Ripped right out of hundreds of science fiction, comic book and horror stories comes news that a Russian man has decided to be a medical guinea pig or possibly a pioneer….
By having his head removed and attached to another body.
Suffering from a severe case of spinal muscular atrophy, Valery Spiridonov, a 30-year-old Russian man has volunteered to become the first person to go through the process of a head transplant.
Last December, in a TedTalk, Italian neuroscientist Sergio Canavero claimed it’s possible and he was the guy to do it.
Spiridonov says he’s really got nothing to lose as his condition and quality of life deteriorate:
“I’m very interested in technology, and anything progressive that might change people’s lives for the better. Doing this isn’t only an excellent opportunity for me, but will also create a scientific basis for future generations, no matter what the actual outcome of the surgery is. This technology is similar to the first man to walk in space. This is because in the future it will help thousands of people who are in an even more deplorable state than I am.”
The cost and time to transplant Spiridonov’s head onto it’s new body? 11 million dollars and 36 hours of surgery.
Other doctors in the field are calling this a fantasy and a horrible idea that should never even be considered.
We’ll know in 2017 after 36 hours of surgery…
In the broken-English words of Dr. Canavero during the opening of his TedTALK:
“Are you sitting tight? I’m about to give you one hell of a ride.”
Posted in Bizarre, Brain, Russia, Science, Weird | Comments Off on Russian Man Volunteers for First – Probably Last – Head Transplant by Controverisal Neuroscientist
In a move only he could’ve seen coming…you know….because he’s who he is…the Amazing Kreskin has opened the gates on a new dating site…
A site for “enthusiasts of the paranormal, the unexplained, the mystical, the implausible…”
While we’re pretty sure the guy-to-girl ratio will probably be a lot like a magic club, Kreskin is predicting (yeah…we know) great things for the site:
“I have a feeling that it’s going to take on a dimension that I never realized.”
With Kreskin’s foresight that online graphic design will eventually swing back around to the geocities-era of the internet, the site will probably lure a niche market of older folks who have seen, captured or smelled a bigfoot or been abducted by time-traveling Atlanteans who need love just like the rest of us.
Which brings up some questions: What sort of beings are looking for love? Will they all be human or other things in diguise? Are there vampires and werewolves worried about the fall out from a public tryst in light of the Twilight movies? Are there off-world species seeking to swing it with a human for a cheap thrill on their way to somewhere else? Are the reptilians using the site for some sinister plot? Will other creatures find that someone special without having to brave daylight, pitchforks and torches?
Or is it just a bunch of lonely, probably really nice people just looking for a little companionship in a big and often harsh, ridiculing reality?
Two fishermen in Wisconsin have come forward to say they’ve captured something strange in a series of photographs they took of an always-magical (and probably portals to other dimensions) double rainbow.
After getting home and examining their photos of an often mythic and elusive double rainbow, one of the men noticed what appeared to be a figure with glowing eyes.
Not only did the double rainbow cause the fisherman to see some kind of apparition…
The spill-over from the magnitude of the double rainbow also caused the news station to make one of the strangest news pieces we’ve ever seen about an alleged ghost sighting.
In a small town in California called Wasco something odd has quietly started appearing…
Clowns.
You’d read that and think, “That’s great! My kids LOVE clowns!”
Then you’d hear the more of the story and say, “They only come out at night?”
We’d share a few more details about the clowns, how they don’t talk to anyone, just quietly wander around town, smile all the time with menacing teeth and then we’d watch your smiling expression disintegrate as you draw your children closer to you and vow to never visit Wasco at night.
Ever.
Or at least until the whole clown thing blows over.
Created by a couple of artists who were interested in the ‘unobserved’ moments of sound that go on in places like stairwells, hallways and, unfortunately for commuters witnessing the bizarre sight of this freaking thing, subways.
Filled with a mixture that is half oxygen, half helium (“balloonium”), the weirdly unsettling, 3 foot nylon sphere floats around recording ambient audio which it then replays on a delay of about twenty minutes.
Although it was meant to be a completely innocent object you can’t shake the feeling watching it cruise around that this thing is part of some Cronenbergian horror film and that the ‘innocent’ floating black sphere wandering the world whispering ghost-like conversations of the past is about to shed its nylon skin and reveal its real purpose.
Says one of its creators:
“A lot of people do interpret it as this sinister moving presence that’s following people around.”
Might be because of all the design choices that could’ve happened like a cute kitten or a doe-eyed baby animal or even the Teenage Mutant Turtles in an awesome group shot you chose a creepy, opaque ball that slowly floats around whispering voices.
In Las Vegas there is a restaurant that doesn’t hold back the honesty or jerk you around with silly calorie-counting menus that seem to be popping up everywhere. This particular restaurant plasters their slogan ‘Food Worth Dying For’ right up in the front window along with a warning that lets you know that you might possibly suffer a heart attack.
