Some artists are willing to do anything for their masterpieces, including risking their freedom. American Duke Riley is one such artist. He walks the fine line between legal and illegal in his new project called “Trading with the Enemy” which involves smuggling cigars from Cuba to Key West using pigeons specially trained for this shady task.

For “Trading with the Enemy,” Riley, who makes a living as a tattoo artist, started off by training 50 birds. Some were taught to carry cigars from Cuba to their destination – which, if you don’t already know by now, is illegal, and some were given special cameras to document their trip back and forth over the boarder. The spying equipment was engineered by Riley himself who worked for several years to make them as light as possible so the pigeon’s wouldn’t even notice them. According to the New York Times, the artist’s concept was a commentary on “the long history of pirating on the southern border.” Riley also wanted to dismiss the government’s very expensive high-tech spying gear by using homing pigeons instead of drones. “I wanted to subvert this billions-of-dollars high-tech system with things that were being used in ancient Sumeria. A lot of the work I do seeks to create some sense of possibility or empowerment, in a humorous and romanticized way, using the simplest means possible,” Riley says.

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Here’s some interesting news: a Japanese company has combined its popular dark beer with the pungent, intense flavor of black garlic, thus creating the unique and rather bizarre Aomori Garlic Black Beer.

Featuring a sleek black label with elegant golden writing, the black garlic-flavored beer bottle – which costs 630 yen ($6.5) – looks very appealing to any avid dark beer lover. The first sip of Aomori Garlic Black Beer doesn’t taste very different from any other quality black beer, but as the dark goes down your throat and into the stomach, the potent black garlic flavor starts to take over your mouth. Incredibly, those brave enough to actually try the Aomori Garlic Black Beer say the spicy, potent aftertaste is very addictive, making you want to drink more and more of the strange beverage.

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You know a university is shady when even a dog can get a Master’s degree. Yes, you heard right – in order to unmask the American University of London (AUOL), BBC Newsnight had Pete the dog apply for an MBA at the American University of London (AUOL). After paying £4,500, the furry “management consultant” actually received his degree.

AUOL is a bogus university which prays on the naivete of people who want to bulk up their resume in preparation for that executive dream-job interview. The so-called educational institution offers distance learning courses that, according to their website, “have been designed to the most exacting standards, in accordance with the most stringent criteria, in order to provide outstanding education at an affordable price.” AUOL then issues corresponding degrees and post-graduate qualifications in business, IT, law, education and liberal arts, humanities and English. Newsnight managed to uncover AUOL’s fraudulent money-making business by setting up a fake identity and CV for the lovely hound Pete. Thus, Peter Smith was born, a management consultant from South London with an undergraduate degree from a real UK University. After e-mailing them his CV and paying £50 – the mandatory application fee, Peter was asked to provide the institution photocopies of his previous qualifications and a photograph of himself. Of course, Pete did not oblige as his resume was made-up and his long dog face could not pass as a real man. Nonetheless, four days later, Pete received a message from AUOL stating that his application for a degree had been processed and that in two weeks he was going to be registered as an MBA graduate. All he had to do was to provide them with £4,500.

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In 2010, Danish freediver Stig Severinsen  jumped into a pool filled with sharks and held his breath for 20 minutes and 10 seconds, breaking the previous Guinness World Record for the longest time breath held voluntarily. Two years later, the fearless Stig did it again, somehow breaking his own remarkable record by holding his breath for a staggering 22 minutes. If there’s such a thing as a real-life Aquaman, it’s this guy.

Severinsen – who has a Ph. D. in medicine and a master’s degree in biology, is known for participating in the most extreme challenges, including swimming in freezing water. Before setting his first breath holding world record, he swam 236 feet – about 72 meters (14.5 more meters than Wim Hof, the previous record holder), in the below-zero waters of the North Sea. After taking a few breaths of air, he dived feet first through a hole carved in the ice. As soon as he was in the water, he started swimming to the next hole wearing only in his signature blue Speedos. The triangle-shaped hole was 72 meters away and there wasn’t another escape route mid-way, which made the challenge extremely dangerous. After reaching his destination in just 96 seconds, the 40-year-old daredevil lingered in the freezing hole a little longer, as if to prove the cold didn’t affect him very much. You’d think that after swimming that distance in heart-stopping water he immediately jumped out to find some warm clothes, but our hero just stood there with his elbows on the ice, smiling and thanking everyone as if he was in a hot tub or somewhere in the Bahamas.

