Tradition. A simple word that is not always simple to stomach. Take for instance a ritual that has occurred for centuries in the small Indian village of Betul. Located in the state of Madhya Pradesh, in central India, the inhabitants of this town happily toss their children into a large, steaming pile of cow dung.
Diwali, also known as the Festival of Lights, is the largest celebration in Hinduism. In the weeks leading up to the event, villagers in Betul begin collecting cow poop from the roughly 600 cows that reside in the surrounding area. All of this dung is piled up in a location at the center of town. On the day after Diwali, parents take children and dip and roll their offspring in the feces, all the while drums and fireworks roar in the background.
The beliefs behind this activity are multi-faceted. First, cows are among the most sacred animals in Hinduism and anything that brings a person closer to a cow is viewed in a favorable light. Second, Hindu preachers claim that both cow pee and cow poop have curative properties. Third, adherents believe that the ritual honors their ancestors, who also participated in the cow dung dipping, and that this will bestow good luck onto the children as they grow up. The ceremony lasts from sunrise to sunset, with villagers waiting their turn to dunk their children. Youths, ranging from six months to nine-years-old, experience this smelly tradition. Older children are tossed into the pile of feces, while infants are gently laid in the dung.
While this is certainly a strange tradition, doctors note that there may be some truth to the claim that this weird practice has medicinal benefits. By their early exposure to the bacteria-filled dung, children are able to develop resistance to infections which they might otherwise succumb to as they grow up in a polluted environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg6noSdfC00
http://www.weirdasianews.com/2016/01/26/indian-children-rolled-in-cow-poop-for-good-luck/
It probably explains their love for poo.
>>19883
how do traditions like these even start? There are parents who before going out to work one morning they think "you know what would be good for the little Raji's career? Flinging him into a pile of shit crying"
>>19891
They don't start overnight. Like OP mentioned, they believe cow excrement has curative properties. It might have started out with rubbing some onto the face (for ex), before transforming into dung mudfights.
Lots of religions have odd traditions when viewed from the outside. Christianity has baptism, and rubbing an ash cross on the forehead. Muslim cultures still treat women as property.
HR 515, The scarlet letter, and ‘International Megan’s Law’
he statute (full text here) requires the secretary of state to affix a “unique identifier” on all passports issued to “covered sex offenders” — a “visual designation affixed to a conspicuous location on the passport indicating that the individual is a covered sex offender.” A “covered sex offender” is anyone previously convicted, at any point in his/her life, for a sex offense involving a minor.
It is, as far as I can determine, the first time in U.S. history that any such special designation will appear on the passports of any U.S. citizens, and I think it should send at least a small chill down all of our spines. Not to overdo the analogy, but it does call to mind Martin Niemoller’s famous dictum (“First they came for the communists . . .”). It is part and parcel of a dispiriting and disheartening campaign (on which I have commented a number of times in the past — see e.g. here, here and here) piling punitive disability upon punitive disability — not just public shaming, but also restrictions on residency locations, employment, Internet use, etc. — on this particularly despised class.
https://www.change.org/p/u-s-house-of-representatives-vote-against-hr-515?recruiter=329453112&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_page&utm_term=mob-xs-no_src-no_msg
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/01/06/the-yellow-star-the-scarlet-letter-and-international-megans-law/
>>19696
It sounds like a classic example of government spending too much money to impose moral standards without much to show for it. This isn't going to stop people from going on asian sex tours or fucking underage minors on craigslist, for instance.
>>19696
lol we did that here in germany aswell...
but instead of sex offenders it was jews!
next thing is they put em into special camps^^
>>19696
>punitive damage
Kiddie diddlers should be publicly hanged.
Those who defend them should hang along side.
https://archive.is/RB4bK
https://archive.is/VMIew
The chief diversity officer of the University of Iowa said her office plans to have a bias assessment response team in place on campus by the end of the current semester.
The proposed team — which would be known by the acronym BART — would address complaints of racial or other bias on campus concerning incidents that “skirt the line between a policy violation or even a crime.”
