Waveplace is a non-profit starting an XO pilot in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, in ten days [February 17th]. OLPC was going to be giving us laptops as part of the Get One Give One program, but it fell through, which is why I’m trying to get twenty XOs from elsewhere.

Your laptop may end up in the hands of one of the most needy children in the Western Hemisphere. The school where the laptop will be sent is run by Susie Scott Krabacher, who has been the Mother Theresa of Haiti for 15 years. In fact, a major motion picture is being made about her life right now, based upon her autobiography, Angels of a Lower Flight: One Womans Mission to Save a Country… One Child at a Time

You could really help by agreeing to sell us your laptop. We’ve only got ten days to get the laptops to Miami, as we’re leaving for Haiti on Feb 17th.

To see the kids that will get them, watch this video, which we shot last month.

Susie’s organization: Mercy and Sharing Foundation (Check on GuideStar.)

You can see a slideshow of the conditions and read an article by Susie from our newsletter.

One way or another, we’ll be in Haiti in ten days. [They're leaving for Haiti February 17th] Please help us bring more laptops.

Please pass the word, and if you have a laptop to sell, click contact on the Waveplace site.

Thank you!

I’m giving mine. David Weinberger’s giving his too. Timothy noted that Waveplace will update with news and video, some of which will include your XO laptop in the hands of the Haitian child who gets it.

Would love to have seen more transparency from the original One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project and the G1G1 (Get One Give One) program regarding the children who receive it and connection between the giver and the getter. Nevertheless, it’s a thrill to see the news and pictures from the pilot in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

I loved the idea of OLPC project and the G1G1 program from the start and still do (despite some bungling in execution and logistics). Yes to empowering children around the world to learn, connect, explore and experiment with their own connected computers! (Yes to nutrition and health initiatives also! Why would that be an either/or?) It feels great to participate.

It’s hard to remember any specific classroom lessons from that age, but I distinctly remember the joy of experimenting on a Commodore PET, guided by books of python BASIC programs and stacks of Make BYTE magazines. The excitement of discovering the logic by altering the code and testing whether the programs ran (and sense of accomplishment when they did) stoked my curiosity, imagination and love of learning. Not to mention the fun of making ASCII art… (Thanks, Dad!)

That feeling rushed back as I opened and beheld the XO for the first time. This adorable, mesh networking, environmentally friendly(ish), highly portable and rugged networked laptop delights the kid in all of us. The magic really starts to happen when multiple XOs mesh with each other. But as much as I wanted it not to be true, it is designed for kids. The mini-keyboard’s a dealbreaker for writing anything longer than short messages with my adult fingers.

Engineered to withstand extreme environmental conditions like high heat, humidity and dust, I figured this three pound membrane-sealed computer would be ideal for tossing in my solar backpack for jaunts to cafes (including spills) and mountain hikes. It excels in high light environments, and the swiveling display delights. I was intrigued to learn even though it’s completely sealed to the elements and accident-resistant, it’s also easy to access and replace parts.

If OLPC can make an XO that does that for around $200, how come Apple’s $1799 MacBook Air is so vulnerable to the elements and being dropped, yet impossible to open for something as simple as battery changing? Ok, ok, compromises must be made because it’s so thin. But the same vulnerability is true for the whole MacBook line and indeed, most laptop computers. (I know, the Toughbook. But aesthetics count, and you shouldn’t have to pay that much of a premium.)

What I’d really love is a powerful MacBook Air with XO’s ruggedness, openness and flexibility. An elegant and sophisticated yet slim and lightweight Fisher Price My First Mac case with Pro brains and easily replacable and recyclable components to cut down on the massive amounts of e-waste my gadget lust produces. Until then, I’ll settle (eagerly) for the MacBook Air, but if you have a laptop like that to sell or donate, please contact me.

So goodbye sweet XO, it’s been wonderful knowing you. Have fun with the new kid in Haiti and stay in touch!

XOXOXO
Emily

Coming from a deep natural aquifer to the surface in Whakatane, New Zealand, Antipodes has real mouth appeal. It’s less aggressively carbonated than my usual brew, San Pellegrino, and it’s easy on the eyes too.

Dressed in classic Mrs. Eaves, Antipodes complements any table without overpowering it. The oviform bottle echoes the round beads streaming up when opened. It’s a happy thing to hold.

I know, I know… you have issues with bottled water. I do too. But a girl’s gotta have a vice, and until I can pour sparkling from the tap, I’ll order the bottle. (When out… technically I could make my own at home.) If it makes you feel any better, Antipodes is the first premium water to be certified carbon neutral in production and export, and they plan to be carbon neutral to any table, hotel room or home anywhere in the world by 2008.

Antipodes is currently served only in hand-picked great restaurants around New Zealand, hence their restaurant list is a good guide to the restaurants I want to try. You can order Antipodes by the case for home delivery in the United States through New Zealand Natural Goods, but at $60 for 12, I’d have to consider it a design element to justify it. Oh, wonderful! Oprah already did.

Claire Nouvian sailing in Penobscot Bay for a session on “Oceans in Balance” at Pop!Tech, off the coast of Maine. (More photos from Pop!Tech 2007)

Claire Nouvian, a documentary filmmaker, thinks really deep thoughts about the ocean and its inhabitants. She’s especially concerned about how we relate to ecosystems that are far removed from our own. Even though oceans represent about 99% of the planet, they have only been looked at in detail since the 1950′s, and we’ve only sampled about 0.5% of the surface. The ocean remains the last frontier.

