Seriously, are you one of the, like, 2 people in the world who haven't seen this video yet?

The series of videos that have this guy named Matt doing a dance are the worlds most watched internet videos.  This one I am posting has over 21 million views on YouTube.   I think they are awesome!

So the story goes like this:  This guy quits his job and starts traveling.  As sort of a memento to the places he visits, he would do this lame little dance.  Well, he posted on YouTube and became an overnight Viral hit, when a gum company saw it and asked him to make one for them.  He said sure, but I don't have any more money to travel.  So the gum company hired him, paid for all of his travels, and the result is what you see up there.

Recently, at a technology convention, Matt talked about how there are many YouTube "geniuses" who thought it was all fake and photoshopped.  He went on to pretend it all was a hoax, saying it was all photoshopped and the dancers were an army of robots, the zero gravity was created in hollowed-out Boeing underwater, and the budget was in the tens of millions.  LOL!  Well, some people couldn't take the joke, and it even made it into the news that the internet sensation was a "hoax."

If you youtube Matt hoax was a hoax, you'll find the whole story, its really pretty funny.  Cliffs Notes Version:  It was all real!  He received emails from all over the world, people asking things like "why didn't you come to my town," and his simple reply would be, "We're coming now, do you want to dance to?"  That's why in the early ones (2005 etc) it was just Matt, but I like this latest one (2008) with all the people.

Anyways, the video made me feel good, so I thought I'd post to remember.  Enjoy!

Sore losers won't let go in California

Here's what I don't get about California and the recent Proposition 8 vote: Why all the commotion over yet another passage of yet another marriage amendment

This was the 30th time a state has placed either a constitutional amendment proposal or its equivalent on its ballot, and the 30th time the amendment has passed.

Thirty straight wins is formidable. It's downright Globetrotter-esque. The New England Patriots didn't even go 30-0.

In twenty-nine of those statewide votes, nobody threw a tantrum.

Granted, early polls predicted California would be the first state to buck the trend, and it did come fairly close with just a 52 percent passage, which tied South Dakota for the narrowest margin of victory among the 30 votes.

But in the end, half a million more Californians voted for the amendment that defines marriage as only between a man and a woman than voted against it. The final tally was 5,387,939 to 4,883,460.

Statistics intrigue the old sports writer in me, and I find the numbers that make up the 30-time winning streak very intriguing.

The great marriage election debate, and the streak, began with Alaska and Hawaii in 1998, continued with Nebraska in 2000, then Nevada in 2002, followed by 13 more states in 2004 (Montana, Oregon, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan and Utah), another two in 2005 (Kansas and Texas), eight more in 2006 (Virginia, Colorado, Idaho, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee), and finally Florida, Arizona and California in 2008.

In all, 58,911,741 Americans over the past decade have cast votes on the issue.

The overall score is 37,662,846 to 21,248.894.

If it were a football game, you'd change the channel in the third quarter and watch something else.

Some states have passed their amendments by huge margins, led by Mississippi at 86 percent and South Carolina and Tennessee at 81 percent each. Six states came in below 60 percent — California and South Dakota at 52 percent, Arizona and Colorado at 56 percent each and Oregon and Virginia at 57 percent apiece. Most margins of victory have been in the 60s — Utah was at 66 percent, which made us pretty close to normal.

Overall, 64 percent of Americans who have voted on the matter are in favor of defining marriage as a one man-one woman exclusive.

That's more than 11 percentage points higher than the 52.7 percent mandate for Barack Obama.

And no one's protesting in the streets over that one.

But California won't let it go. The whining is enough to make a soccer player envious. Lawyers are headed to court to block the proposition. Others are demanding that the vote go back on the ballot in 2010. Proponents of Prop. 8 are being singled out for abuse by opponents.

Sore losing is having a field day.

Evan Wolfson, a California-based gay-rights lawyer who heads a group called Freedom to Marry, said, "There's something deeply wrong with putting the rights of a minority up to a majority vote. If this were being done to almost any other minority, people would see how un-American this is."

Polygamists of the 19th century might have something to say about that. And a thousand other minorities you could name who have had to fall in step with the majority.

How are you supposed to decide stuff? Rock-paper-scissors? Duel at dawn?

Wolfson sees the amendment(s) in terms of discrimination against gays who want to be married while not seeing that the absence of such marriage amendments would be discrimination against not only those who prefer marriage to be defined between one man and one woman, but against untold numbers of children whose world would be greatly changed as a result.

