Oddity Central |
- Sarajevo Roses – Painful War Memories Etched in Asphalt
- World’s Quietest Place Lets You Hear Your Internal Organs
- Can’t Get a Girl? Website Lets Guys Hire Fake Girlfriends for $5
- Chinese Millionaire Becomes Miner to Stop Gambling
| Sarajevo Roses – Painful War Memories Etched in Asphalt Posted: 05 Apr 2012 03:25 AM PDT
They sound like something beautiful, and they are quite nice to look at, but as soon as you learn the story of the Sarajevo Roses, you realize they are really the legacy of a truly tragic event, the Bosnian War of the 1990s. Between 1992 and 1996, Bosnian Serb Forces bombarded the city of Sarajevo in what is remembered as the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. As you can imagine this kind of event leaves serious scars both in the hearts of those affected and on the city’s infrastructure. A Sarajevo Rose is a concrete scar made by a mortar shell explosion that was later painted with red resin as a memorial to those who were killed during the Siege of Sarajevo. It seems unnatural to compare the mark of a mortar explosion to the beauty of a rose, but the unique fragmentation pattern of a mortar round hitting concrete does indeed have a floral look. Still, while roses are a symbol of love and beauty, Sarajevo Roses represent a collective memory of the physical scars of war. Although many Sarajevo Roses have disappeared as the asphalt was replaced in the 16 years since the conflict ended, there are still many of them left. And that’s not very surprising considering the number of shells that dropped during the 1,335 days the city was under siege. According to some estimates an average of 329 bombs hit Sarajevo every day, with a maximum of 3,777 recorded on July 22, 1993. There are Sarajevo Roses in front of churches, bakeries, on pedestrian streets serving as a reminder of the constant horror in which the people of Sarajevo lived for almost four years. Sarajevo Roses have become very popular tourist attractions, and that makes many of the victims of the Bosnian War want to erase all of them. They feel that being sold to tourists cheapens their original meaning as reminders of a tragic event that claimed so many innocent lives. Other believe they bring back unnecessary memories of something that happened a long time ago, while others would just like to have seamless streets. But the Sarajevo Roses still remain etched in asphalt as a testament of what the Bosnian city and its inhabitants had to endure.
Sarajevo Roses – Painful War Memories Etched in Asphalt was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| World’s Quietest Place Lets You Hear Your Internal Organs Posted: 05 Apr 2012 02:17 AM PDT
The mad and hectic pace of life, sometimes makes us all crave some peace and quiet. But then, as they say, too much of a good thing can actually be bad for you. That applies to silence, as it turns out people can't stand to be in the world's quietest place for too long. The longest a person has lasted in there is 45 minutes. The place I'm talking about is a room at Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis. The room, also known as the 'anechoic chamber', is 99.99% sound absorbent. The double-insulated walls are made of steel and foot-thick concrete. Along the walls are also 3.3-foot thick fiberglass acoustic wedges that contribute to the ultra-quietness. The room holds the current Guinness World Record for being the quietest place on Earth. While it does seem like a dream come true, especially for those who live with kids or have stressful jobs, it's actually not all that great. The room gets so silent that you can actually hear your internal organs at work. And after a while, the hallucinations begin. Photo: Eckel Industries The founder and president of Orfield Labs, Steven Orfield says that people are challenged to sit in the chamber with all the lights out. There was this one reporter who managed to stay in there for 45 minutes. Mr. Orfield himself can do it for 30 minutes, in spite of his mechanical heart valve that becomes very loud inside the room. "When it's quiet, ears will adapt," he says. "The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You'll hear your heart beating; sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly. In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound." Photo: Eckel Industries The experience is so disorienting that it could drive a person mad. In fact, it is imperative that people sit down. Standing up and walking around is simply impossible. Because we orient ourselves through the sounds we hear when we walk, there are no cues to go by inside the chamber. "You take away the perceptual cues that allow you to balance and maneuver. If you're in there for half an hour, you have to be in a chair," Mr. Orfield says.
