Massive spoiler alert! Don’t read this if you haven’t seen the movie.
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Popularity: 54% [?]

Indy 4 is almost here!! The early reviews are starting to trickle out already but I’ve been forcing myself not to read them - I gather it at least doesn’t suck though. Which at least says something given all the hype surrounding it.

To entertain myself (and you!) during the wait, I’ve been comparing what we know of Crystal Skull to the previous Indy movies. All pics of Crystal Skull here are from the trailer (and yes, the 130MB version ), so no danger of spoilers here!

Indy’s Sidekick

“Mutt” vs Short Round (Temple of Doom) vs Henry Jones, Sr. (Last Crusade).

What’s a hero without a trusty sidekick? Crystal Skull sees Shia LeBeouf (Transformers) in the role. Seriously though, what kind of name is “Mutt”? There’d better be an explanation.

I’d say most of us didn’t find Short Round as cute as we could have if we weren’t Asian ourselves. He does get a good one liner “You call him Dr. Jones!” and his own jingle that overlays with the main Raiders theme nicely though. I liked him and he’s a fan favourite, but I think that Sean Connery’s performance is just too hard to top :).

Femme Fatale

Irina Spalko vs Elsa Schneider (Last Crusade)

S: How dare you kiss me!
*kiss*
I: Leave me alone - I don’t like fast women.
*kiss*
S: And I hate arrogant men!
*kiss*

The love scenes in an Indy movie are always hilarious. It’s hard to top Alison Doody’s performance as the sexy Nazi from the Last Crusade, but if there’s anyone who can it’d be Cate Blanchett! As if to make the point, her bobbed ‘do is the total opposite of Schneider’s blonde bombshell look. Will Spalko pull a double with Mutt too I wonder…

Archeological thingamajig

Crystal Skulls vs The Ark of the Covenant (Raiders) vs Sankara Stones (Temple of Doom) vs The Holy Grail (Last Crusade)

(No pic of crystal skulls in the trailer :( )Ah what is Indiana Jones if not for treasure hunts? Unlike some other movies (*ahem*National Treasure*ahem*Tomb Raider), the story leading up to them is usually the right balance between an afterthought and being too convulted. I personally liked the Holy Grail’s plotline best.

Scary tribes

Scary tribe vs scary tribe from Raiders vs scary tribe from Temple of Doom

Many movies have Nazis, but savages never go out of vogue in Indiana Jones. Kali worshippers from ToD were the scariest hands down… they freaking tore out human hearts, roasted their victims as human sacrifices, poked a voodoo doll of you full of needles if you got too annoying, and converted you by forcing you to drink blood!

Life-threatening Trap

Revolving column vs Gigantic Boulder (Raiders) vs Crushing Ceiling (Temple of Doom) vs Tomb filled with burning petrol (Last Crusade)

Another Indiana Jones staple, served with copious amounts of creepy crawlies. I’d say the crushing ceiling from Tod was the most entertaining since it looked his closest to death.

And that’s it! I can’t wait! See you next week with a review!

Popularity: 54% [?]

You may recall that some time back the government tried to spin on their rating in the Global Competitiveness Report, claiming that we were “eighth” among nations with a population of above 20mil - a completely arbitrary categorization, conveniently excluding Singapore of course. We had actually fallen two places. (Hey Pak Lah, isn’t it even MORE OF A SHAME if we are less competitive than countries with fewer people?)

The spinmasters are back, this time working on our International Corruption Perception Index ranking. We dropped from 23 in 1995 to 44 and 43 in 2006 and 2007. But according to Mr. Nice, we are actually IMPROVING. You see, there are more countries in the index now!

Abdullah said if one analysed the index closely, Malaysia had improved on its performance in the fight against corruption.

“From our placing at 56.1% in the list of countries surveyed in 1996, we have improved to 24% last year and then 26.9% this year.

“This means that Malaysia is better than 76% of the countries last year, up from 73.1% in 2006 and 43.9% in 1995,”he said.

Among the new countries in this year’s survey are Somalia and Afghanistan. Aren’t we all SO PROUD we are better than them?

He also contradicts himself by stating in the same article that it is more accurate to use the actual index score instead:

“A more accurate indicator to show the trend of a country’s performance in the index is the country’s score.

“Malaysia’s score since 1995 has been averaging five points, which is a good and stable level,” he said in a written reply on Monday.

Bearing in mind that the index is fucking scored OUT OF TEN, I would say we need this doddling idiot out of office as soon as possible lest he infect us all with his indifference and mediocrity.