And that's a minority that can't even vote.

You can't have it both ways. Those voters in favor of the amendments aren't voting against gay rights, they're voting for a marriage tradition as America, and America's children, have long known it.

Voting for it in huge numbers, in fact.

Everyone seems to get that but California.

 

Lee Benson\'s column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.

I have been following an auction by the FCC for some time now (I thought Google would have it by now...) but I am still excited about it.  Basically, the FCC is auctioning off a huge chunk of airwaves and mandating that the winning bidder set aside a quarter of the airwaves for FREE INTERNET with pornography filters.  The FCC will allow the winner to create a subscription service with higher speeds, but the lower speeds will all be free and smut free!  I like the idea.  I hope Google picks it up.  I would not mind free garbage free internet in the home! 

For more about this, visit the Wall Street Journal article here:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122809560499668087.html

Thousands killed by huge China quake

• Story Highlights
• NEW: China says at least 8,600 dead but it expects figure to rise
• 900 children also buried when a school building collapsed, 50 bodies found
• State news agency says several schools collapsed after 7.9 magnitude quake
• NEW: China releasing $2.89 million to respond to the disaster, Xinhua reports

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Thousands of people have been killed by Monday's powerful earthquake in just one affected region of central China, its government said, with the toll expected to keep rising as bodies are retrieved from schools, homes and factories.

The Chinese government said at least 8,600 people were dead, but that the death toll was sure to rise as authorities began to reach some of the worst-hit areas. Thousands more were believed to be injured.

Xinhua, the state-run news agency, reported that authorities were yet to reach Wenchuan County -- which sits at the epicenter of the 7.9-magnitude earthquake with a population of about 112,000 -- because of damage to roads.

In Beichuan County, close to Wenchuan, the number of deaths was estimated at more than 3,000, with 80 percent of the buildings destroyed. Watch as the death toll rises »

In addition, at least 48 people were killed in the northwest Gansu Province, Xinhua said.

Several hundred students were also feared to be buried in collapsed school buildings, the agency said.

China's Seismological Bureau said the earthquake had affected more than half the country\'s provinces and municipalities.

U.S. President George W. Bush released a statement saying his country "stands ready to help in any way possible."

"I am particularly saddened by the number of students and children affected by this tragedy," Bush said.

China\'s government is releasing $2.89 million to respond to the disaster, Xinhua reported. China\'s Red Cross has dispatched 557 tents, 2,500 quilts and other aid to the disaster zone, Chinese television reported. Impact your world

The state relief disaster commission declared a level-two emergency, the second-highest level out of four, to cope with the aftermath of the quake, Chinese television reported.

In Sichuan\'s Shifang city, the quake buried hundreds of people in two collapsed chemical plants, and more than 80 tons of ammonia leaked out, Xinhua said.

The local government evacuated 6,000 civilians from the area after homes and factories were also destroyed. See CNN\'s interview with an American in Chengdu. »

The quake was "felt in most parts of China," Xinhua reported, with the confirmed casualties in the provinces and municipality of Sichuan, Gansu, Chongqing and Yunnan.

Xinhua said several schools collapsed, at least partially, in the quake.

At one, as many as 900 students were feared buried. At least 50 bodies have been pulled from the rubble at the high school in the Juyuan Township of Dujiangyan City in Wenchuan County.

"Some buried teenagers were struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help," Xinhua reported.

"Grieved parents watched as five cranes were excavating at the site and an ambulance was waiting. See a report on rescue operations at the school. »

"A tearful mother said her son, ninth-grader Zhang Chengwei, was buried in the ruins."

President Hu Jintao ordered an all-out effort to help those affected, and Premier Wen Jiabao traveled to the region to direct the rescue work, Xinhua reported.

"My fellow Chinese, facing such a severe disaster, we need calm, confidence, courage and efficient organization," Wen was quoted as saying.

"I believe we can certainly overcome the disaster with the public and the military working together under the leadership of the CPC Central Committee and the government."

Peter Sammonds, professor of geophysics at University College London, called the earthquake "tremendous." See workers in Chengdu hiding under their desks during the quake. »

"Particularly in the more remote, the more mountainous part where this has taken place, a lot of the buildings are built on sediments that are quite unstable. They\'re probably liquifying, causing the buildings to collapse," he said.

