This video, taken over four hours with a whole-sky camera and compressed to a rapid two minutes (plus a minute of introduction), makes the sky over Sweden look like the world's best executive desk toy.

We imagine it's a common taunt on chicken playgrounds: "Your father is a DUCK!" (I mean, why wouldn't it be? Ducks are gross.) But for one brand-new baby chick at Dubai's Central Veterinary Research Laboratory, it's just the honest truth. Researchers there have announced the birth of a chicken that was fathered by a duck, in a technique that could represent new hope for extinct species.

This shark embryo, found by a fisherman off the coast of Florida, is the first two-headed bull shark science has ever seen. This is almost certainly just one of those things that happens, not a result of pollution or the BP spill or whatever, but feel free to freak out, as it is probably a sign of the End Times anyway.

Kali is an orphaned baby polar bear living at the Alaska Zoo, and if you watch her play you will literally be able to feel stress flowing out of your body.

Obviously YOU don't drink water from plastic bottles, unless you're somewhere where the water isn't safe, or you're at the gym and you forgot your Klean Kanteen, or you're super thirsty and desperate. But lots of people do produce plastic bottle waste. And sure, you could spend the energy to recycle them into other bottles, OR you could make them into badass flame-powered DIY rockets. (And you can still recycle them into other bottles afterwards!)

It's kind of alarming that so many of our solutions for improving public health and slowing population growth depend upon the humble condom. They do the trick, a certain percentage of the time, but they're not exactly towering triumphs of design -- ribbing for her ostensible pleasure aside, substantive improvements to the condom stopped at the invention of latex and quality control.

The Gates Foundation wants to change that: It's offering a $100,000 grant for developing "the next generation of condom." Solar-powered cyborg Voltrondoms that transform into a robot nanny in the event of failure will probably be considered, but that's not what it's after; all it wants is a condom that actually makes sex feel better.

Rep. Steve Stockman, a Republican (of course) from the 36th district of Texas (OF COURSE), wants you to know that he appreciates our planet. Especially the way it painlessly and plentifully provides an inexhaustible source of harmless fuel.

The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas come out.

—
Rep. Steve Stockman (@SteveStockmanTX) March 21, 2013

It's poignant to see a child who's peaked before she even finishes kindergarten, but I'm not sure how 5-year-old Daisy Morris is going to top this one: On a fossil-hunting trip with her family, she found the remains of a previously undiscovered dinosaur, which is now named Vertidraco daisymorrisae. 

These newborn baby eagles live in a nest on property belonging to aluminum company Alcoa, and nobody has ever accused an industry giant of not knowing how to brand and publicize things. In this case, though, it works out well for us, because Alcoa has set up a live cam in the eaglets' nest, and you can watch them as they grow.

Apparently there used to be enough urban goat-ownership in New York that the city could sustain an annual goat beauty pageant. In the post-Prohibition 1930s, the Brewers Board of Trade sought beautiful billy goats to adorn their advertising posters, and the majority of the competitors lived in Manhattan.

Not all of the goats competing in "Mr. Manhattan" were NYC natives -- in fact, Pretzels, the 1934 and 1936 winner, lived in Westchester County, which royally pissed off the New York Times: