3d illusion arts: Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Russian Coupon Site Is Offering a 50% on Redemption Just in Time for the Mayan Apocalypse
Man Creates Indestructible Football for Kids in Third World Countries
The Sad Story of a Man Who Refuses to Wear Pants and Only Puts on Skirts or Dresses

Russian Coupon Site Is Offering a 50% on Redemption Just in Time for the Mayan Apocalypse

Posted: 13 Nov 2012 10:33 AM PST

Believe it or not there are people out there who actually believe they can buy their way into Heaven. A Russian coupon site is offering a 50% discount on indulgences offered by the Catholic Church, and so far over 100 people bought the coupon. The funny thing is Russia is an Orthodox country…

What’s the price of redemption, fellow sinners? Well, according to this offer posted on Russian site Kupon Klub, it’s just 500 rubles ($16). Come on, you have to admit that’s a bargain! But, truth be told, it’s 50% off thanks to the kindness of an Italian Catholic church that has offered to pray for the forgiveness of your sins at half price. All someone has to do is buy this holy coupon and send its unique number to an email address mentioned on site. No matter how much you’ve sinned over the years, you can buy just one coupon for yourself, but you can get as many as you want to have your loved-ones’ sins forgiven as well. According to Lifenews.ru, the organizers of this bizarre campaign believe the number of sold coupons will be in the millions, but with 37 days to go to expiry, only 110 people have bough the discounted indulgence vouchers. That’s right, 110 people believe paying $15 for a coupon will open their way into Heaven.

Here’s how the description of the offer sounds: According to predictions, our world is coming at an end. But we should not be sad. The Catholic Church of Assisi, in the Italian region of Umbria, in the province of Perugia, on the southern slope of Mount Subasio, high above the picturesque confluence or the rivers Tiber and Chiascio, is organizing the forgiveness of your sins. In this grey, depressing time it gives us all a wonderful gift – an astounding 50% discount on personal indulgence. What is indulgence? It’s the first step on the path to God. (I’m not a Russian speaker, but this what I could make out using Google Translate).

Apparently the first step to having your sins forgiven through indulgences is doing good, so all the proceeds from buying these coupons will go to charity. The number of personal indulgences is limited, so go on “Take care of your soul!”

Russian Coupon Site Is Offering a 50% on Redemption Just in Time for the Mayan Apocalypse was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Man Creates Indestructible Football for Kids in Third World Countries

Posted: 13 Nov 2012 07:29 AM PST

After seeing kids in poor and war-torn countries forgetting about their daily lives by playing football with balls made of trash, Tim Jahnigen dedicated his life to creating an indestructible ball that wouldn’t deflate in the hardest of conditions.

It’s called the One World Football and it can take any amount of punishment, from being run over by a car to being punctured with a knife, without deflating. Jahringen, from Berley, California, got the idea for this incredible football in 2006, after watching a documentary about children in Darfur who found refuge from their daily plight by playing with balls made of garbage of string, because regular balls donated by relief forces and sporting goods companies ripped and deflated within 24 hours, on the rocky terrain that doubled as a football field. Still, kids took so much pleasure in kicking a ball around that they played with just about anything that even resembled a football. In the next two years he searched for a material that could be morphed into a ball that wouldn’t wear out, go flat or need to be inflated. Many of the engineers he spoke with questioned his idea, but Tim eventually found what he was looking for. It’s called PopFoam, a type of hard foam made of ethylene-vinyl acetate, a material similar to what the popular Crocs shoes are made of.

Photo by Ngueuliebou Frederic

Discovering PopFoam was indeed a breakthrough, but figuring out how to shape it into a football was going to be an even bigger challenge. His money was tied up in another business, so he could provide the financial resources himself, but luckily Fate smiled upon him once again. He was having breakfast with music legend Sting, whom he knew from his days in the music industry, and he brought up his big idea. He told him how something as simple as a football could bring so much joy to the kids of Darfur, and about his effort to create an indestructible ball. Sting told him to drop everything and make it happen, and that he would gladly pay the estimate $300,000 necessary to create a prototype.

Photo by Helmut Schleppi

The first ever One World Football (named after one of Sting’s songs from his days with Police) took about a year to create at just one-tenth of the estimated cost. Jahringen then took his creations to be tested in Africa. His indestructible balls were used at a camp for ex child soldiers, in Rwanda, at a Johannesburg zoo where a lion that would go through six regular balls a day played with two foam balls, and given to a German Sheppard to play with for an entire year. In all cases the One World Footballs took the abuse without suffering any major damage. Tim even stabs and drives over them with his car in order to convince potential sponsors and backers of the efficiency of his invention, and every time they bounce back to their original shape.