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The people in Villaseca, Chile are some of the most the eco-concious on the Planet, using only sun-powered ovens to cook all their food. With these ovens, which can generate temperatures up to 180 degrees Celsius (356 degrees Fahrenheit), the villagers can prepare all kinds of dishes, including vegetables, meats and even deserts.

At first, cooking with solar energy was a necessity, due to the scarcity of wood in the country, which forced the villagers to spend hours on end every day looking for wood so they could eat. Two decades ago, the poor people of Villaseca were facing a tough wood crisis because of the desertification of the region. Every day, one member of the family had to go looking for wood to burn in their ovens so they could cook and eat warm meals. Thankfully, Rojas, a woman who lives in the Elqui Valley, and four other women were chosen to be guinea pigs in a trial project involving solar energy, conducted by the University of Chile. They were given specially engineered ovens that captured the sun’s rays and allowed any kind of food to be cooked in a heated compartment. The idea was well received, since the arid region is extremely sunny with more than 300 days of sunshine every year. Now, their sustainable ovens are the area’s main attraction and, the people there eat healthier because sun-cooked food lacks the carbon dioxide that emanates from burning wood.

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Unsatisfied with her looks, Candice Armstrong, a former barmaid from London, started going to the gym and working out for three hours a day. After two years, Candice still wasn’t getting the results she wanted, so she began taking steroids and ultimately became addicted to them. Today, the young body-building enthusiast has virtually transformed into a man, with unusually broad shoulders, noticeable stubble and developing male sexual organs.

Candice, who suffers from body dysmorphia, has always been dissatisfied with her womanly looks, especially her upper body which she thought was too thin. “I hated my body. My hips and legs were too big and my arms and torso too skinny. I thought I was out of proportion and not attractive. I’d never had a proper relationship with a man,” Candice says. She soon found herself at the gym, lifting weights and doing push-ups to improve her physique, but after a couple of years of hard work, she still wasn’t ripped enough. Candice stepped up her game becoming obsessed with the way she looked and working out for three hours a day.  Without giving it too much thought, she also started taking daily doses of Trenbolone – a steroid normally used by veterinarians to increase muscle growth in animals. She thought the steroids would finally help her have the bulky upper-body she had always wanted. “After a year, everyone said I had Madonna arms but I wanted them bigger. I heard about steroids and bought them online,” she explains. “When I started taking them I trained very hard. It enabled me to build more muscle and I was making gains I could see.”

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Peter Fitzek is a self-proclaimed king of a made-up state called the Kingdom of Germany which promises to “not serve capitalism, but the people.” This was possible because of a lesser-known subarticle of German law which entitles the citizens to establish non-profit organizations with their own legislation, executive and judiciary structures.

Fitzek started off as a chef working in a renowned restaurant. He then founded several businesses such as a video store, shoe and jeans shop, a disco bar and tattoo parlor. When he got bored with them, he turned to martial arts. He had always been interested in being healthy and in great shape, thanks to his father who always rode a bike on his way to judo class and because of his mother who was physically disabled. Her condition gave him the determination not to be ill since, according to him, being handicapped is a matter of choice. He believes every man has utter control over what happens to his body. “I control every thought I have. Every emotion, every action. I observe very carefully what those ‘bodies’ do and I carefully decide what I allow them to do and what I don’t allow them to do,” Fitzek says. After participating in some karate tournaments, getting married and having two children, he met a mysterious person who gave him some “ancient magical writings.” Fitzek was so captivated by what he read in those books that from then on, he rejected the rational scientific worldview and embraced the magical, surreal world and beliefs the books described. He soon started teaching that belief system to others, holding seminars in his apartment. “I am a teacher with all my heart. I love to teach people new things and set a good example,” he states. In his seminars, he talked about big issues such as humanity’s problems and political systems which, according to him, were flawed. He now believes democracy too is flawed since “the masses never came to a wise decision. It’s always been a small amount of people or individuals who served the further development of mankind.”

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Authorities in Sierra Leone have found a really cool and ingenious way to deal with their very undisciplined and uneducated drivers who are involved in thousands of accidents every year – a fun board game meant to be played for several months by any newbie wanting a driver’s license. Before actually being allowed to get behind the wheel, players will find themselves in realistic situations where the only way out is to give the right answers to traffic law and conduct questions.

