Intense, competitive, trash talk – are the three terms used by the founders of Spikeball to describe the game. After watching a short video of how the sport is played on their website, I’m finding it very hard to disagree. It’s really quite exciting just to watch, so playing it should guarantee an absolute whale of a time.

Spikeball is probably best described as volleyball’s distant cousin, but there’s a lot more to it than just that. The net used for Spikeball is small and circular – probably the size of a Hula Hoop, and it sits on the ground at ankle level. The ball is pretty small too, just about palm-size. Two teams play against each other with only two players on each team. The objective of the game is to smack the ball across to your opponents, just like in volleyball. However, with spikeball, you need to bounce the ball on the net first, so it ricochets upwards at an opposing player. They in turn have to be able to bounce it back to your team, within three hits, or you score. You score points every time they miss, and a score of 21 is needed to win the game.

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A funeral is something people generally make time for out of their busy schedules – to mourn and also to offer their condolences. So when I first heard of drive-through funerals, I was quite surprised. I mean, do people not have time to even grieve anymore? I wondered if the concept was even appropriate, so I decided to find out more.

The drive-through service is currently being offered at the Robert L. Adams Mortuary funeral home, located in Compton, California. True to its name, the service allows the casket containing the body of the deceased to be placed behind a display window, while visitors simply drive by, signing a book of condolences as they leave. Mourners are free to leave their cars and come in if they would like to, but it’s not required. It’s quite interesting to note how drive-through funerals came into existence. According to owner Peggy Scott Adams, in the 1980s there was a sudden spike in cemetery shootouts. So gang members preferred this kind of a service, since they were protected by the drive-through corridor made of bullet proof glass. Read More »

10 Incredible Airplane Graveyards (Environmental Graffiti)

Eagle Dad Makes 10-Year-Old Boy Run through Snow Naked (CNN)

Judge Sentences Man to Date with His Wife (MSN)

Identical Twins Are Totally Different (The Sun)

Dad Shoots Daughter’s Laptop to Teach Her a Lesson (Bit Rebels)

Sewage Plant Offers Valentine’s Day Tours (Huffington Post)

Teenagers Rob Hotel to Buy Girlfriends iPhones (China Hush)

House-Sized Optimus Prime Snow Sculpture (Geekologie)

Fractal Patterns of Landscapes Damaged by Drought (Environmental Graffiti)

Three Indian Sisters Cursed with Werewolf Syndrome (Mirror)

It’s difficult to imagine someone living, eating, sleeping and even washing clothes on a bicycle for over a year. But that’s exactly what French artist and copyeditor Guillaume Blanchet from Montreal has done. He even cooked his own food and flirted with women, while perched on the narrow bicycle seat. And that’s not all.

A three-minute film depicting Blanchet’s life on the bicycle, starts off with a dedication to his 64-year-old father who rode his bike for over 120,000 km. Going by the film, Blanchet does everything on the go, and he never stops pedaling. As he rides hands-free, he is occupied with the various mundane activities of life. Numerous items make an appearance, such as frying pans, shaving kits, laptops, telephones, Rubik cubes, and even musical instruments. It’s pretty amazing how he’s able to handle all these things with ease, as though he were sitting on a couch.

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What could be more natural than having a barbecue party on a volcano? Apart from the obvious health and safety hazards, that is. But such things are not a concern at the El Diablo restaurant, where chefs actually cook food over the heat produced by an active volcano.

Located on a Spanish island called Lanzarote, northwest of Morocco, El Diablo is a unique restaurant where the chefs have access to a volcano of their own. Of course, it isn’t like a lava-spewing mountain, because if that were the case there would be no question of leisurely eating. No, this volcano is more like a hole in the ground, through which volcanic heat erupts from the deeps of the Earth.

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Couples on romantic weekend getaways tend to make a spur-of-the-moment decision to get married. And it is for this reason that several hotels, especially in places like Vegas, provide wedding chapel services. If getting married could be that easy, then why the long-drawn out process for a divorce? Well apparently, not anymore. It is now possible to get divorced over a weekend getaway too, thanks to the Divorce Hotel.

