3d illusion arts: Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Brain Tumor Survivor Has Painted Every Sunrise for the Last Seven Years
Calcio Fiorentino – The Ultimate Manly Sport
English Astronomer Makes World’s First Meteorite-Aged Wine

Brain Tumor Survivor Has Painted Every Sunrise for the Last Seven Years

Posted: 06 Feb 2012 12:34 AM PST

People find unique ways of storing and recording memories of the most important days of their lives. Some save cinema ticket stubs from their first date, some like to keep home videos and photo albums of family events. The methods of storing memories – both happy and sad – are endless. But the story of Cody Cox stands out from the rest. He chose to remember the last day his nephew Justin Tyler Berry was alive in a very different manner – by purchasing a painting depicting the last sunrise his nephew had ever seen. This was possible because brain tumor survivor Debbie Wagner has been painting the sunrise every single morning since December, 2005.

56-year-old Wagner is from Bennington, Kansas. In her healthier days, the mother of three loved to read long novels, cook up complicated recipes, take care of her family's finances and always got nine straight hours of sleep every night. When she was diagnosed with not one, but two tumors in her brain in 2002, her life changed forever. Although the surgery to remove the tumors was successful, she lost the ability to do many of the things she loved. Wagner could no longer multitask, follow recipes or novel plots, balance a checkbook, or even sleep soundly through the night.

Photo © Debbie Wagner

However, Wagner was not one to give up on life. Just five or six months after surgery, the woman who never dreamed she would be an artist one day, had started to paint. Since the surgeries left her with an increased visual awareness, this was a natural choice at the time. Three years into the activity, the idea of painting the sunrise occurred to her. One morning in December 2005, Wagner says she was struck by the colors of an overwhelmingly beautiful sunrise and was compelled to paint it. "It was so exhilarating that I did it again the next day, and the next day." Now she says that the devotion is so effortless because she gets such a rush from it. So far she has completed 2,200 5-by-14 inch paintings and it takes her 30 to 45 minutes to do each one. With the exception of mornings when the sky is completely overcast, Wagner hasn't missed a single day.

Through word of mouth, Debbie’s sunrise paintings began to grow in popularity and she was soon invited to exhibit a show at a gallery in Salina, Kansas. Wagner says of her work, "I think people are drawn to the honesty of what I'm doing, and the pureness of it. It's not calculated and it's not planned, and it was never meant to be commercial. It's my journal and it's very personal." People have started to request Wagner's paintings to celebrate all kinds of milestones: weddings, the birth of a baby, the day of overpowering an addiction or the safe return of a loved one from Iraq. Debbie Wagner sure does seem to have found a beautiful purpose to her life – to be able to live and appreciate each day for the beauty that it holds.

via MSNBC

Brain Tumor Survivor Has Painted Every Sunrise for the Last Seven Years was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Calcio Fiorentino – The Ultimate Manly Sport

Posted: 06 Feb 2012 12:19 AM PST

Imagine a sport that's a mix between soccer and rugby, with absolutely no rules whatsoever. Man, that's got to be brutal! And that's exactly what Calcio Fiorentino is. It's the ultimate sport to prove your strength, power and courage.

The game originated in Italy during the 16^th century in Piazza Santa Maria Novella, Florence. The words Calcio Fiorentino can be loosely translated as the Florence Kick. True to its name, the game was devised by four of Florence's most prominent noble families. Their intention was simple, to be able to show off their physical prowess to their enemies. In those days, spectators of the game were limited only to the ruling class.

Photo © Lorenzo Noccioli

Today, Calcio Fiorentino is still played at an annual event at the Piazza St Croce, in the heart of Florence city. Unlike the earlier times, people from all walks of life are invited to watch, and needless to say, the game is hugely popular. I mean, who wouldn't want to watch grown men wrestle it out over a ball, in a sport where the only rule is there are no rules.

Photo © Lorenzo Noccioli

Even so, there is a certain structure to Calcio Fiorentino. Two teams are formed with 27 players each. The sport is played on a field with goals at either end. The field is actually a sand pit, so the goals are usually as wide as the field. The primary objective is to score more points than the opposite team, by netting the ball into the goal. Players are free to kick, carry, or throw the ball in any direction they please, as long as they're scoring the points. Head butting, punching, elbowing, and even choking are considered fair and normal ways to play. The only practice that constitutes a foul is kicking someone in the head.

Photo © Lorenzo Noccioli

The game has no breaks, time outs or substitutions. Once on the field, all the players need to battle it out to the finish which is 50 long and excruciating minutes later. It's not at all surprising that no less than eight referees are required to regulate the game and the players. Imagine 54 men in a sand pit, free to do what they please just to get a ball into a net. Now, that's going to be very, very far from pretty. Calcio Fiorentino has become popular not just locally, but is also a major attraction for tourists. However, taking into account the number of injuries the players suffer, only three matches are played every year, between four teams – the Santa Croce in blue, the Santa Maria Novella in red, the Santo Spirito in white and the San Giovanni in green.

We've talked about some pretty gruesome sports here on OC (Botaoshi, Savika, Kirkpinar, etc.), but Calcio Fiorentino definitely the title of the ultimate manly sport.

Calcio Fiorentino – The Ultimate Manly Sport was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

English Astronomer Makes World’s First Meteorite-Aged Wine

Posted: 06 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

What do you get when you mix an interest in wine-making and a passion for astronomy? Why meteorite wine, of course. Meteorito, as it’s called, is a unique blend of wine that has been aged with a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite.

Meteorito, a Cabernet Sauvignon, is the creation of Norwich-born Ian Hutcheon. Ian has long been involved with wines as well as astronomy, and always wanted to find a way to combine his two interests. The Englishman now works out of Chile, where he owns a vineyard in the Cachapoal Valley. Out of his passion for outer space, he also opened an observatory in 2007, called the Centro Astrononomica Tagua Tagua. This is currently the only place in the world you can purchase Meteorito wine, although Hutcheon is interested in exporting it to other countries.

When I first heard of Meteorito, I was quite curious as to how it could have been created. The process, it turns out, wasn't so complicated. It all started with the picking of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from Hutcheon's Tremonte Vineyard in April 2010. The initial process of wine-making was pretty basic; the fruit was fermented for 25 days to convert grape sugar to alcohol. The next step, and the most important one in the creation of Meteorito was that of malolactic fermentation, which lasted a whole year. During this step, the wine was stored in a wooden barrel along with the meteorite for 12 long months. After the year was up this meteor soaked wine was then blended with another batch of Cabernet Sauvignon.

About 10,000 liters of this special wine have been made so far. The meteorite in question is 3 inches long and belongs not to Hutcheon, but an American collector who did not object to its special use. While the specimen itself is 4.5 billion years old, it is believed to have crashed 6,000 years ago in the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile.

So what we basically have here is a wine that has been stewing in an extremely old piece of rock from outer space. Does it do anything good for the taste, you want to know? According to Hutcheon, it does. He believes that the wine has achieved a 'livelier taste' with the addition of the rock. He says that his project was an effort to "give everybody the opportunity to touch something from space; the very history of the solar system, and feel it via a grand wine." "When you drink this wine," he adds, "you are drinking elements from the birth of the solar system." I do wonder if it has any side effects apart from making you tipsy.

via Discovery

English Astronomer Makes World’s First Meteorite-Aged Wine was originally posted at OddityCentral.com