Oddity Central |
- Student Makes Prom Dress from 5,000 Pop Tabs
- Skywalking – Russia’s Thrilling but Dangerous Photo Craze
- Head Injury Turns College Dropout into Math Genius with a Beautiful Mind
- Real-Life Robinson Crusoe Has Been Living on Exotic Island for 40 Years
| Student Makes Prom Dress from 5,000 Pop Tabs Posted: 01 May 2012 09:58 AM PDT
Two years ago, Regan Kerr, a junior at George Washington High School, in Aurora, Colorado, decided to turn her small pop tab collection into a daring project: to create her own prom dress out of thousands of pull tabs. According to 9news.com, Regan’s ingenious dress started out as a weird collection of pop tabs, which soon turned into a joke, then became a very serious two-year project that culminated on prom night, Saturday night. A couple of years ago, a friend suggested she start collecting pop tabs, and she soon got the idea to make a dress out of them, because she had always thought “a great prom dress should pop”. It was a really intriguing project, but she had never made a dress before, let alone one from thousands of pop tabs. Her friend, Sara Sanford, remembers thinking it was a cool idea, but she also believed “it would kind of peter out and wouldn’t actually happen.” She was wrong! Over the last two years, Regan, with the help of family and friends, has been gathering pop tabs from various fizzy drinks, until she finally got enough to make her metallic prom outfit. The process didn’t take a lot of skill, as she was just pulling a needle up and down, but it still took her around five months to finish. It might sound like a long time, but you have to consider this was the first dress she ever made, and she did have a few issues to solve. ”The zipper in the back became a problem because you have to sew around it and make sure you’re not interfering with the zipper,” Regan said.
On Saturday, Regan finally fulfilled her dream of going to prom in a unique dress, made of thousands of pop tabs (5,114, to be exact). And just in case you’re wondering, no, she didn’t drink that many sodas herself. A year ago, we featured another impressive pop tab prom dress, made by another resourceful American student called Maura Pozek. Student Makes Prom Dress from 5,000 Pop Tabs was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Skywalking – Russia’s Thrilling but Dangerous Photo Craze Posted: 01 May 2012 08:14 AM PDT
Skywalking is the latest photography craze among Russian teens. The idea is to be able to find a really high building, climb to the very top and stand at its very edge, imagining you're on the top of the world. Then, you take photographs from up there to post on the internet. The teens participating in this form of skywalking do so without any sort of safety equipment. Needless to say, they enjoy it very much. 19-year-old Marat Dupri is one such teenager who engages in skywalking. He risks his life quite casually, scaling sky-high buildings and capturing photographs of the world below. It was about 18 months ago that he purchased a camera and started to take pictures from his own roof. But soon, he was aiming for bigger and better ones. Accompanied by a friend, he scaled a 33-storey building to the very top going right to the very edge of the 120 m high structure. According to him, "It was such a thrill; we couldn't wait to do it again." And they didn't. One of the shots shows the group of teenagers scaling one of Russia's seven Soviet skyscrapers, using a ladder. In another one, his friend is perched at the side of a monument to Peter I, 215 m in the air. There are even photos from atop the Moscow tower, one of the highest buildings in Europe. Dupri and his friends say they've taken a lot of photos by sneaking past guards and getting access to structures illegally. He thinks the risks are definitely worth it to take such amazing pictures. "When I am on the roof I have a feeling that the whole world is at my feet. All my problems and troubles are left somewhere down. The height exilarates me. I am enjoying with my home town views. It gives me energy and fills with enthusiasm to make new and great shots," he says. Photo: Marat Dupri No matter how exhillarating Dupri thinks skywalking is, it sure is exteremely dangerous. In fact, pictures should come with a sign warning kids not to try this at home. People with poor balance and a fear of heights are cautioned against trying this activity. Although, I doubt anyone with acrophobia would want to try skywalking anytime soon. Dupri himself admits that even though he gets a huge adrenalin rush from taking the pictures, he suffers from headaches for several days after. Having said that, the photographs really are quite spectacular to look at. I hope they manage to stay safe. Photo: Marat Dupri Photo: Marat Dupri Photo: Marat Dupri Photo: Marat Dupri Photo: Marat Dupri Photo: Marat Dupri
For more breathtaking photos visit Marat’s Livejournal blog. via Gizmodo Skywalking – Russia’s Thrilling but Dangerous Photo Craze was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Head Injury Turns College Dropout into Math Genius with a Beautiful Mind Posted: 01 May 2012 07:16 AM PDT
