This year, I’m going to stay awake until St. Nick shows up. I’ve got my video camera all set up. Even though I’m a little sleepy, I’m feeling pretty good… not going to doze off and miss St. Nick’s arrival….
Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has become well-known for its plan to distribute huge quantities of laptop computers to children in the developing world. The non-profit organization aims to improve education by providing inexpensive (US$100) laptops to schoolchildren. The innovative XO laptop design is rugged, it can access the Web easily, and it can serve as an e-book reader allowing schoolchildren to have access to an entire library of e-books for just the price of the laptop.
OLPC has come under a great deal of criticism, particularly from those who say that far more basic things are needed in the schools of developing countries, that laptops are a luxury. BBC quotes the Nigerian minister of education as saying, “What is the sense of introducing One Laptop per Child when they don’t have seats to sit down and learn…?” OLPC replies that small, incremental changes have not changed the educational situation in many developing countries, and then challenges those countries to think big: “You’ve got to be big, you’ve got to be bold. And what has happened is that there has been an effort to say ‘don’t take any risks – just do something small, something incremental’,” says Walter Bender of OLPC in an interview with BBC. Link.
In a brilliant publicity stunt, OLPC invited anyone in North America to buy the XO laptop for themselves — for $400, you get your own XO, and OLPC sends one to a child in a developing country. I took advantage of this offer myself (you can, too, if you do it before December 31). While the XO won’t solve all education problems, I believe it could be an important and cost-effective part of an overall strategy for improving education. And of course, they look so cool that I want one for myself. Indeed, the BBC reports that “the sheer amount of features crammed in to the device combined with its low price may mean questions start to be asked of PC makers who typically charge a premium for portability” (link) — i.e., the XO could change the way we all think about laptop computers. Not surprisingly, both Microsoft and Intel are seeing the XO as a threat to their profit centers. Microsoft is coming out with a version of their propietary operating system that will run on the XO (currently, all software on the XO is free and open-source); and Intel got worried enough that they began developing their own version of the XO which they call the “Classmate” (they have now united with OLPC). Nigeria may scorn the XO, but Bill Gates is taking it seriously.
Of greatest interest to me was the news that, according to the BBC, Walter Bender has acknowledged that “OLPC had done a deal with Birmingham, Alabama, in the US, to provide the laptop for schools in the city.” I’ve been waiting for this to happen: forget Nigeria, we need the XO in the United States! For example, here in New Bedford there are plenty of families who cannot afford a computer at home, let alone afford to buy a laptop for each of their children. This lack of access to computers can present serious educational obstacles for kids, particularly those who want to go on to college. I’d love to start a “One Laptop Per New Bedford Child” program. Again, it won’t solve all our educational problems, but it might get some more kids through college — right now, the percentage of college graduates in New Bedford is an appallingly low 11%, less than half the national average. However, I predict that the response of New Bedford politicians will be much like that of the Nigerian politicians; like Nigerian politicians, New Bedford politicians are generally risk-averse and generally unwilling to take bold action on education.
One last thought: I also believe that one reason the XO will be successful in schools is that it is a totally cool machine. I liked it enough that I ordered one for myself — my dad did, too. But don’t take my word for how cool it is, see for yourself:– the BBC has 9 video clips of the XO laptop in action, including shots of schoolchildren in Nigeria using them. Link.
P.S. Looks like for a mere $29,900, you can donate 100 XO laptops, and designate that they go to New Bedford: Link.
In an article posted yesterday, Mark Ward, technology correspondent for the BBC News website, reports on “Second Life,” the well-known virtual world. According to Ward, Philip Rosedale, a founder of Linden Lab and thus one of the creators of “Second Life,” believes that virtual worlds could even replace the World Wide Web in many instances. Rosedale points out that virtual worlds offer a sense of place and a sense of identity in a way that the Web has never done:
“Virtual worlds are inherently comprehensible to us in a way that the web is not,” said Mr Rosedale. “They look like the world we already know and take advantage of our ability to remember and organise.”
