My Tramping View | World News, Reviews and More Interesting Stuffs

A new racing car made of vegetables and powered by chocolate is apparently due to be launched next month.

The interior of the car, named ecoF3, includes a steering wheel made from carrots and a seat of soya bean, while its body is made of potatoes.

With a top speed of 145mph, the WorldFirst racecar runs on a mixture of chocolate and vegetable oils.

Designers from Warwick University's WorldFirst team hope the environmentally-friendly technology used in their car will be adopted by Formula 1 teams.

"We hope the Formula 1 teams will see that an environmentally friendly car is not necessarily a slow car," a team spokesman said.

"We expect our new materials to be used by the Formula 1 cars of the future."

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• Friends exchange 217,000 texts in a month
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Two friends in Central Pennsylvania have just been charged $26,000 on a phone bill in an attempt to set a text-messaging record, exchanging a thumbs-flying total of 217,000 during March.

Nick Andes, 29, and Doug Klinger, 30, were surprised by their phone bill as they were relying on their unlimited text messaging plans to get them through the escapade.

"It came in a box that cost $27.55 to send to me," Andes told The Associated Press.

The two have been practically nonstop texters for about a decade since they attended Berks Technical Institute together.

That led Andes to search for the largest monthly text message total he could find posted online: 182,000 sent in 2005 by Deepak Sharma in India.

Andes and Klinger were able to set up their phones to send multiple messages. During a February test run they found they could send 6,000 or 7,000 messages on some days, prompting the March messaging marathon.

"Most were either short phrases or one word, 'LOL' or 'Hello', things like that, with tons and tons of repeats,' said Andes, a messenger and title clerk who loads trucks for UPS in the morning.

Andes sent more than 140,000 messages, and Klinger sent more than 70,000 to end the month with a total of just over 217,000, he said.

Guinness World Records has not yet responded to the pair's record-setting attempt.

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A woman in Detroit has possibly had her life saved by her bra, as it deflected a bullet fired at her during a break-in at a neighbor's home.

The 57-year-old woman was shot in the chest after she spotted a group of men breaking into a neighbour's house on the west side of the city.

The bullet smashed through her window pane before hitting the bra's underwire - but it didn't penetrate her skin.

Police spokesman Phillip Cook said: "It did slow the bullet down. She sustained injuries but they're not life-threatening."

The woman, who was not identified, was treated at a nearby hospital.

It's thought she may have gone to the window after a burglar alarm at the house next door sounded. Her neighbor was not at home at the time.

The suspects drove away after the shooting.

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A contender for world's tallest man has been discovered after walking into a Chinese hospital on Tuesday.

Zhao Liang, 27, is 2.46 m tall - 10 cm taller than Bao Xishun, now recognized by the Guinness World Records as the world's tallest man, and 17 cm taller than China's NBA basketball star Yao Ming.

But Zhao has not been independently verified by the Guinness judges, so he is not officially considered to be the world's tallest man, Xinhua reports.

Zhao entered a hospital in Tianjin city for an operation to relieve pain from an old muscle tendon injury on his left foot.

He instantly caused a stir because of his unbelievable height and hospital staff rushed to get him properly measured.

Zhao, who lives in Henan province, had been training as a basketball player when he sustained the debilitating foot injury over a decade ago.

Zhao’s parents are of average height, with his father measuring 1.8m and his mum 1.68m.

Wang Keyun, Zhao’s mother, said her son has a big appetite — polishing off eight hamburger-sized steamed buns and three dishes for dinner.

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A German DJ has broken the world record for the longest continuous radio show after wrapping up his "morning" programme over a week after beginning it, his station said.

DJ Dominik Schollmayer, from Hit Radio Antenne in Hannover, Germany, presenting his show for a consecutive 169 hours, beating the previous record - held by an Indian DJ - by one hour.

Under the rules the 26-year-old was allowed to play two consecutive records of up to six minutes but had to return to the airwaves immediately after the second song.

He was allowed a five-minute break ever hour but he often saved up the time so as to give himself a 15-minute break every three hours.

His attempt was also monitored by doctors as sleep deprivation caused bizarre effects, according to a blog on the station's website.

One entry on the blog, entitled: "Now he's gone completely mad" reported that the DJ was 'dancing wildly' around the studio few hours before he made the record-breaking broadcast.

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A message left in a bottle in 1913 has been found on the shores of the Spokane River in Washington.

Darin Winkler was out walking along the river's edge with his kids, Evan and Iris, last weekend when he saw something that looked like an antique bottle, with an old-fashioned cork stopper, the Spokesman-Review reported Sunday.

"Spring and high water brings up various kinds of things on shore," Winkler said.

"We saw an old flattened basketball and a bunch of bottles. Mostly they were whiskey bottles, Mad Dog 20-20 bottles, things like that. But this one stood out."

Winkler said he took the bottle back to his house and carefully teased the note out of it. The paper was a little damp, flaking in places, but mostly intact. The first thing he saw took his breath away: "March 30, 1913."

