Meet Jon Gnarr, By Far the Coolest Mayor in the World

The coolest mayor in the world never went to university, is an ex-taxi driver and used to be in a local punk rock band called ‘Runny Nose’ before he became a comedian and actor. That’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as Jon Gnarr is concerned, a man whose achievements in life are so bizarre that it is truly a wonder how he became the mayor of Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital city and home to over half of the nation’s population.

You’d think that a goofy guy has the chance to be President for the day only in the movies, but it seems in Reykjavik anything’s possible. Jon Gnarr, who was diagnosed with severe mental retardation and ADHD as a child, started his own political party in 2010 after refusing to join up with any of the existing parties. Funny enough, he named his party ‘The Best Party’. Simple, yet brilliant, isn’t it? It had to be, because he won his very first election to the office of mayor with 34.7% of the popular vote. According to what Gnarr told the media, his first real challenge as a politician was deciding between the names ‘The Best Party’ and ‘The Cool Party’. He ultimately settled for the first because it sounds dorkier, which was the vibe he was looking for. Called ‘Besti Flokkurin’ in the local language, the party is a motley group of artists, comedians and punk rockers, none of whom have had any prior experience in city-planning or politics. The only thing they did do well before the elections was record an Icelandic take on the Tina Turner song ‘Simply the Best’ and use it as their official campaign song. With lines like “We want a city that’s cuddly and clean and cool,” and “Tell the squatters in-charge that it’s time to leave,” the song was both silly and attention-grabbing at the same time. If the goofy mayor is to be believed, the city was being run by ‘blathering loons’ and it’s no surprise at all that the Best Party won.

It’s not just the song; some of the promises made by the Best Party were equally bizarre, such as free access to swimming pools and free towels for everyone, a Disney-land in the capital airport (as promised to a kindergarten class), a drug-free government by 2020, and listening more to women and old people. They vowed to stop corruption by participating in it openly (as opposed to the other ‘secretly’ corrupt parties). It looks like the people of Reykjavik were really desperate for a change, because Gnarr won the election last June and in the process, caught the attention of the international press. Pretty soon, a documentary movie called ‘Gnarr’ was made as well, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The movie is so transparent and blatantly honest that you have Gnarr making declarations like, “I have done strip tease in the largest gay club in New York.” Everybody including director Gaukur Ulfarsson found his honestly refreshing. Fair enough, given that Iceland has been having its share of tough times. In the financial crisis of 2009, Iceland went from being one of the wealthiest nations in the world to a state close to ruin. And then in 2010, the Eyjafjallajökull eruption happened. I suppose Icelanders were badly in need of a few laughs when Gnarr stepped in. It didn’t take long for all the laughter to translate into votes.

It may be shocking to others, but Gnarr’s election isn’t too much of a surprise for the Icelanders. They do have a reputation of having a very dark sense of humor. “If we see someone slipping, we’ll laugh before we help,” is what most Icelanders say about themselves. But some people attribute Gnarr’s victory to his role as Georg Bjarnfreðarson in an extremely popular movie trilogy where he plays a hardcore Marxist and intense person who doesn’t get along very well with the people around him. The movie supposedly beat Avatar at the local box office.

Well, whatever the reason for his election, Gnarr sure has caught the world’s attention as one of the most unique politicians in history. How else would you describe a leader who refused to enter a coalition government with anyone who had not watched his favorite TV show (HBO’s The Wire)? He is also being called a ‘hands-on’ politician while making changes to the city. “I have become this weird guy picking up rubbish on daily walks,” reads one of his statuses on Facebook. He’s also probably the only mayor in the world who doesn’t hesitate to dress up like a drag queen at Gray Pride events, or to protest for the freedom of Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot. “Homophobia is not a phobia. They are not scared. They are just assholes,” he declares in another status message. I suppose it’s true that when the people really want you to be their leader, you can get away with pretty much anything. Anything.

