(Photo: Michael Marteen)

Frederick Callison of Sacramento, California had hit rock bottom, but he wasn't going to stay there.

He sat outside a grocery store, trying to get the attention of passersby. But he didn't ask for money. Instead, he was passing out his resume. Callison has extensive experience working in restaurants, which his resume listed. And he wrote on that resume that "I am firm believer in proactive productivity rather than reactive."

Indeed he was. Callison also had his Social Security card, ID card, and copies of his food handler's license. He was ready to start work. That impressed local resident Michael Marteen, who posted Callison's story and resume on Facebook and created a GoFundMe page on his behalf.

Word spread about Callison's efforts and a restaurant named Pizza Rocks hired him. The Today show reports:

"He was ecstatic about landing a job and very grateful for the opportunity," Marteen said. "He was up the night before studying the menu for hours."

The restaurant gave him clothes to wear and a friend is providing Callison with a place to stay until he can get back on his feet.

"It's easy to look at someone and not see anything but a homeless man, but after talking to him I realized he's so much more than that," Marteen said. "He's a well spoken, cool and friendly guy who knows what he wants and is going after it."

-via Huffington Post

It's time to wake up, furry friend!

Well, I don't blame him a bit for staying in bed. He's got a perfect snoozing spot. It's a proper futon with a mattress, pillow, sheet, and blanket. Rocket News 24 tells us about Maru, a hamster owned by Japanese twitter user @tibi241. He's content to sleep in and let the world go by.

Andrea Cammalleri of Middletown, Ohio, fought the law ... with a comma and the comma won!

Cammalleri got a traffic ticket back in 2014 in the village of West Jefferso when she parked her pickup truck in a zone that prohibited parking there for longer than 24 hours. The Ohio woman pointed out that the law stated that the types of car that couldn't be parked included "motor vehicle camper" not "motor vehicle, camper" so her pickup truck clearly didn't qualify.

The town's attorney argued that the law's meaning was clear in context, but the judge ruled for Cammalleri. Score 1 for grammar!

So the next time someone said to you that grammar doesn't matter, tell 'em that you can use it to fight traffic tickets!

Image: Grammar Police by SteveOramA

Only one in about 3,000 calico cats are male. You knew that, but the explanation of how sex and cat fur color are so intertwined is a new one for me. The explanation starts with a refresher on X and Y chromosomes. Females have two X, and males have an X and a Y. In cats, the X chromosome determines fur color. Unless that color is white. A cat with two X chromosomes (female) only uses one of them, while the other will go dormant.

The important thing here is that the same X-chromosome does not inactivate for each cell. One cell may shut off the X-chromosome from the mother while leaving the chromosome from the father. That cell then creates more cells, each of which will use the father’s X-chromosome to determine the fur color. Likewise, another cell may silence the X-chromosome from the father and instead use the chromosome from the mother.

So, for instance, if the female offspring receives the chromosome for black fur from both of its parents, she will have black fur. In the case of calico cats, the same process occurs. However, the offspring receives the chromosome for, for instance, black fur from one parent and orange fur from the other. One cell inactivates the chromosome for black fur resulting in orange fur. Other cells use the chromosome for black fur instead. In both cases, these cells are replicated and the inactivated chromosome will always stay inactive. Those two colors then combine on the cat’s fur to create the orange and black patches of fur. If the cat only has these two colors, it is known as a tortoiseshell cat.

But what about white? That’s a different story, because white cat fur isn’t dependent on sex chromosomes. Any cat can have white fur, or patches of white fur. And then there are the rare male calico cats. Read how that happens in the full post at Today I Found Out.

(Image credit: Flickr user Erica Zabowski)