A five month old Northern fur seal pup wandered inland from the Pacific Ocean at Tracy, California. His destination? The Tracy Animal Shelter! Animal control officers corraled him on the front steps of the shelter and took him to his new home at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. Link (with video) -via Fark

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Video of Earth rising and setting over the moon's horizon, taken with the HDTV camera aboard Japan's KAGUYA (SELENE) lunar explorer on November 7, 2007.

Eventually, Japanese TV will show the high-definition version. From Pink Tentacle via Cynical-C

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Watch this little robot; it's like a pet who won't give up!

RHex is a man-portable robot with extraordinary rough terrain mobility. RHex climbs over rock fields, mud, sand, vegetation, railroad tracks, telephone poles and up steep slopes and stairways. RHex has a sealed body, making it fully operational in wet weather, in muddy and swampy conditions, and it can swim on the surface or dive underwater.

RHex is made by Boston Dynamics, and is controlled by a remote operator up to 600 feet away. http://www.bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?section=RHex -via Dark Roasted Blend

You never get a second chance to make a first last impression. Ransom Riggs of mental_floss wrote and directed an animated video that takes us on a tour of famous people in history and their famous last words, all set to a catchy tune and hosted by the Grim Reaper himself! Link

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Jeff Lew was the lead animator for the movie The Matrix Reloaded. In the four years since, he has been working on his own feature film, an animated action movie starring... beans. No release date has been set. Link -via Reddit

The 2007 Specialty Equipment Market Association Show was held last week in Las Vegas. Out of many custom cars displayed at the show, American Inventors Spot selected the ten most extreme. This one is called the Blastolene B-702. It’s 19.5 feet long and has a V12 motor and leather interior. Even the frame is custom-made! Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

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Pacman makes his way through the first level of Super Mario Brothers. These fit together so well, you may forget they are two separate games! -via Gorilla Mask

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A ghostly image has been observed by both witnesses and by security cameras. Surveillance video at a gas station in Parma, Ohio shows a “blue cloud” hovering over the pump area. Some people think it’s a ghost or an angel, but no explanation has been found so far. Link to story. -via Arbroath

Five-year-old Riquelme Wesley dos Santos of Palmeira, Brazil was dressed in his Spiderman costume last Thursday when a house fire broke out. Riquelme entered the burning house, grabbed one year old Andriele from her crib, and took her to safety. Riquelme is now a national celebrity! The story does not say whether the two children are related. Link -via Fark

The first fuel pump on the Boeing 767 went out. Then all the fuel pumps went out. Then an engine stopped. Then the other engine failed. What to do? The crew consulted Boeing’s emergency manual for advice on an unpowered landing.

Much to their dismay, no such section existed, presumably because a simultaneous engine failure had been too ridiculous for Boeing engineers to contemplate.

This really happened, in Canada in 1983. Find out how the story ended at Damn Interesting. Link

You might remember the turkey-flavored Jones Soda from last Christmas. Sodas are now available in new holiday flavors for 2007.

The Christmas pack will feature such flavors as Sugar Plum, Christmas Tree, Egg Nog and Christmas Ham. The Hanukkah pack will have Jelly Doughnut, Apple Sauce, Chocolate Coins and Latkes sodas, the company said in a statement Friday.

It even will be kosher, the company says — including the ham.

Nothing says “artificial flavor” like kosher ham soda pop. Link ~via Geek Like Me

The Mars Analogue Research Station (MARS) Programme has two sites used to simulate the conditions of living and working on Mars. One is on Devon Island in the Arctic; the other is in the desert in Utah. Participants have a strict protocol of Mars simulation conditions they follow as they test equipment and develop procedures for Mars exploration. Link ~via Dark Roasted Blend

Photographer Craig Nelson bought a batch of intriguing photos from a shop in Arkansas. They were taken in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968. Nelson posted them on Flickr and searched for the original photographer. He found Darrell Hill, who discarded the pictures 30 years ago in an Arkansas dumpster, and is now an artist in Hawaii. Link to story. Link to photographs. ~via Metafilter

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A busker playing Indonesian music on many instruments on the street in Oxford. I recognize the hang drum and some kind of squeezbox. The horn looks like a cross between a digeridoo {wiki} and an alphorn {wiki}. Can anyone identify it? ~via Unique Daily

Dark Roasted Blend has a gallery of beautiful photographs of exotic insects by various photographers. This one is an Idolomantis diabolica, or a Devil's Flower Mantis. Link

(Image credit: Igor Siwanowicz)