“I’ve been thinking about it since I’ve been here,” said Georgina Dodge, who has been serving since 2010 as UI’s chief diversity officer and associate vice president. “We’ve been talking about it for a couple of years, but it was a matter of having the capacity to do it.”
With help from the Office of the UI Vice President for Student Life, Dodge said UI officials will meet with various stakeholders over the course of the semester, with the goal of having a bias assessment process in place by May.
"It’s one thing to look at other institutions … but we really need to be specific to our own culture," Dodge told the Press-Citizen on Wednesday. "And that is something that is going to mean pulling everybody in and having a discussion."
Although UI’s team will be tailored specifically to the institution, Dodge said it will be modeled somewhat after the BART in place at Ohio State University, where she previously had directed the Department of African American and African Studies Community Extension Center.
The calls to create a bias assessment team at UI have grown louder from some student groups over past 18 months — especially after a visiting UI art professor displayed a controversial KKK-effigy on the Pentacrest. Although the artist said the unauthorized sculpture was intended to raise awareness of ongoing racial violence in the U.S., many students viewed the sculpture as a threat.
...rest of story above
Trump can't win soon enough
> BART
Ayyy carumba!
>>19695
This hug box bullshit is getting out of heard some one use the term feminist ally the other day fugg
Vladimir Putin confessed yesterday at a conference of the All-Russia People's Front (a political movement Putin started in 2011) that he is personally very fond of the ideas found in communism and socialism.
According to Putin, the Code of the Builder of Communism (a set of 12 codified moral rules in the USSR guiding every Communist Party member and Communist youth member) “strongly resembles the Bible.” “This is not a joke; it was actually an excerpt from the Bible,” Putin explained.
The president also noted that communism and socialism, as they were practically implemented in the Soviet Union, were far from what socialist-utopians proposed.
“The practical implementation of these ideals in [the USSR] had little in common with what the utopian socialists Saint-Simon or Owen spoke about. This country had little resemblance to their Sun City,” Putin said, referring to the utopian work by the Italian Dominican philosopher Tommaso Campanella, published in 1602.
Putin also said he never threw out or burned his Soviet Communist Party membership card.
This was not the first time Putin compared the Code of the Builder of Communism to the Bible. In 2013, he called the code “a pathetic copy from the Bible,” saying Soviet communism observed quasi-religious values.
On January 21, Vladimir Putin blamed Vladimir Lenin for the collapse of the Soviet Union. “There were a lot of ideas like autonomation and so on. They put an atomic bomb under the building we call Russia and then it blew up. We didn't need any world revolution,” Putin said at a meeting of the Presidential Council for Science and Education.
https://meduza.io/en/news/2016/01/26/putin-says-he-s-fond-of-communist-and-socialist-ideas
>>19577
They should put Engels out of this picture and Brezhnev in instead. He would fit nice between Stalin and Putin with his big eyebrows
>>19577
Wait, you guys think Putin might be a communism? No, that just wouldn't make sense, and is so unexpected!
Is habbening!
well its finally over bundy is arrested and shots were fired
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/officials-close-highway-near-oregon-community-at-center-of-wildlife-refuge-standoff-oregonian/ar-BBoKsvV?ocid=spartanntp
>>19586
One person killed
>itsonlyjustbegun
>le day of the rope meme
op here Russia today reporting 1 person killed
https://www.rt.com/usa/330249-ammon-bundy-oregon-arrest/
Why do I find news like this exciting I really need to get a life
http://www.wired.com/2016/01/please-stop-saying-humans-arent-causing-climate-change/
>an opinion piece
This isn't news.
>Humans are causing climate change
nice meme m8 :^)
Isn't this just common knowledge? I figure the only people that don't believe it are those making money off of what is causing it or people who drank the red kool aid and pray to Glenn Beck before bed.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-responds-to-trump-dropping-out-hes-still-welcome-but-there-are-conditions/
http://www.mediaite.com/online/fox-news-responds-to-trumps-latest-twitter-poll-with-first-rate-trolling/
Donald is skipping the final debate before the Iowa caucus. Recently, Trump has been polling ahead of Ted and some commentators think he is trying to miss the debate to avoid going head to head with Cruz.
