Oddity Central |
- Leg Humping Competition Celebrates Dogs’ Love for Our Legs
- Brazilian Inmates Pedal Their Way to Freedom
- Banking Is Child’s Play – Indian Street Kids Create Efficient Financial System
| Leg Humping Competition Celebrates Dogs’ Love for Our Legs Posted: 11 Jul 2012 07:01 AM PDT
Usually, when a dog starts humping your leg, you’re quick to make him stop, but at the Humpy Awards, owners actually encourage their pooches to get it on with their legs. There’s the Grammys, the Emmys, the Webbies, and now we have the Humpys, which celebrate dogs’ natural behavior to hump your legs. This first ever annual humping competition for dogs was actually a viral marketing stunt for a new AMC reality show called Small Town Security, but that doesn’t in any way diminish the dogs’ admirable performances. Almost all of the canines brought forth into the humping arena did just what they were supposed to, impressing the judges with their techniques. I don’t know if they got any training prior to the competition, but it all seemed pretty natural to me.
The judges at the the first edition of the Humpy Awards picked the winner after examining such things as the mount, speed, stamina, style and dismount. The lucky winner of the first ever Humpy was Miss Hope, an eight-year-old Jack Russell terrier who impressed the crowd with her moves.
Apparently, this leg humping contest aims to celebrate one of the dog’s natural behaviors while creating an entertaining show for us humans. Just one piece of advice though, don’t wear shorts, if you ever plan on attending this kind of events. via Geekosystem Leg Humping Competition Celebrates Dogs’ Love for Our Legs was originally posted at OddityCentral.com |
| Brazilian Inmates Pedal Their Way to Freedom Posted: 11 Jul 2012 06:23 AM PDT
At one particular Brazilian jail, inmates don’t actually need both wheels on their bicycle to make an escape. By pedaling on stationary bikes, they can reduce their sentence and also get into shape. The medium-security penitentiary of Santa Rita do Sapucai, a mountain range city about two hours north of Sao Paolo, has recently made headlines for its controversial sentence-reducing program. Thought up by the local judge, Jose Henrique Mallmann, who said he was inspired by a piece of news he read on the Internet about gyms in the United States where people generate electricity by riding stationary bikes, this two-month old program has inmates doing the same thing to reduce their stay in jail. For every three eight-hour days riding the bikes, criminals have one day of sentence shaved off. It’s a pretty good deals, but like other recently-implemented programs in Brazilian jails, it sparked some controversy around the South-American country.
Photo: Euronews video caption “We used to spend all day locked up in our cells, only seeing the sun for two hours a day,” Ronaldo da Silva, an inmate at Santa Rita do Sapucai jail, said. ”Now we’re out in the fresh air, generating electricity for the town and at the same time we’re winning our freedom.” He has already managed to shave 20 days off his sentence and lost 9 pounds in the process. The eight participants in the unique program quickly work up a sweat on the stationary bicycles, as producing energy makes pedaling hard, but the cool mountain air makes it bearable.
Photo: Euronews video caption Almost everyone in Santa Rita do Sapucai pitched in to make this program possible. The municipal police contributed bicycles from the lost and found department, engineers turned them into stationary bikes and hooked them up to batteries donated by local businesses, while other firms provided the converter that transforms the battery’s power into the 110 volts required to power 10 streetlamps along a riverside promenade. Every night, a guard drives the battery from the jail to the promenade, hooks it up to the converter and in just a few moments, the streetlamps begin to light up. In the morning, the battery is taken back to the prison to be recharged. “It’s a win-win situation,” Gilson Rafael Silva, the prison’s director, said. “People who normally are on the margins of society are contributing to the community and not only do they get out sooner in return, they also get their self-esteem back.” But although people do enjoy walking on the promenade again, and jail representatives say they’ve received inquiries from mother penitentiaries, not everyone agrees cycling for freedom is a good idea. ”People say that we’re turning prisons into a kind of luxury hotel,” Silva said. “But this is the only hotel I know of where no one wants to stay.” via ABC News Brazilian Inmates Pedal Their Way to Freedom was originally posted at OddityCentral.com |
| Banking Is Child’s Play – Indian Street Kids Create Efficient Financial System Posted: 11 Jul 2012 03:38 AM PDT
They say the banking system is very complicated, but try telling that to a bunch of Indian street kids who set up a model bank with tens of branches all over South-East Asia. In order to save money for a brighter future, a group of Indian children have created their own bank, where they can deposit their money and take advances whenever they need to. A branch of this unusual financial institution is located in a shelter for homeless runaway teens in New Delhi. It’s here that street children who work come to place their money for safekeeping, and take out development or welfare advances to start a business or invest in things they need for school. The most impressive thing about this bank for kids and teens is that it was initiated, implemented and is operated by children. In fact, Satish Kumar, who was elected bank manager for the New Delhi branch of the children’s development ’khazana’ (Indian for ‘treasure chest’) doesn’t look a day over 12.
Photo: Voices of Youth Mohammad Shah, a 12-year-old bank client who sells water bottles at night, told Russia Today he has so far taken three loans from the children’s bank. "The first time I took 500 rupees to buy the school uniform and other things, the second time I took the advance because my mother was sick. I took 1000 rupees and got the necessary check up done for my mother. The third time I took the advance was because I had to repay some money I had borrowed to help my father open a shop," he said. The ambitious young man, who was taken in by the shelter and directed toward school, hopes the bank will help him invest in education, so he can ultimately reach his goal of one day becoming a policeman.
Photo: AFP Like Mohammed, around 9,000 other kids and teenagers put their trust in the children’s bank and deposit their hard-earned money at its 77 branches all over South-East Asia, in hopes for a brighter future. "They can be the super models in this whole thing because they know how to save money. They know how to utilize money for the best because they learn how to prioritize their needs, which we as adults actually don't know," Sharon Jacob from "Butterflies" child rights non-profit organization said. It’s this sense of responsibility and survival that has shocked the adult supervisors of the shelters, who think the world’s international bankers could learn a thing or two from these youngsters.
In a time when the global financial system seems more vulnerable than ever, it looks like a bunch of kids have everything figured out. During monthly meetings they review applications for advances, and based on everyone’s track record of saving and earning, they decide who can get the money and how quickly they have to pay it back. They hold everyone from the account managers to the clients responsible for their financial decisions. Banking Is Child’s Play – Indian Street Kids Create Efficient Financial System was originally posted at OddityCentral.com |
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