The game, called “The Drivers’ Way”, might look like your regular board game but it has a quirky twist – the rules of the game are real driving rules and players move pieces modeled like classic cars around a colorful board as they advance. The dice is cleverly made into a traffic light but even if the light is green, players still have to tackle tough traffic law tests to go further. If they fail the tests or have a broken tail light, they get a fine, just like in real life. The game, which apparently plays a bit like Scrabble, seems easy enough if you know your signs and speed limits. Thousands of copies of the game have already been made, each costing 60,000 Leones (about $14). Sarah Bendu, executive director of Sierra Leone’s Road Transport Authority explains that “they (novice drivers) will have to pay for it. Then they will play it for two or three months, or maybe just one if they’re smart enough, then they will come for their test.”  I’m guessing that after playing it months on end, the West African country will have some seriously determined drivers.

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Newsflash! Carl McCoid– the guy who transformed his body into a shrine for Miley Cyrus, has added 6 more tattoos of the controversial singer to his collection, totaling an impressive 21 inked inscriptions and portraits. Last time we saw him, he “only” had 15.

Back in august, after the VMAs, Miley was harshly criticized for her borderline-obscene performance and revealing outfit, but super-fan Carl was very supportive and understanding, saying that “I don’t like the criticism she is getting. She doesn’t deserve it. It is all part of her comeback,” and adding that Miley is all grown up and that she is just “being true to herself now.” Carl, whose obsession with Miley tattoos started after his divorce, was also very flattered to hear that the singer mentioned him in an interview, stating that “She gave me a couple of seconds of her mind.” In the interview, she said that she didn’t like his tattoos and that he should “start another sleeve with my new look.” As the obedient, obsessed fan that he is, Carl went on and got himself inked with portraits illustrating her new rebellious look and lewd attitude as well as with lyrics from her songs, adding a total of 6 tattoos to his collection.

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Roll over and shake paws with Boomer the Dog – a man with a canine soul, who often roams the streets of Pittsburgh in a large dog costume, barking at every passing car and digging holes in the backyard. Boomer takes his persona very seriously and wishes everyone would treat him like a real dog.

Born Gary Matthews, Boomer is now a 50-something unemployed computer technician who lives by himself. He wears ears made from his long hair and a collar with a dog tag with his adopted name, Boomer the Dog. He rarely dresses as a human as he loves wearing his full size paper dog costume and getting on all fours. He eats dog food with his snout from a special bowl on the floor, barks, chases cars and digs for bones in the backyard like any other canine would. The guy even sleeps in his own indoor doghouse which, according to him, is much more comfortable than a human bed. Boomer, who resides in Pennsylvania, adopted his canine persona after watching the NBC hit show “Here’s Boomer” when he was only a child. The popular TV series was about a mixed-breed stray called Boomer who travels around helping people in trouble. This idea appealed to Mathews and soon, his fascination with dogs in general as well as with the star of the show took a life of its own and became his ultimate obsession.

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Although he started drawing with pencils after the age of 40, Adolfo Fernandez Rodriguez – a Madrid based artist, quickly mastered this technique. Using only colored pencils, he now draws life-like characters, bubbles, reflections and ripples of water that often get confused with hyper-realistic oil paintings and even photographs.

His mind-blowing creations include incredibly realistic waves and drops of water, distorted reflections as well as some very accurate depictions of statues and extremely detailed complex pieces such as two hands on a pile of hay with every straw carefully contoured, or the pages of a book where the artist really took the time to fill the pages with words and drawings. “I only recently discovered this Spanish artist and, really, what else is there to say about his work except – ‘WOW!’ Done in a very realistic style, all of his drawings look like paintings and many of them are almost impossible to tell apart from a photograph. I find not only his work, but also his interpretations and expressions of the love he feels for his many subjects, to be incredibly inspiring,” fellow pencil artist Lissa Rachelle Robillard wrote about Rodriguez’s work.

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In the face of greedy men with chainsaws in their hands, not even the enduring giant Redwoods stand a chance. But Julia Hill, a young American environmentalist showed the entire world the battle for the preservation of Mother Nature’s wonders is not yet lost, after she spent an astounding 738 days high up in a 60 meter Redwood she named Luna, in a desperate attempt to save the ancient tree and the forest around it.

