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A caretaker found just the right scratching spot to induce bliss in a baby leopard. This little one lives at the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington.

-via The Uniblog

You have to get out of bed. Oh, no, this clock isn't going to lure you out with freshly-cooked bacon. Nor will it slap you in the face or toss you on to the floor. But you will have to leave your bedroom and show some basic cognition:

There is no snooze button. If you unplug it, a battery takes over. As wake-up time approaches, you cannot reset the alarm time.

It could be the world's most exasperating alarm clock.

Once it goes off, to stop it you must get out of bed, go into the kitchen or bathroom, and punch the day's date into a telephone-style keypad. That's the only way to stop the loud 'ding-ding,' designed to sound like a customer angrily banging on a concierge bell at a hotel.

My suggestion for a heavy-duty version: the user must solve a basic algebra problem before the alarm turns off.

Link -via Marginal Revolution | Official Website | Photo: AP

He was a fine bug: a devoted family man with over two hundred children. His loss was a shock to us all.

The Carmichael Collective in Minneapolis marked the passing of this roach by setting up a little memorial to him where they found his body on the sidewalk. It's one of several bug memorials that they made. You can find more photos at the link.

Link -via Bit Rebels

Since 1913, Edvard Eriksen's statute of the titular character from the tale "The Little Mermaid" has watched over the harbor of Copenhagen, Denmark. To mark her upcoming hundredth birthday, artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset made this male version. Thanks to machinery inside, the stainless steel merman blinks every half hour.

Link -via My Modern Met | Photo: Art Daily

Previously: Skeleton Replaces Copenhagen Mermaid

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This is the awesomest thing you will see all day. Okay, it's a barrel organ that plays Star Wars music, but it's so much more than that. The surface is made of LEGO pieces, arranged as scenes from Hoth, Endor and Tatooine. The LEGO pieces trip levers that press organ keys, so the scenes play music. The studio Builders of Sound made this marvel, and it deserves a standing ovation right now.

Link -via DVICE

Aren't you a little tall for a stormtrooper? Still, I won't argue with Fabian Gonzalez's re-imagining of the 1933 film.

Link -via Distracted by Star Wars | Previously by Fabian Gonzalez

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If you've long fantasized about living as a hamster, then have I got a hotel for you! The Hamster Villa in Nantes, France simulates the full hamster experience. Guests get furry hats and tails, an exercise wheel, a bed of hay and water from a fountain.

Link -via The Presurfer

Party droid R2-D2 is ready to get down this weekend, thanks to a few modifications by Tex Nasty and Ed Hubbs. You can also hire him for weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Link | Photo: Jessica Walker

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Remember the scammers who reversed their car into another? A similar thief is at work here. He walks into a stopped car, then acts like the car hit him. Watch until the end, when you see him nurse a leg, feigning injury -- and it's the wrong leg!

-via reddit

You may have gotten over the shock of discovering that the sinking of the Titanic was a real historical event. Now brace yourselves: not everything that the movies tell you about it is accurate. Some of what people think to be true about the Titanic isn't at all, such as that the owners claimed that the ship was unsinkable:

But this is perhaps the biggest myth surrounding the Titanic, says Richard Howells, from Kings College London.

"It is not true that everyone thought this. It's a retrospective myth, and it makes a better story. If a man in his pride builds an unsinkable ship like Prometheus stealing the fire from the gods... it makes perfect mythical sense that God would be so angry at such an affront that he would sink the ship on its maiden outing."

Contrary to the popular interpretation the White Star Line never made any substantive claims that the Titanic was unsinkable - and nobody really talked about the ship's unsinkability until after the event, argues Howells.

Link -via Joe Carter | Image: Paramount

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That a dog would tolerate this treatment so readily seems weird until you learn the dog's name: Corbin Dallas Multipass.

That's a Fifth Element reference. Two of them, in fact.

Anyone with a name that awesome would have such confidence that nothing could perturb him.

Link -via Super Punch

Coffee, a basketball...and now socks! Hong Yi makes portraits using materials you'd never think of.

Her latest work is a rendering of Chinese filmmaker Yimou Zhang in socks. She was inspired by the most ordinary of sights in Shanghai: socks hanging out to dry on bamboo rods. "To me," she writes, "that was incredibly beautiful."

Link -via Oddity Central

Iranian artist Farhad Moshiri gets right to the point: life is beautiful. He expressed this sentiment in 2009 by driving hundreds of knives into a gallery wall.

Link -via NotCot | Photos: Guillaume Ziccarelli

When Anthony Regole was a freshman in high school, he built an Adirondack chair out of old hockey sticks for a school project. This launched his woodworking career. He does more than just hockey stick projects, but these remain his signature pieces. This lamp would work well in a man cave, don't you think?

Builder's Website -via Ann Toler

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Ingredients: 2 Krispy Kreme donuts, 1 huge marshmallow, and 1 Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Nate Smith compared the joyful experience of biting into this wonder with the birth of his own son:

I'm so happy!...This is similar to how it feels when I had my son...This is the greatest thing in the world.

He's not modest. Nor should he be.

Link -via Geekosystem