Oddity Central |
- Online Language School Uses Hot Models to Help You Learn Mandarin
- Fight Church – When Evangelical Christianity Meets Mixed Martial Arts
- Creepy Fan Shows-Off His 15 Tattoos of Miley Cyrus
| Online Language School Uses Hot Models to Help You Learn Mandarin Posted: 20 Jun 2012 09:51 AM PDT
Let’s face it, for most of us learning Chinese really is a Herculean task, but SexyMandarin.com, an unconventional online school, tries to make things easier by using lingerie-clad models as teachers. China’s official language, Mandarin, or Putonghua, has around 900 million native speakers, and 1,4 billion speakers worldwide, and as China’s role in the global economy becomes more important, the number of people trying to learn the language is also on the rise. But Mandarin is known as one of the toughest languages in the world, and just looking at the intricate symbols you can tell mastering it won’t be easy. But one online language school has apparently found an ingenious way of making Mandarin more accessible – sexy lingerie-wearing teachers. I wonder why I didn’t think of that… Ever since it launched, in December of 2011, Sexy Mandarin was a huge hit, with its provocative clips showing young pretty Chinese models talking in their native language. Oh, and there’s also Mr. Fung, a cartoon character who actually explains what the girls are saying, but who even cares about that when there are hot girls examining their bodies in the mirror, grappling each other on a bed, cleaning cars with foamy sponges or sucking suggestively on a lemon? Apparently, these sexy teachers are asked to submit a full-body photo and provide any relevant modelling or teaching experience, in order to improve their chances of scoring a job with Sexy Mandarin. Kaoru Kikuchi, an architecture graduate from the University of Nottingham, England, is the founder of this unique language school. The Japanese-born model and designer says her goal was to make Mandarin more accessible. ”If you go the textbook way with all these Chinese characters it just makes you intimidated,” Kikuchi says. “If you start with the colloquial way … or sexy clips it is a different story.” Mick Gleissner, a Hong Kong filmmaker who produces the videos, adds: ”If you want to learn to play the piano and you try to play Chopin of course you are going to give up. But if you see a kid trying to play kid’s songs … you’ll say, ‘Hey that’s kind of easy and fun.’”
Most of the Sexy Mandarin videos posted on YouTube have tens of thousands of views, with the first lesson topping the channel with over 350,000 views, but not everyone seems to appreciate their educational purpose. Wu Yue, a teacher from Beijing’s Mandarin Connection school said ”It is very entertaining, and might be good for marketing and promotion, but it is not good for serious language learning. Students would get easily distracted during a class featuring sexual content.”
What do you think, is Sexy Mandarin the future of online language schools? You have to admit it looks much more fun than the way many Chinese are learning English. via Telegraph.co.uk Online Language School Uses Hot Models to Help You Learn Mandarin was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Fight Church – When Evangelical Christianity Meets Mixed Martial Arts Posted: 20 Jun 2012 08:12 AM PDT
What do you do when your love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is just as strong as your passion for religion? That’s the big question Fight Church is trying to answer. Fight Church is an interesting documentary directed by Oscar-winning director Daniel Junge that tries to explore the rocky relationship between Evangelical Christianity and fighting in a cage. It mainly focuses on Senior Pastor Paul Burress, his Trinity Church and its offshoot MMA school, Trinity Training. The controversial film was given the green light after attracting $30,000 through Kickstarter, and although it’s still in production, the debut trailer posted online has already caused quite a stir. And that comes as no surprise, considering it features people asking questions like “Can you love your neighbor as yourself and at the same time knee him in the face as hard as you can?” “I love fighting!” Pastor Burress says, and in Fight Church he even tries to explain to his congregation that “In life there are times when you take shots cause its a battle out there and the enemy is trying to seek and destroy us. He wants to destroy your families, he wants to destroy you personally. That’s where the bible gives you your training.” He says he would love to hold cage fighting competitions right in his church, in Rochester, but MMA is still illegal in the state of New York. According to other Evangelical Christians who love mixed martial arts, MMA is not violent, it’s just “two participants entering into a ring or a cage saying, we’re gonna test each other today and the best man’s gonna win.” But state officials are appalled by the idea of a Christian Pastor wanting to take things to the next level of violence. For the Christian fighters shown in the Fight Church trailer, the fight is religious in itself. ’The hope is that through the fight I can create a relationship with the person I’m fighting and extend Christ to him,’ says one dedicated fighter, while ’Fight Pastor’ Brandon Beals says ’The greatest example is in scripture where Jesus was a fighter. That is the type of Jesus that I want to serve.’ Daniel Junge, the film’s director, explains that ‘religion is such that everyone has their own interpretation; sometimes a very passionate interpretation of whether or not it encompasses their lifestyle. The people who inhabit this lifestyle, fight and are devout Christians who believe that there are no contradictions there.’ Probably the most disturbing thing about Fight Church is that it shows young boys involved in fighting. One of them says ‘I am gonna go in there and rip this kids head off,’ before going into the ring and taking a beating from a smaller kid. He is then shown crying as Pastor Paul Burress tries to console him by telling him some of his best life experiences involved taking a beating.
There are probably few people out there who really don’t see anything wrong about connecting God and religion to brutal, bloody fighting, but I think ’Fight Pastor’ Brandon Beals has it right when he says that if you think mixed martial arts is wrong, and that Jesus told everybody to turn the other cheek, this is probably not the church for you! via HuffPost Fight Church – When Evangelical Christianity Meets Mixed Martial Arts was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Creepy Fan Shows-Off His 15 Tattoos of Miley Cyrus Posted: 20 Jun 2012 12:16 AM PDT
Ok, so you’ve bought all of Miley’s albums, you know all her songs by heart, and your room is practically covered with poster of her. You still have nothing on this guy, because let’s face it, nothing says “I Love Miley Cyrus” than 15 tattoos related to her. Showing off your obsession through tattoos is really nothing new. Remember the lady who got a fullback Twilight tat, or the dude covered in tattoos of Neytiri from Avatar? Well, they’re nowhere as strange as this particular Miley Cyrus fan. The guy took some photos of himself wearing a Miley hat and showing off all of his 15 creepy tattoos and posted them on Twitter. And I’m not talking about some pimple-face teen who got drunk one night and made the mistake of a lifetime. This is a full-grown man with a passion for the 19-year-old pop star. The dude, who calls himself MileyCyrusCarl on Twitter, is apparently from Bridlington, UK, and has this as a description on the popular microblogging platform: Miley Cyrus u are a Miracle. I love u so much x nobody is more beautiful & talented & sexy as u. I have 15 tattoos of u! There’s an Angel in LA xxxx. In the photos he posted, Carl proudly shows off his ink, including a portrait of the American singer on his left shoulder, her name on the sides of his palms and on his chest, as well as the names of some of her songs on his forearms. I think it’s pretty safe to say this guy is going to have a tough time finding a girlfriend, unless it’s another Miley Cyrus-obsessed fan, in which case the tattoos may actually help.
Photos via Twitpic via Buzzfeed Creepy Fan Shows-Off His 15 Tattoos of Miley Cyrus was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
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