A certain psychologist who goes by the name of Doctor He has shocked Chinese netizens after he showed up on the streets of Shenzen City, China, with a woman in her underwear, who helped him advertise his services.

I know it’s not the most common way to look for employers, but you have to understand this guy is a psychologist; he knows how the human brain works so I guess he decided a shocking approach was the easiest way to grab the attention he needed. So He hired a girl to stand beside him on the street, dressed only in underwear and holding a sign that said ““National treasure, Mental Illness Specialist, 10 million yearly salary, searching for buyer.” Meanwhile he just sat quietly in his chair, waiting for the media and watching as passers-by gathered to take photos with their cellphones.

Very straightforward marketing strategy I must say, but I bet the girl hated every minute of her performance. While she may be comfortable getting paid for showing up in her underwear, doing so on a winter day must not have been easy. As a matter of fact, witnesses say her skin quickly turned red from the cold, and she put her clothes back on after about 20 minutes. But that was more than enough for the doctor to reach his goal.

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Often referred to as “the oldest cabin in the world”, the Fossil Cabin of Medicine Bow is a unique roadside attraction made of thousands of dinosaur fossils.

Located eight miles east of Medicine Bow, Wyoming, on US Route 30 is one of the most amazing tourist attractions in America – the Fossil Cabin. This starter cabin turned fossil museum is constructed of approximately 26,000 dinosaur bones extracted from the nearby Como Bluff dig site. It was designed by Thomas Boylan an entrepreneur who hauled out the dinosaur bones and together with his family completed the Fossil Cabin in 1933. Thomas had apparently been collecting dinosaur bones for seventeen years when he realized his entire pile of bones came from various species and there appeared to be no complete specimen, so he decided to use his collection as building material.

In 1938, Robert Ripley, of Ripley’s Believe It or Not dubbed it “the oldest cabin in the world” and judging by the primary building material, he wasn’t exaggerating one bit. It gained a lot of attention after that and it brought a lot of customers to Boylan’s neighboring gas station, but after he died, and Interstate 80 was built, business started to go downhill. The Fossil Cabin was sold to the Fultz family who managed it as a fossil museum. Inside visitors could admire and in some cases purchases various dinosaur bones, petrified sea-life, and other things that appeal to dinophiles.

Unfortunately, Fossil Cabin is currently closed to the public, pending acquisition of a new manager, but you can stop by and shoot some great photos of its dinosaur bone walls.

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Brian Dettmer, also known as “The Book Surgeon” uses knives, tweezers and surgical tools to carve old dictionaries and encyclopedias into incredible works of art.

Born in 1974, in Chicago, Brian Dettmer studied art at Colombia College, where he focused mainly on painting. During his time working in a signage store, the artist started exploring the relationship between codes, text, language and art. He began producing paintings based on sign language, Braille and Morse Code, then moved on to layered works that involved pasting newspaper and book pages to a canvas, and it was just a matter of time before he would discover the talent he is now renowned for – expert book carving.

The Book Surgeon takes outdated books, dictionaries and encyclopedias that would otherwise end up at a landfill somewhere, and gives them new meaning and the chance at a second life, by carving them into intricate artworks. “Their intended role has decreased or deceased and they often exist simply as symbols of the ideas they represent rather than true conveyors of content. When an object’s intended function is fleeting, the necessity for a new approach to its form and content arises.” Dattmer says, explaining the philosophy behind his work.

Reference works are Brian’s favorite material, because of the rich illustrated content, but regardless of what he works with, he never inserts any new material or move the content of the book around just to make it more interesting. Using his trusty precision tools, he cuts out unwanted content stabilizing what’s left with layers of varnish. In the beginning, Brian Dettemer focused on carving one book at a time, but in recent years his art has become even more ambitious, as he began using sets of books to create the images he desires.

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Icecreamists, a London restaurant based in Covent Garden is offering clients the chance to try ice-cream made with real breast milk.

“No-one’s done anything interesting with ice cream in the last hundred years, wanted to completely reinvent it.” says Icecreamists founder, Matt O’Connor. The restaurant specializes in quirky ice-cream flavors, but using breast milk is definitely the weirdest thing they’ve done in their quest to change how people think about ice-cream.

Victoria Hiley, the first woman to donate breast milk for the unique ice-cream, says she was intrigued when she saw the ad on an online forum. People were arguing whether it was for real or not, so she decided to find out. The 35-year-old mother of one ended up selling 30 ounces of breast milk to Icecreamists. Now the restaurant is looking for more women willing to sell them the magical liquid and is offering £15 ($24) for every ten ounces. In case anyone is interested, the milk is extracted using breast pumps.

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“Off the Roll” is a yearly tape sculpture contest that challenges people to create the best artworks they can by using only Scotch tape.

