The "Nun Bun", a cinnamon bun bearing an uncanny resemblence to Mother Theresa, was stolen Christmas morning!

The Nun Bun gained worldwide attention in 1996 when a customer nearly took a bite of it before recognizing the revered nun in the folds of flaky pastry.

Link | Bongo Java's Nun Bun Page

For more of Margot's artwork, see: http://www.margotknight.com/margot.html

Owen, the baby hippo rescued after a flood, has found a new friend: Mzee, a 100-year old tortoise in a wildlife sanctuary in Mombasa, Kenya.

According to a park official, they sleep together, eat together and "have become inseparable".

Link

Faroe Islands, located halfway between Iceland and Norway, is usually an idyllic and very scenic place. Except when it's time for Grindadráp, a controversial whaling event where pilot whales are herded onto the beach and then culled.

Whether you agree with whaling or not, you'll find these pictures noteworthy.

Link to Mario Paoluzzo's images (via growabrain) | Wikipedia entry

Mathematicians Matthias Weber, David Hoffman, and Michael Wolf discovered a new minimal surface called a genus one helicoid - a structure thought for over 200 years not to be mathematically possible.

What is a minimal surface?

"A minimal surface is formed when the pressure on both sides of a surface is the same," Weber explained. "'For example, when you dip a bent coat hanger into soapy water, the soap bubble that forms on the hanger is a minimal surface." These soap bubbles can have various shapes, depending on the shape of the coat hanger, but in every case the bubble is trying to minimize surface tension, he said. This happens when the bubble has the smallest possible surface area.

Link to News Article | Various neat minimal surfaces

Menssana Research's Breathscanner 1.0 is a billion times more sensitive than a police breathalyzer, and can be used to check for asthma, ulcers, and trouble with a heart transplant.

Recent tests of the Menssana device have been encouraging. In a 2003 pilot study of 201 women, some of whom had diagnosed breast cancers, the breath test identified 88% of those cancers. The test's accuracy is comparable to a mammogram.

And in a 2004 clinical trial that involved 407 volunteers, including 195 patients with untreated lung cancer, the breath test picked up nearly 91% of the tumors.

Link to ZD Net Article | Link to Menssana Research

What happens when you put a frog inside a 16-Tesla magnetic field at the Nijmegen High Field Magnet Laboratory? It levitates!

In fact, it is possible to levitate magnetically every material and every living creature on the earth due to the always present molecular magnetism. The molecular magnetism is very weak (millions times weaker than ferromagnetism) and usually remains unnoticed in everyday life, thereby producing the wrong impression that materials around us are mainly nonmagnetic. But they are all magnetic. It is just that magnetic fields required to levitate all these "nonmagnetic" materials have to be approximately 100 times larger than for the case of, say, superconductors.

http://www.hfml.ru.nl/froglev.html | Gallery of Levitating Objects (Thanks Tony!)

What do you get when you parody popular songs using "karaoke-style backing music with vocals provided by audio pronunciation samples from online dictionaries"?

http://www.dictionaraoke.org/

For more of Heidi's artwork, see: Link

What is a fish highway? The website explains it best:

Imagine a means for fish to swim out the top of your aquarium, up to the ceiling, across the room and then down into another tank. That's a fish highway.

Link to Website (Apparently, there was even a patent back in 1877 on this idea!)

Check out Gelchop's other curious creations! http://gelchop.at.infoseek.co.jp/gel_top.html (Don't miss the strange "Kowai Mori exhibition", the Wall Animal, and this weird sculpture at the Yatsushiro School)

In a freak accident, one of the Boy Scout leaders flung a knife from his hands while trying to catch another scout who tripped. The knife hit Kevin Coulter in the head and lodged in his brain!

The blade landed in between his frontal lobes. It was 2 millimeters away from hitting a major blood vessel in his brain.

Kevin's doctors told him it was sheer luck where the knife hit.

“That's the best spot you know, if you're going to have a knife in your head,” said Kevin.

http://kutv.com/topstories/local_story_356200328.html (via J-Walk Blog)