Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Free Higher Education – Guy Crashes Elite College Courses for Four Years, Never Gets Caught

Posted: 09 Mar 2015 02:36 AM PDT

28-year-old Guillaume Dumas is a strong critic of the higher education system. In an attempt to make a political statement about how universities exclude people who cannot afford them, he spent four long years as a wandering scholar. He hopped campuses across North America, attending lectures and seminars for free, as an unregistered student. And although he didn't receive a degree at the end, Dumas has used his education to start a successful online dating business in Montreal.

Dumas, who hails from Quebec, said that he first started campus hopping because it was fun. His parents didn't even want him to attend college. "My mother got it in her head that I should become a butcher," he said. "Her friend's son was a butcher's apprentice and he seemed to make good money. My father thought I should become a lumberjack in rural Quebec."

But Dumas had other ideas. He applied to LaSalle College in Montreal and got in. And although he started college like any other 18-year-old, he soon got restless and was unsure of what he wanted to do with his life. He liked psychology, physics and philosophy, so he couldn't decide on a major. He was spending $4,000 a year on his education, which he felt was a colossal waste. So he dropped out of LaSalle and started attending a few classes at the nearby McGill University. "It was so easy to look at the course listing and them show up for a class," he recalled. "I thought, why couldn't I do this at other schools?"

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Artist Turns Human Bodies into Mind-Boggling Optical Illusions

Posted: 09 Mar 2015 01:58 AM PDT

Oregon-based artist Natalie Fletcher is an expert at turning human bodies into optical illusions. Her artworks may seem cleverly photoshopped, but the illusions are in fact painted directly on to the skin!

Her project, aptly named 'Just an Illusion', features human canvases that are painted in bright base colors like cyan, fuchsia, yellow and green. She cleverly makes use of black contour lines to fool the eye into thinking that parts of the model's torso are distorted. Some of them appear twisted, while others seem to have a gaping sinkhole in the center. She creates the illusion of depth by shading and positioning the lines.

body-painting-illusions

8-Year-Old Girl Feeds Neighborhood Crows, They Thank Her with Gifts

Posted: 09 Mar 2015 01:44 AM PDT

8-year-old Gabi Mann, from Seattle, has some very unusual friends who shower her with gifts almost every day. Ever since she started feeding her neighborhood crows, they began returning the favor and bringing back all kinds of trinkets.

Gabi's unique relationship with the neighborhood crows began in 2011, when at age four, she was prone to dropping food. Soon, the crows were always watching for her, hoping to get a bite of the crumbs she dropped. As she got older, she began to feed them consciously – she would share her lunch with them on the way to the bus stop. It wasn't long before crows were lining up in the afternoon to greet her at the stop.

In 2013, Gabi started feeding the birds regularly, instead of sharing her scraps with them. Along with her family, she would fill the birdbath in the backyard with fresh water every day, cover the bird feeder platforms with peanuts and throw handfuls of dog food on to the grass. Soon, the crows automatically lining up on the telephone lines, waiting for their treats.

gifts-from-crows

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