Members of a Russian winter swimmers’ club went for a swim into the Yenisei River, at a temperature of around -36 degrees Celsius.

Russians are no strangers to cold, and most of them cope pretty well with it, especially after a few shots of vodka, but under -35 degrees is extreme, even for them. Winter swimming is very popular in Russia, and the ritual of the Epiphany has thousands of people bathing in ice-cold water to purify their bodies, but this particular group of swimmers, from the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, did it simply for fun. That’s right, they stripped down to their bathing suits and dived into the Yenisei River at -36 degrees Celsius, because that’s what they call a good time.

In case you were wondering, they all survived this crazy stunt, which means they’ll probably survive the next ice age.

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Noche de Rabanos (Night of the Radishes) takes place every year, on the 23rd of December, in Oaxaca,Spain and is one of the most impressive vegetable festivals around the world.

The radish was brought to the Americas in the 16th century, and back then the vendors used to carve them and use them on their market stalls to attract customers. Although the origins of the festival cannot be traced to an exact period, it is considered that it all began in the year 1897, when the mayor of Oaxaca organized the first radish-art exposition. Everever since that first celebration, every year, this humble vegetable is meticulously carved into animals, warriors, kings, dancers and pretty much any shape you can imagine. The artists sometimes make use of other vegetables, like onion or lettuce to complete their work. There’s also a prize for the most beautiful piece displayed.

The carver’s work begins about three days in advance and on the 23rd of December, the day of the festival, the results of all their hard work is presented to the public. On that same day, especially in the morning, children have the chance to learn this incredible art of radish-carving, or at least some of its secrets.

The celebrations don’t end that day. They continue on Christmas Eve and Christmas  Day with other joyful “fiestas”, parades of floats, fireworks music and dancing.

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Preston Hill, a 17-year-old Buchanan High School student from Clovis, California, used the Butt Drag move on one of his teammates at a school-sponsored event and now faces sexual battery charges.

As both Preston and his father assert the “butt drag” is a move that his coaches taught him ever since he was in middle school, the boy’s family doesn’t understand why such a common move brought such dire consequences. As coaches describe it, the “butt drag” is a move which involves grabbing the butt cheeks of the rival and inserting your fingers inside his anus, as to obtain better positioning and leverage.

Although it has been used for years in many wrestling matches, Preston has been suspended until his expulsion hearing. He has also been charged with sexual battery and the trial was to begin on Thursday, 9th of Dec.

On the other hand, Ross Rice, the assaulted boy’s father, claims it was an intentional aggression,as Preston was looking to get revenge on his opponent for standing up to him in school. “Preston took it beyond a wrestling move. He crossed the line.”

This is not a first. In 2007, an also 17-year-old wrestling champion from  South Dakota was charged with rape and attempted rape, as there were six other wrestlers that testified against him, saying that he penetrated or tried to penetrate their anuses. He was found guilty…

I can’t wait to see your comment on this one!

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Scotland’s town of Cumbernauld has recently become the proud “host” of a beautiful mermaid statue that seems to be guarding the town’s entrance.

Standing at over 33ft tall, this statue is entirely made out of metal and depicts a beautiful four-armed mermaid, with two of her arms stretched outwards, as if to protect the town, and the other two holding up her mermaid tail.Her name is Arria and she was thought of and designed by English sculptor Andy Scott.

The real spectacle begins at nightfall as the statue features a rig of multicolored lights inside it’s structure that all lit up, putting Arria in a whole new “light”.

The costs for making the statue reached up to around $400,000, but local authorities hope the mermaid will be the town’s lucky charm.

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Using various carving tools, mixed media artist Julia Feld breathes new life into old, useless books by transforming them into beautiful artworks.

A scientist by trade, Julia Feld has always enjoyed the visual elements of science and started carving old books to draw attention to their beauty rather than their outdated content. While most people aren’t interested in the information these books contain, anymore, Julia tries to give them a second chance to be valuable. Making great use of exacto knives, rotary cutters, tweezers, rulers, pliers, files, custom cut panes of glass, and lots of glue, the artist creates incredible carvings that leave you wondering “how did she do it”?

While some people accuse her of ruining vintage books, Julia Feld insists she is actually a book lover, and would never dream of carving up a book that she believes still has valuable content. That’s why she prefers to work with reference books that are several editions out-of-date, and have been salvaged from garage sales or second-hand shops.

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For all you Twilight fans or haters out there, a mummified vampire heart,  belonging to vampire Auguste Delagrance, is being actioned off, on eBay.

