Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Military Kindergarten Toughens Up Preschoolers with Marine Drills

Posted: 29 Jul 2013 03:52 AM PDT

At the Albert Kindergarten, in Taichung, Taiwan, children aged three to six don camouflage outfits and take part in a mandatory exercise program modeled after marine drills. Their parents hope the rough training will prepare them for the hardships of life, but there are those who criticize the preschool for pushing the kids too hard and exposing them to injury.

For one to two hours a day, the children enrolled at Taichung’s Albert Kindergarten perform a series a series of physical exercises inspired by military drills. Principal Fong Yun believes Taiwanese kids lack confidence and courage compared to youngsters from other countries, so over 10 years ago she teamed up with pediatric professor Chen Yi-hsin to develop a special program that combined military drills and gymnastics to boost their physical and mental strength. Yun is convince her training will help the students deal with hardships like tough college admission exams, job hunting and even marriage. Many Taiwanese parents seem to share her beliefs, as all the classes at Albert Kindergarten are full and parents drive from over half an hour ever day just to drop their kids off here. The children climb ladders, do handstands, backflips and all kinds of other exercises that even hardened marines sometimes find difficult. In order to graduate, they must prove they’ve mastered the entire routine by passing a challenging test.

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Ukrainian Battlestar Galactica Fan Builds Life-Size Wooden Cylon

Posted: 29 Jul 2013 02:06 AM PDT

39-year-old Dmitry Balandin, a robot enthusiast from Zaporozhye, Ukraine, spent six months building a 1.95 -meter-tall Cylon out of 500 plywood parts.

Dmitry Balandin works as a crane operator, but ever since he saw the 1980 Russian movie “Electronik”, about a professor who builds a robot that looks and acts like a human, he has always been fascinated by robotics. About two years ago he finally decided to live out his childhood dream of creating a real-life robot. In the beginning, he wanted to use metal as his medium, but realized it was hard to work with in his Zaporozhye apartment, so he chose plywood instead. After months of planning and experimenting, Dmitry finally started work on his wooden robot six months ago, designing and cutting all the parts himself. Although he didn’t have the resources to give his creation a human appearance, he decided the best way to make it as realistic as possible was to use flexible joints. The Cylon (a name inspired by the hit-series Battlestar Galactica) can bend and extend its limbs, shake hands and rotate its neck and torso, but Balandin wants to add a series of improvements, including a radio-controlled motor that will allow his wooden robot to move in a way similar to the fighting bots from the movie Real Steel. Unfortunately, that would cost the Ukrainian craftsman an extra $3,000, which at the moment is more than he can afford.

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Fashionable Dress Made from the Pages of an Old Thesaurus

Posted: 29 Jul 2013 01:05 AM PDT

Canadian actress Jodi Phillips spent months tearing pages out of an old thesaurus and gluing them together to create an awe-inspiring strapless paper dress. After uploading photos of her wearing the unique garment to Reddit, she garnered more attention than she had ever hoped for.

Two years ago, Jodi Phillips was asked by a committee member for the Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival if she could design a bookworm costume to greet visitors during the four-day event. A bookworm herself, Jodi decided the best way to do it was to make a dress almost entirely from book pages. So she started scouring thrift stores for the perfect book for the job, and finally found an old thesaurus. Although she doesn’t remember exactly how many hours she put into making her stunning dress, the aspiring actress says she through two full seasons her favorite television show, How I Met Your Mother, tearing, folding and gluing pages. Lined with fabric and featuring a bodice for body support, Jody’s recycled dress is completely covered with hundreds of yellowed pages from thesaurus sections A through O. “It feels quite comfy actually,if not a little hot, although its hard to move without ripping it,” Jodi says. “The parts that are scaled are actually the parts that don’t move. It has pages bunched up on the parts that stretch so they sorta inchworm out when it moves.”

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