It appears in China the saying “study till you drop” is taken quite literally by some, as photos show students receiving amino acid IV drips as they hit the books during late evening studying session for college exam.

You thought you were studying too hard? Well unless you’ve ever needed intravenous medication to keep you from passing out or collapsing due to excessive studying, you have it pretty good compared to these young students at a high school in Xiaogan, central China’s Hubei province. Photos taken late one evening, and posted on popular Chinese site Sina Weibo, show a brightly lit classroom full of students studying National College Entrance Exam, commonly known as “gao kao”. Students appear buried among piles of books, with dozens of IV bags hanging from lines traversing the classroom.

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Growing up in India, I’ve heard several stories of yogis who would eat nothing, surviving on only sunlight. We never really tested out the theory, assuming it was only the stuff of legends. But a Swiss woman apparently did try it, and the results were not good. She ended up starving herself to death. Looks like she found out the hard way that sunlight isn’t really food unless you’re a plant.

The woman’s real name is unknown, but news reports refer to her as Anna Gut. She was in her early fifties when she first heard about the concept of living off sunlight in the documentary film “In the Beginning There was Light”. The two men portrayed in the film – anthroposophist Michael Werner, 62, and Indian yogi Prahlad Jani, 83, claimed they made use of spiritual practices and sunlight for their sustenance, rather than food. Inspired by the concept of ‘breatharianism’, Anna read a book on the same subject written by Australian Ellen Greve. She then began to follow the instructions provided by the book.

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You’d think that someone drinking hand sanitizer was obsessed with keeping their insides as clean as their outsides. But no, in a disturbing new trend, teenagers are actually consuming the alcohol-based liquid as a cheap substitute for liquor. Since kids don’t have access to alcohol, they are actually using the chemical cleaning agent to get drunk.

Recently, six teenagers were brought into San Fernando Valley emergency rooms for alcohol poisoning from hand sanitizer consumption. This got public health officials worried so they started issuing warnings to parents and teachers about the hazards involved with ingesting hand sanitizers. According to Cyrus Rangan, a medical toxicology consultant at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, “All it takes is a few swallows and you have a drunk teenager.” He believes that although the practice isn’t widespread yet, it has all the potential to balloon into a huge issue. Since hand sanitizer bottles are very easily available and inexpensive, the trend couldn’t take very long to catch up. It doesn’t help that distillation instructions are easily available on the internet; kids can separate the alcohol from the sanitizing liquid with just a little salt.

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47-year-old Debbie Stevens, a divorced mother of two from Long Island, donated her kidney to help out her boss. You’d think the least she could receive in return was some gratitude, but instead she was promptly fired. The behavior of the boss in question truly seems unfathomable. Stevens now contends that she was being set up and used by her 61-year-old boss, Jackie Brucia.

Stevens and Brucia met as co workers at the billion-dollar Atlantic Automotive Group. At the time, Stevens was a clerical worker, while Brucia was one of the company’s controllers. Later, Stevens left the company in June 2010 and moved to Florida, but she happened to meet Brucia again on a visit to Long Island. It was then that she came to know of Brucia’s illness and difficulty in finding a kidney donor. As a ‘naturally generous’ person, Stevens offered to donate her own kidney if the need arose. To which Brucia replied, “You never know, I may have to take you up on that offer.”

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Thanks to Objectum Sexuality, the Statue of Liberty now has a lover, a three foot model the Greek God Adonis has a girlfriend and the Eiffel Tower has a wife, as does the Berlin Wall. What sounds completely bizarre to us is in fact normal to these four women who suffer from the psychological condition that makes them experience romantic feelings towards inanimate objects. Let’s delve a little deeper into their stories of love.

Amanda Whittaker

Amanda is a 27-year-old shop assistant from Leeds, and head-over-heels in love with the iconic Statue of Liberty. In her home she has a shrine to the famous landmark, which demonstrates her love. “She is my long-distance lover,” says Amanda. “I am blown away by how stunning she is.” She affectionately refers to the statue as ‘Libby’, and although she would like to be married to it, she says she’s holding herself back in consideration of the many others who might be in love with it too.