The mummified heart is said to be that of vampire Auguste Delagrance, responsible for the deaths of more than forty people back in the 1900, a period of vampirism in the USA. When identified, Delagrance was hunted down by a Romano Catholic priest and a Voodoo Hougan, and and destroyed in 1912.

The seller offers the heart and stake with which the vampire was killed, both  stored into an oak box decorated with some hand lettered writing, including the vampires name and the date of its destruction.

I have to admit that this story, based upon some real events that took place in that particular period of time in the United States, such as cases of mass murders and alleged cults, make this heart far more realistic and impressive than it really is.

The extremely detailed prop is made using traditional techniques and although it is made out of dried beef jerky covered in a coat of wax, it certainly does look very realistic (probably feels that way, too) with all the stubs of the major vessels and the hole supposedly made by the stake.

And if you feel you have to have it, there is still some time left, as the auction is on for another 3 days. The current bid is $256.72. Surely, a vampire heart is worth much more than that…

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Enrique Conde has found a great way of recycling old computer components and peripherals, by using them to create cool-looking choppers, cars and dragsters.

Electronic waste is one of the most important environmental issues of our time, and finding new ingenious ways of recycling electronics is crucial. Enrique Conde has found a brilliant way of transforming used computer components into inspiring artworks he refers to as Kike Art. He takes old hard-drives, motherboards, used mice, and even mobile phones and puts them together to make really cool-looking motorcycles, cars and even dragsters or airplanes.

Looking at his computer part vehicles, you really couldn’t tell they were made from nothing but electronic junk, but a closer look reveals hard disks used as wheels, old mice as fuel tanks, or mobile phones converted into original seats.

On his website, Enrique Conde says he loves the process of searching for the right computer components and putting together as toy vehicles, just as much as he hopes people love looking at them. All of his ingenious artworks are for sale, and he also does custom works, if you have any particular specifications.

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I don’t know about you, but for me it is enough seeing the vuvuzela and I can actually hear that horrific sound it makes.

Well, at least I’m not the only one who doesn’t get why this “instrument of torture”, with which even the loudest group of supporters can’t compete, was such a hit during the South African World Cup. And the sound is not only annoying but also bad for your health, as Dr. Katijah Khoza-Shangase, professor of speech pathology and audiology at the Univeristy of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, says, quoted by CBS News: “We are not saying, ‘ban the vuvuzelas.’ The vuvuzela is part of the festivities of the game, it is part of what makes the soccer in this country, but people need to be aware that they need to just wear ear protection.”

In an attempt to transform the vuvuzela into something decorative or useful,after the end of The World Cup, Matt Blitz and some of his co-workers at Leftfield, an advertising firm, put up a blog called Wozela on which people could post their ideas on transforming the leftover vuvuzelas.

Although they started of with a few of their own ideas and were hopping to get just 20 maybe 50 more, they had to make this into a competition as they received 150 submissions in just a few months. There was also a prize of 10,000 Rand, around $1500, for the best idea.

The ideas were ranged from practical to absurd, from vuvuzela light fixtures to vuvuzela educational table or Christmas trees, but the top prize was won by a simple one: vuvuzela earrings, idea belonging to Megan Bernstein from Cape Town. She considers this as a form of redemption “Out of one vuvuzela you can make 10 earrings so there’s quite a return of investment there.”

Matt Blitz affirmed: “We’re trying to change perceptions a little bit. In the way people might have reacted and the amount of positive comments we’ve got I think we have done quite a good thing in busting the negative image of it.”

And the end of the online contest doesn’t mean the end of the vuvuzela make-over ideas. New ones can still be submitted and the initiators of the “Wozela movement” plan to organize exhibitions featuring the submissions first in Cape Town and then Johannesburg.

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What is the connection between people, what they eat and their cravings? This is the question Ted Sabarese had in mind when imagining his food fashion photography collection called “Hunger Pains’“.

The clothes on each model are completely made out of food and not only that, but they are also an image of that person’s cravings. This collection represents the result of the imagination and hard work of designers Ami Goodheart of SOTU Productions, Daniel Feld and Wesley Nault of Project Runway alongside Ted Sabarese’s creative vision.

Each outfit was thoroughly put together, leading up to long hour of work, as the artichoke dress alone took around 6 hours to finish.

Taking all that into consideration I think it was well worth it, given the end results.

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John Polley, a 50 year-old former train driver from London managed to create a replica of Abbey Road underground train station in his own home, in Hertfordshire, at a scale of 4mm/30cm.

This large train set, so large that when assembled it took up most of the space in John Polly’s house,was built in approximately 2 years and is amazingly detailed. It’s not only complete with audio messages like “Mind the gap” or “This is Abbey Road”, but one can also spot The Beatles crossing the street (just as on their “Abbey Road” album cover) – he used them as they are considered the symbol of London. Head and tail lighting was mounted on every train and some also have video cameras to offer a driver’s eye perspective on the set.

