Arabian Tuner Specializes in Covering Cars with Thousands of Shiny Coins

A Dubai-based car tuning company aptly named Cars Coin has come up with an original way of giving luxury vehicles a unique look. They simply cover the cars in tens of thousands of modern and antique coins to make them “shine as if they were made of diamonds”.

It’s not easy making your car stand out in the UAE. It doesn’t matter if you drive the latest Ferrari, Lamborghini or Porsche, there are probably hundreds of others just like it lining the streets of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Covering your ride in gold foil is an option, but it’s been done more than once. Luckily, a group of tuning enthusiasts have come up with a new way to make expensive cars look unique. The guys at Cars Coin, an independent car workshop in Dubai, specialize in draping luxury cars in thousands of coins. Photos of their latest creation, a 2013 Range Rover draped in no less than 57,412 old Dirham coins have been making the rounds on the internet, during the last few days. Cars Coin artists spent weeks shinning the coins and gluing each one by hand to the body of the car. According to some sources, this extra metal layer added another 170 kilos to the weight of the luxury SUV. Just to make sure no one is tempted to steal the coins, the tuners used old Dirham coins that are no longer in circulation. But it’s not like most people in the UAE need small change, anyway.

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Beautiful Shadow Sculptures Made from Trash and Scrap Metal

Dutch artist Diet Wiegman has spent the last 50 years carefully arranging pieces of trash and scrap metal to create incredibly beautiful and detailed shadow sculptures.

Looking at Diet Wiegman’s piles of junk you’re left wondering why on Earth would anyone think of them as art. There’s really nothing special about them, just a combination of scrap metal and various discarded objects that always seems to represent the same thing – chaos. But as soon as someone turns on the little projector that always accompanies his works, the real masterpiece magically appears in the background. After realizing the shadows cast by Wiegman’s trash puppets are the real artworks, viewers are puzzled by another question – how does he do it? That’s something only the artist can answer, but it’s obvious he spends a great deal of time patiently arranging every little part of his sculptures, making sure they cast the right shadow when light shines from a specific angle.

light-sculptures

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The Swimming Pigs of Big Major Cay, in the Bahamas

Not everyone agrees with me, but I’ve always thought pigs were adorable creatures. Sure, they aren’t exactly the cleanest, but they’re very cute especially when they’re young. So when I heard about this tiny island that a bunch of pigs had all to themselves, I just had to find out more! Turns out this pig island is located in the Bahamas, where the creatures were first discovered in 2009 by photographer Eric Cheng and captain Jim Abernathy.

The island’s official name is Big Major Cay, but most people know it as Pig Island. The region is blessed with a natural water spring and sheltered by a string of neighboring islands that protect it from tropical storms. It’s the perfect environment for the pigs to laze around all day like little beach bums. They frolic in the water, swimming along-side each other and showing off their paddling skills to visitors. It’s interesting how the pigs appeared on this island in the first place. Rumor has it that a few sailors passing by the island a few years ago thought to leave a few pigs behind and turn the place into a reliable and secret source of food. Lucky for the pigs however, the sailors never returned. The creatures have never had to worry about their own food, thanks to the passing yachts that regularly dump excess food into the sea. It seems the pigs are able to tell when their next ‘shipment’ is arriving, so they eagerly plunge into the waves when they spot a yacht. They sweem a few feet up to the vessel, in the hope of getting the best catch.

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Controversial Priest Wears Rocker Clothes, Rides a Chopper and References Rock Songs During Sermons

Adolfo Huerta Aleman, known to his parishioners as Father Gofo, is not your usual priest. He looks and dresses like a rocker, likes going to bars, loves pictures of naked women,smokes, swears, and tells jokes during his sermons. He’s probably not the only Catholic priest with odd hobbies, but unlike most, he’s open about them.

At one point in his life, Gofo wanted to enroll in the military. Then he thought about becoming a policeman, a firefighter or a teacher, but he ended up as a priest in the Mexican city of Satillo. He says his ultimate career choice was probably influenced by the values passed on to him by his religious family. But for him, entering the Church didn’t mean leaving everything he loved up to that point at the door. That included his love for rock culture, his passion for motorcycles or any of his vices. On the contrary, he decided to let his unique personality play a big role in his profession, as a way to reach those for whom conventional religion held no appeal. He continued dyeing the end of his black locks red, wore skull rings and bracelets in church, rode his chopper around town, and even referenced rock songs during Mass. Obviously, all that didn’t sit well with many of his conservative parishioners, but it got him closer to members of the community that would otherwise be inaccessible to the Catholic Church.