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Dog Attends Daily Mass at Church Where Dead Owner Used to Go

Ciccio, a 12-year-old German shepherd, whose owner passed away two months ago, visits the church she used to frequent and where her funeral was celebrated, patiently waiting for her to return.

The people attending the church of Santa Maria Assunta in San Donaci, Italy have received a lesson in love and loyalty from a dog that for the past two months has been coming in for the daily mass, hoping his beloved owner would return. Local Maria Margherita Lochi, 57, had adopted Ciccio years ago, after she found him abandoned in the fields near her home. She was an animal lover who had taken in several stray cats and dogs, but her connection with Ciccio was special. Apparently he felt the same way, as even though Maria died two months ago, the dog keeps coming back to the place he last saw her. She would walk with him to the church, for the daily Mass, and the priest would allow him to wait patiently at her feet. He was even there with Maria’s loved ones at her funeral. But Ciccio seems to have a tough time letting go, and he comes back into the church each day, as soon as he hears the bells calling in the faithful for the Holy Mass. He just sits by the side of the altar, quietly, hoping Maria will come back…

“He’s there every time I celebrate Mass and is very well behaved – he doesn’t make a sound, I’ve not heard one bark from him in all the time he has been coming in,” says Father Donato Panna. “He’s still coming to Mass even after Maria’s funeral, he waits patiently by the side of the altar and just sits there quietly. I didn’t have the heart to throw him out – I’ve just recently lost my own dog so I leave him there until Mass finishes and then I let him out.” Everyone in San Donaci has been so impressed by Ciccio’s loyalty to his owner that they decided to adopt and look after him

This kind of heart-breaking stories never cease to impress me. I posted quite a few of them on OC, if you’re looking to shed some tears: Capitan, who has been living by his owner’s grave for 6 years, Leao, the dog who lost his master to landslides in Brazil, or the Russian dog who stood guard over his mate’s body for a week, after she was hit by a car. Tragic stories that make me appreciate dogs even more.

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193 Funny and Interesting Facts

Please note that some of the 'facts' below have been proven false myths. An example is the duck's echo which does not echo (but proved that it does).

