Going out to the same restaurants and bars every week can get pretty boring after a while, but if you like in a large UK city, you now have the chance to spice up your nights on the town in one of the most macabre ways imaginable, thanks to Anatomy Lab Live. The unique experience involves a fancy dinner followed by a live dissection of what looks to be a real human body.

There’s nothing like watching a pathologist sink his hands into a corpse and pulling out bloody organs to help the digestion after a hearty meal. At least that’s what Sam Piri, the man behind the Anatomy Lab Live experience seems to think. Sam, who works as a school teacher, claims to have been inspired by the excitement of his students while studying biology, and becoming familiar with pig organs. He decided adults might get a kick out of seeing a live dissection and learning more about the wonders of the human body, but why he thought it would be a good idea to feed his guests beforehand is a mystery.

Anatomy Lab Live, which debuted recently at the Village Hotel in Solihull, outside Birmingham, starts off with a fancy dinner of salmon, served with roast potatoes, green beans and roasted butternut squash and carrots. Dessert includes apple pie and custard or Eton mess, and for drinks, guests get to choose between wine and beer. As they feast on the generous spread, the only sign that something unnerving is about to happen is a center table full of syringes, medical waste bags and petri dishes. Read More »

UK-based company The Unseen has recently revealed a revolutionary hair dye that can change  between two colors whenever the temperature around the user fluctuates. This ingenious new product is called FIRE and despite being based on science, it looks like magic.

Within fashion circles, The Unseen founder Lauren Bowker is known as ‘The Alchemist’. It might sound like an exaggeration, but she and her team have indeed had some remarkable breakthroughs in design and fashion. The Unseen has patented color-changing technology that has allowed the company to create a variety of bespoke inks and coatings. These can in turn be used to create clothes and accessories that change color depending on certain factors, like temperature and humidity. But their latest creation, FIRE – a specially formulated hair dye that causes the hair to change color whenever the temperature fluctuates has been drawing the most attention.

A chemist, fashion designer and businesswoman, Lauren Bowker says that she came up with the idea for FIRE while watching a scene from the 90’s teen movie “The Craft”, more specifically a scene where Robin Tunney’s character goes from brunette to platinum blond by simply combing her fingers through her hair. “It was in that moment that the penny kind of dropped,” Lauren said. “I was like, ‘We could do that.'” And she did.

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Do companies need a strong leader to make it in today’s highly competitive environment? Many would say “yes, definitely”, but the employees of one Swedish software consultancy company would tell them otherwise. They don’t have a CEO. Nobody tells anyone what to do, instead all the 40 employees have meetings and decide together.

Crisp, the software consultancy firm that has become world famous for not having a boss, has in fact gone through a number of organisational structures, including the classic formula of having a single person running things. Hoping to get its employees more involved, it moved on to changing its chief executive officer annually, but ultimately, the 40-strong staff decided there was actually no need for a single leader, so they scrapped the position altogether.

“We said, ‘what if we had nobody as our next CEO – what would that look like?’ And then we went through an exercise and listed down the things that the CEO does,” said Yassal Sundman, a developer at Crisp. He and his colleagues quickly realized that many of the CEO’s responsibilities overlapped with their own, with the few roles that didn’t easily shareable among other employees. SO they decided to give the boss-less experiment a try.

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The authors of a Class IV textbook in India recently came under fire, after it was revealed that in a lesson on the importance of breathing they were literally encouraging the kids to do an experiment involving suffocating a cat.

It sounds hard to believe that a school textbook for environmental studies could teach children as young as 9 years old to kill an animal as an experiment, but it’s sadly true. Twitter user Lola Kuttiamma shared photos of the book passages concerning the absurd experiment, and people understandably were outraged about it. “Living things breathe”, the textbook explains. “No living thing can live without air for more than a few minutes. “You can do an experiment. Take two wooden boxes. Make holes on lid of one box. Put a small kitten in each box. Close the Boxes. After some time open the boxes. What do you see? The kitten in the box with no holes has died.”

Wow, is that educational or what? And they’re not even suggesting using adult cats, but cute little kittens. Not that grown cats would have made it any more acceptable, but kittens just make it sound even crueler. And if you thought things couldn’t possibly get worse, you were wrong. The textbook, entitled “Our Green World: Environment Studies”, also features a couple of pictograms, with one kitten alive and well in the box with holes in it, and the other, well, dead.

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Temperature-controlled rooms, king-size beds, a dreamy playground and gourmet chow are just some of the things felines can enjoy at Catzonia, the world’s first five-star hotel for cats.