When she was 22, Julia Hill was involved in a freak car accident which left her with a fractured skull and unable to speak for a year. Once a career and money driven woman, she rethought her entire life and set out to explore the world. In 1997, one year after her accident, she finally found what she was looking for – a group of activists protesting against the destruction of a redwood forest in Northern California, which stretched for hundreds of kilometers. She was enchanted by the ancient trees and decided to join their cause. Courageous and determined, Julia volunteered to climb one of the tallest trees in the forest – a 1,500 year old redwood, hoping to stop the Maxxam Corporation, the operator of Pacific Lumber, from chopping it down. Inexperienced, she managed to stay in the tree only for a few days at a time, which didn’t really impress the loggers or the media. Julia wanted to draw the atention of international media to the horrible deforestation that was taking place – a process called “clearcutting” which implied cutting trees of all ages and sizes and then burning the entire area in preparation for replanting new ones. She knew the only way to get people’s attention was to break the record for tree sitting which was 42 days. And that’s exactly what she did – after 100 days, Julia was all over the news giving interviews and educating people on the importance of saving these trees that have been here long before us.

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It’s tough being a professional model in such a competitive industry, especially when you are passed your prime, but it’s always good to remember that when a door closes, a window opens. Take Elliott Sailors, for example. She used to grace Bacardi billboards around the world with her beautiful blond locks, but at 31, she struggled to find any decent giggs. So she chopped off her hair, wrapped her breasts tightly and reinvented herself as a sexy androgynous male model.

Inspired by Casey Legler, a fellow colleague at the prestigious Ford modelling agency and the first woman to exclusively model menswear, Sailors cut her hair into a modern masculine style, hid her curves as best she could and started posing in front of the camera as a man, in an attempt to save her career. She says she didn’t want her modelling career to end so abruptly at only 31, as it often happens with female models who are replaced by younger newcomers. “Men don’t need to look as young as possible, so I have a lot of time,” the woman explains. Her decision to become a male model was not as extreme as it might seem. Back in the day, when she was a beauty pageant contestant, she was insecure with her masculine features. “Earlier on in my career, I would get frustrated because I thought I looked too masculine,” Elliot explains. “I have a strong jaw, wide forehead, huge eyebrows. I thought I looked like a man wearing makeup.” Nowadays, she likes her jawline and other manly features and tries to accentuate them with makeup.

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What if you could eat your favorite food every day and still be able to lose weight? Believe it or not, such a thing is very much possible, and Evo Terro, and average guy from Arizona, is living proof. Despite stuffing his face with sausages and drinking cold beers all day, he is actually shedding his extra pounds.

Terro’s miracle diet consists of consuming only sausages and drinking up to six beers a day for the entire month of October in celebration of the popular Oktoberfest. Evo discovered the offbeat diet three years ago and has been using it to shed extra weight ever since. Last year, he managed to lose about 6 kg (14lbs) by munching on his favorite bratwursts and gulping beer – which add up to about 15,000 calories per week. “Most of it was body fat,” Terry Simpsons – his doctor, says. “His cholesterol went down by a third.”  To make sure the diet is not harmful in any way, Terro’s health is being monitored by the supportive doctor. “We will do the labs to make sure your liver is doing fine, your lipids aren’t out of wack and your cholesterol is fine, blood chemistries are fine and I thought that was good supervision. We knew if something bad happened we would just shut it down,” the doctor explains.

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From screaming teenage girls to fanatic grannies, everybody’s got Bieber fever, including Toby Sheldon, a 33-year-old songwriter from Los Angeles who spent $100,000 on plastic surgery trying to transform himself into his idol, Justin Bieber. The man has had countless procedures such as eyelid surgery, chin reduction and face fillers all in an off-the-wall attempt to look like the popular pop-star.

Toby has been obsessed with his fading boyish looks ever since he was 23, when he started a series of treatments for his thinning hair and ended up undergoing hair transplants which cost him an impressive $8,000. It wasn’t until 2008, when Justin became popular worldwide, that Toby really started considering plastic surgery. He explains that “once Justin shot to fame his face was everywhere and I all I kept thinking when I saw his picture was, ‘I want to look like him’.” To the disappointment of millions of second grade schoolgirls, Sheldon is not a true Bielieber as he mostly admires the pop star’s soft facial features rather than his musical aptitude. “I didn’t necessarily listen to his music or fawn over him as a celebrity, but his face was just so flawless every change I made was modeled after him,” Sheldon says. With Justin in mind, the 33 year old spent another $21,000 to further enhance his appearance and underwent a procedure to lower his hairline closer to his temples to resemble that of Bieber. Toby then grew out his bangs and got Bieber’s signature haircut which he says often gets him mistaken for his idol.

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