Here is a link to the laptop the people at MIT (with help from various other groups) have been designing. The purpose of these is to be able to give them to children in poverty-stricken regions of the world, so they can get a leg up.

While the benefits of education and its potential are excellent, some serious problems I see with this:
1. I hope this isn't part of some ploy to bring them into the "first world" with a taste of misinformation (project partially sponsored by News Corp, makers of Fox News).
2. Many of the world's poor are still dealing with basic needs like food and medicine.
3. These computers are going to give them a flood of information, and will potentially inflict a new version of hell upon them. By this, I mean, they will be given a window to look into the world of those in countries/cultures who are doing just great while they're living on pennies a day. Much like bringing a homeless person into a fancy restaurant and letting them sit in the corner to watch you eat!

A good solution I'd propose is that in addition to bringing these computers, we better bring a heckuva lot more. Whatever justice exists in the world needs to be brought out before these laptops.

Still, even if the justice doesn't happen before then, this is probably a good thing nonetheless. It's empowering, and will enlighten these children to the real state of the world. Once they start plastering posts on internet forums everywhere to note the disparity between "ooh i can't get one bad pixel on my plasma screen to work" and "i've been eating rice and vitamins for two weeks" perhaps some good leveling will come. Then again I'm a dreamer, but not the only one.

music: "I hear that train a comin', a comin' round the bend. I ain't seen the sun shine since I don't know when."

colors: pink orange and yellow

mood: so-so

thoughts: given above. i'm going to change the order around here so thoughts come first since that's usually what i'm thinking when i come to this page to update. funny, i wouldn't come to this page just to tell you what colors i'm thinking about. then again, sometimes i am listening to such a good song that i want to share it...

chant/prayer/mantra:
We live in a world of plenty. Let's spread it around for real.

Link of the day: Rock Feet

pax hominibus,
joel

Thanks to Ellie for sending a link to this article on a not-so-outlandish future, if we make it there.

music: Ministry - Deity

colors: brown and white

mood: hoowa

thoughts: I say that we'll want to have non-sentient robot servants, and also create a sentient robot species. That will be interesting, because they'll be able to dominate us in just about every video game ever known.

chant/prayer/mantra:
The future comes, regardless of vision, but vision can make the difference.

pax hominibus,
joel

.
sleepless,
unable to focus
on anything
but your surrender

sweet revelation
sweet surrender

...

pax hominibus,
joel

music: Chet Atkins - You Are My Sunshine

colors: red white and you

mood: leisurely/busy

thoughts: My friend Ellie just sent me a link to a site with world maps of exports/imports, births/deaths, immigrations/emigration patterns by country, where each country's percentage is expressed by size. These maps look all blown out of proportion, squinched up and blown out in all sorts of weird ways. If you do a search for "Butthole Surfers Piouhgd" you can see the cover art, but if you have the album, the inner artwork is of their faces looking a lot like these maps.

For example, in this map, we see that the U.S. is the largest importer of toys, and in this map, we see that China is the largest exporter of toys. Some of these maps are beyond remarkable. Likewise, here are maps of clothing imports and exports. And check this: Royalties and Licensing exports, which include "international payments and receipts for the authorised use of intangible, non-produced, non-financial assets and proprietary rights ...."

chant/prayer/mantra:
Static State Someday, or somewhere near it.

pax hominibus,
joel

.

OK, the reason I've been including the quote in orange below is as a reminder that neither Jeffrey Lebowski or Walter Sobchak really had any idea of what Donny's wishes really were, so Walter just totally guessed. After getting ashes blown all over him as they were released from the coffee can up on the oceanside cliff, Jeffrey Lebowski got a bit upset with Walter for being so dumb about it and attaching all sorts of meaningless extra junk onto the pseudo-eulogy he delivered.

In the same way, the people of Christian churches presume to know the wishes of God. They think that an all-knowing, all-powerful God could somehow be summed up in a single bound volume, and have been going on and on, adding interpretations in, and claiming that their insistence on biblical inerrancy makes them tight with God in general. Meanwhile, the Dude abides, getting covered in ashes from the Christian coffee can. OK, that said, say goodbye to the autosig. If I do another, I promise it'll be more pithy, or more something or other.

pax hominibus,
joel

"And so, Theodore Donald Karabotsos, in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been, we commit your final mortal remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean"

music: elvis - suspicious minds; angels envy - les lokey

colors: flesh colored

mood: kind of psyched up for my paper on emerson now that i've seen this android business

thoughts: Here's the world's second "android". not sure whether it comes closer to Real Doll or to the replicants from Blade Runner.

My cynical guess is that it'll see use as the former first.

Considering that they introduced this product/person to 60 schoolchildren, and considering the weird-out people get from the verisimilitudinous human likeness of these androids (known as the Uncanny Valley principle), I wonder if they'll be traumatized at all.

chant/prayer/mantra:
The people with the most money will be the early adopters. The people without enough food or decent water will likely never see one of these.

pax hominibus,
joel

"And so, Theodore Donald Karabotsos, in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been, we commit your final mortal remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean"

music: volunteers of america - jefferson airplane (not a song i really like all that much, but it's in my head after reading about dorothy parker)

colors: brick red, canary yellow

mood: here and there

thoughts: follow this link to find out why this innocent woman went to jail.

chant/prayer/mantra:
treat the just as just, and the criminals as unjust.


pax hominibus,
joel

"And so, Theodore Donald Karabotsos, in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been, we commit your final mortal remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean"

Hello Alienware Support,

I bought an Alienware Sentia 223 from you 13 months ago, and now it's
just out of warranty and does NOTHING! It does not even POST, it has
no electricity, so I am guessing that the problem is the PSU, which
apparently is integrated into the motherboard.

Here is the relevant information on your forum(also, why is this forum
moderated, and why has it taken over three days and still my posts
aren't being posted or replied to?):
http://support.alienware.com/Forum_Pages/AddPost.aspx?PostID=531846&mode=flat

I've searched the internet pretty thoroughly now, and I haven't found
either a PSU/mobo or somebody who can fix this. I was told to contact
Uniwill, the manufacturers of this motherboard, and they pointed me to
the adapter, which is NOT the part I need. If the original
manufacturer can't understand the problem or help with itI am having a
very hard time coming to terms with the notion that I now have a $1500
paperweight that is unfixable only 13 months after buying this laptop
new.

I don't want to have a paperweight, I want a functional laptop. I
understand this laptop is just past its warranty period, but that
shouldn't mean that a problem can't be fixed and something I bought
from you is now zero-value.

What I would really like is a place to send this to get it fixed (I
understand that the cost will come out of my pocket), because I'm not
really too confident at picking apart an entire dense little laptop
and putting it back together again.

Please reply soon! My wife is hounding me about when she gets to use
the laptop again.

Thanks.

--
pax hominibus,
agape to everyone,
joel

http://revjd.blogspot.com/

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see
them misunderstood.
- HL Mencken

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
- Kurt Vonnegut

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- Alan Kay

"A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting
air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians."
-Frank Zappa

"I liked the Bible better when I could consciously take its
contradictory books each for what it is, and felt nothing commanding
me to accept it for what it is not."
-Theodore Parker

xoxox