1. It is impossible to lick your elbow (busted)
2. A crocodile can't stick it's tongue out.
3. A shrimp's heart is in it's head.
4. People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you sneeze,your heart stops for a mili-second.
5. In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, no one reported a single case where an ostrich buried its head in the sand.
6. It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.
7. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
8. More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.
9. Rats and horses can't vomit.
10. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib.
11. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.
12. If you keep your eyes open by force when you sneeze, you might pop an eyeball out.
13. Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.
14. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.
15. In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
16. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
17. Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
18. A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
19. 23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their butts.
20. In the course of an average lifetime you will, while sleeping, eat 70 assorted insects and 10 spiders.
21. Most lipstick contains fish scales.
22. Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
23. Over 75% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.
24. A crocodile can't move its tongue and cannot chew. Its digestive juices are so strong that it can digest a steel nail.
25. Money notes are not made from paper, they are made mostly from a special blend of cotton and linen. In 1932, when a shortage of cash occurred in Tenino, Washington, USA, notes were made out of wood for a brief period.
26. The Grammy Awards were introduced to counter the threat of rock music. In the late 1950s, a group of record executives were alarmed by the explosive success of rock ‘n roll, considering it a threat to "quality" music.
27. Tea is said to have been discovered in 2737 BC by a Chinese emperor when some tea leaves accidentally blew into a pot of boiling water. The tea bag was introduced in 1908 by Thomas Sullivan of New York.
28. Over the last 150 years the average height of people in industrialised nations has increased 10 cm (about 4 inches). In the 19th century, American men were the tallest in the world, averaging 1,71m (5'6"). Today, the average height for American men is 1,75m (5'7"), compared to 1,77 (5'8") for Swedes, and 1,78 (5'8.5") for the Dutch. The tallest nation in the world is the Watusis of Burundi.
29. In 1955 the richest woman in the world was Mrs Hetty Green Wilks, who left an estate of $95 million in a will that was found in a tin box with four pieces of soap. Queen Elizabeth of Britain and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands count under the 10 wealthiest women in the world.
30. Joseph Niepce developed the world's first photographic image in 1827. Thomas Edison and W K L Dickson introduced the film camera in 1894. But the first projection of an image on a screen was made by a German priest. In 1646, Athanasius Kircher used a candle or oil lamp to project hand-painted images onto a white screen.
31. In 1935 a writer named Dudley Nichols refused to accept the Oscar for his movie The Informer because the Writers Guild was on strike against the movie studios. In 1970 George C. Scott refused the Best Actor Oscar for Patton. In 1972 Marlon Brando refused the Oscar for his role in The Godfather.
32. The system of democracy was introduced 2 500 years ago in Athens, Greece. The oldest existing governing body operates in Althing in Iceland. It was established in 930 AD.
33. A person can live without food for about a month, but only about a week without water.
    If the amount of water in your body is reduced by just 1%, you'll feel thirsty.
    If it's reduced by 10%, you'll die.
34. According to a study by the Economic Research Service, 27% of all food production in Western nations ends up in garbage cans. Yet, 1,2 billion people are underfed - the same number of people who are overweight.
35. Camels are called "ships of the desert" because of the way they move, not because of their transport capabilities. A Dromedary camel has one hump and a Bactrian camel two humps. The humps are used as fat storage. Thus, an undernourished camel will not have a hump. 
36. In the Durango desert, in Mexico, there's a creepy spot called the "Zone of Silence." You can't pick up clear TV or radio signals. And locals say fireballs sometimes appear in the sky.
37. Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.
38. Bill Gates' first business was Traff-O-Data, a company that created machines which recorded the number of cars passing a given point on a road.
39. Uranus' orbital axis is tilted at 90 degrees.
40. The final resting-place for Dr. Eugene Shoemaker - the Moon. The famed U.S. Geological Survey astronomer, trained the Apollo astronauts about craters, but never made it into space. Mr. Shoemaker had wanted to be an astronaut but was rejected because of a medical problem. His ashes were placed on board the Lunar Prospector spacecraft before it was launched on January 6, 1998. NASA crashed the probe into a crater on the moon in an attempt to learn if there is water on the moon.
41. Outside the USA, Ireland is the largest software producing country in the world.
42. The first fossilized specimen of Australopithecus afarenisis was named Lucy after the paleontologists' favorite song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," by the Beatles.
43. Figlet, an ASCII font converter program, stands for Frank, Ian and Glenn's LETters.
44. Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
45. Every year about 98% of atoms in your body are replaced.
46. Hot water is heavier than cold.
47. Plutonium - first weighed on August 20th, 1942, by University of Chicago scientists Glenn Seaborg and his colleagues - was the first man-made element.
48. If you went out into space, you would explode before you suffocated because there's no air pressure.
49. The radioactive substance, Americanium - 241 is used in many smoke detectors.
50. The original IBM-PCs, that had hard drives, referred to the hard drives as Winchester drives. This is due to the fact that the original Winchester drive had a model number of 3030. This is, of course, a Winchester firearm.
51. Sound travels 15 times faster through steel than through the air.
52. On average, half of all false teeth have some form of radioactivity.
53. Only one satellite has been ever been destroyed by a meteor: the European Space Agency's Olympus in 1993.
54. Starch is used as a binder in the production of paper. It is the use of a starch coating that controls ink penetration when printing. Cheaper papers do not use as much starch, and this is why your elbows get black when you are leaning over your morning paper.
55. Sterling silver is not pure silver. Because pure silver is too soft to be used in most tableware it is mixed with copper in the proportion of 92.5 percent silver to 7.5 percent copper.
56. A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber. A ball of solid steel will bounce higher than one made entirely of glass.
57. A chip of silicon a quarter-inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block.
58. An ordinary TNT bomb involves atomic reaction, and could be called an atomic bomb. What we call an A-bomb involves nuclear reactions and should be called a nuclear bomb.
59. At a glance, the Celsius scale makes more sense than the Fahrenheit scale for temperature measuring. But its creator, Anders Celsius, was an oddball scientist. When he first developed his scale, he made freezing 100 degrees and boiling 0 degrees, or upside down. No one dared point this out to him, so fellow scientists waited until Celsius died to change the scale.
60. At a jet plane's speed of 1,000 km (620mi) per hour, the length of the plane becomes one atom shorter than its original length.
61. The first full moon to occur on the winter solstice, Dec. 22, commonly called the first day of winter, happened in 1999. Since a full moon on the winter solstice occurred in conjunction with a lunar perigee (point in the moon's orbit that is closest to Earth), the moon appeared about 14% larger than it does at apogee (the point in it's elliptical orbit that is farthest from the Earth).
    