Some parts of the note had deteriorated, but large portions of the pencil-written note remained decipherable.

Here's what it says, with missing parts noted with ellipses:


March 30, 1913

Dear friend,

Who ever finds this bottle, please write in ... at Rockford, within the next two years ... and let me know it... Will put it in ...Spokane ... North East ... state of Wa ...

Yours truly,

Emmett Presnell

Rockford, Wash.

RFD #1 Box 5


After some sleuthing on the Internet and in the Spokesman-Review archives, Winkler was able to find out plenty about that long-ago bottle.

His theory is that the bottle got washed up on a bank or into a tangle of logs, and stayed high and dry for most of the next nine decades, thus explaining its relatively good condition.

Recently, possibly even last year, high water may have refloated the bottle and sent it down the river to where Winkler found it, directly across from the old Natatorium Park.

When Presnell died at age 85, on May 13, 1978, that bottle was probably still stuck in a riverbank somewhere.

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An artist has made colourful creatures from tens of thousands of matchsticks.

According to the Daily Mail, David Mach spends up to three months making gorillas, polar bears and rhinos, which sell for between £20,000 and £35,000 each.

Combining an array of matchsticks with different coloured tips, the 52-year-old is able to immortalise the animals in incredible detail complete with antlers, horns and teeth.

His 15-inch high gorilla - with flared nostrils and a fierce open mouth - required 30,000 matches and took three months as each match was painstakingly glued onto a mould.

The Scot, who works from a studio in London, recreates the animals' features and different skin shades using 14 different coloured matchsticks imported from Japan.

He said: "I like to make figures that are instantly recognisable and make people take notice.

"The animals are a joy and a challenge to make because they have difficult features such as antlers and horns."

He once crafted a 12ft-high sculpture of a gorilla out of coat-hangers which sold for £200,000.

Other works include a public sculpture depicting an LNER Class A4 steam engine made from 185,000 bricks on the A66 near Darlington, County Durham.

He has created more than 350 sculptures since 1982 and in 1988 was nominated for the Turner Prize.

In 2000 he joined the Royal Academy of Arts as Professor of Sculpture.

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An Indian nationalist movement is taking healthy living to the extreme with plans to release a fizzy drink made from cow urine.

The Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India's biggest and oldest Hindu nationalist group, has announced that development has almost finished on the beverage, which is called 'gau jal', meaning 'cow water.'

Om Prakash, the head of the department, said that the drink is undergoing final laboratory tests and should be on the market by the end of the year.

"Don't worry, it won't smell like urine and will be tasty too," he told The Times.

"Its USP (Ultimate Selling Point) will be that it's going to be very healthy. It won't be like carbonated drinks and would be devoid of any toxins."

The movement is hoping that the drink will help promote the ideology of Hindutva, or Hindu-ness, which includes revering cows as objects of worship.

Many Hindus believe cow's urine to have medicinal properties and it is often drunk at religious festivals.

It might not sound appetising to non-Hindus, but it is claimed the fizzy beverage will help fight a number of diseases, including cancer.

Prakash added: "Cow urine offers a cure for around 70 to 80 incurable diseases like diabetes. All are curable by cow urine.

"It is useful for the whole country and the world as well."

Discussing other drink manufacturers, Prakash said: "We're going to give them good competition as our drink is good for mankind. We may also think of exporting it."

In the past, the RSS group has campaigned against foreign imports such as Pepsi and Coca Cola, considering them a tool of Western imperialism.

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This is the world's coolest and one of the coldest hotel. Here’s a bit more about the hotel:

It has some permanent, heated rooms. But the really awesome rooms are cold rooms, which workers build each year using blocks of ice from the nearby River Torne. The rooms stay at temperatures from 28 to 40 degrees F.

Each room, had a “serene blue glow” from LEDs in the icy walls; the hotel’s silence added to the serenity. He slept on a bed made from ice covered in reindeer fur. The staff wakes guests up each day with a steaming cup of lingonberry juice, which is supposed to do wonders for keeping you warm.

There are some expeditions you can arrange from the hotel. Jukkasjärvi is pretty cold, though, so you really have to bundle up.

The cold rooms don’t have their own bathrooms. You have to get bundled up, tromp outside and go into the heated area.


via: Wandering Justin

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An underwater camera at an oil and gas drilling site off the coast of Texas has captured a rare sight: an alien-like, long-armed, and "elbowed" Magnapinna squid.

The creature, caught on video by a remote-controlled device owned by the Shell Oil Company, was spotted last November roughly a mile and a half below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

Footage of the rare squid had been circulating among oil industry employees for months, but became public after a recent report in National Geographic.

"Perdido ROV Visitor, What Is It?" the email's subject line read — Perdido being the name of a Shell-owned drilling site which is located about 200 miles off Houston, Texas.

Despite the squid's apparent unflappability on camera, Magnapinna, or "big fin," squid remain largely a mystery to science.

First identified ten years ago, Magnapinna, or "big fin," has ten tentacles of equal length (as opposed to other squid species, which normally have eight short and two long tentacles), and those tentacles seem to have a visible "elbow" at a short distance from the main body.

