Mom Uses Year-Old Cheeseburger to Keep Kids Away from McDonalds

We’ve read several myths on the internet about the very questionable quality of food served at fast-food restaurants. A Canadian mom has actually gone on to prove some of these myths, in an attempt to discourage her teenage children from consuming ‘junk’ food.

Melanie Hesketh, from Windsor, Ontario, has a McDonald’s cheeseburger sitting on her kitchen counter. It looks as good as new, except that it’s been there for a year. That’s right, a whole year. Nope, no mould, no fungi, no maggots. Apparently, even bacteria won’t eat the food that millions of people around the world queue up for, each day. According to Melanie, who is a professional nutritionist at Windsor’s Lifetime Wellness Center, the meat patty has just shrunk a little but otherwise looks edible. It has a faint but lingering greasy, leathery odor, and still smells slightly like a burger. Her trick has worked pretty well. The sight of the burger in their kitchen every single day has helped her kids cut back on their intake of fast food. In fact, her oldest son has visited McDonald’s maybe only twice in the past year, in spite of growing peer pressure.

Read More »

Man Spends a Year Living as a Turkey to Prove They’re Not Dumb

We’ve all heard the popular myth about turkeys being so stupid that they will look up at the rain and drown. Well, naturalist Joe Hutto’s year-long experiment living as a turkey proved it wrong, along with any other myths that suggest the stupidity of the bird. On the contrary, he says that turkeys are born with an “innate understanding of ecology” and have a complex vocabulary to communicate with each other.

Hutto, an ethologist who lives in Florida, has always been interested in the phenomenon of imprinting – in which young birds and animals identify the first moving object they encounter as a mother or a caregiver. So when a local farmer left a bowl-full of wild turkey eggs at Hutto’s doorstep, it was an opportunity he couldn’t refuse. He began his scientific experiment by choosing to imprint himself as the mother turkey. Hutto placed the eggs in an incubator and waited for them to hatch. When the cracks began to appear, he had to act fast, since imprinting occurs only in the first few moments after hatching. He placed his face close to the eggs and when the first poult came out, there was immediate eye-contact and the establishment of a bond. “Something very unambiguous happened in that moment,” he said

Read More »

93-Year-Old Proves You’re Never Too Old for Yoga

For people like Tao Porchon-Lynch, old is the new young. There’s literally nothing about her that suggests she is 93. The woman has been practicing yoga for over 70 years now, and teaching it to students in India, France, and the US for more than 45 years. What’s more, she participates in ballroom dancing in her free time, an activity she took up at the age of 87.

If the mere mention of her physical prowess is awe-inspiring, wait till you hear the story of how she took to dancing. When Tao Porchon-Lynch had just turned 87, she fell down outside a grocery store and broke her hip. She had to undergo a major hip-replacement surgery, something that would leave most people confined to bed for the rest of their life. But Tao would have none of that. Completely disregarding her doctor’s advice to slow things down, she walked into a ballroom-dancing studio merely one month after the surgery, starting lessons that very night. Today, at the age of 93, Tao participates in ballroom-dancing competitions in New Jersey, New York and Puerto Rico along with her 23-year-old dance partner. All this, while teaching 12 Yoga classes a week.

Read More »

Chinese “Wolf Dad” Reveals Brutal Parenting Techniques

This isn’t the first time the Chinese have been in the news for their strict parenting techniques. When Chinese-American Amy Chua came out with her book, “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, it was met with a lot of criticism.

Now it’s Xiao Baiyou’s turn. Also Chinese, the 47-year-old businessman recently published a book called “That’s Why They Go to Peking University”, about his fathering techniques. He believes that his practice of hitting his children with a rattan cane helped them get into top colleges. He has been nicknamed “Wolf Dad” after his brutal methods, and he is actually proud of the title. “Wolves look ferocious and brutal, yet they have great wisdom and are exceptionally tender to their cubs,” he said. His brutality, according to him, is only out of love.

Read More »

16-Year-Old Creates Dress from 4,000 Tea Bags

The latest in bizarre dresses has arrived. After paper napkins, newspapers, and even condoms, we now have a dress made of tea bags. This one was made by a 16-year-old from Kuala Lumpur, and she used a whopping 4,000 tea bags to create her masterpiece. She won the top prize at the Green Awards 2011 held in Kuala Lumpur in October.

Suraya Mohd Zairin is a science student from SMK Bukit Jelutong, Shah Alam. She says that she chose to make a dress out of tea bags because they were easily available to her. With the help of her friends, she was able to collect the 4,000 bags and then it took her three months to complete the dress. The theme followed by the budding designer was ‘flowers’, because their shapes have always mesmerized her.

