Author: p6admin

To build a windmill.

A few years ago he was plucked from the obscurity of the Malawi countryside to speak to the TED Conference – a conference of ideas and visionaries. William Kamkwamba couldn’t afford school, but he decided to teach himself by looking at the diagrams in books at the library (his English wasn’t that good so he couldn’t really read). One that caught his eye was a book about windmills, so he set off to build one in his village to power a few lights and a radio. That led to people talking about the house with electricity, and bloggers mentioning this amazing story of a kid who make a windmill from a bunch of junk.  That led to TED bringing him over to speak to the visionaries, who turned around and decided to sponsor this kid financially through high school and university. ]]>

Books on my nightstand at this moment. This is silly.

Ok, I need to finish some of these before buying new ones. And guess what? Amazon just sent me a $30 gift certificate for some reason. Maybe I’ll use it on a bookcase.

Ok, this is just silly. I’m taking some of these back downstairs to the library. There are easily 5 more in here and I’m tired of making all these links.

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Book Giveaway–The Girl who Played with Fire

Stieg Larsson‘s first book the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo I was patiently awaiting his next book, the Girl Who Played with Fire.  Of course waiting isn’t exactly the right term as it’s been ‘done’ for a few years now, it was just a matter of waiting for the translation to be completed.  Luckily, by the power of the net, I was ‘found’ by Alred Knopf’s marketing team which has sent me a free copy of the book to giveaway to my vast and illiterate mass of readers. So I’ll have a competition.  Post your answers below and I’ll pick from the correct responses: 1) How many Ikeas are in there in the world? 2) Who invented Swedish Fish (and why)?  You can make up the second bit. 3) What was the score in the 1980 US-Sweden gold medal hockey game? Ok, that’s enough.  Just post a comment and I’ll send it to one of you. Oh, bonus:  if you want a temporary Dragon tattoo just email me your address and I’ll mail you a bunch.  I probably have about 30 of them from the marketing team at A. Knopf. ]]>