“Information is presented there in a way that matches our memories and experiences,” he said. “Your and my ability to remember the words we use and the information we talk about is much higher if it’s presented as a room or space around us.” Link to full story
Pointing out that some educators and corporations already use Second Life to do online collaboration, Rosedale speculates on the possibilities of a portable online identity, built into some kind of online-world-browser, which would browse online worlds in the way Web browsers now browse the World Wide Web. Rosedale even seems to call for “a sufficiently open platform” that will allow people to “move into it quite rapidly.”
Indeed, one of my big complaints about the World Wide Web is that you never quite know where you are, or how you got to here from the last place you were. In a virtual world, you could move across a virtual landscape to find information/knowlege/social contacts that interested you — and you would know where you are, and how you got there, and how to get back.
Or think about it this way: instead of visiting this blog in your Web browser, you could travel to a virtual place in an online world where my avatar would periodically show up to post new reading matter, videos, etc. If your avatar and my avatar happened to be in that virtual place (a “virtblog”?) at the same time, we could chat; or if I’m not there, you could chat with whatever other avatars happen to be there, and when you got bored you could all head off to some new virtual place.
Or think about virtual online church committee meetings. Or virtual online adult religious education (I’d love to do online Bible study from a liberation/feminist perspective!).
Or who knows how virtual worlds will evolve. Or even if they will evolve. Uh, can someone get Tim Berners-Lee interested in creating VWML (Virtual World Markup Language)?
Back in August, 2005, I read a stunningly good story by an author who was then unfamiliar to me. The author was Kelly Link, and the story, “Magic for Beginners,” was a sort of magical-realism-science-fiction-fantasy story with characters that were very well drawn. Since then, I’ve read some other stories by Link, and while I feel “Magic for Beginners” is her best story, everything I’ve read by her is good enough that I’m willing to listen when she says something about writing.
In an interview in the November, 2007, issue of Locus magazine, she asserts that boredom is useful, perhaps even necessary, for writers:
Boredom is useful for writers. I need a certain amount of boredom to get work done. But I also need to do other things besides sit at a desk and write…. You need other kinds of work, and you also need significant periods of stillness in order to have time to think. Boredom allows time for thinking. Even in writing, boredom serves a useful function in writing — if I’m boring myself when I write, it means I need to stretch myself, try something I haven’t done before….
I don’t know if boredom is useful to everyone who writes, but boredom certainly is useful for me when I’m trying to write. When I get overly busy — and I have been very busy the past month or so — I don’t write much, and what I write isn’t worth much.
Yet another reason for not letting excessive busy-ness creep into my life.
My new favorite Web-comic is We the Robots. Given the title, you won’t be surprised to learn that the main characters are all robots. Cute, snarky, foul-mouthed robots (sorta like Bender from Futurama, except more relaxed).
I got hooked after I read the strip where a guy walks into a coffee shop to get a large coffee. The barista refuses to sell him a “large” coffee, because corporate policy dictates that the barista can only sell coffee in “gordo,” “jumba-jumba,” and “drei-und-zwanzig” sizes. Things devolve quickly into chaos from there. Link. This strip managed to capture the essence of a minor frustration in my life. One reason I hate Starbucks is that the baristas always roll their eyes at me when I ask for a “large decaf.” Then they say: “You mean a decaf vented Companeros?” Then I say, “No thank you, I’ll just go to Dunkins instead.”
Dan is taking a holiday break, and so Mr. Crankypants is taking over this blog today.
Mr. Crankypants has learned a new term, and he’s just dying to share it with you. Carol, who is the partner of stupid alter ego Dan, has been talking about “grant vultures.” You may well ask what a “grant vulture” is, and Mr. Crankypants will tell you.
Apparently, there are people who come to open hearings and other meetings in New Bedford, even though they’re not residents of the city. Why do they come to these meetings when they live in other towns? Could it be that they are planning to move to New Bedford, and want to know how the political process works? Well, no, when you talk to them it becomes obvious that they have no desire to live in the city. Could it be that they are political process junkies, and there just aren’t enough open hearings and political meetings in their home towns, so they feel compelled to attend political meetings in nearby municipalities? Well, no, when you talk to them it becomes obvious that they do not participate in the political process in any meaningful way in their home town.
