(YouTube link)
From eggs til the time they leave the nest. I am astounded to think of how many trips the tiny mother bird must've made to feed two growing babies! -via Ursi’s Blog

Rob Carter of Fort Worth, Texas arrived home from Chicago and collected his luggage at the airport -but picked up the wrong suitcase. He realized his error when he opened it at home.

Irked at his "own idiocy," Carter leaned over to zip it shut when a kitten popped its head out of a corner of the suitcase. The wide-eyed cat took one look at Carter and bolted under the bed. "I must have jumped six feet into the air and screamed like a girl," said Carter.

The next morning, he got close enough to see a phone number on the cat's collar and called Kelly Levy in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, who was frantic over her missing cat. When her husband Seth left for the airport, Gracie Mae had apparently stowed way in the suitcase. The ten-month-old cat still had stitches from being spayed a few days earlier. Carter delivered the cat to Seth Levy, who took her home with a proper airline ticket.

Carter said that he considered keeping the cat before he knew she had a home.

"If I couldn't have found a good home, I would have kept it," he said. "We were going to name it Suitcase."

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-flpcat0123pnjan23,0,6910342.story to Carter's story. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-flpcat0122pnjan22,0,6320516.story to the Levys' story. -via Arbroath

(image credit: Sun-Sentinel/Rhonda Vanover)

Imagine drinking from a “cup” shaped like a corkscrew made up of ribbon. It doesn’t sound easy, but it could make drinking much easier in space. In microgravity conditions, liquid breaks up into globules which tend to float around and cause problems. Brian Lowry and Heather-Jean May of the University of New Brunswick have tested helix containers, which keep liquids in line by surface tension.

These forms should function much better as containers for holding fluids in microgravity, they say surface tension holds liquid inside the coil and the properties of the shape's surface allow fluid to be sucked out in one go.

When liquid is drawn out of these helical containers, the remaining fluid redistributes along the spiralling support. So, you can keep sucking until there is only a very thin ribbon of liquid lining the structure. An astronaut could drain a helix holding a drink in a single draught.

This type of container would be useful for applications besides drinking. Engineers must often transfer liquids in space for mechanical and experimental purposes. Lowry said:

"At the micro and nano scale, gravity becomes relatively insignificant, so this approach could help engineers working with tiny amounts of fluid on earth too."

Link -via BB Spot

When 40-year-old Tran Thi Kham traveled to Taiwan to search for her long lost father, she only had a few mementos as clues, a gold ring and a picture of a young man. She took several jobs, one of which was to care for an elderly woman until her death. After leaving that job and moving to another city, she realized her precious mementos had been left behind! 77-year-old Tsai Han-chao, the man who had employed her looked for the ring and picture and recognized them as gifts he had given to a Vietnamese woman he had fallen in love with 40 years earlier!

"Life's ups and downs are just like television drama. How could I have ever dreamed that she is my daughter? I couldn't stop crying when we were finally united," he told Taiwan's TVBS cable news channel.

Tran’s mother had died only two years after her birth, and she did not know that the aunt who raised her was not her birthmother until she was an adult. Link -via Metafilter

Roughly one in every 100 men (or 300 women) is a psychopath. Do you know one?

In the public imagination, a "psychopath" is a violent serial killer or an over-the-top movie villain, as one sometimes might suspect Frank to be. He is highly impulsive and has a callous disregard for the well-being of others that can be disquieting. But he is just as likely to be a next-door neighbor, a doctor, or an actor on TV—essentially no different from anyone else who holds these roles, except that Frank lacks the nagging little voice which so profoundly influences most of our lives. Frank has no conscience. And as much as we would like to think that people like him are a rare aberration, safely locked away, the truth is that they are more common than most would ever guess.

Psychopathology is explained in frightening detail at Damn Interesting. (Incidently, the "Frank" referred to in the quote was not pictured. This picture is of psychopath and serial killer Ted Bundy.) Link

A high-definition TV that requires less electricity than a 100 watt lightbulb. USB hubs and webcams that contain no plastic at all. Music players and flashlights that you wind up. And batteries that run on water. These eco-gadgets don’t cost as much as you’d think, and ten of them are described at EcoStreet. Link -via the Presurfer

The previously-linked article Top 50 Fictional Weapons drew much disagreement and conflicting opinions. Now we hear that 20th Century Fox commissioned a survey in which 2,000 moviegoers were asked which was their favorite weapon used in films. The top ten were:

1. Lightsabre (Star Wars)
2. .44 Magnum (Dirty Harry)
3. Bullwhip (Indiana Jones)
4. Samurai sword (Kill Bill)
5. Chainsaw (Texas Chainsaw Massacre)
6. Golden Gun (James Bond - The Man With The Golden Gun)
7. Bow and arrow (Robin Hood)
8. Machine gun (Scarface)
9. The Death Star (Star Wars)
10. Bowler hat (James Bond - Goldfinger)

Link -via Geek Like Me

Always keep your mind open when you are experimenting. While working toward one goal, one of your mistakes may prove to be very useful for another purpose. Or you may turn a side effect or byproduct into something that will become a hit! Alexander Fleming thought his experiment was ruined when mold formed in the petri dish, but he wound up finding penicillin that way! Percy Spencer was working with a “magnetron” when a candy bar melted in his pocket, and that’s how the microwave oven was born. Those are only two of the 10 Accidental Product Discoveries. Link -via the Presurfer

(YouTube link)
A music video set to the song Pussy on the Mat by poet and singer Ivor Cutler {wiki}, whom I never heard of before today. -via Arbroath

With so many people brainstorming on the problem of climate change, there’s bound to be some outlandish ideas for helping the Earth. How about an artificial volcano eruption? Or wrapping glaciers to keep them from melting? See these and more at ecoble. Link -Thanks, Craig Kohler!

Hello Kitty Darth Vader leads the way in strange combined memes. Now Darth Kitty has been enshrined forever in someone’s skin! Link -via Everlasting Blort

Ships were powered by the wind for centuries, and those days may be returning! The MS Beluga, a 462ft cargo vessel, will leave Germany on Tuesday for a voyage to Venezuela. During the trip, the crew will deploy a SkySail, a 160 square meter kite which will ride the wind 600 feet up. Its inventor, Stephan Wrage, believes the use of SkySail can cut diesel consumption by 20%, which will save £800 (about $1600) a day. Link -via reddit

(YouTube link)
Simon takes on 74 balloons in an epic battle with the clock running! I didn’t count the balloons; that’s what the video description said. -via Arbroath

Tom Parker has published several books on “rules of thumb” over the past 25 years, and has collected even more information, which he’s turned into a collective website.

A rule of thumb turns information you have into information you need. The goal of this website is to gather every rule of thumb on earth into one gargantuan, easily searchable online reference database that will be accessible from anywhere in the world and continue to grow forever.

Some featured rules cover how to choose a lawyer, the safe stopping distance at traffic lights, caring for your car, and winning at blackjack. There are 151 categories of rules so far! You can submit yours, too. Link -Thanks, Tom!

This article gives us scenarios that range from the familiar (nuclear war, divine intervention) to the incomprehensible (the Omega Point). In between are somethings that might not have caused you nightmares before, but might now! Link -Thanks, Jon Jason!