Begging is generally not considered to be an honorable means of livelihood, not unless a person has absolutely no other choice. What would you say though, to a beggar who does not live off his own earnings, but gives it all away? Now, that’s something you don’t get to see every day.

The mystical traditions of the East have insisted on monks begging for their daily meals in ancient times. Forty one year old Wang Zhiyou seems to be one step ahead of his ancestors. He has been giving away every penny earned by begging. Zhiyou has his roots in the Chinese village of Yongping, located in Heilongjiang province. Today, he doesn’t have a home or a place to call his own. He wanders from town to town, village to village, never staying more than a month. When the thirty days are up, he donates all the money and moves on. He has been doing this for the past fifteen years.

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I don’t know what it is about people and chocolate rooms, but they seem to keep making them and we keep writing about them. This time a shopping mall in Kaliningrad, Russia celebrated its fifth anniversary by commissioning an artist to create a room entirely of chocolate.

The idea of building a chocolate room inside Kaliningrad Plaza belonged to Lithuanian ad agency Ad Hunters, who commissioned experienced sculptor Elena Climent to carve it out of 420 kilograms of dark, milk and white chocolate. Measuring around 20 square meters, the delicious-looking room features furniture like a chocolate sofa, table and carpet, as well as chocolate cutlery, candle holders, and flowers. 40% of the room is made of dark chocolate, another 40% is milk chocolate, and the rest is white chocolate.

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Progress in the world of gaming and technology has brought us nothing other than amazement over the years. The latest awesome feat of gaming is beyond awesome as the Tobii EyeAsteroids pushes you to take a different look at gaming, literally. Based on one of the best games in history, Asteroids, the new arcade game features a special controller – your eyes.

Using some special sensors and software, the game tracks the motion of your eyes and then interprets it as input commands for the game. The Tobii EyeAsteroids is a game that simply implies you looking at it. There’s no button mashing or jumping up and down to control the game. It seems to be the perfect gaming system to indulge in laziness while safely avoiding carpal tunnel problems. It’s also a definite eye catcher system that can be both weird and addictive at the same time.

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Circus shows have been getting censored, simplified and overall less exciting just about everywhere. Not in India though, that’s the place where the infamous phrase “death defying stunt” lives on through Mauth Ka Kuan, or the Well of Death.

Though originally performed all over the world, riding a bike on a vertical wall can now only be seen live in the “Land of contrasts” and it makes visiting the place even more tempting. The stunt is old so you’d imagine India’s bike riders have honed and perfected it to the highest level. Actually, the Well of Death – as the arena is referred to – isn’t just a marketing ploy.Riding on incredibly old bikes that haven’t seen maintenance since they left the factory, the Indian bikers ride with absolutely no safety gear at break neck speeds. The walls on which they ride are vertical and built from salvaged wood.

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Be careful before taking that sip! It might just make you gay. Or so believes a Peruvian Mayor, Jose Benitez. This by far sounds like one of the most unusual and irrational beliefs associated with homosexuality. Does Mr. Mayor actually have something to back his claims? Let’s find out.

It is definitely an established fact that the drinking water in the area consists of several minerals. It is the very presence of these minerals that is causing the Mayor of Humarey to make such claims. In fact, the supply of potable water to Humarey comes from the neighboring town of Tabalosos, and this water is known to have high levels of the mineral strontium. It is interesting to note that Tabalosos has been in the news before. For none other than its high population of homosexuals. It was reported that around 14,000 gay men inhabited the town at one point of time. A correlation has been drawn between strontium and the gay population.

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We’re all used to purchasing fast food from trailers, trucks, vans and even push-carts. But from a tiny Smart car? Now that’s something new.

This innovative concept comes to Austin, Texas all the way from Germany. Two German youths who arrived in Dallas a few years ago as exchange students, have brought with them something unique from their homeland. Michael Heyne and Dominek Stein sell the Doener Kebap from a Smart car.

The dish is actually kind of similar to the Greek gyro sandwich. The German version, Doener Kebap consists of large shavings of chicken or beef. These slices are cooked on a vertical rotisserie grill and are served with a variety of vegetables and sauces, all bundled up in a piece of pocket bread. The origins of the dish lie in Turkey and it was brought over to Germany sometime in the 1970s. But the dish is only a part of the attraction. What brings people in, is the innovative manner in which it is sold.

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It is surprising to find business owners in this day and age who aren’t all about the money. Michael Diedrick from Milwaukee is one such person. The fact that he sold his restaurant located in a prime neighborhood for a paltry sum of $100, is something strange and unfathomable. Although, once you get to know more about the deal, it might not seem so bizarre after all.

Forty year old Diedrick opened the National Café and Takeaway around three years ago with a goal. His aim was to introduce the city of Milwaukee to the sustainable concept of local and organic food, centered around minimal waste. The place was opened as an experiment, with the intention of being sold eventually, to a person capable of managing such a restaurant. Diedrick, in fact, runs his own website design studio in the same premises, three floors below.

