Share an apartment and break the law!

If that rule is enforced I'll have to marry my roommate, or face bankruptcy.

What the heck...this is just retarded...I don't even know what to say...

this country is full of shit. wtf.

this doesn't help gay couples either

This would probably top the list of this week's Retarded China Today Top 10000, if it wasn't for....

In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission.

According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation." But beyond the irony lies China 's true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet 's exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region's Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country.

By barring any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new human to continue the work of relieving suffering.

At 72, the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since 1959, is beginning to plan his succession, saying that he refuses to be reborn in Tibet so long as it's under Chinese control.

Assuming he's able to master the feat of controlling his rebirth, as Dalai Lamas supposedly have for the last 600 years, the situation is shaping up in which there could be two Dalai Lamas: one picked by the Chinese government, the other by Buddhist monks. "It will be a very hot issue," says Paul Harrison, a Buddhism scholar at Stanford. "The Dalai Lama has been the prime symbol of unity and national identity in Tibet , and so it's quite likely the battle for his incarnation will be a lot more important than the others."

So where in the world will the next Dalai Lama be born?

Harrison and other Buddhism scholars agree that it will likely be from within the 130,000 Tibetan exiles spread throughout India , Europe and North America .

With an estimated 8,000 Tibetans living in the United States , could the next Dalai Lama be American-born? "You'll have to ask him," says Harrison . If so, he'll likely be welcomed into a culture that has increasingly embraced reincarnation over the years.

According to a 2005 Gallup poll, 20 percent of all U.S. adults believe in reincarnation. Recent surveys by the Barna Group, a Christian research nonprofit, have found that a quarter of U.S. Christians, including 10 percent of all born-again Christians, embrace it as their favored end-of-life view.

A non-Tibetan Dalai Lama, experts say, is probably out of the question.

Gotta love the dementedness of this place!

I think the rules are meant to deal with "second landlords", those people who rent apartments, subdivide them into many small rooms, and rent those out to other people. Shanghai has a long history of doing this dating back to two centuries ago. Of course this law, like all laws in China, will be selectively enforced on a group (the one I mention above) that goes unmentioned in the official law so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Guest 12: Well if you have any more "Concert for a Free Tibet" statistics to repeat, please do so. BTW, I heard Alanis Morissette's set was smoking!

In the meantime, little babies being chosen as theocratic leaders is a bad fucking idea, whoever does the choosing.

#13 What HAVE you been smoking?