In honor of President’s Day, I’ve uploaded 30 minutes of cinematic goodness for you all to enjoy. The only problem is, these movies are actually quite horrific. Nevertheless, they should be good for a laugh. You can find links to them at the top of the new “Creative” page.
These films represent the sum total of EMC Productions’s catalog between 2002 and 2004. Thanks to Steve Katz, Peter Kay, Becky Kelly, Eugene Novikov, Matt Toia, and Chris Vandegrift for all of their hard work.
Last night I had the opportunity to see a speech by Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the One Laptop per Child non-profit association. I had read a little bit about the program in the past, but had always considered it to be a pie-in-the-sky academic exercise. I was wrong.
Watching Negroponte speak, I realized I was witnessing something really amazing. The OLPC project is exactly the kind of thing that I hope to do one day. They’ve taken a really, really, really hard and gigantic problem and made it work: I saw the laptop with my own eyes. Just considering the types of problems they had to solve is staggering. They’ve: created a new financial instrument to fund the projecct, developed an entirely new user interface paradigm, created hardware at a price nobody thought possible, worked with governments across the world to ensure widespread acceptance, and much more. They solved problems that I didn’t even think existed. Negroponte spoke about how the target schools for the program do not have access to electricity. I had read about this in previous articles about the program, and I was aware of the novel “hand crank” they had built into prototypes that would allow children to generate power. But the first generation shipping product actually uses a pull-cord, something like you see on children’s talking dolls. Apparently their research showed that this design reduces overall muscle strain.
The pull-cord is just one small example of the brilliance I learned about last night. This is world-changing stuff.
And they’re right. Despite the fact that I’m alone on a Saturday night, working on a memo, I just wanted to take a few minutes from the beginning of my 24th year to post some thoughts on how lucky I’ve been. Life is just great. I’ve got a great family, a great group of friends (and a great girlfriend), a great school, and a great big future ahead of me. I was lucky enough to be born in the greatest country the world has ever known, at what is, despite the presence of a few sticky issues, a great time in its history. The pieces are all here for a group of dedicated people - hopefully people that I will know - to create a future that is driven by man’s nobler instincts.
Time to get back to work. If there’s anything I can do for you, let me know.