Monthly Archives: April 2007

The things I’ve missed out on, never having traveled more than 30miles from the US border as an adult. For example, Nelson Minar brings this report from France.

the craziest appliance in my apartment is one we have no name for in the US, so I’m calling it le moulin à merde. It serves the same function as a garbage disposal only instead of being in the kitchen sink it’s in the toilet. Old buildings have awkward plumbing, in this case a thin little pipe coming out of the toilet instead of a 2 inch sewer pipe. So you have a grinder. It seems to work but it’s noisy as hell. Ken and I agreed to not flush after late night micturation, but simply adding to the water level is enough to start it chewing.
(link)

I can’t imagine that makes potty training any easier

OLPC is Awesome. Press coverage of OLPC, not so much

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CNet has some intriguing photos of the first OLPC laptops to be deployed, which were given to Nigerian students recently. They also have a written profile and fluffy video interview of Khaled Hassounah who heads up OLPC’s efforts in Africa.

I love the OLPC project, it gives me the same giddy feeling I last got from the first mars rover, but I don’t want background on the project and it’s principals.

Gimme THE FRICKIN MEAT!
What happened when the kids finally got their laptops?!? To this point, they’ve apparently received computer instruction from an instructor who has never actually used a computer. How have they reacted to the Sugar UI? Have any of them discovered they can tweak the python code underlying it? C’mon people!!! What’s the holdup?!?

Sadly, the OLPC site is no better. Their news page has a link to the CNet article. That’s it.