Get a laptop and give one to a child in a developing nation
Month: December 2008
As you may have learned there was an enormous under sea cable cut in Egypt that severed internet data communications. The ripples of this outage spread across the Middle East, Europe and even affected the network performances of Time Warner in California.
The worst part? Its the 2nd major cut on the same lines that occurred in February 2008.
Cannot help but wonder what American school children (Grades K-6) could accomplish with One Laptop per Child XO Laptop. Dare I say the ‘competition’ for XOs in America this holiday season are gaming systems? Actually the Give a Laptop, Get a Laptop Program isn’t really all that expensive in comparison with the top gaming systems:
Wii value bundle: $325.00
XBox 360 Pro: $300.00
PlayStation3 80GB Console: $400.00
Chinese real estate companies are planning to visit two of the US Cities who have lost significant housing market values (Los Angeles and San Francisco) to purchase property.
SouFun, the biggest real estate website in China will look at properties in California and possibly Nevada. Liu Jian, the company’s chief operating officer, said about 300 people had expressed interest in the idea in the three days since it was advertised, though the company would take only a small group on the first trip.
The Chinese have also expressed interest in GM which just last week opened its 8th auto plant on the mainland.
Tags: China, Los Angeles, economy, globalization, San Francisco, GM, trends
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Hot, Flat and Crowded
Finally I am pushing my way through Tom Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America. If your a fan of his The World Is Flat series you’re in for a fast, real-world update about the state of the environment. Its safe to say our global carbon footprint is ruining the planet.
I was very impressed with his chapter on energy poverty was very well written. Energy is the capacity to do work: 1 in 6 people do not have access to energy. Even in India almost 700,000,000 citizens are not on any energy grid. There has not been a power plant built in over 30 years anywhere across Africa … with the exception of white South Africa. I never really considered Africa’s real problem has been an energy problem all along. Fighting AIDS, hunger and the other noble causes are quite restricted when you cannot even turn on a lamp at night.
But as Friedman outlines in the book Africa needs green energy. Coal burning solutions that would only contribute to the world’s global warming problems. And China is bringing on new coal burning plants every other week?
For the health of the planet we need to place as much green energy as possible – Friedman acknowledges that many green solutions cannot yet scale to cover Africans, Indians, Chinese AND Americans – at the base of every country’s economic pyramid.
Looking forward to the remaining half of the book.