My opinion is that Trump is worried he will not win Iowa because if that happens it will shatter his aura of invincibly, and significantly slow his momentum going forward. He has presented himself above everything else as a winner, if he can not win then his other claims become suspect.
Ted also offered to go one-on-one with Trump with Mark Levin as the moderator.. Which we won't see and was a good taunt by Ted. I wouldn't be surprised if Cruz started to climb in the polls because of all of this.
Both are awful people.
>>19669
I don't really follow the reasoning behind why he's not participating. She isn't fair? If she isn't fair there'll be backlash. He shouldn't have anything to worry about. He's childish.
>>19676
He claims that Megyn is unfair toward him, but its probably just a smokescreen he can use so he doesn't have to get hit by Ted's ammunition
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/546036/first-monkeys-with-autism-created-in-china/
China greatest nation.
>>19446
oh, thanks god, alchemists have been trying for centuries
>>19446
>Popularity of My Little Pony increases tenfold
>>19446
>I thought africa already existed
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/tom-delay-hillary-clinton-indict-fbi/2016/01/25/id/710813/
Thank god
>newsmax
inb4 nothing happens
Credibility issues with previously indicted Tom Delay, don't know what to believe, nothing will probably happen, the current decline marches on
Either she gets indited or the FBI goes public, either way she loses.
http://time.com/4194226/planned-parenthood-david-daleiden-felony/
>Three years after David Daleiden launched his plot against Planned Parenthood, and six months after the release of his undercover videos triggered a national political tempest, the first criminal indictments were finally handed down Monday in connection with the sting.
>Prosecution was one of the goals of the intricate caper from the beginning, Troy Newman, a Daleiden associate and fellow antiabortion activist, told TIME in an interview last year. But in a surprise twist, it’s Daleiden, not Planned Parenthood, on the business end of criminal charges.
>A grand jury in Harris County, Tex., indicted Daleiden, 27, on two counts: one second-degree felony charge of tampering with a governmental record, and a misdemeanor charge related to the prohibition of the purchase and sale of human organs. Under Texas law, the felony charge carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
A Y Y L M A O
>>19600
I'd imagine this will be sadly under-reported in conservative media. I'd bet the average FoxNews-only viewer has no idea this even happened.
>a misdemeanor charge related to the prohibition of the purchase and sale of human organs
But they just let PP off for this exact same charge in spite of openly talking about selling them for a profit in the videos.
>>19686
>But they just let PP off for this exact same charge in spite of openly talking about selling them for a profit in the videos.
That's the point, the videos were doctored to make it appear they are saying things they really weren't.
26th January, 1:30 PM EST
http://clock.thebulletin.org/2016
There is possibility they will reset the clock, as the situation gets shittier, and [OPs opinion] setting it to 23:59 would cause panic.
>>19300
What's all this then?
But what's the chance it would be 23:59?
The closest the world ever got to midnight was the 1963 cuban missile crisis, which was two minutes away. Right now we're at 3 minutes, and I predict that it will not change because within the past 12 months there was a mix of good (environmental talks in Paris) and bad (ISIS attacks, North Korea's potential A-bomb testing). Also, I think current circumstances do not justify moving the clock to 23:58, if the only other circumstance was the cuban missile crisis. At least right now we are not in a nuclear arms race... (rather, we are engaged in a series of overlapping proxy wars in the middle east, but that's another story)
>>19308
>But what's the chance it would be 23:59?
If Trump or Hillary get elected then it probably would. After people realize that their probably not going to start a war, then it will move back 4 or 5 minutes. It's just like Reagan and Carter.
>Nachrichtendienstgesetzt (NDG),… a bill that gave Swiss intelligence authorities more clout to spy on private communications, hack into citizens’ computers, and sweep up their cellphone information.