Sometimes it takes a good, hard knock in the head to start seeing things right. In the case of Jason Padgett, he started to see more than just right. He began to see complex mathematical formulae everywhere he looked, after a head injury. For now, the 41-year-old works behind the counter of a futon store in Tacoma, Washington, but surely not for long. His genius is bound to lead him elsewhere in life. Interestingly, for his level of intelligence Jason has no college degree, let alone a PhD. He doesn't even have a background in math; just 10 years ago he was a very different person. Interested only in working out and partying, Jason had no idea his life was about to change forever as he walked out of a karaoke club in Tacoma. A group of muggers attacked and brutally assaulted him, kicking him several times in the head. "All I saw was a bright flash of light and the next thing I knew I was on my knees on the ground and I thought, 'I'm going to get killed,'" he says. But he didn't. Instead, he got the best gift he could ever hope for. Escaping with a concussion, doctors said he would soon be all right. But within a couple of days, Jason was able to notice something remarkable. As a person who could never draw, he suddenly began to create intricate diagrams not even knowing what they were. Everywhere he looked, he could see mathematical formulae represented in the various shapes. "I see bits and pieces of the Pythagorean theorem everywhere. Every single little curve, every single little spiral, every tree is part of that equation." The drawings he makes are known as fractals – "A shape that when you take apart into pieces, the pieces are the same or similar to the whole. So say I had 1,000 pictures of you that were little and I put all those little pictures of you in the right spot to make the exact same picture of you, but bigger," he explains. Photo copyright: Jason Padgett Jason is being described as "A Beautiful Mind" by the media, similar to the character John Nash played by Russell Crowe in the movie of the same name. Several researchers believe that he has stumbled upon an incredibly rare gift. He was even sent to Finland to go through a series of tests by Berit Brogaard, a neuroscientist and philosophy professor at the Center for Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri-St.Louis. The scan revealed that Jason's brain was damaged, which led to overcompensation in certain areas. Most people don't have access to these portions of the brain, but Jason does, explained Brogaard. As a result, he is now a savant – developed in a particular skill that can be mathematical, spatial, or autistic. Brogaard says the skill is developed to such an extreme degree that it makes the person super human. Photo copyright: Jason Padgett As for Jason, although he would like to have the ability to turn off the gift every once in a while, he doesn't wish for it to go away completely. His future goals include leaving the furniture store and take up the role of teacher. He says he would like to show others that math is as beautiful and natural as the world around us. Photo copyright: Jason Padgett Photo copyright: Jason Padgett Photo copyright: Jason Padgett
via ABC News Head Injury Turns College Dropout into Math Genius with a Beautiful Mind was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Real-Life Robinson Crusoe Has Been Living on Exotic Island for 40 Years Posted: 01 May 2012 06:44 AM PDT
Brendon Grimshaw is the world's real-life Robinson Crusoe, and Rene Lafortune, his man Friday. The only difference is that Grimshaw actually purchased the island instead of being stranded there. The Yorkshireman purchased Moyenne, a half-mile-wide island in the Seychelles for £8,000 ($13,000) in the early 1960s. As a successful newspaper editor in those times, he was restless and seeking adventure, itching to start a new life of his own. Nine years after the purchase, he moved in to the island full-time, making it his permanent home. The 86-year-old is now credited for bringing out and restoring the beauty of the exotic island, encouraging birds and tortoises to make it their home too. He did have a lot of time to do it, as he has been living there for 40 years. When Grimshaw first arrived at Moyenne, it had been abandoned for 50 years. The scrub was so dense and overgrown that even coconuts couldn't fall to the ground. It was then that he was joined by an assistant, a Seychellois named Rene Lafortune, and together they worked tirelessly towards restoring the island to its former glory. The duo ended up planting over 16,000 trees by hand. 700 of these are mahogany trees that are about 60-70 ft tall. The other trees include palms, mango and paw-paw. They also built 4.8 km of nature paths. The giant tortoise, which was almost driven to extinction due to excessive hunting, has found a new home at Moyenne, thanks to the work of Grimshaw. He is now the caretaker of 120 giant tortoises. He also managed to attract about 2,000 birds to the island, starting with a meager 10 that he purchased from a neighboring island. At first they promptly flew back, but then they started to stay longer. Lafortune died in 2007, and since then Grimshaw has been the only permanent resident of Moyenne. He lives there in a small one-story wooden house that clings to the hillside and is furnished with African souvenirs. Outside his house is a sign that says, "Please respect the tortoises. They are probably older than you." Grimshaw's story was beautifully captured in his 1996 autobiography, "A Grain of Sand". A documentary film with the same name was made, depicting life on the remote island. "The island gradually taught you what to do. It knows itself what it wants to do," he says. Joel Morgan, Seychelles' Minister of Home Affairs has hailed Grimshaw as a "modern Robinson Crusoe." His work today is so well recognized that Moyenne Island was elevated to the status of a National Park in 2008. However, he insists that he wasn't really doing any of this to convert the island into a National Park. "No, no, no! We were doing it to make it habitable for me," he insists. Living all alone on an island, with only tortoises and dogs for company, one might wonder if he doesn't get lonely. His answer is simple, he says he was lonely only "once in my life – when I was living in a bedsit in London. I was miserable then, but never here.” Photo: A Grain of Sand the Film Doesn’t this story make you want to just pack your bags and move to a deserted island living the craziness of the big city behind you forever? I wonder if I can get a broadband Internet connection on one of these islands… Anyway, this is definitely one of the most impressive we’ve covered in a while.
via National Post Real-Life Robinson Crusoe Has Been Living on Exotic Island for 40 Years was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
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