Read More »

Alexa Fisher – An 8-Year-Old Poker Prodigy

Alexa Fisher, from Texas, looks and talks like any other 8-year old girl. However, she has a skill that is most unusual for girls her age. She can play poker fabulously well. In fact, Alexa is so good at poker that she can take on card sharks seven times her age. She was introduced to playing cards at the age of three by her father Justin, a 35 year old poker enthusiast. He says he taught her the game to help improve her Math skills.

Justin began by having ESPN and other poker game shows on TV playing in the background all the time. He also used playing cards as a way to teach her to count and learn math skills before she began school. And his efforts payed off. Alexa slowly began to understand which cards were higher and recognized poker terminology, like a flush, a pair and three of a kind. He then went on to get her poker chips. By the age of four, when other kids are barely able to hold an entire pack of cards in their tiny hands, Alexa was could shuffle, deal and also knew the basic strategies of bluffing. When she reached five, she could play No-Limit Texas Holde’m like a pro. She slowly began to learn more games like Badugi, Double Flop Hold’em, and many other WSOP (World Series of Poker Tournaments) games.

Read More »

Kieron Williamson – The 9-Year Old Monet

When 9-Year Old Kieron Williamson’s paintings were put up for sale in Norfolk, England, they were sold out in just 10 minutes. While artists more than twice his age struggle to find buyers for even a single piece of art, Kieron’s story is one that could spark envy in the most established of painters.

It’s always interesting to learn about the early years of artists, especially ones as young as Kieron. According to his parents, he never showed much interest in art or drawing until he was five. A typical energetic child, he was more interested in mud and water, riding his bike and playing with bugs. His inclination towards art was sparked off on a family visit to Cornwall, in 2008. It was here that he had asked for some sheets of paper and began to draw, inspired by the boats in a nearby port. After a few art classes and some lessons from artist Carol Ann Pennington, a family friend, Kieron began to produce masterpieces that people would soon be queuing up to purchase. His first sale was in the summer of 2009, when he sold 19 pictures for £14,000 ($22,000). The latest sale of his paintings have earned him £ 100,000 ($157,000).

Read More »

In Thailand, a “Like” on Facebook Can Get You 15 Years in Jail

In older times, it was “off with your head” if you spoke ill of the King. Now, you go to jail for posting your feelings on Facebook about the Thai monarchy, which many of the Thai folk actively do. In fact, over 10,000 pages of material was found on the social networking, containing images or text that is offensive to the royal family.

The Information Minister of Thailand, Anudith Nakornthap, warned the people of Thailand that if users on Facebook so much as even like or share any kind of information insulting the monarchy, the consequences would be severe. Such a person could be charged with violation of the lese majeste laws of the country, and could serve up to 15 years in prison. He also advised people to ‘unlike’ any pages and remove any comments made on similar lines. In a world where democracy and freedom of speech are taken for granted in most countries, this news might come across as quite surprising. I mean, we’ve lost count of the number of jokes made online at the expense of Bush, Palin and the likes. Thailand however, has always been strict in enforcing laws that protect the dignity of the sovereign.

Read More »

Who Knew “My Little Pony” Appeals to Dudes

If I told you about a group of adult males, who are fans of a children’s cartoon series about ponies, called the “Bronies“, you’d probably tell me to stop kidding. But I’m not. It’s really true.

Ever since “My Little Pony”, an animated TV show from the 80s, was remade in October 2010, the number of geeky, tech savvy guys interested in the show have been on a steady rise. Now titled “My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic,” the show in its new avatar is actually targeted towards preadolescent girls and features pretty, candy-colored ponies. The first sign was the appearance of videos from the show on the website 4chan, which a lot of tech savvy guys tend to visit frequently. Soon, the number of hits on these videos was on the rise, and a community of Pony-lovers was formed. They call themselves the “Bronies” which combines “Bro” and “Ponies”. Bronies hold regular meetings and get-togethers in various cities, supporting each other, watching the cartoons, displaying and exchanging Pony collectibles and merchandise.

Read More »

Man Sells Restaurant for $100 in Exchange for a Year’s Free Meals

It is surprising to find business owners in this day and age who aren’t all about the money. Michael Diedrick from Milwaukee is one such person. The fact that he sold his restaurant located in a prime neighborhood for a paltry sum of $100, is something strange and unfathomable. Although, once you get to know more about the deal, it might not seem so bizarre after all.