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w e n ** will you , now? says:
john williams isnt he a composer

w e n ** will you , now? says:
u mean indiana jones song no lyrics one?

Popularity: 48% [?]

We are certainly lucky to be Malaysian.

And no, it’s because we are so muhibbah, or because we are an independent nation, or even because we have oil. It’s because natural disasters are rare here. In the floods of Dec 2006 for example, “only” six people died. Not that I am belittling anyone else’s suffering, but we just don’t see chaos like some countries face daily.

I’m talking of course of Cyclone Nargis which has left well over 100,000 dead and many more homeless in Myanmar. These pictures, taken from a satellite [source], sum up the destruction:

The Irrawaddy delta which is Myanmar’s main source of rice was also largely destroyed, making the situation even worse.

But what is really disgusting about the whole thing is how Myanmar’s military-controlled government is actually using the disaster to exploit their people. They are stubbornly refusing outside help, turning away volunteers and denying press coverage. The regime is even denying how critical the situation is!:

The junta, however, told visiting Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej on Wednesday it is in control of the relief operations and doesn’t need foreign experts.

“They have their own team to cope with the situation,” Samak said after returning from Yangon.

He said the junta gave him a “guarantee” that there was no starvation or disease outbreaks among survivors. In Yangon, Samak visited a government relief center.

“From what I have seen, I am impressed with their management,” Samak said.

Instead of putting aside their differences to help the people, the junta is instead busy relabelling boxes of supplies donated by international organizations with names of generals. Unconfirmed reports even state that the military is diverting supplies for itself, or swapping out the food!

A longtime foreign resident in Yangon told the AP in Bangkok that angry government officials have complained to him about the misappropriation of the aid by the military.

He said the officials told him that quantities of the high-energy biscuits rushed into Myanmar by the WFP on its first flights were sent to a military warehouse.

They were exchanged by what the officials said were “tasteless and low quality” biscuits produced by the Industry Ministry to be handed out to cyclone victims, the foreign resident said.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because revealing his identity would jeopardize his safety.

Suddenly our gomen looks like a choir of angels huh? A few people even told me that the US should invade Myanmar to “force” the aid in!

Regardless, this should not stop us from contributing what we can.  A blogger from Burma said it well: “I would hate to see the aids stopping because of this. Let’s say $100 is donated, and let’s say, $50 is not received, but the other $50 will still go there, so it’s better than $0.”.

You can donate to the people of Myanmar here.

Popularity: 38% [?]

Last week saw a landmark case - the (first?) recognized deconversion from Islam. From AFP:

Apostasy, or renouncing the faith, is one of the gravest sins in Islam and a very sensitive issue in Malaysia where Islamic sharia courts have rarely allowed such renunciations and have also jailed apostates.

Penang Sharia Court judge Othman Ibrahim said he had no choice but to allow an application by cook Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah to renounce her faith and return to Buddhism.

“The court has no choice but to declare that Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah is no longer a Muslim as she has never practised the teachings of Islam,” Othman told a packed courtroom.

“I order the conversion certificate to be nullified,” he added.

Siti Fatimah or Tan Ean Huang, 38, said she had never practised Islamic teachings since she converted in 1998 and only did so to enable her to marry Iranian Ferdoun Ashanian.

The couple married in 2004 and she filed for the renunciation after her husband left her.

Forgive me for being a bit crabby but OMFG it’s about time. The very idea that you can “prevent” a deconversion by Our relief would be tempered somewhat though by a depressing letter that featured on Malaysiakini last week as well, “JPN on the look-out for illegitimate Malay children”:

On the evening of April 7, a terribly upset young couple walked into my surgery. Earlier in the day, they had an altercation with the staff of the National Registration Department (JPN) at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital.

The woman was 18 years old and her husband 24 years old. On April 1, she delivered a baby girl weighing 1.4 kg. She was so tiny she had to be put in an incubator. On the day in question, they had gone to visit their baby with a couple of friends. After that the whole group went to the JPN office to register the baby’s birth.

The counter staff scrutinised their marriage certificate and after doing some arithmetic, publicly announced the baby was conceived out of wedlock. As such only the baby’s name and the mother’s name could be entered in the register.

In the space for father’s particulars shall be written ‘Information not Available’. In the baby’s MyKad identity card shall be entered baby’s name followed by ‘bin or binti Abdullah’.

The couple refused to register the baby. They were so upset and humiliated. The baby has since died of prematurity. She never had a birth certificate.