I never knew it was possible to create sculptures out of Scotch tape alone, but after seeing some of the things people made for the Off the Roll contest, I started thinking this is one of the coolest materials available. Now that I think about it, I should have realized that sooner, especially after writing about the duct tape costumes of “Stuck at Prom”.

This year, Scotch is offering a grand prize of $5,000 to the most original and best executed sticky tape sculpture, as well as three other $500 prizes for runners-up and a people’s choice award. If you’re interested in participating, all you have to do is stock up on Scotch tape, create an impressive sculpture, take up to three photos of it and enter it in the competition by the end of February.

Check out some of the most beautiful Scotch tape sculptures entered in this year’s competition, and make sure you visit the Off the Roll contest page to vote for your favorites.

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For most of us, Christmas day is a time of celebration and togetherness, but for the people of the Chumbivilcas community, near Cuzco, it’s the perfect opportunity to get into a fight.

Takanakuy, which means “when the blood is boiling” in Quechua, one of the oldest spoken dialects of Peru, is an annual celebration that gives people the chance to solve personal differences with members of their community the old fashioned way, through violence. The yearly festival, which takes place every December 25th, is an indigenous tradition that has a lot to do with family honor, reputation and distrust in the judiciary system. Takanakuy is viewed by many as the only way to put problems behind them, before New Year’s.

On the day of the festival, participants (men, women and children alike) gather in the local bullring, where they engage in a bare knuckle fight, supervised by local authorities who act as referees. Men mostly stick to punching, but in women’s matches kicking is very popular and while contenders don’t seem to be holding back much, injuries are rarely reported. Fighters are not allowed to hit their opponents while they’re down, and they risk getting whipped if they forget about this important rule.

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Pigs of God is a controversial Taiwanese festival and contest where pigs that have been force-fed for years are publicly slaughtered, then put on floats and paraded through the city streets.

The origins of this gruesome event aren’t very clear, but while some say it’s part of the religious beliefs of the Hakkas, an ethnic group with a population of over four million in Taiwan, animal rights activists claim that in the last few decades it has become a simple meaningless contest used by families to show off their wealth and power. They are currently fighting for the banning of a clear form of animal cruelty, and the substitution of real pigs with ones made of dough, rice or flowers. Read More »

Kelly Coxhead, 32, got engaged 10 years ago and has since then been trying to convince her fiancee to set a wedding date. Now, she’s closer than ever to tying the knot, all she needs is 1 million Facebook friends.

Fiancee Paul Mappelthorpe, a mechanic who lives with Kelly in Swindon, England, has now become arguably the most unromantic man in Britain after refusing to marry his partner until she gets one million Facebook users to join a group. While other women would have probably left him after hearing such a ridiculous claim, Ms. Coaxhead actually set up a group called ‘I NEED 1 MILLION PEOPLE TO JOIN FOR PAUL TO MARRY ME C’MON GUYS HELP ME lol’, and began asking family and friends to join.

”It just came out of nowhere. I thought ‘a million’ that sounds good.” Paul says, ”When you think there’s 67 billion people in the world it’s less than 0.1 per cent. I just like a challenge and I like the idea of setting a challenge for her. It’ll give her something to look at on Facebook.”

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Chicago-based artist Wayne Kusy uses thousands of ordinary toothpicks and gallons of glue to create impressive-looking models of famous sea vessels.

50-year-old Kusy remembers he built his first toothpick model when he was just a child in the fifth grade. It was an Indian tepee and it got him a B+ in class, but toothpicks were to play a much bigger part in his life. He moved on to build a house out pf toothpicks, then a year later he started working on a ship that didn’t come out perfectly, but wasn’t far off the mark either, so he decided to build another one. And, before he knew it, he was pretty much obsessed with toothpicks.

Wayne Kusy’s amazing toothpick fleet began to take shape when he bought a plastic Revell model of the Titanic, studied the blueprints and deck plans, and spent the next three years recreating it with 75,000 flat and square toothpicks. It was impressive to look at, but it was so big that his small Chicago apartment could barely accommodate it, and there was no way to move it out without hitting the corners of his home and damaging the ship. The Titanic lost a lot of toothpicks on its maiden voyage out of Wayne’s apartment, but it taught the artist a valuable lesson – from there on he designed his ships so they could be reassembled from multiple segments.

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Chichi the rocking piano was designed by Sarah Davenport as a way of strengthening the relationship between the pianist and piano, and is unique in the world. Apparently, the rocking motion creates a perfect harmony that allows the piano player to completely get lost in the music, ignoring the world around. At least that’s how Sarah says it makes her feel, and she’s been playing piano since she was just three years old, so I guess we can take her word for it. At some events, pianists have been known to get so immersed in the music and the rocking that they kept playing for hours on end.