The concept of Divorce Hotel was developed by entrepreneur Jim Halfens, in the Netherlands. In a country where the average divorce settlement could be very heavy on the pocket and take months to complete, Halfens spotted a great business opportunity that could make things easier for parting couples. So all they need to do is check in at the Divorce Hotel over a weekend and all the necessary legal documentation to end their marriage is arranged for them. The service includes a mediator and a series of lawyers who help the couple split assets, arrange visitation rights and agree on alimony payments, all at a fixed fee.

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Jim Dingilian is one of those rare artists who stretch the limits of creativity with their amazing creations. He uses candle smoke to paint picture-perfect images on the inside of empty bottles.

“The miniature scenes I depict are of locations on the edge of suburbia which seem mysterious or even slightly menacing despite their commonplace nature. The bottles add to the implied narratives of transgression. When found by the sides of roads or in the weeds near the edges of parking lots, empty liquor bottles are artifacts of consumption, delight, or dread. As art objects, they become hourglasses of sorts, their drained interiors now inhabited by dim memories” Jim Dingilian says bout his art.  How he manages to create such detailed images inside the bottle remains a mystery, but I’m thinking he uses some sort of slim tool to scratch at the candle smoke. Still, how he manages to keep a steady hand and work through that narrow bottle hand is beyond me.

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When I was a kid, scratch-and-sniff stickers were the rage. We had all kinds of flavors and odors back then. While I have no idea if kids these days are still into such things, it does seem the in-thing for grown men, not with stickers, but jeans! Last week, a Canadian company launched a brand new line of scratch-and-sniff jeans.

Naked & Famous Denim, a company based in Montreal, has introduced the jeans at a price of $150. What’s special about them is that they smell like raspberry candy, when scratched. Unfortunately, the smell does fade over time, and you’ll be left with just a regular pair of denim pants. According to designer and company founder Brandon Svarc, the scent will last through at least five washings. But he says it shouldn’t be much of a problem since many of their male customers don’t wash their jeans very often, and some never wash them at all.

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People making their own coffin isn’t new to us here at OC. But the story of Fred Guentert sure is. Because he’s been building himself a coffin that’s fit for an Egyptian pharaoh – for the past 25 years.

Guentert, who is now 89 years old, has kept himself occupied for about a quarter of a century with his unusual hobby. And he sure does have something to show for it. The coffin he is to be buried in someday is 7 feet long and weighs 300 pounds. It is made of cedar and hand-painted in royal colors like gold, red, green and black. A hand-carved image of the Egyptian god Osiris adorns the lid. Near the base, you can see a colorful image of Isis. The interior has been decorated with a full-size painting of Nut – the sky goddess. On one side of the box is the Eye of Horus, looking on intently.

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It’s news like this that makes me wish I could become a kid and go back to school again. I mean, just look at the pictures. If school was like this, who wouldn’t want to go? To me, the school looks like it’s come out of the future, or from a sci-fi movie. It’s definitely surreal. But a closer look shows that it isn’t very different from, say, a Google office. Kids seem to be working independently on their laptops, in a place that’s comfortable and convenient for them. I do wonder if all that lounging around is good for their posture, though.

The school you’re looking at is the brainchild of Swedish Free School Organization, Vittra. They operate 30 schools around Sweden, with an aim to ensure that learning takes place everywhere on campus. So, they’ve eliminated classrooms all together. This particular school is the latest, called Telefonplan, and it was opened last August. It was designed and built by the architecture firm Rosan Bosch. At Vittra, students are free to work independently, and if they find the need to collaborate with peers on a project, they have a few options for that too. The ‘village’ is a tiny house meant for group work, and ‘organic conversation furniture’ allows the kids to interact with each other as well. Each student receives a computer from the school too, which is used as a major tool for learning.