After enquiring from several JPN offices at various places, I learnt that the director-general of JPN had issued an internal circular on July 6, 2007 to the effect that JPN should ‘look out’ for illegitimate Malay children and that they be labelled, accordingly, ‘bin Abdullah’ or ‘binti Abdullah’.

From that day many babies do not have their father’s names on their birth certificates.

It was bad enough when they had upstarts from RELA tell us not to hold hands, but actually having people in hospitals slam this in people’s faces is just so…ARGH.

What conceivable good can come out of denying a father his name on the birth certificate out of spite and piousness? Surely the “solution” to premarital sex is not to oust the father and promote single mothers instead! If anything I’d actually congratulate the guy for sticking by the mother and taking the responsibility. Registration personnel should have better things to do than calculate when the baby was born!

Popularity: 61% [?]

It was only a matter of time before RPK was hauled up for the statements made on Malaysia Today. He is a great man, but even I find it hard to swallow his posts sometimes. I stopped reading MT regularly partly because of this, and partly because the unadulterated anger in the hundreds of comments left on his posts make me wince.

In the infamous post “Let’s send the Altantuya murderers to hell” RPK accuses Najib of everything short of triggering the C4 himself. Najib had his press secretary write a letter to MT warning that he would “seek legal redress”. RPK thanked him for the letter, but stood by his guns.

Quite frankly, considering the accusations made, any leader would certainly have charged the person making them. Hey, at least we are under Najib in Malaysia and not Putin in Russia, where critical journalists mysteriously disappear.

That being said, the charge under the Sedition Act, as Polytikus points out, is unwarranted and a travesty. Part of the problem is the loose wording of the Act:

(c) to bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against the administration of justice in Malaysia or in any State;

(d) to raise discontent or disaffection amongst the subjects of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong or of the Ruler of any State or amongst the inhabitants of Malaysia or of any State;

(e) to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Malaysia; or

I can certainly think of many examples where the current government has been guilty of sedition!

Sedition is, according to the dictionary, the “incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government”. But Najib is flattering himself if he thinks that he is the government. This is not an isolated example - Lim Guan Eng was also charged under the Sedition Act when he alleged that Rahim Thamby Chik, then CM of Malacca, had raped a young Malay girl.

The more suitable charge is libel. Accross the causeway, Lee Kuan Yew has happily charged detractors with libel suits - and won, most of the time. Unsavoury, but at least better than assuming that allegations against you are allegations against the country.

I am not sure what was going on with the “hunger strike” or the bail-raising stunts, but the next week should be interesting. I wouldn’t want RPK in jail, but with the government out to get him, I have that sinking feeling. Still, RPK hints he has an ace up his sleeve.

Popularity: 56% [?]

Last week’s TIME had an article about the diary of Rutka Laskier, a Polish Jew whose diary had been found and kept by a friend for 60 years. It outlines four months in 1943, before Rutka and her family were sent to Auschwitz and killed.

If you’ve read the diary of Anne Frank, you’ll find haunting parallels between their lives: the innocence, the despair, the first glimpses of romance.

People were thirsty, and there was not a single drop of water around … Then … it started pouring. The rain didn’t stop. At 3 o’clock Kuczynsky arrived and the selection started. “1″ meant returning home, “1a” meant going to labor, which was even worse than deportation, “2″ meant going for further inspection, and “3″ meant deportation, in other words, death.

Then I saw what disaster meant. We reported for selection at 4 o’clock. Mom, Dad and my little brother were sent to group 1, and I was sent to 1a. I walked as if I were stunned … The weirdest thing was that we didn’t cry at all, AT ALL … Later on, I saw many more disasters. I can’t put it in words. Little children were lying on the wet grass, the storm raging above our heads. The policemen beat them ferociously and also shot them.

I sat there until 1 o’clock at night. Then I ran away. My heart pounded. I jumped out of a window from the first floor of a small building, and nothing happened to me. Only my lips were bitten so bad that they bled … When I was already on the street, I ran into someone “in uniform,” and I felt that I couldn’t take it anymore. My head was spinning. I was pretty sure he was going to beat me … but apparently he was drunk and didn’t see the “yellow star,” and he let me go.

Around me it was dark like in a closed cabin. From time to time flashes of lightning lightened the sky … and it thundered. The journey that normally takes me half an hour I did in 10 minutes. Everybody was at home except Grandma, whom Dad released and brought home the next day …

Oh, I forgot the most important thing. I saw how a soldier tore a baby, who was only a few months old, out of its mother’s hands and bashed his head against an electric pylon. The baby’s brain splashed on the wood. The mother went crazy.

