Basis is a bring-your-own-food bar that recently opened in Amsterdam, in response to the crisis currently affecting the Dutch capital. Over the last two years, 10% of Amsterdam’s cafés have closed down, but its cool concept actually makes Basis Bar a profitable business. The Netherlands appeared to be handling the economic crisis quite well, when it first descended over Europe, but now, after the old government collapsed due to disagreements over budget cuts, there are increasing signs of an economic downturn. A group of young entrepreneurs anticipated the precarious financial situation of their country, and came up with a great concept that allows people to still afford to eat out, without having to break the bank. The Basis Bar allows its customers to bring their own food, either cooked at home or ordered from cheaper eateries, like pizzerias. The bar provides everything from dishes, cutlery and napkins, to microwave ovens where people can heat up their food. All they have to pay for is the drinks they order.

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Colored sand, a great deal of patience and his bare hands are all Joe Mangrum needs to create his incredible sand pantings on the sidewalks of New York. Joe Mangrum was a painter for many years, but only started creating art with sand in the Fall of 2009. He chose to work with sand because it’s an ephemeral medium that can simply be swept away at the the end of the day, after he’s had a chance to express his talent and amaze passers-by. I never thought sprinkling colored sand through the bottom of your fist could lead to such amazing works of art, but Mangrum’s creations prove patience and talent are the basis of truly incredible things. The gifted street artist spends hours on end on his hands and knees sprinkling his colored sand onto the sidewalk to create ephemeral masterpieces that catch the eye of everyone around him. Read More »

I don’t think there are any rules against men becoming cheerleaders. But even if there was one, it wouldn’t stop Sacha Heppel, from Colorado, whose dream is to join the ranks of professional NFL cheerleaders. His current mission, to become the first male cheerleader for the Denver Broncos, however, fizzled out when he was rejected by the judges. Heppel competed with 200 other women at the first round of the 2012 Denver Broncos Cheerleader tryouts last Sunday, dressed in a turquoise shirt and tight fitting black pants. Heppel’s love for dance is what compelled him to try cheerleading. He is not a professional dancer, although he enjoys it very much. “When I dance, I lose myself,” he says. His previous job involved standing at a street corner with a sign where would do several dance routines to keep people entertained. He was disappointed when he didn’t make the cut, but he says he will try hard again next year. Read More »

Young Hina has what is most coveted by Japanese women – pale skin. And yet, she visits tanning salons every week. Not just for a sun-kissed look, but for a deeper, darker shade. Hina is one of many young Japanese women who are crazy about B-Style (Black Lifestyle). They adore the African American pop/hip hop culture to such an extent that they are ready to compromise everything natural about their looks. After all, as Hina herself admits, “part of B-Style is that you do not look Japanese.” So there are trips to the tanning salons along with hair braids, clothing and accessories that reflect B-Style to the core. For Hina it all started when her hair turned frizzy in high school. She then got interested in Black artists and found them pretty cool. Soon she found herself in a tanning salon for the very first time. Today, she is an employee at a trendy Tokyo boutique called Baby Shoop, completely dedicated to B-Style fashion. The boutique goes by the tag-line ‘Black for Life’. Hina loves working there as she feels the shop is a “tribute to Black culture and also to their music, fashion and dance.” And it’s not just Hina but all the shop girls at Baby Shoop that undergo deep tanning on a regular basis. One of the shop girls points out, “Really, with a tan you look slimmer. You look healthy and of course great.” Read More »

Drew Barrymore’s character has a weird memory condition that makes her relieve the same day every time she wakes up. This pretty much the basis of the romantic comedy 50 First Dates. It’s a pretty interesting concept for a film, but in real life it would be considered a nightmare. Unfortunately, 19-year-old Jess Lydon has to go through something similar to this every day. Instead of returning to the past, Jess is actually trapped in the present. She has been affected by a rare condition known as Susac Syndrome that only allows her to remember what happened in the past 24 hours. Needless to say, this is highly upsetting to Jess and her family. It gets so bad sometimes that she cannot remember what she had for dinner the previous night, or what she did on Christmas and for her birthday. Looking at family pictures confuses her, as she can’t recollect any of the events that took place. The worst part is that although she split up with her boyfriend almost 2 years ago, she wakes up thinking they’re together every morning. Imagine having to relive a heartbreak every single day of your life. Read More »

