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Lei Lei, The Supersized Baby!

By Lucy Furr Wednesday August 25, 2010

It happens to us all, we get a little older, a little lazier, develop a deep and everlasting love of juicy chicken thighs deep-fried to a delicious crisp in a spiced and crumbed coating. Before you know it, you’re umm…you know plump.

You just don’t expect to see an enormously over-weight baby though. All babies are a bit chubby and cuddly, if they weren’t, no-one would have the smelly, noisy things. However really fat babies do exist. In fact, there’s a poor little 10 month old darling in Hunan Province, China that is so huge he weighs as much as an average 6 year old! That’s a whopping 20kg! Apparently Lei Lei isn’t the fattest 10 month old ever – a boy from India, Karan Singh, weighed 22kg at the same age! Lei Lei is being examined by doctors to see whether there is an underlying medical reason for his incredible weight gain. According to his mother, little Lei Lei is absolutely ravenous and puts everything he sees in his mouth – perhaps that’s why he’s so portly?

lei lei

I feel for the little chap, when I first looked at photos of him, I thought “aw how cute, he looks like the fat happy Buddha”, but pondering the situation later I became more and more horrified at the implications of a 10 month old child weighing so very much. Will his little legs be able to support him when he starts learning to walk? Is his tiny developing cardiovascular system being damaged irreparably? How does his mother keep him truly clean with all those folds of fat? How will he feel when he looks back at Internet posts that refer to him as the Michelin Baby? It’s just heartbreaking really.

[via Daily Mail]

Life’s Funny Lessons

By prawn1 Thursday August 19, 2010

1 Comment

If you enjoyed Ashleigh Brilliant’s pot-shots, chances are you might like charming art by Spanish illustrator Alex Noriega. On his sketch blog, Stuff No One Told Me (but I have to post it here or aliens will kill me), Noriega takes a humorous look at some of life’s truths.

Check out Noriega’s illustrated life lessons after the jump.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM

By prawn1 Wednesday July 7, 2010

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If you’re reading this, you’ve probably zoned out of the semi-final football match going on right now. It’s ok though, Paul the psychic cephalopod has already predicted a Spanish win. I hope for his sake he is wrong, lest the staff at Sea Life in Oberhausen, Germany will be dining on octopus soup in the canteen tomorrow.

In any case, if you’d like to take your mind off the footy and contemplate something more abstract, then have a look at this stop-motion street art short by Italian graffiti artist, BLU. In BIG BANG BIG BOOM, he takes a look at the cyclical nature of evolution. It’s typically BLU, so it’s quite odd but very impressive.

[via Geekiz]

Need Versus Want, Illustrated

By prawn1 Monday July 5, 2010

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Another age-old argument – need versus want. I want a newer/bigger/flashier TV even though the one I have works perfectly fine. I want to be taller and ruggedly handsome, but what I need to be is more comfortable in my own skin.

Like many of us, artist Erin Hanson, also feels conflicted about what she desires as opposed to what she really needs in life. Her minimal illustrations show the stand-offs going on in her mind. Have a look at her Need to Want Less series after the jump.

OMG, LOLTATZ!

By prawn1 Thursday June 10, 2010

40 Comments

Tattoos run the gamut from the utterly ridiculous, to fail territory, to the sublime. It’s the job of Toby at LOLTATZ to capture stupidly awesome tattoos for posterity. The captions are delightful too, have a look at some of them after the jump.

Green Porno Educational Videos

By prawn1 Friday June 4, 2010

7 Comments

This is altogether surreal and weirdly delightful. Green Porno is a series of short films penned by and staring actress Isabella Rossellini. These educational videos take a look at the reproductive habits of various insects and marine animals, and whether she is getting her head eaten off as a praying mantis or has a massive whale erection, Rossellini plays all the characters with charm and wit.

Green Porno is scientifically accurate yet so cheeky and silly. Have a look at two of our favourite episodes below. They might be NSFW on the account of simulated sex and heavy breathing.