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Popeye’s Village in Real Life

Tucked away in the small European country of Malta is a place you’d probably never expect to find in the real world– Popeye’s Village. Also known as Sweethaven Village, it is an ideal family-vacation spot and one of Malta’s major tourist attractions. The fun park is modeled on the theme of the favorite children’s cartoon character, Popeye the Sailor Man. Interestingly, this village was the actual set used by Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions to shoot the 1980 film Popeye, based on the comic strips by E. C. Segar.

At Sweethaven, you can expect to see models of all the main characters of the popular children’s cartoon – Popeye the Sailor, Olive Oyl, Bluto, Swee’Pea and Wimpy. You can also go on joy rides and visit play houses, puppet shows, museums, and cinema sessions featuring the film Popeye and the construction of the set. You can even star in your own film, record it and take it home. But that’s not all, there are a host of other things to see and experience, like face painting, balloon modelling, storytelling, open-air barbeques, crafts and Wii games. There’s also a mini golf course and a free wine tasting for adults. The season-specific activities are a huge hit as well, these include water trampolines, play pools and boat rides during the summer, and a Christmas Parade along with Santa’s toy town in December.

Popeye-Village-Malta

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A Huge Cross to Bear – Man Spends 26 Years Traveling the World with a Giant Crucifix on His Shoulder

I think it’s amazing how dedicated some people can be towards a cause they believe in. Like 60-year-old Lindsay Hamon, who has spent the past 26 years of his life hauling a giant crucifix all around the world, talking about Jesus to anyone who will listen. He literally carried his faith on his shoulders, trekking across 19 countries including New Zealand, Romania, India and Sri Lanka. During the course of his amazing journey he has had some truly spectacular moments as well as some pretty rough ones. In spite of being attacked and shot at in Bangladesh and thrown out of St Peter’s Square in Rome, Hamon has no plans to stop his work any time soon.

Hamon took up the mission of carrying the huge cross around the world in 1987, and he has rarely put it down ever since . The cross itself is made of cedar wood and measures 12 ft. by 6ft tall. It has a wheel at its base to make it easier to drag around, and he actually carries it over his shoulder for up to 12 hours a day, without having the faintest idea of where he will spend the night. The father-of-two and part-time care worker receives donations from supporters that help him stay committed to his role as a Christian Evangelist. But he does need to stop at his home town in Cornwall every once in a while to work and pay his family’s bills. “I tried giving up my work and doing this full time instead, but I didn’t get enough money to make ends meet,” he says. At times, Hamon has even put his life at risk. “There is fear there sometimes because I have a wife and kids and you don’t want to put yourself in danger. It is really trusting in God, knowing he will protect you.”

Lindsay-Hamon-cross

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Dead Men Walking – The Bizarre Condition Known as Cotard’s Syndrome

One of the world’s strangest and rarest mental disorders is Cotard’s Syndrome. Also known as the Cotard Delusion, the Nihilistic Delusion, and the Walking Corpse Syndrome, CS causes sufferers to believe that they are dead (figuratively or literally) and do not exist.

I always thought the walking dead only existed in movies and video games. Until I read about Cotard’s Syndrome (CS), that is. Apparently, people who suffer from this rare but very real mental disorder actually believe that they have died and are not of this world anymore. The condition is named after a 19th century French neurologist, Jules Cotard. In 1880, he presented the first patient to be diagnosed with the condition at a lecture, calling her Mademoiselle X. She is said to have suffered from significant self-loathing, a denial of the existence of God, the Devil, and several parts of her own body. She also believed she was damned for eternity and incapable of dying a natural death, so she had no reason to eat anymore. Mademoiselle X eventually starved to death.

cotards-syndrome

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Awe-Inspiring Pixelated Portraits Made from Paint-Injected Bubble Wrap

Canadian artist Bradley Hart creates pixelated photo-realistic images by injecting bubble wrap with acrylic paint. The process it’s considerably more complicated and time-consuming than it sounds, but the end result is simply mind-blowing.