Adult squids of this type can range from 1.5 m to 7 m in size.

Scientists are still unsure what function the elbows serve, with some suggesting they help prevent the tentacles from getting tangled when trawling for food.

The Magnapinna squid has never been filmed at a drilling site before, and has only been caught on camera a few times.

The discovery indicates how little we know about life in the Earth's largest ecosystem.

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A kitten with two faces was born on Wednesday near Perth, Western Australia.

It was delivered at the Swan Veterinary Clinic after its mother had endured complications during the birth.

The feline can only use one of its two faces to eat because of a cleft palate, but both of its mouths can miaow at the same time.

The grey and white cat was one of three born in the litter, but its siblings were born without deformities.

Nurse Louisa Burgess, who successfully delivered the remarkable cat with veterinarian George Huber, said that in her 12-year career' she had never seen a two-faced cat.

"I have seen cats with two tails and extra legs, but not this," she said.

And despite its irregular birth, Burgess said the cat appeared healthy.

"It has a full tummy and it survived the night so that is a good sign," she added. "It seems content, it meows and purrs.

"This is the result of a congenital deformity. Something has gone wrong in the early embryonic development."

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A puppy has survived being hit by a car at 70 mph after clinging to the car's grille.

The one-year-old stray dog was hit by Marco Menozzi's Peugeot 207 at such speed that it became embedded in the grille under the bonnet of his car as it drove a further 15 miles.

Miraculously, the pup survived the ordeal, escaping with just a broken leg and bruising.

Menozzi admitted that he did not consider stopping when he clashed with the pooch.

The dog is now in a police kennel looking for a new owner.

A police spokesman said: "He's a very lucky boy. He was saved because he was hit so hard.

"Any softer and he would have bounced off the car and been crushed under the wheels."

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A man has launched a campaign in Japan to convince the government that people are in need of a law that would allow marriages with comic characters

In one week, more than 1,000 people have signed Taichi Takashita's on-line petition, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Takashita decided to launch an online appeal hoping to get one million signatures which would later be presented to the government of Japan.

He said: "I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world.

"However, that seems impossible with present-day technology. Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorise marriage with a two-dimensional character?"

Comic books known as "manga", animated "anime" films and on-line virtual reality games have become increasingly popular in Japan, with fictitious characters frequently elevated to celebrity status.

One person who supported the petition, wrote: "For a long time I have only been able to fall in love with two-dimensional people and currently I have someone I really love.

"Even if she is fictional, it is still loving someone. I would like to have legal approval for this system at any cost."


via: http://jap-pon.blogspot.com

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These collection of frightening models by Chinese sculptor Chen Wenling was on display at the Asia Art Centre in Beijing.

Credit: The Sun

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Brad Sciullo, an American chef who works at an Italian restaurant in Pennsylvania, has become the first person to conquer the Beer Barrel Belly Bruiser - a burger weighing 15lbs (6.8kg) and has 5.2lbs (2.3kg) of toppings.

It took 4 hours and 39 minutes to to finish the meal at Denny's Beer Barrel Pub in Pennsylvania.

The burger includes a bun, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, onions, mild banana peppers and a cup each of mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard and relish.

For completing the challenge in the under-five-hour time limit, Sciullo won $400, three T-shirts, a certificate "and a burger hangover, as I call it," pub owner Dennis Liegey said.

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Aww, is that cute!

Here is a two-year-old chimpanzee, Anjana, who has been helping to raise 23-day-old cubs Mitra and Shiva at T.I.G.E.R.S. (The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species), South Carolina.

Anjana and the cubs have been inseparable ever since the cubs' birth 3 weeks ago.

The chimp took on the surrogate role after the cubs were separated from their mother.

T.I.G.E.R.S. founder Dr Bhagavan Antle said: "Anjana has acted as a surrogate mother to leopards, lions and orangutans and has done the same with these baby white tigers. She gives them a bottle and lies with them — she is a great assistant."



Image courtesy of Barcroft Media via The Sun

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A Cambodian couple whose marriage fell apart decided to their house in half to avoid the country's expensive divorce process.

Moeun Rim and his wife, Nhanh, who have been married nearly 40 years, divided their house into two parts after deciding to separate, Cheach village chief Vorng Morn told AFP.

The break-up was caused either by the husband's alleged malingering, or the wife's alleged lack of care.

They also divided their property into four parts; two for their son and daughter, and two for them.

The split house is located in the Prey Veng province of southern Cambodia.

Under Cambodian law, a couple’s assets are divided equally when a husband and wife get divorced.

However, divorce cases in Cambodia may take a long time to settle and can be costly as the country is notoriously having a corrupt legal system.


Image courtesy of AFP

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Here’s 8 cool Lego Movie scenes built by somebody who is brilliant but really need get a life

Casablanca

Casablanca (original)

Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction (original)

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Bride Of Frankenstein

Titanic

The Honeymoon Killers

Sherlock Holmes

Edward Scissorhands

Image via: Sooth Brush

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