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Wife beating in Islam is a widely discussed subject. In fact, it is the topic of several debates around the world, with people within the religion itself differing in their opinions. Some Muslims say it’s alright for a wife to be controlled through minor beatings, and others disagree. What the religion truly proposes is not exactly clear, but looks like people aren’t ready to change their minds about wife beatings anytime soon. Not with books being written that provide men with tips on how exactly to beat their wives. That’s right, there actually is a book called A Gift for the Muslim Couple that encourages wife beating as a method of control. News reports suggest that it was available for sale at a Toronto bookstore, but was ‘sold out’ pretty soon. It isn’t stocked anywhere online anymore, either.

The 160-page book, written by Hazrat Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi, and released in Canada, is reported to carry this in its opening pages: “It might be necessary to restrain her with strength or even to threaten her.” I’m supposing it won’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what the rest of the book is going to be like. On page 45, which apparently lists the rights of a husband, it says a wife cannot leave the house without his permission; she must fulfill his desires and not allow herself to be untidy. She must also beautify herself for him. I don’t really mean to disrespect the personal opinion of the writer, but doesn’t this just sound twisted? It doesn’t get any better after that. There’s more advice for men on how to carry out physical punishment. The book says that a man may scold his wife, beat her by hand or stick, withhold money from her or pull her by the ears. Oh, and there’s a disclaimer in place, that the husband should “refrain from beating her excessively.” Sounds like it might have been put there to avoid lawsuits in the future. Hazrat also has a very bizarre way of advising Muslim men to also be kind to their wives, saying that “the husband should treat the wife with kindness and love, even if she tends to be stupid and slow sometimes.”

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It’s disgusting, funny and sad all at once, what 53-year-old Carrie from Colorado Springs goes through. She has been addicted to drinking her own urine for over four years now. Her urine intake amounts to about 80 ounces a day, and since she began she has consumed over 900 gallons. “I drink almost all the urine that comes out of my body. It tastes like water for me,” she says.

What makes Carrie’s condition all the more weird is that she doesn’t just drink urine from a glass. I watched this video of a program about her on the TLC channel, where she gathers up the courage to confess her habit to her friend Denise. During the confession, she describes in detail exactly what  she does with the urine. Some of it goes in the regular way, through a glass. But then she puts some of it in a Neti pot and drinks it nasally. And some, she actually drinks through her eyes using an eye cup. She even brushes her teeth with it, and saves some so that she can rub aged urine all over her skin. Carrie says that it’s the nasal drinking that hurts the most. “The pain is different than any pain you’ve experienced.” Read More »

While the rest of the world is awakening to the benefits of eating organic food, 21-year-old Kerry Trebilcock is doing just the opposite. Actually, what she eats isn’t even food. The young girl from Cornwall eats (yes, eats) soap and sponges. So far, she’s consumed 4,000 washing sponges and over 100 bars of soap. Well, I suppose she at least has super-clean intestines!

It’s no laughing matter though, as Kerry is suffering from a condition called Pica, which makes her crave things that have nothing to do with food. People with Pica are known to eat a variety of things ranging from metal to sand, and even chalk, coal, light bulbs and furniture. For a long time, Kerry’s diet consisted of sponges dipped in tea or hot chocolate, or spiced up with mustard and BBQ sauce. She would never leave the house without a snack – a small plastic bag of cut up sponges and sauce in a Tupperware.

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A 95-year-old Chinese woman, thought to be dead and placed in a coffin, terrified her family and neighbors by climbing right out after six long days. Must have scared the living daylights out of her neighbor Mr. Qingwang, who was the first to discover the empty coffin.

Ms. Xiufeng lives alone in her home in China’s Guangxi Province. She had recently suffered a head injury,  and Mr. Qingwang found her motionless one morning when he went to give her breakfast. “No matter how hard I pushed her and caller her name, she had no reactions,” he said. “I felt something was wrong, so I tried her breath, and she has gone but her body was still warm.” So believing her to be dead, Mr. Qingwang and his son made funeral preparations, placing the old woman’s body in a coffin. Fortunately, in Chinese tradition the coffin is retained for several days, until family and friends pay their respects. Also, he chose not to nail the box shut until the day of burial.

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“You are hereby sentenced to death by rollercoaster.” Sounds strange for a death sentence, I know, but it could very well be a reality. That is, if Lithuanian engineer Julijonas Urbonas’ invention – the Euthanasia Coaster – is ever created. For now, he only has a prototype of the amusement ride with the ultimate thrill, death itself.