>The climate of fear and terrorism, he said, felt too overwhelming to get people to care about constitutional rights when people first started organizing to fight the NDG law. Governments around the world, not to mention cable news networks, have taken advantage of tragedy to expand their reach under the guise of protecting people, even in classically neutral Switzerland — without much transparency or public debate on whether or not increased surveillance would help solve the problem.
>But thanks to the way Swiss law works — if you get together 50,000 signatures within three months of the law passing — you can force a nationwide referendum where every citizen gets a say.
>“In Switzerland, and overseas, no one really thought to ask the people,” Yen said. “The public opinion, especially from the young people, has shifted to pro-privacy.”
https://theintercept.com/2016/01/25/how-a-small-company-in-switzerland-is-fighting-a-surveillance-law-and-winning/
Based Switzerland. Lead the way, Swissbros.
>>19331
> Nachrichtendienstgesetzt
The name alone is hard to take in...
Fuck if only we could prevent the nsa from invading us like that..
>>19363
If only citizens were made more aware of bills being worked on and being passed, including the fine print that lets anything and everything happen even if it's completely unrelated to the original point of the bill.
> Since the hat debuted and Trump's campaign became a juggernaut, awareness of the slogan stayed steady, as measured in Google searches. No one cared about searching for "make America great again" a year ago. Now people search for it all the time, often when seeking information about the hat itself. The hat and the slogan have their own life. Trump doesn't need to wear it, any more than Nike needs to write "Nike" under their swoosh. The brand is known.
> Of all of the signs that the Trump campaign has matured, I'd offer that this is one of the most clear. Not only because wearing a ball cap is unusual for the modern presidential candidate, but because Trump's campaign has reached that level that Barack Obama hit in 2008.
> What's Hillary Clinton's slogan? What's Ted Cruz's? What's Bernie Sanders? What's Jeb Bush's? Trump's hat may have outlived its usefulness for his campaign. But the idea -- the concise slogan hammered home as frequently as possible -- might still serve as inspiration for the campaigns of some of his competitors.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/25/why-donald-trump-has-given-up-on-the-hat/
>>19330
this.
He may not win the campaign but he BTFO in advertising
I wore my Trump hat out while doing a bunch of snow removal work.
Basically every guy that noticed it and was within earshot said him and his entire family are voting Trump.
>>19334
Please read this if you think Trump's campaign is about advertising rather than winning & results! http://theweek.com/articles/600335/donald-trump-poised-strongest-primary-performance-modern-history
http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/26/entertainment/abe-vigoda-dead-obit-feat/index.html
>>19532
related:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/01/26/the-decades-long-history-of-the-abe-vigoda-death-hoax/
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/01/26/three-men-escape-california-jail-they-let-hannibal-lector-out/
>The hunt is on for three men who pulled off an escape from a California jail, according to a CBS report.
Jonathan Tieu, Bac Duong and Hossein Nayeri have all been charged with federal felony counts of escaping prison after they made it out of the Orange County Men’s Central Jail on Friday morning. Tieu, 20, was charged with murder and attempted murder and Duong, 43, was charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. Both have ties to Vietnamese gangs.
>Thirty-seven-year-old Nayeri, who has ties to Iran, is charged with kidnapping and torture. He is also accused of torturing a man with fire with the help of an accomplice in 2012.
>“They also poured bleach all over him and in the end, he cut his penis off,” Lt. Dave Sawyer said of Nayeri’s torture accusations.
>The men were able to escape by cutting through a steel screen, crawling through plumbing tunnels, climbing a roof and rappelling nearly five floors using linens as a makeshift rope. Authorities believe the three men could be “embedded” somewhere in the community and are reaching out for any information regarding the escapees.
>"It rubs the bleach on it's skin."
>>19481
That was Buffalo Bill
>The men were able to escape by cutting through a steel screen, crawling through plumbing tunnels, climbing a roof and rappelling nearly five floors using linens as a makeshift rope.
This couldn't be more stereotypical if they used a hacksaw...
>>19572
what ever works