    Since the Earth is also several million miles closer to the sun at that time of the year than in the summer, sunlight striking the moon was about 7% stronger making it brighter. Also, this was the closest perigee of the Moon of the year since the moon's orbit is constantly deforming. In places where the weather was clear and there was a snow cover, even car headlights were superfluous.
62. According to security equipment specialists, security systems that utilize motion detectors won't function properly if walls and floors are too hot. When an infrared beam is used in a motion detector, it will pick up a person's body temperature of 98.6 degrees compared to the cooler walls and floor.
    
    If the room is too hot, the motion detector won't register a change in the radiated heat of that person's body when it enters the room and breaks the infrared beam. Your home's safety might be compromised if you turn your air conditioning off or set the thermostat too high while on summer vacation.
63. Western Electric successfully brought sound to motion pictures and introduced systems of mobile communications which culminated in the cellular telephone.
64. On December 23, 1947, Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., held a secret demonstration of the transistor which marked the foundation of modern electronics.
65. The wick of a trick candle has small amounts of magnesium in them. When you light the candle, you are also lighting the magnesium. When someone tries to blow out the flame, the magnesium inside the wick continues to burn and, in just a split second (or two or three), relights the wick.
66. Ostriches are often not taken seriously. They can run faster than horses, and the males can roar like lions.
67. Seals used for their fur get extremely sick when taken aboard ships.
68. Sloths take two weeks to digest their food.
69. Guinea pigs and rabbits can't sweat.
70. The pet food company Ralston Purina recently introduced, from its subsidiary Purina Philippines, power chicken feed designed to help roosters build muscles for cockfighting, which is popular in many areas of the world.
71. According to the Wall Street Journal, the cockfighting market is huge: The Philippines has five million roosters used for exactly that.
72. Sharks and rays are the only animals known to man that don't get cancer. Scientists believe this has something to do with the fact that they don't have bones, but cartilage.
73. The porpoise is second to man as the most intelligent animal on the planet.
74. Young beavers stay with their parents for the first two years of their lives before going out on their own.
75. Skunks can accurately spray their smelly fluid as far as ten feet.
76. Deer can't eat hay.
77. Gopher snakes in Arizona are not poisonous, but when frightened they may hiss and shake their tails like rattlesnakes.
78. On average, dogs have better eyesight than humans, although not as colorful.
79. The duckbill platypus can store as many as six hundred worms in the pouches of its cheeks.
80. The lifespan of a squirrel is about nine years.
81. North American oysters do not make pearls of any value.
82. Human birth control pills work on gorillas.
83. Many sharks lay eggs, but hammerheads give birth to live babies that look like very small duplicates of their parents. Young hammerheads are usually born headfirst, with the tip of their hammer-shaped head folded backward to make them more streamlined for birth.
84. Gorillas sleep as much as fourteen hours per day.
85. A biological reserve has been made for golden toads because they are so rare.
86. There are more than fifty different kinds of kangaroos.
87. Jellyfish like salt water. A rainy season often reduces the jellyfish population by putting more fresh water into normally salty waters where they live.
88. The female lion does ninety percent of the hunting.
89. The odds of seeing three albino deer at once are one in seventy-nine billion, yet one man in Boulder Junction, Wisconsin, took a picture of three albino deer in the woods.
90. A group of twelve or more cows is called a flink.
91. Cats often rub up against people and furniture to lay their scent and mark their territory. They do it this way, as opposed to the way dogs do it, because they have scent glands in their faces.
92. Cats sleep up to eighteen hours a day, but never quite as deep as humans. Instead, they fall asleep quickly and wake up intermittently to check to see if their environment is still safe.
93. Catnip, or Nepeta cataria, is an herb with nepetalactone in it. Many think that when cats inhale nepetalactone, it affects hormones that arouse sexual feelings, or at least alter their brain functioning to make them feel "high." Catnip was originally made, using nepetalactone as a natural bug repellant, but roaming cats would rip up the plants before they could be put to their intended task.
94. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans ages the equivalent of five human years for every day they live, so they usually die after about fourteen days. When stressed, though, the worm goes into a comatose state that can last for two or more months. The human equivalent would be to sleep for about two hundred years.
95. You can tell the sex of a horse by its teeth. Most males have 40, females have 36.
96. Money isn't made out of paper; it's made out of cotton.
97. The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottle represents the varieties of pickle the company once had.
98. Your stomach produces a new layer of mucus every two weeks - otherwise it will digest itself.
99. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
100. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
101. Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.
102. Every person has a unique tongue print as well as fingerprints.
103. 315 entries in Webster's 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.
104. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.
105. During the chariot scene in 'Ben Hur' a small red car can be seen in the distance.
106. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.
107. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
108. Most lipstick contains fish scales.
109. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear any pants.
110. Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.
111. Upper and lower case letters are named 'upper' and 'lower' because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the 'upper case' letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the smaller, 'lower case' letters.
112. Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.
113. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
114. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
115. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan, there was never a recorded Wendy before!
116. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and silver!
117. Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors.
118. A tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion will make it instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
119. The mask used by Michael Myers in the original "Halloween" was a Captain Kirk mask painted white.
120. If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
121. Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. It's the same with apples!
122. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying!
123. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
124. Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.
125. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages them.
126. The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.
127. Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon.
128. Of all the words in the English language, the word ’set’ has the most definitions!
129. What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as an "English kiss" in France.
130. "Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
131. "Rhythm" is the longest English word without a vowel.
132. In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child
133. A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off.
134. Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
135. You can’t kill yourself by holding your breath
136. There is a city called Rome on every continent.
137. It’s against the law to have a pet dog in Iceland.
138. Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day.
139. Horatio Nelson, one of England’s most illustrious admirals was throughout his life, never able to find a cure for his sea-sickness.
140. The skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is present at all important meetings of the University of London
141. Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people
142. Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, everytime you breathe!
143. The elephant is the only mammal that can’t jump!
144. One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet!
145. Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different!
146. The first known transfusion of blood was performed as early as 1667, when Jean-Baptiste, transfused two pints of blood from a sheep to a young man
147. Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!
148. Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin!
149. The present population of 5 billion plus people of the world is predicted to become 15 billion by 2080.
150. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
151. Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and had only ONE testicle.
152. Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.
153. Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."
154. Coca-Cola would be green if colouring weren’t added to it.
155. On average a hedgehog’s heart beats 300 times a minute.
156. More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.
157. The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.
158. More people are allergic to cow’s milk than any other food.
159. Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.
160. The placement of a donkey’s eyes in its’ heads enables it to see all four feet at all times!
161. The six official languages of the United Nations are: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish.
162. Earth is the only planet not named after a god.
163. It’s against the law to burp, or sneeze in a church in Nebraska, USA.
164. You’re born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206.
165. Some worms will eat themselves if they can’t find any food!
166. Dolphins sleep with one eye open!
167. It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open
168. The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old!
169. The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds
170. Queen Elizabeth I regarded herself as a paragon of cleanliness. She declared that she bathed once every three months, whether she needed it or not
171. Slugs have 4 noses.
172. Owls are the only birds who can see the colour blue.
173. A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years!
174. A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!
175. The average person laughs 10 times a day!
176. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain
177. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
178. If you farted consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
179. The human heart! creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
180. A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.
181. A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death!
182. Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories a hour
183. The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
184. The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field.
185. The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.
186. Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
187. Butterflies taste with their feet.
188. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
189. A cat's urine glows under a black light.
190. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
191. Starfish have no brains.
192. Polar bears are left-handed.
193. Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure. SOURCE