"You might expect landslides to occur, which could actually stop the relief efforts going through on the roads, so this could be very grim in the remoter, more mountainous parts of this province."

While many of the most immediate efforts were focused on Sichuan Province, Xinhua reported that there were dead and injured also in Gansu, Chongqing and Yunnan.

Scattered stories of destruction poured in from around the country. Xinhua said one person was killed in Santai County, in the city of Mianyang, when a water tower fell.

A provincial government spokesman said they feared more dead and injured in collapsed houses in Dujiangyan City in Wenchuan County.

A driver for the seismological bureau said he saw "rows of houses collapsed" in Dujiangyan, Xinhua reported. Read an explanation about earthquakes. »

"Wenchuan is home to the Wolong Nature Reserve, China\'s leading research and breeding base for endangered giant pandas," Xinhua reported. The condition of the center was not immediately known because all communication services were cut off.

Bonnie Thie, the country director the Peace Corps, was on a university campus in Chengdu about 100 km from the epicenter, in the eastern part of China\'s Sichuan province, when the first quake hit.

"You could see the ground shaking," Thie told CNN.

The shaking "went on for what seemed like a very long time," she said.

"This is a very dangerous earthquake," said Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, which updated the magnitude of Monday\'s quake from 7.8 to 7.9.

The quake had the potential to cause major damage because of its strength and proximity to major population centers, he said.

In addition, the earthquake was relatively shallow, Presgrave said, and those kinds of quakes tend to do more damage near the epicenter than deeper ones.

An earthquake with 7.5 magnitude in the northern Chinese city of Tangshan killed 255,000 people in 1976 -- the greatest death toll from an earthquake in the last four centuries and the second greatest in recorded history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Tangshan is roughly 1,600 km from Chengdu, the nearest major city to the epicenter of Monday\'s quake. Quake victims have been sleeping outside in Chengdu. »

After the first quake struck Monday, the ground shook as far away as Beijing, which is 1,500 km from the epicenter.

They felt "a very quiet rolling sensation" that lasted for about a minute, according to CNN correspondent John Vause.

"Our building began to sway," he said.

Thousands of people were evacuated from Beijing high-rises immediately after the earthquake.

At least seven more earthquakes -- measuring between 4.0 and 6.0 magnitudes -- happened nearby over the three hours after the initial quake at at 2:28 p.m. local time (0728 GMT), the USGS reported.

A spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Committee said no Olympic venues were affected by the earthquake. The massive Three Gorges Dam -- roughly 600 km east of the epicenter -- was not damaged, a spokesman said.

The earthquake was also felt in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, and as far away as Hanoi, Vietnam, and Bangkok, Thailand, according to the Hong Kong-based Mandarin-language channel Phoenix TV.

CNN's John Vause and Jaime FlorCruz contributed to this report.

Associated Press - 5/7/2008

WASHINGTON —  The top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar says the death toll may reach 100,000 from a cyclone and its aftermath. She said the country\'s military junta is "paranoid," about the United States but is not blocking American aid in retaliation for past criticism.

U.S. charge d\'affaires Shari Villarosa estimates show 95 percent of buildings in the affected area are demolished, bridges are washed out. She called the situation outside the former capital Yangon "increasingly horrendous," citing relief agency reports of shortages of food and drinking water.

"There is a very real risk of disease outbreaks as long as this continues," Villarosa told reporters in a telephone call from Yangon. The death toll could hit or exceed 100,000 as humanitarian conditions worsen, she said.

She said that almost all the deaths are in the delta area. In Yangon, some 600-700 people may have died, she said.

The U.S. military has put people and airplanes into position to work on any relief effort, as officials awaited word on whether the Asian nation would accept American help.

Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that Myanmar must let the international community in to help. She said the aid is to meet the needs of a humanitarian crisis, and not a matter of politics, Reuters reported.

Villarosa did not sound optimistic.

"It\'s a very paranoid regime," she said. "They are very paranoid about the United States."

She said lower reaches of the Myanmar regime appear to recognize the magnitude of the problem, but the senior leadership is isolated and has not yet announced a final decision on how to handle outside aid.

She said she met with three ministers this week and is pressing hard to allow U.S. aid into the country. The junta is blocking aid from other nations, and does not appear to be singling out the United States because of the White House focus on human rights and other abuses in Myanmar, she said.