Pixelated portraits are nothing new. In the years since I started Oddity Central I’ve seen this kind of artworks created with everything from thousands of lipsticks to colored crayons and keyboard keys, but I’ve never heard of anyone using bubble wraps. Until today, that is. Bradley Hart uses the packaging material as a canvas for his photo-realistic paintings, by injecting every bubble with acrylic paint. It’s a painstaking process, because not only does he have to get every color just right to create the desired effect, but he also has to surgically remove all the dripped paint from the backside of the material. As the Canadian artist explains on his website “the exchange between paint and the air inside the bubble displaces one of the two elements. As the paint is injected into a bubble, the excess drips down the back of the piece.” So, after he completes one of his amazing artworks, he has to remove all the drippings from the backside of the plastic.

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Croatian Modeler Builds Incredibly Accurate Replicas of Industrial Vehicles from Thousands of Matchsticks

20-year old Djordje Balac spends weeks, sometimes months at a time working from sunrise to midnight creating realistic models of industrial vehicles like trucks, excavators and cranes exclusively from matchsticks and glue.

Djordje’s passion for making wooden models dates back to general school. At first he cut all the necessary parts from pieces of wood, but soon he discovered matchsticks were a much better building material and, as he puts it. “the rest is history”. He started using hundreds of boxes of matches to create small-size models of his favorite trucks and industrial equipment, and spent weeks trying to get all the details just right. As his skills improved, the young man from Gospic, Croatia, decided to take his matchstick art to the next level by making the wooden replicas operational. So in 2006, he started building larger matchstick models, concentrating not only on replicating every design feature, but also on functionality. Despite working with a rigid material like matchsticks, he managed to make the arms of his excavator and crane models extend and turn like they do on real ones, and the cabins of his trucks detachable. After posting photos of his creations on forums and social media sites, Djordje Balac got the recognition he deserved, and was even invited to display his models at fairs and exhibitions around his home country.

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Ukrainian Spider-Man Performing Vertigo-Inducing Stunts Claims Fear Does Not Exist

26-year-old Mustang Wanted (not his real name, obviously) got the nickname “real-life Spider-Man” after he spent the last decade climbing atop some of the highest structures in the former USSR, and taking unbelievable photos of himself dangling on one hand or tiptoeing on metal rails.

Ever since he was just a child, Mustang Wanted had a taste for extreme sports, and among his first hobbies were practicing the Brazilian art of Capoeira and “throwing battle axes”. Now, the former legal adviser from Kiev satisfies his adrenaline cravings by scaling sky-high structures, performing unbelievable stunts and sharing photos and videos of his achievements through social media. Some of his most famous exploits include doing push-ups on a metal tower at about 300 feet above ground, and dangling by one hand from a metal crane 150 meters up in the air. Just watching this stuff is enough to make most people’s hands sweat, but the young daredevil says for him fear does not exist: “Sometimes I think that I’m a robot. I do not feel anything.” His only real concern is getting caught by the police, who have on occasions disrupted his plans. Death is certainly not his biggest worry while balancing on metal beams and offering his fans a bird’s eye view of urban Ukraine and Russia, and even says he would rather die than suffer an injury that would end his “skywalking” career.

Mustang-Wanted

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Mind-Reading Headphones Play Music Based on Your Mood

Finding the right song to suit your mood can be pretty frustrating, but thanks to the new Mico mind-reading headphones from Japanese company Neurowear, you won’t have to scroll through your playlist anymore. They’ll just scan your brain and play the perfect song.

The Mico mind-reading system is made up of two parts: a pair of bulky headphones and an iPhone app. The headphones come with a forehead sensor that analyzes the user’s brainwaves to detect his mood, then connects to the Mico database via the iPhone application and selects the song that best fits his current state, from a number of neuro-tagged tunes. If your mood changes, and you feel the song isn’t appropriate anymore, all you have to do is shake the phone to clear collected data and have the sensor scan your brain again. Neurowear’s revolutionary headphones also come with built-in LED indicators that display your mood through icons to everyone around you. Right now, they have an exclamation mark for when you’re focused, a “zzz” sign for when you’re feeling drowsy, and a cross icon for when you’re stressed.

Neurowear-headphones

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Fire Facials – Setting Your Face on Fire in the Name of Beauty

Women have always had to endure a certain amount of pain to make themselves beautiful. But how far is actually considered too far? Apparently, there isn’t a limit to what Chinese women would do to look good, even if it means setting themselves on fire.