There are horror stories and films about mannequins in store windows that come alive supernaturally. Of course these aren’t true, but what if you accidentally waved at a mannequin and it waved right back? Man, that would be just too creepy. If you happen to be in Tokyo this time of the year, however, you might just witness this happening in the store window of the Takashimaya mall in Shinjuku. No, it’s not a ghost-mannequin on display, but the Geminoid-F, an android capable of displaying human expressions and actions. The android sits casually in the window, as though waiting for a friend. Basic emotions and behavior have been programmed into it, which is the basis of all its expressions in response to whatever is happening around it. So you will be able to see it twitch its eyebrows, smile, frown and occasionally even wave at passersby. Not like a robot though, but like a real human being. Read More »

Kids love exchanging horror stories at school, even if it means weeks of sleepless nights. But what if a real ghost decides to make a guest appearance? It could cause kids to lose not just sleep but even their sanity. In Vietnam, it’s causing them to faint on a regular basis. The students of Son Hoa Ethnic Boarding High School in the Son Hoa District claim to have had supernatural visitors in the bathroom at night, causing many of them lose consciousness. It all started with K Pa Ho Luon, a student of the school. He returned to his dorm one night  in November, from the toilet area, in a state of hysteria. He was talking gibberish, fell to the floor and began to scratch the walls and the floor. All this, just before he passed out. Luon was then rushed to the hospital by school authorities. When he recovered, he claimed to have met a ghost in the toilet.

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Fashion designer Rachel Freire has recently been called “sick” by animal rights activists, after she presented a series of creations made from 3,000 yak nipples, at London Fashion Week. And you thought no one could top Lady Gaga’s famous meat dress, right? Well, yak nipples seem a lot more bizarre than some sewn pieces of red meat. 32-year-old Freire, who has previously worked with celebrities like Christina Aguilera and Courtney Love, had her models parading on the catwalk wearing two dresses and bras made from thousands of yak nipples given to her by a tannery. The show caused quite the scandal and several animal activists as well as members of Parliament used words such as “sickening”, “grotesque”, “repulsive” and “disturbing” to describe the Liverpool-based designer’s creations. Justin Kerswell of animal rights organisaton Viva said: “Isn’t the way we treat farmed animals bad enough without turning their dead bodies into a runway freakshow?” Read More »

Deepa Ahirwar, a 22-year-old woman from India’s Madhya Pradesh state, has recently accused her husband of drinking her blood on a regular basis, for the last three years.

Although it sounds like the story of a cheap vampire movie, young Deepa swears she’s telling the truth and even bears the scars to prove it. She and her husband, Mahesh Ahirwar, an agricultural worker, got married in 2007, in Shikarpura village. A few months later, he started drawing blood from her veins, emptying the contents of the syringe into an empty glass and drinking the contents. He threatened he would do terrible things to her if she dared tell anyone about his habit, and she kept quiet for about three years.

Mahesh claimed drinking his wife’s blood kept him strong and boosted his virility, so he didn’t stop playing the vampire even when Deepa was pregnant. After she gave birth, seven months ago, she started protesting for the first time, because she would feel weak and nauseated after each blood extraction. Every time she resisted, her husband beat her, and when she couldn’t take it anymore, she ran to her parents, who after hearing her disturbing story, alerted the authorities.

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Having a baby is a blessing, but taking care of a toddler is a full time job and hitting the gym on a regular basis gets pretty tough. Thankfully, Joshua Levitt’s book, Baby Barbells, teaches fathers how to spend time with their babies and stay fit at the same time.

Modern life makes it almost impossible for people to get everything done by doing one thing at a time, and for Joshua Levitt, a naturopathic physician, husband and father of three, going to the gym to do his works out was pretty much out of the question. Six months after his first baby was born, he realized that by trying to be a good father, husband and doctor,  he was neglecting his daily exercises; he was getting out of shape and he was feeling it. One day, after trying all the usual tricks to calm his baby daughter, he was lying down on his back and he began lifting her “baby up, baby down” and, apart from the fact that she appeared to enjoy it, Josh felt the burn in his triceps, and that’s when the idea for Baby Barbells was born.

It was multitasking at its finest, and thrilled, so thrilled by his discovery, Mr. Levitt began searching for other ways of incorporating fitness exercises in his fathering activities. He invented routines like Peek-a-boo Pop-ups, Lullaby Lunges or Tot Squats and included them all in a clever illustrated book called “Baby Barbells: The Dad’s Guide to Fitness and Fathering” that helps dads tone their muscles while interacting with their kids.