Chichi has been around for three years now, and after being featured in prestigious venues like the London Design Festival and The Nottingham Contemporay Art Gallery, Sarah decided it’s time to find it a proper home. She auctioned it off, at the end of January, and I’m sure it sold for a pretty hefty sum.

Ms. Davenport has already been approached by some of the biggest names in the music industry, to create more rocking pianos, each of which will be custom made, but she says there will never be another Chichi.

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“People don’t ask me if I’m crazy – they tell me I’m crazy” says Erik Bendl, also known as “World Guy“, a man who has spent most of the last few years trekking across the US rolling a giant globe.

Walking around 2,200 miles across 23 states is quite a challenge for any 48-year-old, but Mr Bendl decided to make it even tougher by rolling a 36-kg-heavy inflatable globe, everywhere he goes. It may sound useless and stupid, but it’s actually for a good cause – raising awareness about diabetes and the complications it causes.

World Guy lost his 54-year-old mother to diabetes, in 1987,and always wanted to do something memorable in her honor. In the late 1990s, he took the giant canvas globe he and his son used to play with and embarked on a 160-miles-long journey across Kentucky, for the American Diabetes Association, and also began walking in parades around the state. In 2007, after he and his wife got divorced, Erik Bendl set out on his first major trek across America, a 430-mile walk from Louisville to Pittsburgh.

Now, he’s halfway through his fifth long walk, talking to people he encounters and posting their stories on his blog, via the Blackberry smartphone hanging around his neck. He is accompanied by his dog, Nice, who loyally follows him on his daily 10-mile walks. When he completes his daily trek, he returns to his van, drives it to the spot he ended his walk, sleeps and does it all again the next day.

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60-year-old Pamela Cole has spent most of her life putting together an impressive collection of over 2,000 ceramic cats, and doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon.

When Ms. Cole says she’s crazy about cats, you best believe she means it – her house in Hollywood, Birmingham is practically full of ceramic cats, from a common replicas of cartoon characters like Top Cat, to 7th century BC Egyptian statuettes.

This unusual obsession with ceramic cats can be traced back to Pamela Cole’s childhood years, in the 1940s, when her mother bought her a cat to stop her feeling lonely. It was a simple pottery cat from a gift store in Corporation Street, but it kick-started her passion for collecting, and from then on she spent her days scouring shops and craft fairs in search of cat china.

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Rising105 meters into the sky, the Sanctuary of Truth is a one-of-a-kind gigantic structure that pays homage to the ‘Ancient Vision of Earth’, ‘Ancient Knowledge’ and ‘Eastern Philosophy’. It looks like a Thai temple or a palace, but it’s actually neither of them, so many people just look at it at as a monument to Thai craftsmanship.

Covering thirty two acres of land, on a rocky hilltop overlooking the ocean, the Sanctuary of Truth is the most magnificent sight in North Pattaya, and one of the most popular tourist attractions in Thailand. It is entirely carved out of teak wood and features the most beautiful and elaborate wood carvings I have ever seen, inspired by the four major artistic and philosophical influences in Thailand (Chinese, Thai, Khmer and Hindu). Buddha heads, sacred animals and all kinds of  religious and philosophical themes are depicted in the thousands of wooden sculptures and carvings adorning both the interior and outside walls of the sanctuary.

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I’ve read and written about a some pretty unusual hotels, in the past, but this is the first chicken hotel I’ve ever heard of.

The Chicken Hotel created by 31-year-old David Roberts, from Boskenwyn, Helston, is almost just like any other hotel out there, with one big difference – instead of people, it offers accommodations for chicken. I know it sounds like a joke, but this  place is for real, and apparently  it’s also very successful.

“With more people looking to escape the rat race and move out in the country with a little bit of land, keeping chickens is becoming more and more popular. But what do you do if you go away on holiday? Who looks after the chicken?” asks Mr. Roberts, who opened his unusual establishment to encourage people to raise their own chicken. A former cabinet-maker, David Roberts built the chicken coops himself and now rents them for 2 pounds each, plus 75 pence per chicken.

Each coop in the Chicken Hotel holds up to eight chicken and the current offer includes buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner of local produce, served in open-air. Guests are allowed to roam around the hotel grounds all day, before being gathered to roost at night. According to Mr. Roberts, the hotel was fully booked over Christmas time, and he hopes half term and Easter will be just as successful.

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The people of Jingdezhen City, China have found an original way to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Rabbit – they’ve built a giant statue of a rabbit from 30,000 porcelain plates.

Ever since the Song dynasty, 1,700 years ago, Jingdezhen has been known as the “porcelain city” because of its porcelain-making history, so it made perfect sense the locals used centuries-old skills for the celebration. Just like that porcelain dragon from Yangzhou that I posted about last week, this giant rabbit sculpture features a metal frame covered with thousands of porcelain plates.

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