Located in Damansara, just outside Malaysia’s capital city of Kuala Lumpur, Catzonia was set up to offer pampered felines a lavish holiday whenever they need a break from their daily routine, or when their loving masters are away and can’t offer them the attention they deserve. Featuring a total of 35 rooms split into four categories, Catzonia is manned by a crew of feline lovers who promise to play with the guests, groom them and generally make sure their stay is as comfortable as possible.

“We believe that cats need holidays too,” the Catzonia Hotel website states. “They always prefer to be treated as a boss. It means the environment must be felt like home, always being cuddled and hugged, and most importantly they don’t want to feel lonely.”

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London-based company Naturist Cleaners, “one of UK’s leading naturist and nude cleaning service providers”, is currently looking for women willing to clean private houses wearing just slippers and cleaning gloves. Women “of all ages and sizes” can apply, and the job pays £45 ($57) an hour.

“We are looking for female naturist cleaners who can clean private houses nude,” the job ad reads. “The job will require doing all general cleaning like dusting, tidying up, vacuuming, watering plants, making beds, using the washing machine, ironing clothes and cleaning windows.” So it’s a regular cleaning job, minus the clothes. Clients, most of which are part of nudist community, are charged £65 for the first hour, and £55 for every hour after that. They also have to agree to a “no touching” policy and also not to photograph or film the nude cleaners as they perform their job.

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If you’re sick of waiting for summer to get a natural tan, it’s time you learned about TanRound, the world’s only apparel that lets you sunbathe all year round, even in the cold winter months.

Let’s face it, spray-on tans look nasty, and UV tanning beds are dangerous, but what’s a person to do when it’s too cold to go outside for good ol’ fashion sunbathing that not only makes you look good but replenishes your vitamin D reserves? Well, until not too long ago, we didn’t have too many options, but now there’s TanRound, an innovative line of apparel that allows wearers to sunbathe in cool temperatures down to -1 degrees Celsius. If you have no problem walking around in see-through plastic, it might be just what you’ve been looking for.

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Maid cafes have been a big part of Japanese pop culture for a while now, but the maid phenomenon is transitioning into other areas as well. For example, a new gym near Tokyo’s famous Akihabara district offers patrons the chance to work out while assisted by beautiful trainers wearing maid costumes.

Can you imagine pumping some iron with a cute maid spotting you and cheering you on? Well, apparently a lot of Japanese guys can and they’re loving the idea. So much so that they’ve helped successfully crowdfund the MID GYM project thought up by a couple of young Japanese entrepreneurs. With more than a month to go to the deadline, the campaign to make the unique maid gym a reality has already met its 700,000 yen goal, on Japanese crowdfunding site CampFire. It’s not clear exactly when the Mid Gym will open its gates, but it’s definitely coming soon.

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The Onomichi Denim Project, a chic boutique in Onomichi, Japan’s Hiroshima Prefecture, is a popular destination for denim enthusiasts looking for a pair of truly special jeans. The shop is well-known around Japan and even abroad for selling premium jeans that have been worn by select members of the local community for at least one year.

Selling used jeans, or any other type of clothing for that matter, is not exactly a new business model, but Onomichi Denim Project is not your average second-hand denim retailer. Created in 2013, as a collaborative effort between local designer Yoshiyuki Hayashi, textile expert Yukinobu Danjo, and Discoverlink Setouchi, an organization that aims to supports local industry, the minimalist boutique aims to draw attention to the city’s top-quality craftsmanship and its people in a unique way. Plus, while used denim is generally sold at a discount, these particular jeans actually get about twice as a expensive after being worn by somebody almost daily, for at least a year.

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Coming up with effective hand protection in dangerous environments like construction sites has been an elusive goal for many years, but Chilean inventor Jorge Sgombic claims to have finally come up with a truly safe solution.

Boots with built-in toe protection have become a requirement on most construction sites these days, so foot safety is no longer an issue, but the human hands are an infinitely trickier problem. Protective gear companies are actively trying to strike the perfect balance between functionality, mobility and safety when creating new work gloves, but so far the results have been unimpressive. Workers still have to put up with the excruciating pain of banging their fingers with large hammers, or, even worse, slice part of them off in gory work accidents. But Jorge Sgombic’s  innovative Mark VIII safety gloves aim to fix this problem.

