Arrested for Photography – Past and Protest

See this innocuous advertisement for Coca Cola on Moscow’s Arbat Street. Does it look like a Russian state secret? Like it would have any value to a Chechen spy? Or be the basis for arrest if you took a photograph of it?

I was arrested for taking a photograph of this very sign when I lived in Moscow and I refuse for that to happen in America.

It was a damn cold night in Moscow, -34C. I know this number for the bottom of that Coke ad had a thermometer and when I saw just how cold it was, I pulled out my camera to document the moment – a tropics boy in the frigid north.

No sooner had the flash illuminated the night that two of Moscow’s drunkest finest stepped out of the shadows and asked me for my documents. A standard small-time bribe shakedown I’d easily brushed past before. This time, they didn’t quickly return my documents.

And then I spent a long, cold night in a Russian holding cell waiting for the police day shift to arrive and straighten things out. Yes, I was quickly released, unharmed if a little hungry and sleep deprived, when sober minds took a look at me and my paperwork. But that’s not the point.

The point is that this experience, while maybe expected in Russia, is now playing out in America. A country founded on freedom of expression and a right to public discourse. A country where unrestricted photography by private citizens has played an integral role in protecting the freedom, security, and well-being of all Americans by contributing to improvements in civil rights, labor practices, and police activity.

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I am on 60 Minutes this Sunday!

Are you in the USA? Do you have access to the American infotainment juggernaut? Then turn your attention to the CBS News program “60 Minutes” this Sunday, May 20th at 7pm.

Famed reporter Lesley Stahl will be covering MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte’s progress with One Laptop Per Child, his dream of one-to-one computing as an educational boost, a way for children in the developing world to “learn learning”. Ms. Stahl will have on-location reports from OLPC testing in Brazil. With 13 million viewers on average, the coverage of OLPC should be a major boost in profile for the project.

Lesley Stahl will also be interviewing an obsessive follower of OLPC XO advances, a technology in development expert who publishes the informative and influential OLPC News, Wayan Vota.

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Banking Home a Half-Million Dollar Mortgage

There is an interesting alternate reality to your every day financial life. In this separate dimension, strange voices on telephones promise to send you a blank check. Blank but for the amount, there it says $500,000.

Five hundred thousand dollars.

Have you ever seen that much money? Have you ever held a check for it? I have not, not yet anyway, of those voices on the telephone wait for me to find something to spend it on before they will send me the check.

And not just anything, but a house, a home, a domicile to call my very own. And those voices, whispering in my ears from many sides tell me I should do it. I should take that blank check and buy a home.

Maybe buy a dream home in the Petworth neighbourhood of Washington DC. And a dream it is, perfect for a settled life of domestic bliss. See the video for yourself of what $500,000 buys in my housing market.

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I’m gonna be on National Public Radio tonight!

That’s right, I’m going to be on National Public Radio talking about a $100 dollar laptop, tonight, Wednesday Feb21 @ 7pm. station list)

Think about it, a $100 dollar laptop. Wouldn’t that be great! You could buy one for everyone you know. Better yet, what about a $100 laptop designed for students?

Imagine a classroom full of children, faces aglow with laptop screens, all learning at Internet speeds; the next Bill Gates, the next Jerry Yang, the next Sergey Bergin. Now imagine all three in the developing world, better known for abject poverty than power computing.

That is the dream of Nicholas Negroponte, a MIT professor and technology futurist, as well as a dream of many in the development community. In a distinct difference, Mr. Negroponte has run with his dream and now his nonprofit, One Laptop Per Child is designing an appropriate-technology laptop, the Children’s Machine XO.

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Flickr Photo Pools: Hacked or Just Gone Mad?!

This morning I was looking to add a post to Metroblogging DC, the hyper-local view of Washington DC that I love. But when I went to my DC Metroblogger Flickr account to find the transit foamer image I wanted, my web wanderings took an unexpected turn.

When I clicked on my Transit Foamer photo pool, where I have images of public transport options worldwide, I found a whole different kind of foamer staring back at me. Shocked, I refreshed the page, thinking it was a temporary error, but the new “foamer” was still there.

To my relief, when I clicked through, it was my original photo, but back at the photo pool page, the foamer only shifted locations.

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