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For those of you who love Christmas but can’t stand falling needles and cheap plastic, Japanese jeweler Ginza Tanaka has created the ultimate Christmas tree –  made of pure gold and worth a whopping $2 million.

After making a 24-karat gold horse for Japan’s newborn prince, and creating another tree worth $850,000, Ginza Tanaka decided to step it up even more and came up with a solid gold Christmas tree for this holiday season. Measuring 2.4 meters high and weighing around 12 kilograms, the luxurious tree is decorated with golden plates and around 60 heart-shaped ornaments, and covered with ribbon. It’s the most expensive thing Ginza Tanaka has ever made, but while I do appreciate the craftsmanship and the effort that went into it, I’m not sure gold is right for such an important symbol. After all, what kind of presents are you supposed to put under such a tree, anyway?

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As a kid, cars play a big role in life as they are generally boys’ favorite toys. If you’ve got a father that’s as passionate about cars as you, you may end up going to a motor show and seeing them live.

Once you’re there however, things go a little bit wrong, after the ten or so supercars and a couple of off-roaders you realize it’s not really that interesting. There’s just tons of boring cars for daddy, mommy and whoever else can actually drive. Since odds are that you’re still calling the models “pretty women” there’s no appeal in that either. Car shows aren’t always as fun as you’d imagine they could be when you’re five years old. Unless you went to the LA Motor Show this year.

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The mother of all DIY projects has arrived. And this one involves making something you, and only you will ever use. Your coffin.

A class that teaches people to build their own caskets is indeed available in Grand Marais, northern Minnesota. It is run by a forty-five year-old professional wood worker, Randy Schnobrich. The three-day course costs around $750, $470 of which is spent on materials alone. Participants are taught and supervised while they construct a coffin from cabinet grade pine, an inch in thickness.

The USP of this class, apart from building coffins of course, is the fact that very few power tools are used. Most of the construction work is done using hand tools such as planes and saws, as opposed to heavy machinery. Schnobrich feels that the use of hand tools is, in some ways, the very essence of the school.

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Pointillism is  the technique used to create an image by repeatedly applying small dots of pure color to a blank canvas. When post-impressionist painter George Seurat first invented this technique, little did he know that a fine arts student would one day use it to create the image of a Beagle, with the help of Sprinkles.

After creating a chair with 22 different shades of paint for his fine arts university project, Joel Brochu was fascinated by the use of everyday objects in art. He first experimented with M&Ms to create images, but their size was a major hurdle. Brochu found that he had to stand several feet away from the completed image to actually view it as a whole. He then happened to notice sprinkles.

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Have you ever heard of kids making some cash on the side, simply by studying? Well, it’s happening and we’ll tell you how. High schools in Virginia Beach are offering cash incentives to students as well as teachers for receiving good grades on their Advanced Placement exams.

As unbelievable as it might sound, it’s really true. The first few schools to adopt this new technique to get kids back to their books are Salem and Green Run High Schools. Apparently, a pat on the back just won’t do it anymore. A student can receive up to $100 for each AP exam on which they score 3, 4 or 5, on a five point scale.

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China is the most populated country in the world, probably the most hard working country in the world and well on its way toward becoming the richest one as well. Considering how they’ve managed to achieve such a feat is considerably less fun than making snide remarks at their legendary knockoff business.

Millions of brands around the world saw their products replicated cheaply and brands like Mike, Abidas, iFone appeared from nowhere. Though still considerably involved in the replica production China has since come a long way. Just about every manufacturer on Earth has plants there and, more importantly, most of their products are being sold there as well. You’d imagine that once the Asian country got a real taste of proper products, started making some real money and was looking for what to spend it on, they’d forget about the cheap fakes right?Well, sort of, rather unusually, the Chinese have now acquired a taste for expensive fakes. A prime example would be the country’s richest village.

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Man has done his bit to improve various things around him and, in doing so, he’s even managed to improve himself. Maybe not directly, but they don’t say children are the future for no reason.

In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg went down in history as one of the youngest people ever to be deemed Times “Person of the Year” and is also one of the world’s youngest self made billionaire. This year, Sebastian Vettel went down in history as the youngest driver to ever win two consecutive Formula 1 titles alongside a large number of “world’s youngest” achievements he already has under his belt. All great stories, but when it comes to the world of business, these rich twenty-something year-old success stories have been rather outdone by the protagonist of this story. His name is Harli Jordean and he’s reached business success at just eight years of age.

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Trust me on this, that headline has absolutely nothing rock’n’roll about it . Weirdly enough, it’s actually true and you can even go on to experience it yourself, provided you’re willing to travel.

Travel a little or a lot rather depends on where you’re starting from as you’ll have to go to Georgia in order to live this out. Oh, and that’s not Georgia, the American state, but Georgia a small country that sits borderline between Europe and Asia. In this rather remote country, that’s seen it’s fair share of misfortune over the years for various political issues, economic and social pressures and so on, you’ll be able to find an unusual bastion of hope.

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