Could it be that they are hooping to tap into the grant money that comes to New Bedford? Could it be that they’re hoping to tap into funding to help support their own non-profit organizations (which, by the way, are generally based in the suburbs, and do not directly serve city residents)? For example, it could be that they hope to tap into some of the money that comes from the Environmental Protection Agency to help New Bedford harbor’s toxic waste problems. It could be that they are grant vultures — critters that hover around a city, hoping that some grant money stays still long enough that they can flap down and grab a piece, and then fly back with it to feed their own nestlings.
But Mr. Crankypants doesn’t believe that there are actual grant vultures out there. And Mr. Crankypants knows that most of the people in the non-profit world are not grant vultures, they have pure motives, and they really do serious work at facilitating the fair flow of grant money. Mr. Crankypants hopes that the grant vulture is just a mythical beast, like unicorns and dragons. And he hopes everyone in the non-profit world truly is pure of heart, with only the highest of motives.
Praise workers laboring hard in their fields,
May sun and moon increase their yields.
May the soil be blessed with falling silver rain,
As we offer thanks to mother earth again.
A happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!
This Sunday, my sermon title is “Greedy Guts,” in honor of the biggest shopping weekend of the year here in the United States. While searching for appropriate readings, I came across this summary of the King Midas story, in Robert Graves’s Greek Myths:
Midas, son of the Great Goddess of Ida, by a satyr whose name is not remembered, was a pleasure-loving King of Macedonian Bromium, where he ruled over the Brigians and planted his celebrated rose gardens. In his infancy, a procession of ants was observed carrying grains of wheat up the side of his cradle and placing them between his lips as he slept — a prodigy which the soothsayers read as an omen of the great wealth that would accrue to him….
One day, the debauched old satyr Silenus, Dionysus’s former pedagogue, happened to straggle from the main body of the riotous Dionysian army as it marched out of Thrace into Boeotia, and was found sleeping off his drunken fit in [Midas’s] rose gardens. The gardeners bound him with garlands of flowers and led his before Midas, to whom he told wonderful tales of an immense continent lying beyond the Ocean stream — altogether separate from the conjoined mass of Europe, Asia, or Africa — where splendid cities abound, peopled by gigantic, happy, and long-lived inhabitants, and enjoying a remarkable legal system. A great expedition — at least ten million strong — once set out [from] thence across the Ocean in ships to visit the Hyperboreans; but on learning that theirs was the best land that the old world had to offer, retired in disgust…. Midas, enchanted by Silenus’s fictions, entertained him for five days and nights, and then ordered a guide to escort him [back] to Dionysus’s headquarters.
Dionysus, who had been anxious on Silenus’s account, sent to ask how Midas wished to be rewarded. He replied without hesitation: ‘Pray grant that all I touch be turned into gold.’ However, not only stones, flowers, and the furnishing of his house turned to gold but, when he sat down to table, so did the food he ate and the water he drank. Midas soon begged to be released from his wish, because he was fast dying of hunger and thirst; whereupon Dionysus, highly entertained, told him to visit the source of the river Pactolus, near Mount Tmolus, and there wash himself. He obeyed, and was at once freed from the golden touch, but the sand of the river Pactolus are bright with gold to this day…. [pp. 281-282]
That the Midas legend is herein tied to a tale told by a drunken debauched satyr of a fabulous land of plenty lying westward across the Atlantic Ocean makes a kind of mythic sense for my purposes, don’t you think?
I’m about two-thirds of the way through Thurber: A Biography by Burton Bernstein. I had known that James Thurber was one of the finest American humorists of the 20th C., but I did not realize that he was very good at word games. Once, Peter De Vries and Berton Roueche challenged Thurber to come up with single words that contain all five vowels — “sequoia” was the example they gave him. Thurber: A Biography quotes from two of Thurber’s letters to De Vries and Roueche, in which he gives them twelve other such words. He extended the game to come up with five-vowel names of real people, such as Benjamin Clough.
I read too fast, and had already read Thurber’s twelve five-vowel words before I realized that it would have been far more fun to try to find them myself. Now I’m trying to think if there are any more beyond those twelve. I don’t want to spoil your fun, so I’ll just leave this question hanging:– how many five-vowel words can you come up with? — and how many five-vowel names (of real people)?