How appropriate for a place called ‘The Heart Attack Grill’.
Featuring an over the top, cartoonish hospital theme, the Heart Attack Grill doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to letting you know that their food could kill you. Jolt Cola is the only soda served in the place and the menu reads like a health advocate’s hell with items like a Quadruple Bypass Burger and fried-in-lard Flatliner Fries.
‘Doctor’ Jon Basso, the guy behind this whole heart attack-inducing establishment, is like some kind of comic book nemesis to those fighting this country’s health issues (seriously…here’s some artwork from his DeviantArt account). His lair is a faux hospital-themed restaurant where ‘nurses’ are ramped up fantasy versions of the real thing and the patrons wear hospital gowns. Even Basso himself isn’t a real doctor but plays one in his restaurant. People are even rolled out in a wheelchair to their cars on occasion. And if you don’t finish a burger in the Heart Attack Grill? You step up to a contraption where you face a small webcam, your hands reach up on either side of your head to grab a pair of handles, one of the establishment’s half-dressed nurses grabs a paddle, walks up behind you and then proceeds to give you a spanking which is then posted online for the world to witness.
And if you’re wondering if anyone’s ever actually had a heart attack eating at the grill? Yes. Four of them. And one of those four won’t be eating there…or anywhere else ever again. In fact, Basso has some of that particular patron’s cremated remains in a bag.
Recently a tiny little lady in one of the staple nurse uniforms was added to the staff. She rides around inside the restaurant in a tiny ambulance only adding to the vision of ‘Doctor’ Jon Basso as the ringleader in one of the weirdest circuses about personal choice the world’s ever seen.
We’ve all seen the video where we’re asked to count how many times a ball is passed between two teams of players only to be asked about the gorilla that passes through the video instead of the actual passes. We have all seen that video, right? Spoiler….there’s a gorilla in it.
In Moreno Valley, California police officers have taken that concept and applied it to an important lesson in safety.
And instead of a monkey…they’re using a gingerbread man.
For anyone cosplaying the Joker at DragonCon, you can take it to a whole new level and show just how dedicated you are.
You can now head over to Korea, the world’s WalMart of plastic surgery, and get that frowny, upside-down face surgically fixed into a smiling, confident, sun-shiny one.
Known as a Smile Lipt, this surgery pulls your mouth corners up into a smile instead of down like the old curmudgeon you are inside. All you need to do is make an appointment and shell out about $2000.
What’s unsettling about the surgery isn’t the procedure or that it’s sad that a pretend smile in Korea will knock you back two grand. What’s unsettling is the number of young Koreans getting the procedure done so they’re found more attractive for prospective mates.
And if you have a perma-frown? You might want to think twice about having this because at the end of the video the narrator lets you know about the possible side effects which includes the smile being over-corrected…just like a pasty, green-haired villain we all know and love.
In the last couple of weeks this surgery has been getting some attention from the media but the procedure actually dates back several decades so this isn’t something new…it’s just popped in the mainstream’s feed.
One thing’s for certain though…you’re going to have to get the word ‘mouthcorners’ surgically removed from your brain after watching this video.
Last time we checked Brazil seemed like a place where men really wouldn’t be hard up to find a female companion.
We were wrong. Very, very wrong.
How wrong? Just…just keep reading.
There’s a bidding war going on in Brazil right now over a woman. For some she’s the perfect woman. For most of us she’s just plain weird and the ridiculous bidding war over her is even weirder.
Her name is Valentina.
Valentina is, disturbingly enough, the most desirable woman in Brazil right now and the man with the most padded wallet will get the chance to deflower her.
The current going price for Valentina’s virginity right now? $105,000 and climbing.
Wondering what her parents and family might be thinking of all of this craziness? Doesn’t matter.
Valentina isn’t real. She’s a life-like sex doll created by the acme of all sex-doll companies, Real Doll. The company has recently opened a manufacturing plant in Brazil and Valentina is the first doll created there. Now her ‘virginity’ is on the auction block.
The winner of the auction will also receive all-expenses-paid travel to and from São Paulo, a free night’s stay in the Presidential Suite of a fancy hotel, and a complimentary candlelight dinner with French Champagne to share with Valentina.
They’ll even throw in some sexy lingerie as Valentina’s gift to you, and a digital camera “to shoot and then show your friends.”
Not only is this a bidding war for an inanimate woman’s viginity…it also seems like an opportunity to see who the richest, most desperate Brazillian man is who’s got such bad game that he’s willing to shell out a small fortune for a woman who won’t say no to even his worst pitch.
Body modification seemed to root itself into underground culture of the 90s. Since that time we’ve seen our share of modded bods. You’d think that there just wasn’t anything to really mod until low-cost cybernetic parts started popping up on the shelves at WalMart. Wrong.
Check out all the fun these body-moddin’ kids are having!
They’ve sadly been slapped with the descriptive slang-term “BagelHeads”.
