Not being from New York, I feel like I have still a valid claim since I often look at hi-res 3d Manhattan buildings on Google Earth. This bit of diversion comes from a NYT article titled What New Yorkers Should Dread in the New Year:

Restaging of traditional New Year’s Eve ball-dropping at Times Square: Instead of the usual Waterford crystal ball — sold to Dubai as a traffic light — a city worker will toss a match into a trash can full of kerosene-soaked rags to announce that 2009 has officially arrived.

Also from Google Earth – WTF IS THIS? This patch of light visible from NASA’s “City Lights” layer sparkles brighter than Moscow or Beijing; yet upon further investigation one learns that there just over a million people living in the entire region. What’s making all of this light!?

In this region we have the budding metropolises of Surgut, Nizhnevartovsk, and Nefteyugansk – each on the scale of  Wausau, WI. Maybe they have lots of oil refineries…? All of these cities, and the majority of the lights are in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. That does sound ominous – perhaps it’s a forgotten Soviet Doomsday Device? I’d put a doomsday device near that, but nothing comes up when you Google “Khanty-Mansi Doomsday Device.” Why didn’t you tell the world!?