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22-year-old Mary Krupa started interacting with the squirrels living on the Penn State University campus four years ago, and became an internet sensation after posting photos of the adorable rodents wearing tiny outfits and posing with various props. Today, everyone at the university knows her as the “Squirrel Whisperer” or “Squirrel Girl”.

Mary says that she became friends with the grey squirrels during her first week at Penn State, after spotting them running around and idly wondering what one of them would look like with a tiny hat on its head. She started bringing them food, and little by little they began to trust her. She actually managed to put a hat on a squirrel and take a picture, which she then sent to her grandmother, who loved it. Thinking that her Penn State colleagues could use something to lift up their spirits, she started posting photos of the squirrels wearing funny hats and playing with props she made herself, on Facebook. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and before long Mary and her squirrels became internet sensations.

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In an effort to combat plastic pollution, Indian startup EnviGreen has come up with a combination of natural starch and vegetable oils that looks and feels just like plastic, but is 100 percent organic, biodegradable and eco-friendly. You can even dispose of such a “plastic” bag by eating it.

EnviGreen founder Ashwath Hedge came up with the idea for these revolutionary bags after seeing people struggling to find alternatives to plastic bags, following bans imposed by several Indian cities. “People were concerned bout how they would carry products from the market now. Everyone cannot afford a bag worth Rs. 5 or Rs. 15 to carry a kilogram of sugar,” he told The Better India. So the 25-year-old decided to work on something that would solve this problem while being environment-friendly.

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Authorities in Ghana have recently shut down a fake United States embassy in the capital Accra that had been issuing illegally-obtained but authentic visas for the last 10 years. The fake institution was being run by members of organized crime from both Ghana and Turkey.

The real U.S. embassy in Acra is a large office building complete with security fencing and U.S. military guards, located in one of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods, while the fake one was just a rundown, pink two-storey building with a corrugated iron roof and a United States flag flown outside. There were no actual Americans working there, not even con artists. Instead the staff was made up of English-speaking Ghanian and Turkish citizens. And yet, for 10 years, the organized crime ring operating this fake embassy was able to convince people to pay thousands of dollars for visas and false identification documents. Maybe it was the portrait of Barrack Obama that police found inside that made the place seem legit.

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For over 2000 years, the good ol’ iron horseshoe has remained the only reliable footwear for horses, but an Austrian company is ready to “take the horse out of the Iron Age” with the world’s first equine running shoes, the Megasus Horserunners.

Charly Forstner, the founder of Megasus, used to work as an animal welfare inspector for horses in Austria. He learned that over 50% of horses that needed to be put down suffered from severe hoof and leg problems. 20 years ago, he decided to dedicate his life to coming up with a better alternative to the iron horseshoe. Over the last two decades, he invented various hoof protection products made of plastic, like the ‘Dynamix’ or the ‘Easywalker’, but he recently unveiled something truly revolutionary – clip-on running shoes for horses. Forstener claims that they combine the qualities of both the common horseshoe and the hoof boot to offer horses the protection and freedom of movement that they require.

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Ejiao, or donkey skin gelatin, is considered one of the three treasures of traditional Chinese medicine. It is used to treat a wide range of ailments from simple colds to insomnia and impotence, and demand in the Chinese market is soaring like never before. Millions of donkeys are slaughtered all around the world and their hides transported to China to be melted into the miracle gelatin that many believe will keep them looking youthful and even prolong their life.

Dong’e county, in northern China, is the epicenter of ejiao production. Here, over 100 factories melt thousands of donkey hides into gelatin, every week, and after running out of domestic stock, they are now relying on imports from developing countries to sustain the huge demand. China’s donkey population has dwindled from 11 million during the 1990s to just 6 million today, due to both industrialization and massive slaughtering for ejiao. With local stock of donkeys going dry at an alarming rate, some factories have opened their own farms to breed and kill up to 10,000 donkeys a year, but with some of them processing over 1 million donkey hides in the same period, it’s hardly a sustainable plan. Which is why many factories have turned their attention to the foreign market.

Various countries in Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East are supplying millions of donkey skins for the Chinese ejiao market. With the price for donkeys having skyrocketed from around $65 a decade ago to $315 today, some livestock breeders are switching to donkeys exclusively, because the trade is so profitable. But some governments have already banned China from buying their donkeys because they realized that it would eventually decimate the animal population. In September, Nigeria announced a ban on the export of donkeys in September, after the trade increased three times in one year, mainly to Asian markets. “If the export continues the animals will be decimated,” Atte Issa, a Nigerian government official told the BBC.

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