Bee

Whale

And see a few more after the jump.

Behind The Logo: BP’s Green Emblem Gets Dirty

By prawn1 Tuesday June 1, 2010

1 Comment

The ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill is creating quite a mess for British Petroleum, or British Polluters as the company is affectionately known. The spill, now considered the largest offshore spill in U.S. history, is obviously no laughing matter but you’d be forgiven for chuckling at the comedic tweets from a fake BP global public relations account, @BPGlobalPR, that proved a further headache for the energy company.

In 2008, environmental organization Greenpeace awared BP the Emerald Paintbrush award for its tireless efforts in greenwashing, a dodgy type of marketing that projects an eco-friendly image of a company without that company actually doing anything to protect the environment. BP was nominated for the Greenwash Awards in 2009, but ended up in fifth place, behind ArcelorMittal, Dong (lol), Shell, and Swedish energy company, Vattenfall.

This year Greenpeace is running a clever competition, entitled Behind The Logo, to highlight the BP’s investment in the Canadian oil sands, where the process of extracting oil produces four times as much carbon dioxide as conventional drilling. Greenpeace says that BP’s slick green logo is a misnomer and are asking people from around the world to create a new logo, something that is more in tune with the dirty business that BP are in. Have a look at some of the new logos after the jump.

Airspace Rebooted

By prawn1 Saturday May 1, 2010

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You may (should) remember the volcanic eruptions at Eyjafjallajökull (pronunciation) in Iceland. The volcano spewed lava and sent out a plume of ash several kilometres up in the atmosphere. The lightning produced in the volcanic plume created a spectacular electrical phenomenon known as a dirty thunderstorm. For fear the that the ash may damage aircraft engines, the airspace of many European countries were closed off, leaving travellers stranded. One could not simply fly into Europe.

Air travel was disrupted from April 15th to April 20th and this data visualization shows the northern European airspace during that time.

For some fantastic images of Eyjafjallajökull, check out The Big Picture’s coverage here and there.

[via Gizmodo | KiTTGT]

Venereal Disease and the Magazine of Death

By prawn1 Wednesday March 24, 2010

4 Comments

Venereal Disease and the Magazine of Death

In the spirit of knowledge sharing, we have two educational videos to show you today. They may seem unconnected but can both cause an unpleasant death. First up is a 70s PSA warning against reckless sexual behaviour and then a tutorial on how to use a rolled up magazine to beat down pesky attackers. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJLJOwn-ozs

If you have seen any good informational videos recently, do let us know about them in the comments below.

[via avatarsnailman | Hecklerspray]

Simo Hayha, The White Death

By prawn1 Tuesday January 26, 2010

4 Comments

Do you have a nickname? I’ve had a fair share of embarrassing ones (my middle name is bad enough – thanks ever so much, mom & dad.) and it’s generally disastrous to one’s street cred to have such nicknames divulged.

However, there are some people whose actions – be they good or bad – have earned themselves a reputation, and supremely awesome nicknames to match. One of those people is Simo Häyhä, or known more notoriously as the White Death.

Häyhä, a Finnish farmer and hunter by trade, started this military career in 1925, at the age of 20. It was during the Winter War (1939–1940), when Finland was being invaded by the Soviet Union that he shot to fame. Armed with a standard bolt action rifle and dressed completely in white camouflage, Häyhä ventured out into the bitter cold, and amassed what is the highest recorded number of confirmed kills in any major war. Over 100 days, the sniper extinguished 505 Soviet soldiers with his rifle and reportedly offed a further 200 of them with a submachine gun, bringing the body count to a staggering 705! Isn’t that just mind-blowing?

The frustrated Soviets sent out counter snipers and even an artillery strike, but the attempts failed to down the now infamous, White Death. Häyhä’s career came to an end in 1940 when he was shot in the jaw – he survived, but the injury blew off bits of his face and crushed his jaw. When asked whether he felt bad about his actions, he said, “I did what I was told to as well as I could.” The White Death passed away in 2002.