I am writing this as if nothing has happened. As if I were in an army experienced in cruelty. But I’m young, I’m 14, and I haven’t seen much in my life, and I’m already so indifferent. Now I am terrified when I see “uniforms.” I’m turning into an animal waiting to die …

Now to everyday matters: Janek came by this afternoon. We had to sit in the kitchen … I told him that I had given away all my photographs. He got very upset. We were joking around; we spoke about “Nica and the gang.” While we were talking he suddenly blurted out he’d like it very much if he could kiss me. I said “maybe” and continued the conversation. He was a bit confused; he thought I was Tusia or Hala Zelinger. I would have allowed [myself] to be kissed only by the person I loved, and I feel indifferent towards him.

Then Dad sent me to deal with something. I had to leave. Janek accompanied me. While going downstairs I asked him, is kissing such a pleasant thing? And then I told him that I had already kissed before, what a taste it has (that’s completely true). He burst out laughing. (He has a nice laugh, I must admit.) He said he was curious too. Maybe, but I won’t let him kiss me. I’m afraid it would destroy something beautiful, pure … I’m also afraid that I’ll be very disappointed.

Ahmadinejad should get a copy of her diary.

Six million Jews died in the Holocaust, a testament to how much ideology can shape humans. How could there have been soldiers willing enough to carry out those orders? It might be a bit twisted, but I’m glad to see the human race has come far enough that the thousands who have died in Iraq have a much louder voice. I hope that there will never again come a day where we lose sight of our conscience or take lightly a human life.

Popularity: 65% [?]

Apologies for missing this last week, was busying watching HIMYM :P

Malaysia

• Dr. Mahathir joins the ranks of the unemployed lying females in Malaysia.
• MCA newsletter editor Wong Chun Wai follows suit.
• The Sun aggressively calls for reform of press freedom laws.
• Newly appointed CM of Penang Lim Guan Eng is spotted flying economy class. Meanwhile, in a written reply to a question in Parliament, PM Abdullah Badawi says that the government spent RM792,325 for the use of executive jets for himself and DPM Najib in the two weeks before the polls.
  (Yes, somehow it’s hard to believe that we don’t have money for projects in Penang).
• Anwar is in TIME’s list of 100 most influential people in the world.
• Jakim has rejected the PM’s proposal to compel Muslim converts to inform their families about their conversion.
  (Apparently the PM is not in their list of influential people).
• Hishammudin Hussein finally “apologizes” over his usage of the keris. The Star calls him a “big man” for this.
  (WTF - it bore all the hallmarks of a non-apology apology, was much belated, and he was practically forced to do it. “Big Man” my ass. )
• The much-ballyhooed sports complex to be built in England is scrapped. Citizen Nades of The Sun reports.
• Malaysia ranks 2nd-highest in the world… for malicious web activity.

Science

• According to Nature, 20% of scientists who participated in an informal survey said they used “cognitive enchancing” drugs.
• Australian researches find that there is a very effective way of preventing prostate cancer by 40%.
• A genetic study suggests that humans came close to extinction 70,000 years ago.
• Keyboards may carry more bacteria than toilet seats, a UK study finds.
• South Korea has cloned seven dogs from an active drug-sniffer in active service. All of them will be named Toppy.

Entertainment

• JK Rowling is suing a (former?) fan who planned to publish his own Harry Potter lexicon, an encyclopedia to the series. He reportedly cried on the witness stand.
• A million WoW players were online at the same time over the weekend, reports the company that hosts WoW servers in China.

Interest

• A New Yorker survived being trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. The ordeal was captured on CCTV.
• Six Masai warriors were invited to run in the Flora London Marathon. “The marathon was easy, there were no lions!”

World/Politics

• A Russian newspaper reported plans by President Putin to wed a former Olympic gymnast half his age. He denied the rumour, and the paper was promptly shut down.
• 60% of the world’s paintings apparently are churned out from a single village in China.
• An Italian performance artist who planned to hitchhike from Italy to the Middle East in a wedding dress to “send a message or peace” is found brutally murdered in Turkey.

Tech

• A writer from MacWorld builds and successfully runs Mac OS X on a “clone” computer.
• The latest beta of Opera 9.5 blows competitors out of the water - yes, including FF b3!

Popularity: 74% [?]