As bizarre as it seems, the anechoic chamber has plenty of uses. Several manufacturers test their products for noise, and see how they could be made quieter. For instance, the room was used to make Harley Davidson motorbikes much quieter, while retaining their trademark sound. Nasa uses it to put their astronauts through various tests. They are made to float in there in a water-filled container, to see how long it takes before hallucinations begin and whether they could work through it. Because believe it or not, outer space is just one big anechoic chamber – the silence out there is just too loud. via Daily Mail World’s Quietest Place Lets You Hear Your Internal Organs was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Can’t Get a Girl? Website Lets Guys Hire Fake Girlfriends for $5 Posted: 05 Apr 2012 01:22 AM PDT
GirlfriendHire.com is a new website where you can hire a girl to do 'girlfriend-type' things for you at a cost of just $5. Now before you get your hopes up, there are no 'dirty' services available. The website targets tweens and teens, so typical girlfriend activities would include doing your homework, flirting on Facebook, sending naughty texts and making your friends jealous. According to the website, it is "the first place on the internet dedicated to connecting guys and girls, to help guys breakup with their girlfriends, prank their friends, get their ex-gfs back, create a fake breakup message and even hire a girl to do your homework." Hiring girls to do fake relationship stuff does sound kind of sad, but there's no dearth of boys willing to shell out the 5 bucks. Plus, girls get to make some quick money and no one's really hurt in the process. I checked out the website and there's a list of girls offering various services, called 'flings', ranging from, "I will text you anything for $5" to "I will give relationship advice for $5". The most popular of them all is, "I will be your Facebook friend for $5". Isn't that cool, to be able to make money out of your Facebook friends list? Boys can put up 'fling' requests too and these tend to be creative like, "Make a video summarizing Battlestar Gallactica in a skirt or bikini" and "Put 15 tootsie roll pops in your mouth singing the alphabet backward in a bikini". And there are the more desperate ones with "Send me a fake message on Facebook telling how much fun you had last night". The founder of GirlfriendHire is 22-year-old Cody Krecicki, a student of Edison State College, Florida. His aim, he says, is to "make a niche for girls that are in college to make money while they're busy going to class." So the site helps girls to "be their own bosses" and guys to "have something fun – a tool to use, if you want to call it that." He hopes that the Facebook services would become the most popular, because guys generally want to look cool around their friends. Krecicki is quick to point out that he doesn't want GirlfriendHire to be seen as an adult service, he want it to be "fun and safe." I wonder how long he can keep it that way, though. I can already spot some 'adult-type' services being offered by a few girls. I wonder if Krecicki was inspired to create his popular new website by China’s rent-a-girlfriend type services we wrote about a while ago. Judging buy the layout and the $5 price tag, Fiverr was definitely a huge inspiration. via Buzzfeed Can’t Get a Girl? Website Lets Guys Hire Fake Girlfriends for $5 was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Chinese Millionaire Becomes Miner to Stop Gambling Posted: 05 Apr 2012 01:08 AM PDT
Addictions are a life-long struggle for most people. There are very few who manage to successfully kick self-destructive habits for good. 39-year-old Chinese millionaire, Qijang Zhang Yongqiang, is one such person. He was able to get rid of his gambling addiction by taking up a unique hobby – mining. Zhang is the owner of a couple of supermarkets and a few other properties in China. As a rich person, he had taken to gambling and soon got addicted to it, losing up to 80,000 Yuan ($12,700) on some nights. On one such night, after losing a huge amount of money, he realized that he needed to do something to save himself from destruction. So in 2008, the millionaire decided to put gambling behind him, and took up a job as a miner. Initially, he did it just to keep away from the nasty habit, but soon he fell so much in love with the work that it became his full-time job. His wife and parents are quite supportive and help by operating the supermarkets while he is at work. Zhang is now a popular local figure, especially among the miners of Fengchun coal mines of Shihao town. His story has been featured in newspapers and people are deeply touched by his perseverance. On a typical workday, Zhang is up at 4am and has breakfast at a hawker stall with his colleagues. An hour later, he reports at work. To reach his workplace, he travels on a 7,500m rail system in a 12-man cart. The journey takes 40 minutes to complete, which is when he takes a quick nap. When he gets back to ground level again, it is 4pm. Initially, Zhang's coworkers did not know about his fortune, but when his story got out, he earned their respect. He is now considered one of the best workers on his team and a role model to his colleagues. Zhang is undoubtedly a proud and happy man today. "I have not gambled for three years and this is the best period of my life," he says. If this doesn’t convince you that money isn’t everything, check out the stories of other unique millionaires like Andrew Hyde or Karl Rabeder. via China News Chinese Millionaire Becomes Miner to Stop Gambling was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
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