Hanukkah begins at sundown on December 4th this year. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has instructions for making your own Mini-LED Menorah! Link

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I can imagine the dialogue for this encounter:

Crawfish: Stay back! I am big, scary, and dangerous!
Cat: Oh, hai! Do u has a flavor?
Dog: Zzzz.

Warning: You may be whistling the Imperial March for the rest of the day. -via Arbroath

King Faud’s Fountain in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia shoots water over a thousand feet into the air! See a video of the fountain in action at deputy dog. http://deputy-dog.com/2007/11/19/the-worlds-highest-fountain/

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Sung by Stephen M. Stahl, MD, PhD, of the Neurosciences Education Institute, with apologies to Gilbert and Sulivan. -via OmniBrain

Santa Claus made his entrance at a Texas mall over the weekend. Since theree was no chimney, Santa rappelled down the side of the building... almost. He became stuck about 30 feet from the ground.

"And what happened was his beard got caught in his rope-thing," one eyewitness said. "So then he couldn't get out, so then somebody threw him some scissors, and he started cutting his beard off, but then he was still stuck."

Have no fear, Santa was rescued by an emergency crew. Link (with video) -via Fark

In the latest installment of cute interspecies adoption, Summer the rabbit has become bonded with a litter of abandoned kittens. Veterinary nurse Melanie Humble took the kittens home to foster, expecting her cat Ellie to be interested, but five-month-old Summer took to the kittens instead, letting them snuggle with and climb all over her. Link -via Unique Daily

In this geography game, click as close to the prompted location as you can, but remember, speed counts! I scored 353,403 points through ten levels, not high enough to play the last two levels. Link -via Militant Playtpus

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In the latest Chinese viral video advertising series from Nokia, the story goes that hip hop originated in the 60s in a farming village in Inner Mongolia. The master of the art is a 60-year-old who goes by the name MC Farmer. -via Metafilter

Using time-lapse photography, Journal Sentinel photographer Tom Lynn offers a day in the life of a game at Lambeau Field. Tom began by stationing a Canon EOS Mark II digital camera, mounted with a 16mm lens, atop the southwest corner of the stadium, encapsulating the entire bowl of the stadium with the field at its core. Powered by an external battery pack, the camera automatically fired every 20 seconds, shooting from 9:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., capturing the stadium as it filled with fans, as the game unfolded, and as the stadium emptied. The entire process captured 1,194 total images, which have been compressed into this two-minute video.

Link -via Cynical-C

Get your hankies ready as you watch this story from YTMND about the game Animal Crossing. Then call your mother. Link -via Metafilter

(The link was hijacked earlier; it's fixed now)

President Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863 (144 years ago today). But what if President Lincoln were a modern CEO? Then his Gettysburg Address would be given as a Powerpoint presentation. Peter Norvig shows us what it might have looked like. http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm -via Wired

Researchers in Belgium infiltrated cockroach colonies with robots in order to study their group behavior. The robots didn’t look much like cockroaches, but the roaches didn’t mind as long as they smelled right. Not only were the robots accepted as fellow cockroaches, but they became leaders and influenced the groups’ behavior! http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16328789&ps=bb1

In Terminus, a short movie by Trevor Cawood, a man tries to shake an annoying concrete creature who follows him around. Link [Quicktime] | Link [YouTube] -via I Am Bored

Santa Claus left a comment at my site today, reminding me about his personal blog. The latest post tells about the launch of his business blog, Corporate Responsibility @ The North Pole, where you can look up Santa’s stance on volunteerism, animal rights, environmental practices, and more. Link to personal blog. Link to corporate blog. -Thanks, Santa!

On the night and early morning of February 24 and 25, 1942, a singular event unfolded in the skies over Southern California – the continental United States was attacked by an enemy... or was it? The reports of this vary, from a squadron of Japanese bombers, a weather balloon, and even alien spacecraft, and the subsequent government conspiracies that followed. We do know that something happened; too many people witnessed the event to dispute that fact, but what really happened?

Was it an enemy attack, hysteria, or a UFO? Although the mystery has never been solved, the Fort MacArthur Museum is staging a recreation of the Great Los Angeles Air Raid on February 23rd, 2008. Link -via Grow-A-Brain