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The Fattening Farms of Mauritania – Force-Feeding Young Girls in the name of Beauty

While the whole world is obsessed over getting thin, it seems there are far-flung places in the world today where fat is still considered a thing of beauty. Not in a good way, though. In the West African nation of Mauritania, it is so important for girls to be fat that they are sent away to fat camp – the opposite of the western version – during school holidays, to put on oodles of weight.

According to women’s rights campaigner Mint Ely, girls as young as five are subjected to the tradition known as Leblouh each year. Leblouh is an attempt to groom young girls for potential suitors, involving the consumption of gargantuan amounts of food; even vomit, if it refuses to stay down. Ely says that in Mauritania, a woman’s size indicates the space she occupies in her husband’s heart. So to make sure no other woman can ever have room, girls are sent away for Leblouh at special farms where older women will administer the necessary diet. It’s rather appalling to know that 5, 7 and 9-year-olds are expected to consume a daily diet of two kilos of pounded millet mixed with two cups of butter and 20 liters of camel’s milk. Their daily consumption comes up to a whopping 16,000 calories.

This process is usually done during school holidays or in the rainy season when milk is plentiful. Torture methods are employed in case the girls aren’t eating as much as they are expected to. Fatima M’baye, a children’s rights lawyer, says, “The girl is sent away from home without understanding why. She suffers but is told that being fat will bring her happiness. Matrons use sticks which they roll on the girl’s thighs, to break down tissue and hasten the process.” Some other torture methods include ‘zayar’, where two sticks are inserted on each side of a toe. If a child refuses to eat or drink, the matron will squeeze the sticks together, causing a lot of pain. If successful, the fattening process will cause a 12-year-old child to weigh 80kg. “If she vomits, she must drink it,” says M’baye. “By the age of 15, she will look 30.”

As strange as it seems, the practice of Leblouh is a respected ancient tradition in Mauritania. It supposedly dates back to pre-colonial times, when the white Moor Arabs of the region were all nomads. The richer the husband, the less his wife would have to do around the house. The rich wives were able to sit around the house all day while black slaves took care of all the household chores. Invariably, they got fat, and round bodies became a sign of affluence and of good husbands. Stretch marks, known as ‘tebtath’ were seen as a woman’s jewels. ‘Lekhwassar’, which is fat around the waist, was given lyrical pride. In recent times, however, things were slowly starting to look better for the women of Mauritania. “We had a Ministry of Women’s Affairs. We had achieved a parliamentary quota of 20% seats. We had female diplomats and governors. The military have set us back by decades, sending us back to our traditional roles,” says Mint Ely, about the military coup in 2008. “Until the military coup, we had made strides. Ten years ago we ran information campaigns about the dangers of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The government even commissioned ballads condemning fattening.” But things went back to they were again since General Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz seized power after the elected president tried to sack him.

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Indian Student Invents Electrifying Alarm Clock that Shocks You Out of Bed

Tired of waking up very late and missing his university lectures, Indian student Sankalp Sinha decided to do something about his problem – he invented a special alarm clock that “rewards” the owner with an electric shock if he tries to press the snooze button.

