walrus

This past June, the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn experienced a beautiful thing: the birth of a baby boy walrus, a first for the aquarium and for New York City in general. Now that he's nearly four months old, it seems it's time to name the creature that employees at the zoo have lovingly described as a 256-pound bulldog wearing a wetsuit. Now you can play an important role in the pup's young life by helping choose his name at the Today Show website.

As you can see from this video of the little guys first swim, hes about as agile on land as a one-legged antelope, but takes to the water as gracefully as, well, a walrus. If you have the stomach for it, you might also check out this birth video (the first-ever walrus birth caught on tape). Considering all the things that walruses do slowly, the birth is over ridiculously quickly.

Cast your votes before the October 10 deadline and hope that he ends up with a better name than his dad, Ayveq, which in the Siberian Yupik language means, simply, "walrus." Me, I'm taking the write-in route. Let's go "Oscar!"—Bjorn Carey

Image: Copyright WCS/Julie Larsen Maher

This is not a Blimp. It's a sort of flying Queen Mary 2 that could change the way you think about air travel. It's the Aeroscraft, and when it's completed, it will ferry pampered passengers across continents and oceans as they stroll leisurely about the one-acre cabin or relax in their well-appointed staterooms.

Unlike its dirigible ancestors, the Aeroscraft is not lighter than air. Its 14 million cubic feet of helium hoist only two thirds of the craft's weight.