John Polley used different types of materials to build up his  train set, like old key rings, which he used for some vehicles, or shop window display signs, used for the buildings. The trains were designed by Polley himself and he had them custom made in SriLanka.

“I started building it during the day in my garage because I worked night shifts. The hardest part was getting the correct details. It does need regular maintenance like clearing grease, dusting off the rails and cleaning the electrical contacts. I would like to extend it by another five to ten feet in the future,” John Polley said .

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A wooden miniature figure of Julian Assange, the controversial founder of Wikileaks has been placed right in the middle of the Nativity scene, by an Italian sculptor.

Christmas creches depicting various religious themes are very popular in the area around Naples, Italy and in later years, Neapolitan sculptors have made it a habit to include something contemporary in their wooden masterpieces. While most artists chose to use the city’s longtime garbage crisis as a theme, Genaro di Virgilio stayed true to his habit of featuring at least one of the year’s most important figures right in the middle of Jesus’ Nativity scene.

Placed between the three wisemen, next to Mary and Joseph, is non other than Wikileaks mastermind Julian Assange, portrayed in a black suit, holding a laptop and sporting a wide smile on his face. To Genaro di Virgilio, he is the man of the year and fully deserves the spot in his beautiful Christmas creche. The Julian Assange figurine is one-of-a-kind and priced at 130 euros.

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Some people tend to compare Japanese Love Dolls with regular western sex dolls, but in reality, they are on a whole other level. Believe it or not, people actually pay big money to sleep with a doll, at the bustling love doll brothels across Japan.

The first Japanese love dolls were created 30 years ago, so that people with disabilities could enjoy some female companionship, but they quickly became an alternative for healthy men simply to shy to enjoy sleeping with real women. A lot of Japanese men are obsessed with anime and manga girls, and these realistic love dolls gave them the chance to actually fulfill their fantasies of spending some time with their favorite characters. Some have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying dozens of high-end love dolls, made of silicon, and feel much more comfortable in their presence than they would in that of a real woman. They don’t nag, they never complain and they don’t cheat. Read More »

Fishing dead bodies is a well known practice in China since ancient times, when some fishermen dedicated their time to recovering bodies from the waters and then returning them to their families. Back then, this  “job” was appreciated and respected, and the fisherman himself wasn’t rewarded with money but an immense gratitude.

With the evolution of the country, both economical and demographic, fishing for dead bodies soon became a thriving business for most of the fishermen on Yellow River, with younger and younger boys taking up the task, every day.

The most “offering” place, as they themselves assert, is at about 18 miles down stream from Lanzhou, the provincial capital of Gansu, northwestern China, a place where  a hydroelectric dam and a bend in the river cause the bodies to surface. Read More »

Situated along side Route 322, near Meadville, PA, this project was thought off by artist Amara Geffen and Arts & Design Initiative Director, in 2002 and has been an ongoing work ever since. It is realized through the collaboration between he Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) and Allegheny College’s Center for Economic and Environmental Development (CEED).

This is a form of community based art project, an original way of celebrating Earth Day. 1200ft long by 9ft tall, this fence is supported by an already existing chain fence around PennDOT’s storage lot and it is entirely made out of recycled road signs, combined as to depict places and people – for example the French Creek watershed, Allegheny Mountains, forests, roads or even PennDOT workers – but also features solar and wind powered kinetic components, thus paying a tribute to the environment.

It’s not only beautiful and original, but it has also managed to bring together the people of the community, having become the pride and symbol of Meadville.

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A group of Slovenian environmentalists have created a scary waste monster, made of tens of thousands of plastic bags, to raise awareness to the world’s ever growing consumerism and waste problems.

To create their unique Plastic Bag Monster, the group of enthusiasts roamed throgh the streets of Ljubljana, collecting used plastic bags and plastic cups. In the end, they managed to come up with 40,000 plastic bags and 7,500 cups, collected from 12 kindergardens, 21 primary schools, 4 high schools, 3 colleges and 500 passers-by, from around Slovenia’s capital city.

As the waste monster keeps spreading its tentacles across Ljubljana, the message it sends becomes clearer – consumerism has gotten way out of control and that’s what spawned this abomination that has managed to adapt to our environment and is about to replace us at the top of the food chain. It is capable of reproducing at unimaginable speeds and feeds on people’s sloth and irresponsibility towards the environment. It knows no mercy, and unless we find it in ourselves to change, it will destroy us all…

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