19-year-old Sankalp Sinha came up with the idea for his shocking alarm clock a couple of years ago, when he was having trouble getting up in the morning to attend university classes. He had developed a habit of hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep, so he started thinking about a solution that would force him out of bed. A student of automobile engineering at Sharda University in Uttar Pradesh, India, Sinha came up with an idea for an alarm clock that administers a small electric shock via the very popular snooze button. “The shock it administers is harmless but is enough to energize you”, the young inventor says, adding that users will be able to adjust how strong the electric shock they get is. He added that the power of his Good Morning Sing N Shock clock will be a fraction of the 50,000 volts delivered by the standard Taser gun. Pretty weak, but you want the thing to wake you up, not put you to sleep, right?

The electric current is administered when the sleepy user presses the aluminum-coated snooze button, and Sankalp assures us not even the deepest sleeper will be able to ignore his creation. ’I think it will help a lot of people who have the same problem as I do,’ says the inventor, who is currently in negotiations with several manufacturers about getting his Good Morning Sing N Shock alarm clock into mass production. If it ever hits retailer shelves, it will probably sell for about $100.

I like Sankalp Sinha’s idea of a shocking wake up call, but if I had to choose, I’d go for the annoying Ramos, an alarm clock that doesn’t have a snooze button and can only be turned off by punching in an elaborate code that requires enough brain power to ensure you stay up.

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Brazilian Company Offers Fake Facebook Girlfriends for $20

Do you want to make your ex-girlfriend by hooking up with a hot chick on Facebook? Are your parents pressuring you to go out and get a date? Are you tired of being teased about not having a girlfriend? If any of this sounds familiar, know that there’s hope for you yet. It’s called Namoro Fake, and it’s a Brazilian company that offers fake Facebook girlfriends, for a fee.

Just because you couldn’t get a girlfriend if your life depended on it, doesn’t mean all your friends have to know about it. What if you could make it seem like you’re dating this beautiful woman, who seems crazy about you that she leave romantic comments on your profile every single day? That would probably make you look cool in front of your friends and maybe even score some points with the ladies in real life, right? Well, that’s probably all the guys that are using Namoro Fake’s services are thinking, anyway. The Brazilian company offers guys the chance at a fake virtual relationship for as little as $10. The relationship may not be real, but the girls behind the profiles certainly are. Namoro Fake hires female Facebook users to act as girlfriends, and apparently splits the proceeds with them. Since you’ll be sending them the exact messages you want posted on your Wall, all they have to do is paste the messages and keep their profiles active to make them seem more real. If you purchase the expensive packages, they’ll even list you in their relationship status. Users can choose their girlfriend from various Facebook profiles listed on the company’s website.

But why would you want to pay for a fake Facebook girlfriend? According to Namoro Fake, there are a number of reasons: to make an ex-girlfriend jealous, show people how quickly you’ve moved on after a breakup, stop friends and family from pressuring and questioning you about a girlfriend, or just to make you more attractive to real women and boost your self-esteem. The company says their service fixes all of the above problems, but you’ll have to fork out some dough for it. The budget plan costs just 10 Brazilian reals ($5), but it will only keep the flame alive for 3 days, and includes just 3 comments from the girl. Then there’s the 19 reals ($9) plan which ups the period to a whole week and 5 comments, the 39 reals ($20) girlfriend plan, also valid for a week, but which includes 10 comments and a relationship status. The “Virtual Girlfriend” package costs 99 reals ($48), is valid for 30 days and includes 30 comments and a relationship status. Believe it or not, the service has been so successful that there are currently no fake girlfriends available for hire.

Namoro Fake only caters to guys looking for fake girlfriends, but it’s working on a similar service for women. The website makes it clear that although there are real women behind the Facebook profiles, info on their real identities will not be provided.

If this seems to expensive to you, there’s always the 5$ fake girlfriend service on GirlfriendHire.

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