Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.”This may be the best four minutes and twenty-eight seconds of your week.”, said the entry at Boing Boing. Well it’s only two days into it, but I’ve a pretty good feeling it will be.It’s basically a goofy dance done by Matt, “a 31-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut” - done in countries all over the world, most times with sporting locals. There’s really something magical about the whole thing.

From Matt’s site:

A few months into his trip, a travel buddy gave Matt an idea. They were standing around taking pictures in Hanoi, and his friend said “Hey, why don’t you stand over there and do that dance. I’ll record it.” He was referring to a particular dance Matt does. It’s actually the only dance Matt does. He does it badly. Anyway, this turned out to be a very good idea.

A couple years later, someone found the video online and passed it to someone else, who passed it to someone else, and so on. Now Matt is quasi-famous as “That guy who dances on the internet. No, not that guy. The other one. No, not him either. I’ll send you the link. It’s funny.”

The response to the first video brought Matt to the attention of the nice people at Stride gum. They asked Matt if he’d be interested in taking another trip around the world to make a new video. Matt asked if they’d be paying for it. They said yes. Matt thought this sounded like another very good idea.

…

Things settled down again, and then in 2007 Matt went back to Stride with another idea. He realized his bad dancing wasn’t actually all that interesting, and that other people were much better at being bad at it. He showed them his inbox, which, as a result of his semi-famousness, was overflowing with emails from all over the planet. He told them he wanted to travel around the world one more time and invite the people who’d written him to come out and dance too.

After you watch this I’m betting your first thought will be “Damn ima quit my job now!”.

And if you wondering, no Malaysia isn’t one of the countries he visited :((. Singapore’s in there somewhere though.

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Robert Mugabe, the tyrant of Zimbabwe (and good friend of Dr. M), on his impending election loss:

“We fought for this country, and a lot of blood was shed,” Mr Mugabe told his supporters. “We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X. How can a ballpoint fight with a gun?”

The warning came a day after he declared: “We are ready to go to war.” Evidence, say observers, of mounting concerns that he may not have done enough to secure the vote.

What causes men to act like this? Ego? A hunger for power? Mental illness? Or is the man just plain evil? I just hope Zimbabwe has a future.

I wonder what Dr. M has to say about all this. Would he still invite Mugabe to retire here?

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Picked this up from Digg, Leaky Cauldron is running the highlights of a recent Q&A with JK Rowling on that series of hers.

Among the usual “who-marries-who” and “what-ifs”, Rowling answered a thoughtful question:
“Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?” by outing him as gay and revealling that he had at one point been in love with the man who would become his nemesis.

In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair… [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, “Dumbledore’s gay!”

Interestingly, she got an ovation from the audience. But I doubt this will go down well with the fundies who’ve already accused her of everything this side of murder. She didn’t shed too much light when asked exactly how much Dumbledore’s brother Aberforth liked goats (come to think of it, what a mental family).

Some may think she’s been reading too much fanfic or that she’s just looking for free publicity, but personally I think it gives you another reason to go through the books again and see if you can pick up anything you missed before :). Poor McGonagall…

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Has Tim finally discovered art? Well no, it’s actually a picture of Mars, coloured by altitude. Google Mars displays the mapped regions of the Red Planet based on satellite photos. There’s also Google Moon and Google Earth if you want to stay closer to home.

Looking into space gives you both a sense of wonder and humility - you feel wonder that the Earth is the way it is, and humbled by how big and beautiful the universe is compared us tiny humans.

Something like this:

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The Sarawak Tribune, a 60-year old newspaper, was suspended indefinitely on February 9 and its top officials forced to resign for republishing the cartoons earlier this month. It is ironic that it was headlined “Cartoon No Big Issue Here” since it was the very thing making it into a big issue!

Then Guangming Daily was suspended for two weeks starting Feb 16 for printing a picture of someone looking at the caricatures in the paper.

The Malaysian press and politicians universally lambasted them and accused them of ignoring Muslim sensitivities.

The latest development is The New Straits Times - which had joined in the crucifixition of these two papers - running the syndicated Non-Sequitir cartoon in its comic section on February 20, which commented on the issue. The cartoon showed a street cartoonist, presumably an Arab Muslim, sitting down with a sign next to him saying “Caricatures of Muhammad while you wait”.

Initially the NST displayed a show of righteous indignance, first at being pointed at in the first place, then for being issued a show-cause letter by the Government.

Today, an unreserved apology is published and the NST submissively “will willingly accept any action deemed fit by the Government”.

The media witch-hunt is far from over, though.

Closer to home, a thread was started at my university forums discussing the issue. It went fairly smoothly at first. Indeed, I always thought it admirable that people could take part in (relatively) level-headed discussion there about sensitive topics. One moderate Muslim in particular managed to win over an irate student with his calm views. Sadly it all spiralled downhill after fundamentalist students spammed the threads and instant-messaged their friends online to join in.

Someone alerted Student Affairs, and immediately a letter was dispatched to the Student Publication Board (which runs the forums) ordering them to delete all topics which touched on religious, political, or race issues. So now we have a “Rule 14″ on the forums prohibiting discussion on these topics on fear of being banned.

Living in Malaysia is like living on a bed of eggshells.

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The controversy, and the picture that says it all.

[Edit] It seems the link to the picture was taken down - now THAT really says it all!

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