If anything is certain is that this is fun. Lots of fun. An excellent piece of software and a great educational companion.

This is an excellent article on some of the (somewhat obvious) political issues surrounding the OLPC — some of which I have alluded to in previous articles on this site. At the same time, it gives an insight on the many of the policy and technology mistakes the OLPC project seems to have made over the past few years; from academic short-sightedness (call it arrogance if you will) to the abuse of free software ideology as a vehicle aiming to convince of the device’s value. Absolutely worth a read.

I really have no words for this. One of the most impressive videos on computer graphics I’ve seen in years. And I guess the guys and gals at Tübingen are not the only ones working on such models. Let the good times films roll.

As part of The Corporation’s supplemental material, this interview of Joel Bakan, the author of the book and co-producer of the synonymous film, by Janeane Garofalo covers some of the topics presented in the book and the movie, but also goes a bit further to explain how politics, money and influence has allowed corporations to evolve into the powerful, dominant, yet completely immoral and irresponsible institution of our time. Extremely interesting and definitely worth watching, even if you have watched this excellent fllm.

In order to break the stream of posts helping me vent my frustration about Hellenic politics and the upcoming elections in that country, here’s an excellent documentary by the BBC (who else?). Its subject matter covers the work and lives of some of the most brilliant scientific minds of the last 200 years and specifically those of Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. A common theme among them is the fact that they all committed suicide. The documentary vaguely attempts to link their prolific scientific and intellectual output and the primitive social environment in which they lived to their death, something which while possible, is vastly more complex correlation to what is presented in this documentary. Still, it is an interesting presentation, especially for those interested in the biographical details of these brilliant thinkers.

One of the few female computer science pioneers, Karen Spärck Jones died in early April 2007, just a few short years after her husband, Roger Needham, passed away in early 2003. Read the CL obituary as well as this month’s IEEE Spectrum’s article on her life and work titled “A woman’s work”.