Crazy Self-Sustainable Chair

Created by Korean artist JooYoun Paek, the self-sustainable chair is a polyethylene-made dress, connected to a pair of special pair of shoes that pump air into the dress, with every step you take. After a short walk, the dress inflates in the back forming a nice “little” chair that makes it possible for you to stop, sit on it and rest for a bit. Depending on the wearer’s weight, the dress deflates allowing him to carry on with his walk.

The self-sustainable dress is an artistic concept that “motivates people to switch between walking and sitting  as a loop behavior on the street”. One couldn’t actually use the self-sustainable chair on a day-to-day basis, it makes you look like you just arrived from another planet.

Here’s a test-drive of the self-sustainable chair in New York:

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2008 Red Bull Cliff Diving

On August 23rd, an extraordinary even took place in the German port-city of Hamburg. The world’s top 10 cliff-divers gathered here to demonstrate their abilities and claim the title of 2008 Red Bull Cliff Diving Champion.  The winner of such a competition is not even important, just being able to accomplish such incredible acrobatic feats is remarkable. These people accelerate from 0 to 90 km/h and drop back to 0 in a free fall that only lasts 2.5 seconds.

Just watch the video and be amazed:

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Aziz – the controversial pop-star

This is Aziz, one of the most popular singers in Bulgaria. He’s a regular superstar there and even represented his country at the Eurovision song contest in 2006. He’s the weirdest transvestite I’ve seen too, I mean how many bearded transvestites have you seen? I thought the point of becoming a transvestite was to make you look more like the opposite sex, but Aziz here has got it all wrong.

Got nothing against his singing but his appearance just gives me the creeps. I added one of his music videos so you can see him in action.

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The Elephant Painters

I always believed elephants were incredible animals, but I never imagined they could something as extraordinary as painting, hell I have opposable thumbs and I can’t paint like that.

The elephants at the National Elephant Institute in Thailand have a particular skill that others animals and some humans don’t posses, they can actually pick up a brush and paint on a canvas. Thai elephants in particular are born artists, you often see them pick up a stick and start noodling in the dirt, and when properly trained they turn into genuine artists with a brush. Take a look at the photos and video and see for yourselves.

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The incredible wooden miror

Created by Daniel Rozen this incredible wooden mirror is made up of 830 tiny wood each controlled by a small motor. A camera gathers light and shape data and sends it to a computer which then shifts the panels to create the image in front of the device. The can’t provide a detailed image but still it’s pretty cool to see and hear those little wooden pieces move and mimic everything you do.

Watch the incredible video of the wooden mirror at the bottom to see how it works.

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The Tree Goats of Morocco

Did you know goats could climb trees? Well, anyway, I didn’t but it turns out, goats climb trees very often in Morocco.

These Moroccan goats you see in the photos climb the Argan trees with incredible ease, in order to get to the delicious fruits that the locals use to make oil. I knew some things about goats, but the fact that they climb trees was not one of them. And before you start yelling “It’s photoshopped!” check out the video at the bottom.

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The Dynamic Tower of Dubai

The first moving building in the world will be built, where else, in Dubai, home to all the revolutionary architectural wonders in recent years.

Designed by Italian architect David Fisher, the Dynamic Tower will be made up of 80 pre-fabricated apartments rotating around a central column, with the help of 79 giant wind turbines placed between the floors. The 420 meters-long building “will never look the same, not once in a lifetime” says David Fisher, the apartments will be able to spin 360 degrees, giving the tower a different look every time.

One of the most important features of the Dynamic Tower is it’s going to be energy self-sufficient, the wind turbines will produce more than enough energy for the whole building, the extra energy will go back into the grid. The apartments will cost between $3,7 m and $36 m and the tower itself will cost $700 million to build.

The amazing Dynamic Tower of Dubai is scheduled to be ready in 2010.

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What 10 million pixels look like

Set up in the Comcast Center in Philadelphia, the 10 million pixel screen has five times the resolution of a HD television.

It’s not exactly a screen either, more like a media wall set up in the lobby of Comcast‘s impressive building, covered with four-millimeter LED lights that form a giant screen. The device is able to play all kins of videos and 3D effects like people flying through the air with coffee cups in their hands. The wall gets its images from a special command center complete with routers, digitizers, video-processors and a whopping 27, 000 gigabytes of data. The wall can display footage for 45 straight days without a sequence ever being repeated. It’s also estimated that a Philadelphia local would have to hang around the Comcast Center lobby for 2 years in order to see all the permutations of image the system can come up with.

U should also know that it only takes 2 million pixels to render a

Comcast paid $22 million to the visual experts at Bosco for this wonder but I think they feel it’s all worth it.

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Destruction Therapy

Is wacking away violently at used cars and broken home appliances a therapy against stress? Well it is in Spain.

Three Spanish entrepreneurs came up with the idea back in 2003 and it has evolved into a profitable business. Basically people pay to smash cars, washing machines, refrigerators, television-sets with jackhammers, thus relieving stress. It’s called Destruction Therapy or Destructotherapy and the latest session took place this Saturday in Castejon, northern Spain. Participants got to pick from different tools and use their rage to pulverize different objects.

One more interesting fact about this Destruction Therapy is that 40% of the participants are women. It’s not certain that Destruction Therapy (Destructotherapy) really has a therapeutic effect, but it’s definitely fun.

The photos are taken at the event that tok place this year in Castijon and the video was shot back in 2005.

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World’s largest earthquake damper

You might just see a huge steel ball, but this tuned mass damper is so much more.

This 728 tons steel pendulum is installed in one of the world’s tallest buildings, the taipei 101 in Taiwan. It helps stabilize the building in case of strong winds and earthquakes, through simple mechanics, when the building moves in a direction it swings in the opposite direction reducing movement by 40%. You can understand how it works by looking at the small GIF image.

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It cost #4 million to install the huge damper in the skyscraper but architects and engineers said it had to be done. It spans across 4 of the building’s stories and it was assembled on site because it couldn’t be lifted by a crane, due to its enormous weight.

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Here’s a video of the damper in action, on May 12th, when a horrific earthquake hit one of China’s provinces and the tremors reached as gar as Taipei. As the building started to shake, people ran towards the center to see the damper in action, it did it’s job.

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