Sunday, February 6, 2005

LONDON,United Kingdom —The new London police commissioner Sir Ian Blair has warned middle class dinner party users of cocaine that he is out to get them. In contrast, he is relaxed about cannabis smokers, saying he does not wish to waste police time pursuing them. He has been quoted as saying: “People seem to think the price of a wrap of cocaine is 50 quid [UK pounds], but the cost is misery on estates here and a trail of blood back to Colombia. Someone has died to bring it [cocaine] to a dinner party. People who wouldn’t dream of having a non-organic vegetable don’t seem to notice the blood on their fingers.”

Blair is clearly trying to prick the conscience of the 624,000 estimated cocaine users in the UK, hoping to persuade them to boycott this Class A drug. Others, including Colombian Nobel Prize winner and author Gabriel García Márquez, have stated that the misery both in Colombia and on poor housing estates in the UK is caused not by drugs themselves but by the banning of them. Marquez has specifically said that he cannot see the end of the civil war in Colombia as long as the illegal drug trade exists, and he cannot see the end of the illegal drug trade unless drugs are legalized. The trade in cannabis also generates violence both at home (in the UK) and abroad, in spite of Sir Ian’s softly, softly approach to this recently reclassified Class C drug.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

India is the latest of the countries where the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) experiment has started. Children from the village of Khairat were given the opportunity to learn how to use the XO laptop. During the last year XO was distributed to children from Arahuay in Peru, Ban Samkha in Thailand, Cardal in Uruguay and Galadima in Nigeria. The OLPC team are, in their reports on the startup of the trials, delighted with how the laptop has improved access to information and ability to carry out educational activities. Thailand’s The Nation has praised the project, describing the children as “enthusiastic” and keen to attend school with their laptops.

Recent good news for the project sees Uruguay having ordered 100,000 of the machines which are to be given to children aged six to twelve. Should all go according to plan a further 300,000 machines will be purchased by 2009 to give one to every child in the country. As the first to order, Uruguay chose the OLPC XO laptop over its rival from Intel, the Classmate PC. In parallel with the delivery of the laptops network connectivity will be provided to schools involved in the project.

The remainder of this article is based on Carla G. Munroy’s Khairat Chronicle, which is available from the OLPC Wiki. Additional sources are listed at the end.