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13-year-old Zara Hartshorn suffers from a rare skin-condition called lipodystrophy, which makes her look like an old woman and causes her daily grief. It’s hard to imagine what it’s like having to cope with people staring at you like you’re some kind of freak, and being called names like “baggy face”, “monkey” or “granny”, on a daily basis. But, no one knows what Zara has to go through, better than her own mother, 40-year-old Tracy. She says she knew her youngest daughter inherited her dreadful condition, ever since she was just a few days old. All her other kids have it too, but the symptoms are much more severs in Zara’s case. Tracy managed to protect her little girl until she had to go to school. That’s when the nightmare began. Schoolmates make fun of her and beat her up if she tries to talk back, adults stop and stare at her wrinkled face as if it’s her fault she was born with this yet incurable condition. Lipodystrophy causes the fatty tissue underneath the skin to deteriorate, while the skin itself grows in excess, at an accelerated pace. Tracy, who experienced the same tragedies, when she was Zara’s age, had facelift surgery, but after only two years, the lypodystrophy symptoms were just as severe and now she had the surgery scars as well. Modern medicine has advanced a lot since then, and Tracy is desperate to help Zara before it’s too late. Unfortunately, she can’t afford the proper skin treatment on a single salary. But if there’s ever a sure way her daughter could be spared all the torment, she’d do anything to save her. via Mirror.co.uk Read More »

All Peter Callesen needs to create his amazing artworks is a sheet of paper, glue and a sharp scalpel. Oh, and that special ingredient that makes it impossible for the rest of us, talent. Peter creates his signature paper sculptures by cutting intricate patterns into a piece of paper and folding the cutouts into incredible shapes. But don’t think this kind of job is easy! The artist spends up to two weeks drawing the patterns, cutting and folding them. One shake of his hand and it’s literally right back to the drawing board. His favorite work material is A4 paper, because he believes people can relate to it, since most of them use it on a daily basis. You might think a sheet of A4 paper is worth just a few cents, but after Peter Callesen is done with it, it will probably sell for about $4,000. Oh yeah, if you love paper craft, then you’re going to love this awesome paper castle. via Daily Mail Read More »

Over 100 height-challenged Chinese people perform in a show called Kingdom Of The Dwarves, close to Kunming, Yunnan Province. Casting for the Kingdom Of The Dwarves show took place last summer, with only two conditions stipulated: the performers had to be between 18 and 40 years old and be shorter than 130 cm (4’3″). No other special skills were required. Now they take the stage of the Kunming World Butterflies Garden twice a day, singing, dancing and performing comedy sketches to entertain the crowds. I know it looks like exploitation and discrimination, but the short performers see it only as another form of migrant labor and a haven away from people who mock and tease them on a daily basis. With discrimination and unemployment still high in China, the little people saw the Kingdom Of The Dwarves as an opportunity. Just to clear things up, this is just a profitable theme park, not a community formed by the dwarves themselves as a shelter, and the mushroom houses only serve as decor and changing rooms, not as living quarters. Photos by REUTERS via Telegraph.co.uk Read More »

In her new jewelry collection, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, Alidra Alic showcases some of the weirdest rings I’ve ever seen. But I mean that in the most positive way possible, the rings look very original, and even though you couldn’t wear on a day-to-day basis, Alidra Alic’s rings are perfect for a fantasy-themed party. Photos by Dorte Krogh and Katrine Rohrberg via  Cool Hunting

You can buy a bottle a bottle of Malaria-infested water, as well as well as many other potentially fatal diseases at vending machines across Manhattan, New York. UNICEF has devised a very original way of raising awareness to the water problem millions of people across the globe are facing every day. The Dirty Water campaign gives people the chance to buy a bottle of disease-infected water, other people are forced to drink on a daily basis. The water-bottles are kept in vending machines across Manhattan and can be purchased for $1 each. Of course, the water isn’t really poisoned, but it does look very dirty. The campaign has been very successful so far, exceeding all expectations. Passers-by are encouraged to make a donation through the vending machines, by SMS or online. Here’s what is written on the Dirty Water vending machines: “Thirsty? So are millions of people around the world with no access to clean drinking water. 4,200 children die of water-related diseases everyday. Help provide safe drinking water to developing countries. Donate today. You wouldn’t drink dirty water. No one should. Donate now by texting TAP to 864233 (UNICEF) or visit tapproject.org. Just a dollar provides a child with 40 days of clean drinking water.” photos via Ochevidec