In an interview with the Phnom Penh Post, former Khmer Rough henchman Nuon Chea discounted the deaths of Cambodians during their reign in the 1970s. “Why should we have killed our own people? I do not see a reason,” he said. “We wanted a clean, illuminating and peaceful regime.”

In response, I would like to offer the following 50 rebuttals:

Approximately 1.7 million other rebuttals available upon request. -andy

Llama Over Machu Picchu, originally uploaded by andycarvin.

Geography lesson for the day: This is Peru, not Nepal. And that is a llama, not a water buffalo, nor a yeti. If you don't know this, for the love of God, don't try to get a job with Royal Nepal Airlines.

Unfortunately, someone else already made this mistake, because they used a similar picture of Peru's Machu Picchu to promote Nepal tourism. According to a Reuters story, a Peruvian man paid a visit to a Royal Nepal Airlines ticket office in New Delhi and spotted a picture of Machu Picchu. The picture, it turns out, was a promotional poster for the Himalayan kingdom. "Have you seen Nepal?" asked the large text on the poster. Apparently none of the Nepalis who worked for the airline had seen Peru, or bothered to notice that the famous Machu Picchu vista wasn't a product of their own country.

Needless to say, the Peruvian at the airline office wasn't pleased. He contacted his government, which filed a complaint with Nepali officials. According to a statement they released on the subject, "The airline ... offered apologies to Peru for using the picture of the Machu Picchu Sanctuary on a poster to promote their country and assured that the lamentable error has been corrected.... As a consequence, the Nepalese airline fired an employee in the rank of a manager ... It is concluded that it was an isolated error."

At the British Education Technology Show today, UK schools minister Jim Knight announced a new goverment goal of bringing Internet access to all students who don't already have it at home. Outlining a series of education technology initiatives, Knight stated he was launching a multi-stakeholder taskforce to develop a sustainable strategy for bridging this home-school digital divide.

Quoting from Knight's speech:

The so-called digital divide cannot be allowed to create and reinforce social and academic divisions.... With more than 800,000 children and young people still restricted to access at school, we run the risk that they could be isolated and left behind. There is no sense in asking every school to provide a learning platform to support children at home if some - likely to be the ones who might most benefit - are cut off from that platform.

Today, I not only want to reinforce that commitment, but to talk further about our aspiration for universal home access and how that might be made a reality. The way to achieve this is by thinking both innovatively and practically, and to use the wisdom of those who really know what they are talking about. That's why we are relying on industry to help with this - and many thanks to Intel, RM and Dell who already doing just that. We need to come up with a sustainable solution which will work for future generations as well as this one, building on existing good practice rather than looking for a quick fix....

I am setting up a Home Access Taskforce which I will personally chair. I want this to bring together key industry players, the voluntary sector, and education representatives to look at the issues. Because ICT at every child's fingertips is not the be-all and end-all of our ambitions. We need to make sure that schools and teachers can take full advantage, and parents too can play a significant role.

So classroom practice will have to adapt to the knowledge that children can access resources at home. It will also mean advice to parents so that they can help their children get the most out of their resources. Let's not forget that the extended family too will benefit....

To conclude, I am committed to ensuring that we will be far-sighted enough to shape the strategic context through policies that make sense for schools and the industry. That we will be proactive in seizing the opportunities technologies offers rather than being overwhelmed by the pace of change. That we will support our workforce to ensure that those opportunities are understood and accepted in the classroom. And most importantly, I am committed to ensuring that we get it right for all learners.

It's a bold idea, but so far is lacking much detail. For example, I can't tell if they're considering some sort of universal service fund akin to the US e-rate program, tax credits for low-income households or some other strategy. Either way, I'd love to be a fly on the wall of those taskforce meetings to see if they can work it out. -andy

When the Democrats took over Congress last Thursday at noon local time, I had assumed that this would be the beginning of the so-called "First 100 Hours" in which Democrats would push through a range of bills they'd promised during the fall campaign. Little did I realize that the meaning of "first" was open to interpretation. That, and the meaning of "100 hours."

If you'd treated the First 100 Hours as literally beginning at noon on Thursday, we would have reached the 100 hour mark about 30 minutes ago - 4pm today. Do the math: four days at 24 hours each, plus another four hours, and there you go.

Alas, I should have never assumed that the First 100 Hours actually began at the very first hour they took controll of Congress. No, there were too many press conferences and parties scheduled, so they decided to make a long weekend out of it. This would suggest that the First 100 Hours would have begun sometime this morning, right? Wrong. At least they offered a good excuse for delaying it for another day: tonight's Florida-Ohio State game.

"There is a very important event happening Monday night, particularly for those who live in Ohio and Florida," said House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer.

Some Republicans disagreed. "We all know the big national championship game is on Monday night," retorted Georgia Republican Rep. Tom Price. "But taking an entire day to watch the game isn't what we should spend part of our five-day work week doing."

(Full disclosure: I'm proudly wearing orange and blue today in support of the Gators.)

Then there's the tricky issue of what "100 Hours" means. Again, if taken at face value, assuming the hours started ticking away at 10am tomorrow - let's give them some time to get to the office - they'd have until 2pm on Saturday to pass their legislation. Right? Wrong again. Turns out they meant business hours, according to Hoyer:

We said to the American people, 'if you elect us, if you put us in charge, this is what we are going to do and we are going to do it in the first 100 hours,' which is essentially two weeks if you have a 40-hour working week, and that is what we are going to do.

So, if my math is correct, they've got until 2pm on Thursday, January 25th to wrap up their First 100 Hours. So what if it's literally 506 hours after the start of the congressional session? I mean, what's 400 or so extra hours among friends? -andy

The same day that Hollywood director James Cameron announces that he's starting work on a $200 film that will be shot in an immersive virtual reality environment, Second Life reveals that they're releasing their immersive VR environment as open source. Coincidence? You decide. Either way, Iooking forward to seeing Cameron plug the two together so Second Life avatars can serve as movie extras. -andy