Noticing what we no longer hear

At this time last year, Oahu residents would have been getting an early preview of another noisy New Year’s Eve.

Instead, because of the passage of the fireworks ban last January, things have been pretty quiet. There are still incendiaries that can be cooked up with the powder reconstituted in some other form, so there are still occasional boomlets, but overall, a blessed silence has descended.

That said, it does seem pretty strange that all of the more innocent little novelties have been deemed just as illegal as the notorious aerials. Some people still have stashed some paperless firecrackers, but they’re not in stores any more.

Once upon a time, people were considered lily-livered for waving sparklers to ring in the new year. In 2012, however, you’re viewed as an outlaw. Imagine that.

Samoa skips ahead in time

You know how they say, "Live like there’s no tomorrow"? Well, in Samoa yesterday, that’s what they did because they knew tomorrow would never come. Sort of.

Samoa’s government decided that its primary trading partners, including Australia, lived on the opposite side of the international date line, so officials decided it made for easier business dealings to join them there. And they figured the easiest way was to simply skip from Dec. 29 and go straight to the 31st.

Things have just gotten much simpler and cheaper — more so because the island nation already had switched to driving on the left, which means people can buy cars shipped from (relatively) nearby Australia.

It’s a pretty good deal all around, except for kids who happen to have a Dec. 30 birthday. They might have felt a little cheated this morning.