Yes, you ride it, you die. That’s pretty much the concept of the Euthanasia Coaster. What could be scarier than this – a ride that lasts 3 minutes, the first two of which are spent slowly climbing a very steep slope. Once at the top, you still have a chance to make the ultimate decision of your life, to live or to die. Choose the latter, and you will be dropped at a high speed and then made to travel through a quick succession of loops. The spinning motion would create a centrifugal force that makes all the blood rush away from the brain, and insufficient oxygen would ultimately lead to death.

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“Turning eight is the new 18” – I seriously wonder how and where people get such ideas. But, apparently they do, and 51-year-old Sarah Burge is one of them. She thinks it’s perfectly normal to gift her 7-year-old daughter plastic surgery gift vouchers worth £8,000 ($12,700).

The vouchers are meant to be a present for the occasion of Poppy Burge’s 8^th birthday. At an age when most girls expect to be given dolls or a new bike, a plastic surgery gift is absolutely bizarre. More so, since Poppy is so young that even her front two teeth are yet to come in. It’s no surprise that Sarah herself is a plastic surgery addict, having spent over £250,000 ($400,000) on altering her own appearance. So according to her, all she’s doing is giving her daughter a chance to be happy with her looks and grow up with confidence. “I’m investing in my child’s future. I’m giving Poppy the freedom to do what she wants,” says Sarah. “That’s what Poppy wants for her birthday.”

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If I told you of a place where babies are repeatedly flipped, spun, swung and dunked underwater, you’d waste no time it telling me it was baby-hell. Or at least some kind of baby-torture camp. But it’s neither. It’s really just a session of Baby Dynamics.

People who are not familiar with the routines involved in baby dynamics are usually, and quite understandably, horrified. Especially when the babies being subjected to the movements are obviously uncomfortable, crying and even vomiting. But the practitioner Lena Fokina simply smiles and asserts that it’s all good for the babies. The 51-year-old Russian has been practicing the techniques of baby dynamics for over 30 years and guarantees that no harm has ever been done to a baby she has handled. “It’s very good for babies and not dangerous at all,” she says. “Some babies cry at first, but then they begin to enjoy it.”

Considering how careful people are to just lift babies into their arms, it is rather shocking the way Lena simply holds one by the ankle or wrist and twists and turns the little one with ease. Again, she insists that this is nothing but normal. “Most people think young babies can only lie in bed, eat and cry. But babies are born with natural reflexes, which we can use to help them develop physically and intellectually.” So baby dynamics is actually meant to help babies with skeletal or muscular problems, and is also suitable for healthy children. It’s an age-old practice that originated with ancient African tribes. Dr Igor Charkovsky, a Russian midwife, adapted the techniques to suit modern times and was later joined by Lena. Baby dynamics is offered to children up to two years old and workshops are held to teach parents how to practice it at home.

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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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Here’s something I never thought I’d hear, let alone write an article about – faecal transplants. Yes, it’s exactly what you think  it is. Taking the poop out of one person and putting it into another. It’s a lot, more disgusting that it sounds, but this medical procedure actually has the potential to save lives. And would you believe, it’s been around since the late 1990s?

Dr. Alisdair MacConnachie is perhaps the only doctor in the UK to have ever performed the transplant. Calling it a proven treatment, this is how he says it’s done. A patient is put on antibiotics up until the night before, after which pills are given to control the stomach acids. The next morning a donor will come in and provide a stool sample. The donor is usually a close relative who tends to eat the same kind of food and lives in the same environment as the patient. Next, 1oz of the sample is taken and churned with salt water in a blender. Eww, right? No wait, it gets worse. The fluid is then poured through a coffee filter to produce a very watery liquid. And now, for the worst part – a tube is inserted up the patient’s nose that goes all the way down to the stomach. 1fl oz of the liquid is poured right in. I will now give you a moment to recover.

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This is the story of a man who has fathered 14 children without ever being intimate with a woman. How, you ask? Why sperm donation, of course.

“Donorsexual” is what 36-year-old Trent Arsenault from Freemont, California, calls himself. Since 2006, the computer security specialist has been giving away his sperm free of cost, through a one-man sperm bank he runs from home. His service is mainly for couples who are unable to conceive naturally, so they pick up sperm samples from him and use them for artificial insemination. This sure does sound weird not to mention, highly unhygienic. I doubted if this is even permitted legally. Turns out it isn’t. Sperm banks in the U.S. are regulated by the FDA, and they’ve issued Arsenault with a cease-and-desist order. The order is based on the fact that the he did not take the necessary legal precautions to prevent the spread of communicable diseases. He could face up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

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