On Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement, ultra-Orthodox Jews use white chickens to perform the Kaparot ritual and get rid of all their sins.

The holiest of Jewish days, celebrated with 25 hours of fasting and intense prayer, offers ultra-Orthodox Jews the chance to make a year’s worth of sins vanish. All they need is a chicken, preferably white, and a simple blessing. The live chicken is waved above the sinner’s head as the blessing is recited and it is believed all his of the previous year are transferred into the chicken.

The new host of the sins is then quickly beheaded and its blood drained as young ultra-Orthodox boys watch. Pretty cool isn’t it? Just sin a way for an entire year and let a brainless chicken take the fall. These are the times that make me wish I was a Jew.

via Telegraph.co.uk

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Huang Xin, a hairdresser from Beijing has created replicas of monuments and famous buildings around Tiananmen Square, using discarded human hair.

I’ve seen some pretty impressive models throughout the years, including a plywood helicopter, a matchstick Minas Tirith or a toothpick city, but never anything made from human hair. But, they say there’s a first time for everything, so today I stumbled over some photos of famous Chinese buildings made entirely from human hair.

Huang Xin, a young Chinese hairdresser wanted to celebrate the 60th anniversary of People’s Republic of China in a unique manner and used his talent to do it. Using discarded human hair, mostly from women, he spent almost an entire year creating some very impressive models of Tiananmen Square.

photos via ImagineChina

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George Reiger considers himself Disney’s number one fan and to prove it, he has covered most of his body with over 1,900 Disney tattoos.

When people ask George Reiger why he has almost 2,000 tattoos relating to Disney, his answers that Disney practically raised him when he was a child and he wanted to have Mickey and the entire Magical Kingdom with him everywhere he went. George had his first tattoo, Fantasia Mickey, when he was just 18 years old. By the time he turned 20, he already had 80 Disney tattoos.

That’s when he went to the company’s owners and asked them for permission to have even more characters permanently inked on his skin. Disney agreed to let him become a walking Disney canvas, as long as he used just one tattoo artist for every one of his tattoos and didn’t make any money from them. He agreed and went one to cover about 85% of his body with Disney characters and settings. He has 4-5 new tattoos done every week.

To George Reiger, nothing is more important than Disney. That’s probably why he’s currently at wife number 6, with all six honeymoons spent at Walt Disney World. He lives in a Disney-themed house, full of over 24,000 Disney collector’s items.

He admits that it’s pretty bizarre for a 50-year-old man to be covered in tattoos of children’s characters, but this is what makes him happy. He spends around $50,000 on Disney every year and when he dies, he wants his ashes spread over the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, so he can live in Wald Disney World forever.

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I’m not a big fan of canned foods, but I can be talked into eating some canned tuna fish from time to time. Hell, if need be, I would even eat whole canned chicken, or pork brains in milk gravy.  But there are some strange foods out there I would rather starve to death that try and the Daily Mail made a list of them. Check it out:

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If you’re a runner, you probably already know about the issue of nipple bleeding, but for people like me, who only run when they’re being chased, this is new.

I stumbled across this set of photos on Unknown Highway, one of  my favorite sites, and thought I’d investigate further to find out what exactly makes men’s nipples bleed during marathons. After a bit of reading I learned not to ever run for miles, dressed in a cotton shirt.

Apparently, cotton and sweat just don’t make a good team. After you run a few miles, you start to sweat a lot and the cotton absorbs the sweat and gets heavier and heavier. That’s when it starts to act like sandpaper against your sensitive nipples. So, if you want to run in a marathon make sure you’re wearing something made out of light-weight material, like a CoolMax t-shirt.

If you don’t have anything else but cotton t-shirts, run shirtless. It’s better for people to see your belly wiggling that to see your nipples bleeding, trust me. Also, I know this sounds a bit kinky, but you might want to rub a bit of Vaseline or other lubricant on your nipples, before a race.

KidZania is a chain of theme-parks where children can decide what they want to be when they grow up, by actually doing the job.