Forty year old Diedrick opened the National Café and Takeaway around three years ago with a goal. His aim was to introduce the city of Milwaukee to the sustainable concept of local and organic food, centered around minimal waste. The place was opened as an experiment, with the intention of being sold eventually, to a person capable of managing such a restaurant. Diedrick, in fact, runs his own website design studio in the same premises, three floors below.

Read More »

12-Year-Old Builds Real-Life Angry Birds Game Using Pumpkins

Sam Beards, a 12-year-old Angry Birds fan from England, has taken his obsession with the popular video game to a whole new level, by creating a real-life version using pumpkins and a giant cannon.

Just like millions of people around the world, Sam spent hours every day playing Angry Birds on the tiny screen of his iPod, but when he got the idea of making a real-life adaptation of his favorite game using a pumpkin cannon his father built last Halloween, he jumped at the opportunity. In Angry Birds, players have to shoot various types of birds at their mortal enemy, the pigs, using a slingshot, but in Sam Beads version, people use the giant cannon to shoot pumpkins painted as the popular birds at other pumpkins painted as pigs.

Read More »

Babushka Artwork Takes Quilling to a Whole New Level

I’ve always found quilling a fascinating art form, but after seeing Yulia Brodskaya’s mind-blowing “Babushka” I feel there’s nothing a talented artist can’t do with just a few colorful strips of paper.

I discovered quilling a year ago, and since then I have posted a number of impressive works of art created using only strips of colorful paper, but I haven’t seen anything as impressive as Babushka since Susan Myers’ recreation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. It takes a lot of skill to shape simple pieces of paper into a detailed artwork, but Yulia Brodskaya has definitely taken quilling to new heights, using light and shadow to create an awe-inspiring masterpiece that carries a powerful emotional message. The Russian-born artist says Babushka is “the first piece in the series of works which I consider a declaration of love to the material and the technique. It is also an attempt to raise a profile of this paper craft, which has been previously regarded with some disdain, and to bring this type of artwork on a new level in terms of its ability to convey meaning and emotions.” She’s definitely up to a great start and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Read More »

Canadian Globetrotter Completes 11-Year Walk around the World

After walking an amazing 75,000 kilometers across the globe, 56-year-old Jean Beliveau completed his 11-year global trek and returned to his native Montreal, where he was greeted by family and friends.

With a crowd cheering him on as he crossed a bridge into Montreal last Sunday, Jean Beliveau hurried to meet the mother he hadn’t seen for 11 years, his loving and supporting girlfriend and two children. It was an emotional reunion that Beliveau could only describe as “amazing”. More than 100 locals showed their support for his effort by walking the last kilometers with him, through the streets of Montreal. The former neon-sign business owner has recently completed the world’s longest walk around the world, a journey that took him through 64 different countries and offered unforgetable experiences.

Read More »

Man Has Lived on a Roadkill Diet for the Last 30 Years

Because he doesn’t like the way farm animals are being treated, Jonathan McGowan, an English taxidermist from Bournemouth, Dorset has been eating roadkill instead of supermarket meat for the last 30 years.

44-year-old Jonathan McGowan first tasted roadkill at the age of 14, when he cooked a dead adder. It didn’t taste very good, but it did make him curious about how other dead animals might taste like. ‘From a young age I was always interested in natural history and being brought up amongst the farming, hunting and shooting communities of the Dorset countryside meant I was right in the middle of everything. Everywhere I looked there were dead animals; fish that had been caught, pheasants that had been shot and animals that had been run over in the road so naturally I became drawn to nature and how it worked.” He remembers he used to cut up dead animals to see their insides and all he could see was fresh organic meat better than what he saw in any meat shops. That’s why he didn’t see any problem with cooking and eating it. His parents knew he was bringing animals home to stuff, but he didn’t tell them he sometimes ate them too, because he knew they wouldn’t approve.

Read More »

Would You Believe These Were DRAWN by an 18-Year-Old?

Rajacenna is an 18-year-old self-taught artist from the Netherlands who draws the most realistic portraits I have ever seen, using only pencils.

I’m a big fan of realistic drawings, and I’ve previously featured amazing works like the pencil drawings of Paul Lung, the ballpoint pen portraits of Juan Francisco Casas, or Cristina Penescu’s detailed scratchboard masterpieces, but at only 18 years of age Rajacenna is in a league of her own. Born in 1993, she started modelling for various Dutch companies when she was only 4, and at 5 years old she made her first appearance on television. She starred in films, soap-operas and tv-series and at 12 she became the host of Kinderjournaal, the first Dutch web-tv for kids.

Read More »