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We live in a world where plastic surgeries and beauty ‘enhancement’ procedures have become the norm rather than the exception. Even so, spending $136,000 on 10 procedures just to get a certain look seems pushing it way too far. But that’s exactly what Jacqueline Koh, a 29-year-old fashion designer fro Singapore has done to herself, in an attempt to look like a typical anime girl, with big sparkling eyes, a small chin and nose, a slim face, and larger breasts.

When I looked at pictures of Koh’s original face, I wondered why she would have wanted to change anything at all. However, she had long been unsatisfied with the shape of her chin and her protruding mouth. The trigger to actually do something about it came two years ago when she had put on weight. Gaining 6kg in 1.5 years without any change to her diet got her worried. At 1.6m tall, she weighed 48kg. I don’t think that’s a weight to worry about at all, but she thought she looked chubby. When no amount of exercise would help her lose weight, she went for corrective procedures.

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Indians have long since been passionate about predicting the future. Horoscopes are created with the help of an astrologer on the very day a child is born and these documents are consulted from time to time during major milestones of a person’s life. Especially when a match is made as a part of an arranged marriage, an astrologer is duly consulted to make sure the horoscopes of the bride and groom are compatible with each other.

While all this may seem very strange to an outsider, for Indians it’s a part of normal and natural life. In fact , progress in terms of fortune-telling technology has been made too. In several homes, local astrologers have been replaced by computer software that serves the same purpose. One simply needs to enter their name and time/date of birth to receive a complete report of their past, present and future.

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It’s not unusual to have photographs of yourself taken every year. But in the case of Ria van Dijk it is, because she’s in the exact same pose in each of the pictures – shooting a target. The 92-year-old from Tilburg, Holland has been going to funfair shooting galleries every year since 1936, and has won the prize every single time – a photograph of herself shooting.

Shooting galleries at fairs are set up in such a way that when the target is hit, it triggers the shutter of a camera. The result is a photograph in which the viewer is in the position of the target. The picture is the prize that participants win for their efforts. Even before she participated in the shooting gallery, Ria had plenty of practice at home, as a child. Along with her brother, she used to shoot at a target with air guns in the garden of her home. She says they would do this just for fun. So when she went to the fair at age 16, her friends encouraged her to give the shooting game a try. She won the picture on the first shot, and went on to win another one. Ria went back to the fair a year later to win another picture and that was when it all began.

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Ninjutsu is considered to be one of the deadliest forms of martial arts in the world. But this doesn’t deter the 3,500 odd Iranian women who are currently receiving official training in the sport.

In fact, when I saw a video of these women in action, I was awestruck by their agility and the ease with which they performed gravity-defying stunts and back flips. I couldn’t even tell that the ninjas were female until they removed the masks from their faces.  Iran, like many other Islamic countries, has stringent rules regarding the freedom and conduct of women. The laws severely restrict them from participating freely in society; perhaps this is where they derive their quiet strength from. The Ninjustu school in Iran was started in 1989 by Sensei Akbar Faraji. This was the first time the martial art was introduced to the country. While the club now has over 24,000 members, the number of female participants is slowly on the rise. According to Faraji, in Ninjutsu, men are called ninjas, while women are addressed as kunoichi.

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30-year-old Ioana Spangenberg has something some skinny female models only dream of. A 20-inch waistline and a body that doesn’t accumulate fat, no matter what she eats. Now, isn’t that a dream come true? Not for Ioana, though. In a classic case of the grass being greener on the other side, the Romanian model says she wants to put on weight in order to be able to look normal.

Ioana seems to be blessed with the much-coveted ‘hourglass’ look, quite literally in fact. She says that she was of normal weight when she was a kid, and the transformation started to occur when she was a teenager. At age 13, her waist was only 15 inches and her friends could actually put their hands completely around it. In an attempt to put on weight, she would eat Mars bars and other sweets, but nothing ever worked. Ioana blames this on the small size of her stomach, which makes her feel sick if she eats too much. Perhaps her body’s constitution is too much of a good thing, because she was never happy with herself until she married. It was her husband who encouraged her to become a model, and she is now finally comfortable in her own skin.

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