The good, the disturbing, and the also disturbing

Google has a dedicated search engine just for books!

And if that were the only thing I'd learned so far today, I'd be bubbling over with happiness.

However, I had the misfortune to see a story on Canada AM this morning that was disturbing and, somehow, gets more disturbing the more I think about it. It was about this "500 year old tradition" in (I want to say) India, but I can't remember, whereby people DROP THEIR BABIES FROM A HEIGHT OF 15 METERS. On purpose. FOR LUCK. The babies land on, like, a sheet held taut by a group of people. The footage was of someone dropping baby after naked baby onto this sheet. And the babies bounce once before they're caught by someone and passed off back to Children's Services, I hope because do their parents really deserve them? How? How? How does this sort of tradition originate? Who was the first person who said, "Maybe if I drop my helpless infant from, oh, say, 15 meters, Fortune will smile on me." Seriously! I can only hope this was an elaborate hoax and Canada AM was somehow duped. (There is currently no mention of it on their site).

After the news segment ended, the show went back to the hosts and they were all just staring speechless at the screen and there was like a 5 minute period where they could barely talk. You could tell they wanted to openly condemn such a thing, but they're probably bound by contract not to. And Seamus O'Regan looked angry. Not at all like an affable morning news show host is supposed to look.

As an aside, while I was searching for that story, I came across this story, which is also disturbing, in its own, special way.

*ADDENDUM* The video is up now on the CanadaAM site. There's no permalink though, so I don't think it'll be up for long. And, they specify that the baby drop is for "good health," not just luck of any kind. Because that makes it okay.