Top Tweets of the Week — Holiday Edition, Last of the Year!

Omigosh, we're closing in on our holiday break and\ won't be back until next year! Since we're out of the office this coming week, we expanded this holiday tweets-of-the-week edition to top 15. Consider it our gift to you. You're welcome. And another "you're welcome" is in order if you join the other 2,000-plus other followers keeping tabs on all our tweets @BWCnews. Happy holidays, friends! See you on the other side!

1. A Different Kind of Christmas Story on PamelaKan.BlogSpot.com: The BWC Prez posted this hopeful little blog in time for the holidays. Her hope? That 2012 turns into a banner year for manufacturing. And that kids in U.S. schools hear the message that there's a bright future in engineering, machine shop work and anything else related to math, science and technology. Cheers to that!

2. 'Catvertising' — the Future of Marketing? on Youtube: What goes viral faster than a mention on Tosh.0? Almost without fail, it's funny cat videos. Our furry purr buckets are just inherently hilarious. Here's a link to some faux marketing company in Canada that claims to have opened an entire division dedicated to creating cat advertising vids. This video itself actually went viral a while ago. Case in point, eh?

www.ritholz.com

3. The World is Coming to an End — Blame Twitter via ritholz.com: Find out how the microblogging giant is killing the world, one tweet at a time. Yipes! If that's true, then we've certainly done our fair share of damage ...

4. A Year in Manufacturing in 40 Links or Less on the Bishop-Wisecarver Daily: The folks at Pennsylvania-based cutlery manufacturers York Saw and Knife Company posted this year-in-review blog on their site this week. It's a great month-by-month breakdown of manufacturing news and views in 2011. Good content, you guys!

5. What Does $40 Mean to You? on Mashable.com: The #40dollars Twitter campaign blew up the web this week, demonstrating the raw power of social media. It's one of several examples this year of regular folks gaining national attention using free info-sharing platforms. The idea behind this one is to spark feedback from people on what $40 means to them — the equivalent of the weekly cost per person if the powers that be allow a tax cut to expire. The answers ranged from the frivolous ("For #40dollars from 962 of my friends, we can afford a single ticket to an Obama fundraiser") to the heartbreaking ("#40dollars is the cost of my monthly blood test to make sure my #Crohns meds aren't making me sick"). What does $40 mean to you?

6. San Bernardino County Makes the Case for Manufacturing on The Sun newspaper: With the number of jobs in the sector opening up and an oft-reported skills shortage, it's encouraging to see this California county encouraging people to get into manufacturing. It's a wonder more people aren't interested in skilled machine shop and manufacturing work considering the average yearly salary starts at $73,000. That's incentive enough!

Credit: FlavorPill.com

7. Aerial Photos of Airports via FlavorPill.com: It's prettier than it sounds, you guys! Some of these shots actually look like abstract paintings.

8. Morphology, a Clay-Morphing Test on Vimeo: Ooh how cool is this video to watch? It's a crazy claymation video that has no plot but it's a treat to look at.

9. Macy's Shares the Secret Sauce for Creating Loyal Customers tweeted by @peekan: We got a lot our of this article about how the national retailer engages customers to keep them coming back time after time. Even though we're not in the retail/service business, a lot of the same truths apply.

10. What Was the Word of the Year? on a SF Chron blog: If you could sum of the year in a word or quick phrase, what would you say? Occupy? Tsunami? The 99 percent? It's interesting to see what others voted. Tell us your word of 2011 in the comments below for a chance to win a WD-40 pen!

11. Heavy Metal is Back — The Best City for Manufacturing on Forbes.com: Any guess on the prime spot for the industry? It's Houston, according to this article, which based its findings on the growth rate of what they're calling the "heavy metal" industry in specific cities. The runners-up: Dallas and Oklahoma City. Interesting!

Credit: Time Magazine

12. A Brief History of the Ugly Christmas Sweater shared by Time Magazine: Just in time for Christmas, a very informative background story on the ubiquitous holiday trend. They used to be in style, maybe, but the horrendously ugly holiday garments have been resurrected — ironically this time for ugly sweater holiday parties. We had a little contest of our own at the office earlier this month. Nice to know we upheld a longstanding tradition!

13. Another Earth-Sized Planet Found via the Bishop-Wisecarver Daily: Cool! Astronomers found two earth-sized planets orbiting the same star. Definitely another milestone for NASA's Kepler mission, if only to prove that our solar system isn't unique.

14. Cleaning Up Air Pollution with Glue on BBC News: Yup, it sounds fantastical but it's a real solution London's considering. If the mayor OK's the plan, the city would spray an adhesive calcium solution into the air in the dead of night to make particulate pollution stick to the roads. It's drawing some criticism, but maybe it'd help keep smog in check. We'll see how it pans out!

15. Hack Your Productivity on Fast Company: "A time management geek's 10-minute solution" explains how you, too, can have the most productive week ever. The secret involves mapping out strategies and goals on a regular basis. It's cool to see what worked for this author — can't wait to try it out for our 2012 goals!