Skip to main content

THE COMING OF 2025

The end and beginning of the year are a transition celebrated worldwide.   

  • Then at 8AM ET, Sydney, Australia.  More than million watched, live.
  • 10AM, Tokyo, Japan.
  • 10AM ET, Seoul, South Korea.
  • 11AM ET, Hong Kong.
  • 11AM ET, Beijing, China.
  • 11AM New York, Taipei, Taiwan, their tallest building, Taiwan 101.
  • Midnight New York, Bangkok, Thailand.
  • 3AM New York, Dubai, UAE, Burj Khalifa, tallest building in the world.
  • What are the final places to see the new year?
    • Baker Island and Howland Island.  However, no one lives there.
    • 6AM ET, American Samoa hits midnight.
    • 5AM ET, Hawaii.
    • 4AM ET, French Polynesia and Alaska.
    • 3AM ET, the Pacific Coast of U.S. and Canada.

Maybe the most seen new year celebration occurs at Times Square in New York City.  The following list is from Time magazine:

  • In the USA, maybe a million revelers pack Times Square, waiting for the ball to drop at midnight.  Another billion watch on TV.  
    • We have a special interest this year because in the spring we spent five days in New York City at the Marriott Marquis, where our room faced that ball.
Ten surprising facts about that glowing orb drop:
  • Dropping balls began in the 1800s, as this practice was used to signify time to sailors at sea.  First in Portsmouth, England, then Greenwich, which led to the Greenwich Mean time.  A timekeeping ball is still dropped there daily.
  • The Times Square ball tradition began because of a fireworks ban in 1907, but was hardly noticed.
  • More recently, counting down a launch had to do with a bomb to be exploded, for the Doomsday Clock came to be in 1947.
  • It's possible, not much was known about the Times Square drop until 1957 when a radio program brought it to nationwide attention.
  • But crowds did not come until 1979.
  • The ball today weighs more than a car, 11,875 pounds.
  • After New Year 2024, 200 sanitation workers took six hours to clean up close to 100,000 pounds of trash and confetti.
  • The Marriott Marquis (our hotel) charges $15,000 for its Prime VIP Couple's Package, offering an open bar, dinner buffet, hors d'oeuvres, bottle of champagne and guaranteed seating next to floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto Times Square.  We could have done this for the cost of the room, which in the Spring was around $500/night.
  • There are no portable restrooms in Times Square.  Solution?  Adult diapers.  No kidding.
  • Pitbull unveiled the current ball on December 27.  He placed the final crystal on the ball.  Next year, there will be a brand new higher tech ball.
  • Read the entire article for all of them.
This year’s main event will be presented by co-hosts actor Jonathan Bennett and interviewer Jeremy Hassell. It will feature musical performances from Mark Ambor, Mickey Guyton, Rita Ora, Carrie Underwood, and the Jonas Brothers. and more, per the Times Square website. Major broadcast networks will also be celebrating in Times Square, with ABC showing Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest and CNN hosting New Year’s Eve Live with Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen.

  • In Brazil, revelers wear white and go to the beach.
  • In Japan, Buddhist temples ring bells 108 times because there are that number of earthly desires.  Each strike removes one of them.
  • In  Denmark, they stand on chairs or couches to leap off when midnight hits.  Not to do so brings bad luck in the new year.
  • Spaniards pop 12 grapes in their mouth
Shifting gears to sports.

It's here! Over the next 40 hours, sure to be filled with drama, the College Football Playoff field will shrink from eight teams to four. Here are the matchups: 
  • Tonight: (6) Penn State vs. (3) Boise State (preview)
  • Tomorrow: (5) Texas vs. (4) Arizona State (preview)
  • Tomorrow: (8) Ohio State vs. (1) Oregon (preview)
  • Tomorrow: (7) Notre Dame vs. (2) Georgia (preview)
Oregon is not favored to win the championship, but if it does, they will become the first 16-0 team in college football history.  The last time Ohio State lost twice to the same team in the same season was in 1894.

The PGA's first two tournaments will be held in Hawaii:
  • The Sentry beginning Thursday, January 2 at the Kapalua Resort Plantation Course on Maui.
  • The Sony Open at the Waialae Country Club in Honolulu from January 9.
Tiger Woods plans on playing more this year.  Below, Tiger and Charlie just came in second at the PNC Championship, with daughter Sam on the bag.

- 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases.  Very few are aware that a new one,   BA.4.6,  is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples .  However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6.  Here is a  reference  as to what this means.  A series of two injections is involved.  Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab  co-packaged with  cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on  subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics.  Thursday was my pandemic day for years.  Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments.  All these  subvariants  derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms.  One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell.  From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant,  BA.2.86,  also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to  lose hair  for...
Post a Comment
Read more

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota.  Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north.  Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge.  If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic.  Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing.  The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University.  Caught a bus. Was called the  Century 21 Exposition .  Also the Seattle World's Fair.  10 million joined me on a six-month run.  My first. These a...
Post a Comment
Read more