The whole ‘BagelHead’ scene has been around for many years already but is only recently getting some serious face-time across the internets after the Taboo show aired on Discovery.
In a nutshell the kids are taking needles, inserting them into their foreheads and then dripping saline into their heads creating what looks like some kind of giant egg under their skin. Once the ‘egg’ is big enough someone then presses slowly into the center of the bloated lump leaving a small indentation in the center. The end result? It looks exactly like a doctor was caught mid-breakfast and just left his bagel under the patient’s skin on her forehead.
Sexy, right? Yeah…that’s a no…we don’t think so either.
Paul Clerkin, a shark ecology graduate student at California’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, has been spending the last couple of months on a deep-sea trawling vessel in the Indian Ocean to see if the ship’s nets might pull up anything interesting in the way of sharks.
The trawler’s nets have been dropping to a depth of 6,500 feet off the coast of an island called Mauritius. What’s come up have been hundreds of strange-looking sharks. Several are species known to be very rare while others may be absolutely unseen before now.
“I tell people I have a ton of sharks, and they keep thinking I’m joking,” Clerkin said. “It was an actual ton. I brought back 350 sharks.”
What’s even cooler is that if any of the strange sharks are entirely new species? Clerkin gets to name them. He’s said that he’ll name a few after his mentors and possibly one after his mom and maybe himself.
We’ve seen a LOT of weird things before in the medical field. But THIS? This is a whole new level.
Back in 2009 a woman by the name of Shanyna Isom had an asthma attack. No biggie, right? Wrong. Isom experienced an allergic reaction to the steriods used to treat the asthma attack.
The result? A reaction like a d-lister from the Xavier Institute…she’s growing fingernails where she would normally grow hair.
No…really…fingernails are sprouting from her body.
Johns Hopkins University doctors are baffled at the condition. There’s no precedent for what’s happening to Isom. She began growing skin cells at 12 times the rate of a normal person and each follicle began producing a fingernail!
Doctors seem to have the bizarre disorder under control and are working to figure out how to fix whatever strange effect the steroid treatment created which caused this entire mess to start in the first place.
[I09]
Because death and urns with your loved one’s ashes aren’t surrounded by enough creepy stories, a fun company called Cremation Solutions has decided to knock the creep factor over the wall. How?
By using a 3D printer to create an amazingly creepy look-alike head of your loved one that contains said loved ones ashes.
No…really…This isn’t a fun, faux site put up as a joke. This is legit, kids. You can now sit home and stare lovingly at the lifeless eyes of a remains-stuffed replica head of your loved one. These things make great conversation pieces too!
Guest: “That’s interesting. Are you into cosmetology?”
You: “No. That’s my ex-wife.”
Fun, right?
Before you get excited and click that Paypal button, there are some things to consider. The head doesn’t come with hair. It can either be added digitally (we’re not really sure what that means…but we’re guessing it’ll end up a lot like putting hair on those little Lego figures) or you can purchase a wig. We’re also not sure about the following line:
The full sized personal urn can hold all the ashes of an adult. For holding just a portion of the ashes, we recommend the keepsake sized personal urns.
Does that mean mini versions of your loved ones are available? We’re not sure.
Unveiled in the UK at the annual Designing Interactive Systems conference, the egg-like device has been dubbed Kissenger. Hidden inside Kissenger’s eyeless, Humpty-Dumpty-like body is a pair of pressure-sensitive soft plastic lips that peek through a smooth plastic casing about the size of an Easter egg.
The lips contain pressure sensors and actuators. When you kiss them, the shape changes you create are transmitted in real time over the net to a receiving Kissenger. There, the actuators reproduce the mirror image of the pressure patterns you created– magically transmitting your smacker to your partner.
“People have found it a very positive way to improve intimacy in communications with their partners when they are apart,” claims Hooman Samani of Singapore-based Lovotics, which developed the device.
The device is a prototype and Samani says it will not be commercialised until “all the ethical and technical considerations are covered”. He adds: “I am not interested in sexual uses for it.”
Remember that part where he stated, “I am not interested in sexual uses for it”? He’s obviously been locked away in his lab for far too long and has forgotten what people are like.
Best part of the story from the New Scientist article? THIS little excerpt:
“I think that approach is too much and I find it kind of creepy,” says Samani. “You don’t need to transmit all the parameters of a kiss. The main aim is to improve long-distance relationships. We’ve taken several steps to minimise the creepiness.”
Two things: We’d hate to see this dude’s idea of what he considers creepy and what did this thing look like BEFORE he minimized the creepiness?
We all just collectively shuddered together.
Here’s Lovotic’s actual company video for an earlier version of the device (in case you were wondering about that ‘before’ design mentioned above)…which makes us wonder how going from a cute rabbit-like design to the disembodied mouth of a Cenobite is ‘minimizing the creepiness’. Again…can someone get a search warrant for this dude’s basement? Or are we just not ready for that?