Do you remember, as a kid, when someone asked you “what do you want to be when you grow up”? And you would say things like astronaut, fireman, doctor without actually knowing what those jobs actually implied. Well, at KidZania, children have the opportunity to experience all kinds of jobs and decide if they really like them.

Luis Javier Laresgoiti, a true theme-park innovator, was the one who came up with the concept of Kidzania and was further developed by Xavier López Ancona, a Mexican entrepreneur. The first career-building theme park was opened in 1999, in Mexico City and there are now 6 Kidzania parks around the world (Tokyo, Monterrey, Jakarta, Koshien and Lisbon).

At Kidzania, children can try popular jobs like firefighting, driving planes, being a doctor, as well as well as being a mechanic or flipping burgers at a diner. The point is for kids to have fun and learn the value of money and work, at a young age. Parents are allowed to watch the kids as they perform the jobs, but they are not allowed to help them.

At the end of the day, the young workers are paid in KidZos (official currency of KidZania).

Photos by GETTY IMAGES via Telegraph.co.uk

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I know, being the hairiest man in China is not how you’d want to be known, and neither does Yu Zenhuan, whose hair covers 96% of his body.

Yu was diagnosed with a rare condition that causes hair to grow in places it normally shouldn’t. he was born in a family of farmers and, when he was only 2 years old, his parents noticed he had hair coming out of his auditory canals. His situation worsened as he grew up and now almost his entire body is covered with long thick hair.

But Yu might have the chance of living a normal life, he is now undertaking a laser treatment to have his hair removed. Basically, every hair on his body will have to be zapped with laser. That can’t be pleasant, but for Yu Zenhuan it’s nowhere as painful as looking in the mirror.

Photos by BARCROFT MEDIA

via Telegraph.co.uk

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The Holiday Inn Key Card Hotel was built by card-stacking master Bryan Berg, from 200,000 discarded hotel key cards.

To mark the relaunch of their hotel chain, numbering 1,200 establishments, Holiday Inn inaugurated the world’s first key card hotel, in Manhattan, New York. It’s made up of a guestroom, bathroom and lobby, featuring life size furniture made-out of key cards.

Bryan Berg, who built his first record-breaking house of cards when he was only 17, back in 1992, said this was his toughest challenge yet, because he has never created human scale structures before. The Key Card Hotel was opened on September 17 and will be in business until September 21. During the five day event, Bryan Berg will build a replica of the Empire State Building, inside the lobby of the strange hotel.

via Daily Mail and Xinhua

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Apart from the breathtaking Iguazu Falls, one of the most important tourist attractions in the Iguazu area is the House of Plastic Bottles, built out of plastic bottles and other recyclable materials.

Alfredo Alberto Santa Cruz got the idea of building a house from plastic bottles while he was creating a playhouse for his little daughter. After he finished it, he noticed the plastic the structure was pretty sturdy and realized he was on to something. That’s when he decided to build a one-bedroom cottage out of plastic bottles, for him and his family.

Mr. Santa Cruz’s bottle house features a bed, chairs, shelves and even a fake hanging plant, all made out of PET bottles. Practically everything inside the house is recyclable, apart from the wood framing and a few metal bolts. The walls are made from 2-liter plastic bottles, while the roof consists of hundreds of tetrapak cartons (the boxes you drink juice from). Alfredo has flattened them into shingles and turn them aluminum side up, to reflect the sun and keep the place cool. They would only last for 4-5 years, due to rains, but he covered them up with a layer of plastic, cut from bottles and says this combo could last even 20 years.

I’ve seen glass bottle houses before, even a temple built out of glass bottles, but this is my first plastic bottle house.

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The world’s largest flag was unfurled over Teddy Football Stadium, Jerusalem, during an event attended by officials from the Guinness Book of Records.

The creation of the flag was initiated by Grace Galindez Gupana, a 48-year-old Filipino business woman and founder of Halleluyah Kingdom of Jerusalem Foundation. Mrs Gupana holds nine other Guinness records, including the largest stone tablets with the ten commandments and says her projects are ways of emphasizing her love for the God of Israel.