The photograph below shows a woman with a thick yellow face-pack, a towel covering half her face and two balls of fire over her eyes. Yet she looks completely unperturbed. Taken by a Chinese girl when she accompanied her mother to the beauty parlor, the pic has been doing the rounds of several websites ever since it was posted on a Chinese message board last month. Along with the pic the girl posted this message: “My mom went to get her face done at the beauty salon so I went with her. What I saw… instantly shocked me… I couldn’t look.” Well, she did look long enough to get a nice shot of her mom’s eyes on fire. Read More »

Austria’s Healing Caves Offer Radioactive Miracle Cure

The largest pain management center in the world, and a popular health tourism destination, the Healing Caves of Gastein welcome over 75,000 people every year. They all flock to this miraculous place to undergo a controversial form of therapy with radioactive radon gas used to cure a variety of medical conditions, from arthritis to psoriasis.

When the people of Gastein started exploring the nearby Radhausberg Mountain in search of gold, they had no idea they would discover something infinitely more valuable –  naturally occurring low levels of radon gas. In time, they realized that the radioactive gas combined with the mountain caves’ high humidity and temperatures of up to 41.5° Celsius helped strengthen their immune system and cured some very serious illnesses. Word about the Gastein Healing Caves spread like wild fire throughout all of Austria, Germany and other Central European countries, and today Gastein is known not only as a world-class skiing destination, but also as a miraculous place of healing with a mind-blowing success rate of 90%. Most of the people who come here for radon treatment say a few sessions in the caves keep them pain-free for a whole year. Apparently, the radioactive gas is absorbed through the skin and lungs, activating the body at a cellular level and stimulating the self-healing process.

Gastein-Healing-Caves

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Sculptor’s Beautiful Tree Carvings Reveal Their Inner Spirits

The Tree Spirits of Saint Simmons Island are one of the most fascinating roadside attractions in North America. Carved into dozens of live oaks and hardwoods, the mysterious wise faces that seem to reveal the trees’ inner spirits are the work of local sculptor Keith Jennings.

Jennings started his Tree Spirits project in 1982, as a hobby. Looking for a way to kill time around the house, the artist armed himself with a few hand tools and began exercising his artistic talents on a tree in his backyard. “I had too much time and too little money,” Keith remembers about the beginnings as a tree carver, but his works impressed the community to such a degree that he was later commissioned to release the inner spirits of 20 other trees around Saint Simmons Island, off the Georgia coast. Although it has long been said that the faces he sculpts into the trees are meant to represent the sailors who drowned on ships made from trees from the island, Keith Jennings dismisses the rumor. “The trees do it all,” he says. “I don’t have that much to do with it. The wood speaks to you, ya know?” Each of his intriguing artworks are created entirely according to the tree they’re carved into. “I like the way they age as they. The bark starts rolling over the edges and gives each one a spooky, eerie appearance,” the artist says.

Tree-Spirits-on-Saint-Simmons-island

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World’s Strongest Coffee Has 200 Percent More Caffeine than Average Roasts

If you feel regular coffee isn’t strong enough to keep you awake and focused through the day, you might want to try a big cup of Death Wish. It’s advertised as the world’s strongest coffee and allegedly has 200% more caffeine that the average dark roast.

The name isn’t too encouraging for the faint-of-heart, but if you’re not too put off by it and the skull-and-bones logo on the pack, Death Wish may just become the best friend you could hope for. Upstate New York roaster Death Wish Coffee claims they have found a highly caffeinated bean that gives coffee that full Arabica flavor and double the buzz. The creators of this powerful roast explain that while Arabica coffee is smoother and more flavorful than the harsher Robusta variety, it also has a much lower caffeine content. Also, dark roast coffee is weaker than a light roast, because the longer you “cook” it, the more caffeine is pulled out. So while you’re favorite cup of joe might be strong in flavor, it probably has a very low caffeine content. After 5 years of having to tell sleepy customers who asked for a cup of their strongest coffee that their strongest tasting roasts were actually very low in caffeine, the makers of Death Wish went on a mission to find a special kind of coffee bean that had the full flavor of dark-roasted Arabica and the highest caffeine content possible. It seems they were successful.

Death-Wish-coffee

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