5 Strangest iPad Incidents

Apple's claim that the iPad tablet is magical sounds about right. It has inspired people to behave in some pretty unusual ways. Here is a round-up of five of the oddest:

1. iPads in the Afterlife

 
Paper replicas of the Apple iPad in China Reports emerged from Malaysia earlier this year that Chinese families there were scrambling to find paper replicas of iPads, which like the real thing was in short supply. It turns out these families were looking to burn the tablet replicas -- and replicas of other luxury items as well as fake money--at the tombs of their ancestors, a practice that is part of the annual Qingming festival. This year, the iPad replicas are the hot item, literally and figuratively.

2. iPad a Real Riot

A riot broke out at a Beijing Apple Store when store personnel and would-be buyers clashed, reportedly sparked by a line jumping patron and overzealous employee. Five people were hurt during the melee and the store was forced to close over the May weekend.

3. $900 to Get in Line

The iPad 2 starts at $500 but the device cost one eager buyer a lot more than that when the tablets went on sale in March. Hazem Sayed forked over an extra $900 to a college student to take the student's spot first in line at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store. Macworld quoted Sayed as saying the transaction was totally worth it in that it got him a bunch of publicity for his iOS development project. He'll need to pay us $900 to mention it here.

4. Fingering an iPad Thief

A Colorado man's joy over buying an iPad for a friend at a mall quickly turned to pain when a thief swiped the device from him and tore off part of one of the the victim's pinky fingers as well. The iPad buyer said the thief kept pulling at a bag containing the iPad that was wrapped around his finger, and according to an AP report: "He kept pulling until something had to give, and it wound up being my finger." A partial amputation resulted.

5. Kidney for an iPad

A 17-year-old Chinese boy has made headlines this week, beginning in the Shanghai Daily, for selling one of his kidneys for about $3,100 so that he could buy an iPad. Reportedly, the boy went through a black market organ trader to sell his kidney after getting it removed at a hospital -- then wound up back in the hospital with an infection from the ill-advised operation. Separately, the iPad sparked a riot by over-exuberant buyers at a Beijing Apple Store.

Chalk Drawing That Won Guinness

I can’t believe we missed this one – Qi Xinghua is a Chinese 3D Chalk artist (first in his country) whose painting entitled Lions Gate Gorge earned him an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest 3D painting in the world! I’m not exactly sure how fresh this information is, as I could swear we’ve seen bigger. Still, with 23 meters in width, 32 meters in length and over 6 meters in height, we can’t ignore hard work Qi invested into this masterpiece. This 3D painting was presented at the Baiyan Wanda Plaza shopping-mall in Guangzhou (China), and it took Qi more than a month to finish the project. Oh, and one more interesting fact: apparently some people reported dizziness, during their “rope balancing”.

Qi Xinghua says he has calculated three different formulas that can be applied on all paintings of varying sizes. He also added (quoted below):

To put it in the simplest way, it’s reversed vision, which is also called inverse-perspective. From our normal vision, nearby objects are big and far away ones are small. I use the opposite method to make far away objects big and close objects small. In this way, a two-dimensional painting turns three-dimensional.

Don’t ask me why, but I have a feeling we’ll be seeing much more of this artist’s creations in the coming weeks! Even after seeing so many awesome pavement drawings, I can’t seem to perceive below pavement as a flat surface. How about you?