Dan Burbank, one of the station’s current crew members. And needless to say, it’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime shots.

Attentive followers of dentistry developments that we are, we've been following the story of the plasma brush for awhile now. And it seems like it's making some serious progress: human clinical trials are supposed to begin in early 2012, and there's also a video (below) of the World's Bravest Dentist shooting a plasma beam into his own mouth.

A large metallic ball has fallen from the heavens and landed in a remote region of Namibia, spurring a lot of speculation about its origins and spurring local authorities to get NASA and the European Space Agency on the horn. No one is sure where the hollow metallic object came from, but it definitely came down hard--it was found 60 feet away from its landing site, a hole more than a foot deep and 12 feet across.