The flag presented on September 17, in the capital of Israel, features the largest emblem of lion, ever soon and measures 44,404 square meters (that’s over 4.3 hectares)  and weighs 9.5 tons. A team of six people produced the world’s largest flag over a period of 120 days. It cost $120,000 to make.

Photos by Xinhua/Yin Bogu

via Xinhua

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Dominic Epistolo had the idea of recreating some of the states in the USA out of pieces of meat and I for one thinks his works look good enough to eat.

Dominic Epistolo, a very talented photographer from Philadelphia has shot many photos in his career, from fashion to still-life, but his most popular set, “The United Steaks of America” has been featured all over the internet. He had the original idea of carving the United States out of pieces of meat.

His photographs look amazing, but I wonder if he cooked his work after shooting it. I’d sure like to sink my teeth into juicy Pennsylvania.

via Toxel

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Stan Munro has spent the last six years of his life recreating some of the world’s most important landmarks out of nothing else but toothpicks.

Most people use them to get rid of food scraps from between their teeth, but 38-year-old Stan Munro, a former television host, uses them to create wooden works of art. Stan takes between one day and six months to glue together 1:164 scale models of some of the most impressive structures on Earth.

In order to create his amazing Toothpick City, Stan Munro has so far used six million toothpicks and 172 liters of glue, but his work is far from over. Right now he is working on a toothpick replica of Angkor Wat, the most complex structure he has ever had to build. All his models are on display at the Museum of Science and Technology, in Syracuse, New York.

Photos by SOLENT NEWS & PHOTO AGENCY

via Telegraph.co.uk

Here are some of his most incredible-looking toothpick creations:

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With most species of tigers about to become extinct, cat breeders are trying to help their cause by creating a tiny tiger replica, called Toyger.

Jennifer Santee has always had a thing for tigers and dreamed of having one as a pet. But knowing that wasn’t ever going to happen, she decided to make a tiger of her own, one that she could keep in her house. Together with a small group of cat breeders, she managed to create the Toyger (for toy tiger), a breed designed “specifically to preserve the beauty of an exotic animal”.

Although Toygers don’t actually have any tiger genes, their rusty color and dark stripes closely resemble those of the Bengal tiger. But they are friendly and playful animals that will go for walks, play fetch and come when they are called. Unlike the Margay,  they are perfect human companions.

Santee says 25 breeders all around the world are working on perfecting the Toyger breed, to make the cats resemble tigers even more. The new species is already in demand and, although each specimen costs over $3,000, they have all been sold. Part of the profits go towards the conservation of wild tigers, the inspiration behind the Toygers. The breeder estimates will truly be tiger replicas by 2010, when the last tigers will disappear from zoos.

via National Geographic

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Tattooed Parrot Fish and other species of ornamental fish are becoming quite popular at a pet-shop in Chengdu, China.

Known as Fortune Fish, these tattooed swimmers bear patterns, such as flowers and rainbows, and characters that are said to bring good fortune and happiness to their owners. The tattoos were apparently done with lasers and made the common Parrot Fish quite popular.

A normal Parrot Fish sells for 10 yuan, while a tattooed Fortune Fish sells for 25 yuan.

via ImagineChina

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Milan Karki, an 18-year-old from Nepal, may have solved the world’s increasing energy problems, by inventing a solar panel that uses human hair instead of expensive wiring.

The young Nepalese, together with 4 classmates, has been trying to come up with a way of producing cheap, renewable energy for his home village ever since he went to school in Kathmandu, but now he dreams of powering up the whole world with his invention.

Milan has discovered hair not only makes us look good, but is also light sensitive and a great energy conductor, because of the melanin it contains. So he replaced the silicon in normal solar panels with human hair and thus invented a new type of solar panel, four times cheaper than the ones on the market today.

The inventor says he has already sent out a couple of his prototypes to districts in Nepal, to be tested for feasibility, but is confident he has found an answer to his country’s energy issues. He says buying half a kilo of human hair is not only cheaper than a set of batteries, but also produces energy for much longer period of time. And anyone can replace the hair, so the solar panel doesn’t require a lot of servicing.

Photos by Tom van Cakenberge/BARCROFT MEDIA

via Daily Mail

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