Oddity Central

Oddity Central


Urban Treasure Hunter Makes a Living Retrieving Stuff People Drop on the Street

Posted: 30 Apr 2013 03:48 AM PDT

For the last eight years Puerto Rico native Eliel Santos has been making a living by reeling in jewelry, cash and electronics from beneath New York City’s sidewalk grates. It may not seem like a very profitable trade, but on great days he can earn over $1,000.

38-year-old Eliel Santos lives in the Bronx, but he spends every day of the week visiting various areas of the Big Apple and using dental floss and mouse trap glue to retrieve whatever valuable items people drop through the sidewalk grates. The urban treasure hunter spends most of his time looking down through the small metal holes hoping to spot something worth pawning. Whenever something grabs his attention, Eliel positions himself over the target and pulls out his trusty tools – a line of dental floss attached to different size weights covered in mouse glue. With expert precision, he lowers his sticky lure through the grating into the darkness below and quickly catches his “prey”. Sometimes it’s just quarters or useless shiny objects, but a lot of times Santos walks away with precious jewelry, cash and even trendy gadgets like iPhones or iPods. "If you drop it, I'm going to pick it up — so be careful," he warns the pedestrians of New York.

Eliel-Santos

North Korea’s Amazingly Choreographed Human Mosaics

Posted: 30 Apr 2013 02:27 AM PDT

Take tens of thousands of children, place them in the largest stadium in the world, arm them with giant colored flip-books containing hundreds of colored panels, train them to move in perfect unison and you get the awe-inspiring human mosaics of the Arirang Mass Games, in North Korea.

The Arirang Festival Mass Games held in Pyongyang, are the largest and most impressive exercise of state propaganda in the world. The event runs from August to October, and offers an incredible spectacle of perfectly choreographed gymnastics, dancing, singing, and of course, praising the achievements of the communist nations’s eternal leader Kim Il-Sung.  The games aren’t held every year. They are suspended in case of national emergencies, like when flooding ravages the country and the Government decides the hundreds of thousands of performers are better put to use repairing the destroyed infrastructure. But when the trained human pixels get the chance to perform on Rungrado May Day Stadium, in front of a crowd of 150,000 people, they make the performers of the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony look like a group of children staging a simple school play. Every 20 seconds for a period of two hours they switch the panels of their flip-books to create stunning mosaics honoring Korea’s cultural heritage and its political regime.

Arirang-Mass-Games

Looking for Time Twins – Man Travels the World to Meet People Born on the Same Day as Him

Posted: 30 Apr 2013 01:04 AM PDT

Curious to know what other people who have spent the same number of days on Earth as him have achieved, English writer Richard Davis is traveling around the world looking for individuals who share his birthday.

Were you born on December 1st, 1974? Than you just might be on Richard Davis’ to-visit list. The oddball English writer has embarked on a journey to meet 40 of his “time twins” in different locations around the world and put his experiences down on paper for his new book. “I was not alone in being born on that day.  Families across the world celebrated their new additions on that day 38 years ago,” Richard writes on his website. “But what kinds of lives have these people lived?  With the same length of time on this planet as me, what have they achieved?  What have been their greatest achievements; and what are their burning ambitions?  Do they see themselves as young, middle aged or old?  Have they achieved their defining moment, or is that still to come? Are they married with children, or single, backpacking round the world?  Are they successful – and how is this judged?  How have their lives been affected by the accident of geography that led them to be born where they were?  Is our age a defining similarity, or does the concept of age change from country to country?” These are the questions he’s trying to find answers to through his unique Time Twins project.

Time-Twins2

Dornob | Design Ideas Daily

Dornob | Design Ideas Daily


Mobile Home De Markies: Timeless Modular Travel Camper

Posted: 30 Apr 2013 10:00 AM PDT

It says something about a design (particularly for a fast-paced mobile house) when someone can look at it three decades later and still marvel at the simple, efficient and effective use of materials and space.

Created by Dutch designer  Eduard Bohtlingk, the name of this classic award-winner means ‘The Awning’ – a fitting description of the fold-down mechanism at the heart of its ingenuity.

On the road, it folds up to look like any other camper, but once on site, it deploys to have a footprint three times the size of the main volume, simply by having the walls turn into floors on either side.

Add a few pieces of furniture to these auxiliary spaces and they become functional overflow for living and sleeping, while the core functions remain housed in the central area.

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Nomadic Furniture: All-in-One Trunk for Guest Habitation

Posted: 29 Apr 2013 04:00 PM PDT

Picture yourself on the road – traveling between cities to visit friends, or staying with a colleague to attend a conference. They have an inflatable bed, or a futon, but not a guest room. You have your suitcase, clothes and accessories. What is missing?

Perhaps it is the  Arara NĂ´made by AndrĂ© Pedrini & Ricardo Freisleben - a trunk that turns into a series of shelves, slots, drawers and hangers to make your stay a little more comfortable and organized.

It requires no attachment despite its height, as it can be leaned against any available wall, giving it more vertical space to grow without requiring much floor space.

Best of all, the project is intuitively designed for easy assembly and does not require screws, glue or tools to put together, meaning all you need to make it is contained in the traveling case itself, which becomes the integrated base at the end.

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Google Now comes to iOS in the latest Google app update

Posted: 30 Apr 2013 08:00 AM PDT

Microsoft Re-imagines Its Major Brands: Skype, Bing, Yammer

Posted: 30 Apr 2013 07:16 AM PDT

Shapeshifting MorePhone Curls Up to Draw Attention

Posted: 30 Apr 2013 06:00 AM PDT

DARPA Smartphone App Locates the Direction of Gunfire

Posted: 30 Apr 2013 05:09 AM PDT

13 Essential Harry Potter Collectibles

Posted: 30 Apr 2013 04:00 AM PDT

MB&F’s MusicMachine Mixes Sci-Fi Themes with Progressive Rock

Posted: 29 Apr 2013 09:00 AM PDT

Samsung hints at Rugged Galaxy S4 and Tablet for Summer 2013

Posted: 29 Apr 2013 08:00 AM PDT

Android OS Makes the Jump from Tablets to Affordable Notebooks

Posted: 29 Apr 2013 07:00 AM PDT

Walyou Interview With Lara From “Lara Plays Videogame Music”

Posted: 29 Apr 2013 05:00 AM PDT

15 Brilliant Superman Tattoos

Posted: 29 Apr 2013 04:00 AM PDT

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