You'll never believe who's helping out One Laptop Per Child...!

[thatcrazycajun]

Courtesy of the intrepid blokes and birds of the UK's premier online tech-news site, The Inquirer (see story here): The $100 laptop designed by Nick Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child initiative has finally shipped. (Okay, so it actually is $125 right now, but there's every reason to hope, as the OLPC folks project, that the cost will be brought down to the goal level within the next two years. What matters is that they're on the way to the kids who can use them.)

But here's the real shocker: Kicking in a huge part of the funding is none other than News Corporation, the right-wing propaganda machine masquerading as a news-and-entertainment organization founded and run by Aussie immigrant Rupert Murdoch. Yes, that News Corp., of Faux Fox News Channel, The Weekly Double Standard and MySpace.com fame. A cynical sort could suppose that ol' Rupe is opening his purse in hopes of hooking a whole new generation of viewers and web-surfers on his company's properties, but in the spirit of the upcoming holiday season and of my recently posted new song "Come the Dawn" (scroll down for lyrics), I'm going to give the Newsies the benefit of the doubt for once and assume the best and noblest intentions. I can't believe I'm saying this, but...thank you, Mr. Murdoch, and God bless you for your generosity, whatever its motive or goal.