One Laptop Per Child - Not in India

And thank god too!
I usually avoid repeating news found elsewhere, but this one is important. India has refused to be part of the suspect “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) project of Negroponte and MIT Labs.
News of this came to me from the blogosphere, and I have seen two reasons for India’s rejection.

The World Bank’s PSD [...]

BBC Climate Change Experiment

Climate change worries me. So I’m glad to learn that the BBC is sponsoring an experiment, to simulate climate change. It uses the power of individual computers, similar to the immensely popular SETI@Home.
I downloaded it to my puny laptop, only to realize it cannot run it. For now I’ll have to be content biking to [...]

The Abyss - Bungy Jumping in Valais

This past Saturday, I looked into a 190m abyss…leaped…

…and bounced back.
After effects? A certificate of insanity, a headache, eyes ready to pop out, a few million fewer grey cells, and bragging rights to a hell of a memory.
If you cannot see the video above, you can
download the entire file and watch it on your computer.

The Failure of Pharmaceutical R&D: Part 1

The NYTimes is carrying an interesting piece of news - a non-profit organization (NPO) is conducting trials of a long-forgotten medicine to combat black fever in India. This is not a new development but it does highlight the failure of pharmaceutical R&D in satisfying the needs of the developing world. This failure is known as [...]