Nouvian’s journey began in 2001 at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, where she was blown away by an exhibition of “Mysteries of the Deep.” She couldn’t believe the beautiful creatures she was seeing were real and not some computer generated 3D aliens. She set out to tell the world this stuff exists, making a documentary and book.

Because the deep sea is remote both horizontally — you have to go over the continental shelf before you go down to the depths — and vertically, it is literally out of sight and out of mind. Alas, it is not out of harms way. Creatures we haven’t even discovered yet are under threat from deep sea mining, deep sea dumping, co2 sequestration, ocean acidification, methane & oil exploitation and bottom trawling.

Why should we care? Sure there are boundless medicinal and biotech discoveries to be made, but aesthetics alone are reason enough for Nouvian. And they are breathtaking. Tim Burton, HR Giger and George Lucas have nothing on nature. On the very first look through her magnificent book, The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss, I fell completely in love. As it turns out, the deep sea is where the creatures from our wildest dreams live.

But seduction always has a price… once you fall in love, you’ll want to protect them. And Nouvian argues there’s no just reason not to do so: deep sea trawling provides only 5% of the worldwide catch and only 300 or 400 ships engage in the $400 million per year industry. Nouvian argued that we are “destroying a unique, unassessed planetary heritage at unprecedented speed and scale in an irreversible manner for no reason but the increased profit of a handful of people.”

Nouvian recommends checking out SeaAroundUs.org, SaveTheHighSeas.org (the website of the Deep Sea Coalition), eating less fish and using seafood watch cards, and her new organization: the Bloom Association which aims to link people with the deep sea, rousing emotions through beauty.

golden purslane, originally uploaded by this is emily.

In Natural History, Pliny the Elder encouraged wearing purslane as an amulet that could expel all evil, but today most people in the US consider purslane a weed. Nevia No of Yuno’s Farm turned me on to it as a salad green last year, and I got hooked on its lemony succulence. Purslane has the most omega-3 fatty acids of any leafy green, and it also features lots of vitamin C, some Bs, carotenoids, calcium, magnesium, potassium and iron.

Tossed with blueberries and hazelnuts, olive oil and lemon juice, it makes a perfect summer salad. (Thanks, Cookshop.)

Purslane grows easily from seed (from Seeds of Change) in a container on a sunny NYC rooftop.

Other recipes I’d like to try soon:

• zucchini flowers made easy
• spicy paneer momos

Her Story Is Strange

• Debbie Millman interviews Maira Kalman for her Design Matters podcast, introducing her subject with a story about the sign at right.

  On Vagueness: “The word itself defines the entire essence of being and how things are always confused and unknown and then you go ahead and make some kind of sense out of it, and then you make some kind of nonsense about it and it’s a full time job, just figuring it out.”

  Her last installment of “The Principles of Uncertainty” comes tomorrow, but the book is coming out in Fall (with a fabulous index!).

• Happy first birthday Photojojo, a delightful site/e-mail list that’s all about fun with digital photos. Inspired to try out today’s tip and tutorial on making Videoramas – full motion video panoramas.
• Scrapblog is another fun tool for creating and sharing multimedia scrapbooks or presentations online with photos from Flickr/Yahoo/Photobucket and videos from YouTube.
• Today’s Daily Om comes right on time: Centering And Expressing.
• Lonely Planet launches travel video social networking channel lonelyplanet.tv, and Charles Simonyi blogs about traveling beyond this lonely planet, following in the weightless footsteps of the amazing Anousheh Ansari. If you’re over the moon about space tourism or terraforming, you’ll want to attend Esther’s Flight School.
• If like Maira, you prefer to explore more vague territories, NYTimes points out you, along with everyone in China, can take “Topics in Philosophy of Language: Vagueness,” a graduate level course at M.I.T.
• Apple announced that they will sell EMI’s entire catalog of music without copy-protection from the iTunes store. Thank you! The other important news here is that the music will be higher quality, encoded at 256 kilobits per second rather than 128 kbps. I’ll be one of their best customers once again, and not have to feel bad about the superfluous CD and packaging waste generated just to enjoy music. (Which reminds me, dear Poptech, why can’t I buy the Antibabel EP by Yungchen Lhamo and Reggie Watts as downloadable files? Will you carbon offset my CD purchase and shipping?) Lately, I’ve been receiving most of my aural gratification from the Hype Machine.

In any case, the announcement email is brilliant in that instead of telling me I can purchase a gadget, they make it seem like I’m about to rescue a pet: Adopt A Rabbit and welcome me to the Rabbit Community.

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Should I be worried about Sherry Turkle’s concerns about nurturing technology?

I’m willing to bet on abundance… developing love or care for robots expands the total love pie, and can be step towards expanding and expressing love to sentient beings.

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In Eggs Take Their Place at the Dinner Table, Mark Bittman reveals the secret of Jean George’s eggs and offers an intriguing recipe for eggs poached in red wine.

Have been enjoying cooking my way through Marie Simmons The Good Egg: More than 200 Fresh Approaches from Breakfast to Dessert with Nevia’s marvelous eggs from happy chickens.