Legends of the Sun Pig

I’m still trying to figure out whether this (Oneshare.com) is a nifty gift idea, or a cynically opportunistic way of introducing children to the joys of capitalist greed before they know any better.

I suppose we already give children toy cars to get them used to the idea that they have a right to drive, toy guns to let them know that killing people is actually rather fun, and TV programmes like the Tweenies to reinforce the gender stereotype of ditzy girls and tough boys. So why not “My First Stock” as well?

Is it a potentially valuable educational tool for learning about saving, the responsibilities of ownership, and the stakeholding economy, or is it a sinister gateway into the world of day trading, inflated earnings statements, and IPO fever?

Or am I just taking it a bit too seriously?

Last year, MIT announced that they’d be putting their course materials up on the web, freely available for anyone to use. Yesterday, they went live with the pilot.

“The idea behind OpenCourseWare is to make the MIT course materials used in almost all undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. The hope is that OCW will advance technology-enhanced education at MIT, and will serve as a model for university dissemination of knowledge in the Internet age.”

The OpenCourseWare Site.

This is quite a significant event in the world of education. The cost of drawing all this information together on a web site must be substantial. But it is a strong acknowledgement of intellectual principles: education enriches us all.

MIT isn’t going to lose fee income because of this. No-one (or at least, vanishingly few people) will decide to just read the stuff on the web rather than spending four years on campus. Nor will it probably lead to increased tuition fee revenue. Again, few people will look at the materials on the web and say, “that’s great; I want more, so I’d better attend MIT.

It’s neither a loss leader, nor a profit source. It’s a charitable donation to the Internet, and a gift to the public domain. People all over the world will benefit massively from this resource. Bravo.

Just a quick note to parents and other users of the brilliant AnyWayUp cups (“the world’s only totally non-spill cup”): don’t use them with fizzy drinks.

The cups rely on a slight pressure imbalance to keep the liquid from leaking out. You take a few sucks, the pressure inside the cup drops, and this is enough to keep the rubber valve nicely closed. But as soon as you put a carbonated beverage in the cup, the CO2 escaping from the drink creates an overpressure in the cup. If you hold it upside-down, this overpressure is enough to force liquid out through the valve, and also out through the rim of the cup. Messy.

Apple juice, yes. Appletise, no.