The junk drawer

Three things you can talk about this week:

1. Gender identity and expression

2. “A Wrinkle in Time”

3. Looming autoworker strikes

And three things you can’t:

1. Whether to Pass/Fail or suffer a B-

2. “What Perez Says”

3. Ryan Mallett

Quotes of the week

“The fact of the matter is she has nothing except her moral authority.”

– Desmond tutu, an Anglican archbishop in South Africa, on pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi’s resistance to South African military rule.

“All of a sudden, you just get corrupt, ignorant, stupid, lazy and promiscuous.”

– Kwame Kilpatrick on how, despite his law degree, people still view him as an unqualified mayor.

“The scheme is working. People want the prizes.”

– Andrei Malykh, chief doctor in the Russian province Ulyanovsk, on the success of a regional initiative to boost the birth rate by rewarding women who have babies on Russia Day.

YouTube of the week

Where the hell is Matt?

Matt Harding, a 30-year-old Connecticut man, can be seen dancing in 36 different countries on all seven continents.
He begins in Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, flailing his arms and legs while “Sweet Lullaby” by Deep Forest plays in the background.

Matt quit his job in 2003 to travel. After his friend gave him the idea to record himself dancing, he made his first YouTube video. In 2005, he went dancing again, this time sponsored by Stride Gum.

The camera is never close enough to see his face clearly, only his gangly arms and legs moving in time to the music. Mostly he dances on land, but he’s seen underwater on occasion.

On his website, Matt said there is no message to his video, he just likes dancing.

He maintains a blog documenting his travels at wherethehellismatt.com while planning his next dancing voyage.

– EMILY BARTON

See this and other YouTube videos of the week at youtube.com/user/michigandaily

Wikipedia article of the week

“Charles Guiteau”

Charles Julius Guiteau (September 8, 1841-June 30, 1882) was an American lawyer who assassinated President James A. Garfield on July 2, 1881. He was sentenced to death by hanging.

Guiteau was routinely beaten by his father as a child and left home at an early age. He inherited $1000 from his grandfather as a young man and went to Ann Arbor, Michigan to attend the University of Michigan, but failed the university’s entrance examinations.

He then joined the controversial religious sect known as the Oneida Community, but despite “free love” aspects of that sect, he was generally rejected during his years there and nicknamed “Charles Get-out.”
Guiteau then obtained a law license in Chicago, based on an extremely casual bar exam. He started a law firm in Chicago based on ludicrously fraudulent recommendations from virtually every prominent American family of the day. He was not successful.

Guiteau’s interest turned to politics. He wrote a speech in support of Ulysses S. Grant called “Grant vs. Hancock”, which he revised to “Garfield vs. Hancock” after Garfield won the 1880 Republican primaries. The speech was delivered at most two times, but Guiteau believed himself to be largely responsible for Garfield’s victory.
After being denied an ambassadorship, he decided that God had commanded him to kill the ungrateful President. On July 2, 1881 Guiteau shot Garfield twice from behind at a New Jersey railroad station.

Guiteau became a media darling during his trial for badmouthing his defense team, formatting his testimony in epic poems, and soliciting legal advice from random spectators in the audience via passed notes. At one point, he argued that Garfield was killed not by himself but by medical malpractice (“The doctors killed Garfield, I just shot him”), which was more than a little true.

Themed Party Suggestion

Iranian nuclear war contingency plan – Stock up on dry goods and whiskey. And after 11 p.m., bar the doors. No one in, no one out. Let the paranoid tension fester.
Throwing this party? Let us know. TheStatement@umich.edu

By the Numbers

350

Number of Peruvian artifacts Yale University has pledged to return to the government to the government of Peru

1912

Year Yale Prof. Hiram Bingham discovered and excavated several tombs at Machu Picchu in Peru.

14

Hours in representatives of Yale and the Peruvian government spent negotiating terms of the artifact’s return