3d illusion arts: Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Man Gave Up Using Money 12 Years Ago, Lives in Caves of Utah Desert
Inventors Create Spray That Gets You Drunk Instantly without the Nasty Side-Effects
Artist Creates Wonderful Artworks with Thousands of Jelly Beans

Man Gave Up Using Money 12 Years Ago, Lives in Caves of Utah Desert

Posted: 04 May 2012 03:33 AM PDT

Daniel Suelo, 51, is a very special person. in 2001, standing on the edge of a highway, he left his life savings, $30, in a phone booth and walked into the desert to start a new life, one that wasn’t based on the rules of modern capitalism. He gave up using money and began living in caves, foraging for wild berries and scavenging for roadkill raccoons and squirrels.

Suelo became an inspiration for thousands of Americans affected by the economic crash and activists like members of the Occupy movement, after his friend, Mark Sundeen, started documenting his way of life. A friend of Daniel, Sundeen admits he though he had gone crazy or suffered a mental break down the first time he heard he had given up money and moved to the desert, in Moab, Utah. They had been out of touch for a few years, but after the economic crash of 2008, he started thinking about his old friend’s ideas. Suelo had once said money was just an illusion, it wasn’t real, and when the money everyone thought they had just started disappearing, Sundeen began to realize Daniel had a point. Because if your house was worth $500,000 today, and just $300,000 the next, what happened to that $200,000, what was that money in the first place? That was when the author got in touch with Suelo and started studying his life.

Daniel Suelo set up house in caves in the Utah desert and instead of accepting welfare, food stamps or any kind of Government handout, he started foraging and scavanging for food, picking expired groceries from dumpsters and accepting meals from friends and strangers. ’My philosophy is to use only what is freely given or discarded and what is already present and already running” Daniel says. ’Our whole society is designed so that you have to have money,’ he adds, ’you have to be a part of the capitalist system. It’s illegal to live outside of it.’ But he has proven you can live abundantly without money, because he has been doing it for the last 12 years.

Sundeen says his book, The Man Who Quit Money, is about someone who chose to live like a myth, like a hero from the Bible. He found a way to live according to his heart, to his beliefs and managed to make it work for a very long time. Also, this is a man who has been trying to get his message across through his blog, instead of sitting on a hill in the desert, becoming enlightened. “We can cultivate freely giving and freely receiving, no matter what station of life we’re in, that’s our true nature and it exists in everybody”, Suelo says. Daniel not only gave up using money 12 years ago, he also threw away his driver’s license, his passport and changed his legal name from Shellabarger to Suelo, which is Spanish for Earth.

Luckily, Daniel Suelo isn’t alone in his effort to prove man can live quite comfortably without using money. In the past, we’ve featured the story of Heidemarie Schwermer, a 70-year-old woman who has been living without money for the last 16 years. She has only relied on the classic barter system to survive, and has also become a huge inspiration for a lot of people. Another interesting case is that of former millionaire Karl Rabeder, who gave up all his fortune and now lives on just €1,000 a month, which isn’t very much in his native country of Austria. It’s nice to see people who actually prove they value the really important things in life, instead of just talking about them.

via Boing Boing

Man Gave Up Using Money 12 Years Ago, Lives in Caves of Utah Desert was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Inventors Create Spray That Gets You Drunk Instantly without the Nasty Side-Effects

Posted: 04 May 2012 02:05 AM PDT

Scientist David Edwards teamed up with French Designer Philippe Starck to create the WA|HH mouth spray that gets you drunk instantly, but only for a few seconds. And the best part is you won’t have to deal with and splitting headaches when you wake up the following day.

Ever wish you could feel what it’s like to be drunk without actually drinking anything? I have a few girl friends who have never drunk more than a few sips of beer, but have always been curious to know what it’s like to feel intoxicated. Thanks to the innovative WA|HH Quantum Sensations spray presented during a Paris exhibition, now everyone can experience being drunk for just a few seconds, and without any of the nasty side-effects. According to its creators, the spray produces an immediate shock, like a sensorial alarm, but only lasts a few seconds. Each puff equals 0.075 milliliters of alcohol, so it would take about 1,000 to equal a real drink. ’We asked ourselves whether we might provide the same agreeable sensation as comes with a sip of alcohol without running the risk of drunkenness,’ Starck said about the spray.

Photo: AFP

A canister of WA|HH Quantum Sensation contains a total of 2 milligrams of alcohol, yet that is enough to make you feel tipsy a bunch of times without worrying about the consequences. This thing is apparently so harmless you could actually pass a breathalyzer test as soon as the alcohol in your mouth wears off. WA|HH might sound like a pretty silly, useless invention, but it might help alcoholics get their fix without actually pouring gallons of alcohol down their throats. the only drawback to this Quantum Sensation is its price. At $26 for a small spray, I’m pretty sure most people would just opt to get wasted the old fashioned way.

Just in case the name David Edwards sounds familiar, he’s the brilliant mind behind another popular spray called Le Whif. It’s an inhaler allows people to taste delicious chocolate without putting on any weight.

via CBS Detroit

Inventors Create Spray That Gets You Drunk Instantly without the Nasty Side-Effects was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Artist Creates Wonderful Artworks with Thousands of Jelly Beans

Posted: 04 May 2012 01:18 AM PDT

California-based artist Kristen Cumings spends hours on end piecing together detailed works of art out of thousands of colorful jelly beans. Needless to say her pieces look good enough to eat.

Although it must be fun working with jelly beans for a living, making 4 x 6 feet murals out of them is definitely painstaking work. Cumings uses between 8,000 and 12,000 jelly beans for her stunning masterpieces and it takes over 50 hours to complete each one. She starts the artistic process by looking at a close up of the reference photo, and then visualizes where each colored jelly bean has to go. She then paints an acrylic version of the photo on a blank canvas, and once that dries, she begins applying the small beans and tries to match the colors as best she can. The painter/illustrator uses spray adhesive to make sure the jelly beans stick, and usually likes to start her artworks by recreating the main features, like the eyes and nose. Then she just starts applying the other jelly beans from the bottom up until the piece is completed.

I first heard about Kristen Cumings jelly bean art when we posted the innovative music video of singer/songwriter Kina Grannis, which was created out of a total of 280,000 jelly beans , over a period of two years. That was literally the sweetest music video I have ever seen, and a truly monumental achievement for Kristen. In the past, she was also asked to make a series of jelly bean paintings, including portraits of various celebrities and recreations of famous works of art, by the iconic Jelly Belly company.