Photo: Sustainable Brands

Now Tim Jahringen has created the fifth generation of One World Footballs, which are much rounder than the previous versions and are estimated to last for 30 years. He has so far produced 50,000 balls, most of which have sold for $40. For each one sold, another is donated, and with organisations carrying it to various countries around the world, word about the indestructible football has spread. General Motors has promised to buy 1,5 million One World Footballs in the next 3 years and donate them to needy children, and UNICEF has already bought over 5,000 of them at $17 each. Still the cost of this wonder ball is a problem. "In our experience, there is sure a demand for longer-lasting footballs, compared to the $2.50 we pay for a regular football, the current cost difference for the more durable solution is currently too high,” said Shanelle Hall, director of UNICEF's supply division in Copenhagen, Denmark, which buys about 30,000 balls a year.

But the cost may go down as production increases, and Jahringen is already struggling to keep up with demand. Workers at a factory in Taiwan, where the One World Football is produced, have had to work double shifts in order to meet the target of 45,000 balls a month. Two containers of balls are shipped to various countries around Africa and Asia every week, and bringing joy to millions of children to whom this simple round object is more fun than any smartphone or video-game console.

via Sydney Morning Herald

Man Creates Indestructible Football for Kids in Third World Countries was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

The Sad Story of a Man Who Refuses to Wear Pants and Only Puts on Skirts or Dresses

Posted: 13 Nov 2012 04:51 AM PST

44-year-old Vladimir Fomin, from Kineshma, a town in Russia’s Ivanovo Region, is a very peculiar man. He became somewhat of a celebrity in his country after he was expelled from the University of Mathematics for refusing to wear pants and walking around in women’s clothing.

Vladimir certainly isn’t the only man in the world who prefers skirts and dresses to pants, but his reasons are definitely unique. He is not gay nor a transvestite, nor does he want to attract media attention. He just wants to stand up for the rights of men to wear whatever kind of clothes they like. After all, women are allowed to wear pants, so why can’t men wear dresses or skirts, why is that regarded as weird? But his fight for the rights of the stronger sex have brought him nothing but trouble. Despite being one of the brightest students at the Ivanovo University of Mathematics and earning a scholarship, he was expelled because of his fashion choices, he was shunned by most of his friends and relatives and even verbally abused and beaten by locals in his home town for walking around in women’s clothes. But in spite of all these problems, Vladimir Fromin continues his fight for the right to dress any way he likes, and hopes to one day be able to walk around in his skirts without being discriminated against. And he has a wardrobe of over 30 women’s garments prepared…

There was a time when Vladimir wore pants. He even had a wife and children, but he says his views of men’s clothing have always been the same. In an interview with Russian newspaper Chronometer , Fromin said he had always been jealous of the Scots for being able to wear kilts, and of the ancient Romans and Greeks who also didn’t wear pants, and that the 25 years in which he forced himself to wear pants were the worst of his life. For the 44-year-old unemployed Russian, pants have a very negative effect on the mood, well-being and health of both men and women. In his eyes they are an abomination that was accepted by both sexes in order to hide most of their bodies and please their jealous partners. And apparently, he’s not the only one who feels that way; Vladimir claims there are thousands of people out there who call themselves his fans but are too afraid to imitate him.

Fromin’s plight started the day he started wearing women’s clothes, but it didn’t affect him that much until it got him expelled from the Ivanovo State University. After he heard a cleaning lady saying he was not right in the head and she was disgusted to even look at him, he got so angry that he took off all his clothes and decided to walk around his dorm in the nude shouting that if she didn’t like to look at him in skirts and dresses she would have to look at him naked. She filed a complaint, and that was all the university needed to have him expelled. Since then, he has tried reapplying, but because he was not allowed a place in the university dorms until he dressed like a proper man, he couldn’t afford to pay rent somewhere else and was again expelled for not attending classes. Vladimir Fromin says that if he was looking for fame, he could have achieved it in the fields of mathematics and science, but instead decided to give up on his career dreams in order to fight for what he believes in.

After being featured on several TV shows where he pleaded his cause, Vladimir’s situation worsened. He can’t get a job, because no one will hire a man wearing skirts and dresses, (although he is willing to make a compromise and wear only long ones), and locals in his Kineshma village have threatened to throw stuff at him if he so much passes by their windows dressed in his cooky clothes. Right now his only source of income are the vegetables he plants in his garden and that he sells at the market every day. But with winter just around the corner, that’s no longer an option. Still, he has no intention of “mutilating” himself by putting on pants…