As relieved as we were to hear that Mary Lou Jepsen, the founder of cheap-laptop display startup Pixel Qi, had recovered from an eye infection acquired in Peru, we were a bit heartbroken to hear that she'd stopped wearing the eye patch she'd sported during a recent video interview. All the more so when we heard where she lived: On a floating house moored at Issaquah Dock, one of the houseboat colonies of Sausalito, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco. Arrr, mateys! Mary Lou has boarded our hearts and taken our imagination captive.Jepsen rocks for so many reasons: She believes that capitalism is a more effective way to do good than an ego-fluffing nonprofit. She's working on actual hardware, solving real-world problems that matter to billions of people, not catering to the whims of a San Francisco/Brooklyn in crowd with a Web 2.0 startup. And she's refreshingly forthright. We never were much for Talk Like a Pirate Day, but come September, we now plan to dress up as Mary Lou Jepsen.

Arrrrrrrrr! Readers who watched computer-display innovator Mary Lou Jepsen yesterday had only one question: WTF with the eye patch. I guessed at Jepsen's email address and asked her. It turns out we'll be seeing much more of Jepsen, but not the patch. The engineer, trained at MIT's Media Lab, left Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project to start her own for-profit venture, Pixel Qi, making affordable screens for all kinds of cheap, portable computers. She recently moved from Massachusetts to San Francisco. Jepsen's eye patch story:

Click to viewThe government whose Ministry of Education dismissed Nick Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child computer as "pedagogically suspect" in 2006 is now backing a plan to design, build and sell a model priced at 400 rupees, or about ten bucks. The project was discussed at a conference in New Delhi by D. Purandeshwari, Minister of State for Human Resources Development. It goes without saying that the price will be held down by a government subsidy. As former OLPC engineer Mary Lou Jepsen explains in a Big Think interview, countries might look to subsidize laptop costs with money intended for textbooks. Here's an idea for you Objectivists: Instead of criticizing India's nanny state, ask every Obama supporter you know when he's going to announce a One MacBook Per Child plan.

MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte had a vision: Millions of third-world children lacked laptops and therefore the means to learn of his greatness. He founded the One Laptop Per Child Project with a singular vision: He, Nicholas Negroponte, would bring laptops to these children, so that they could know that he, Nicholas Negroponte, brought laptops to them. An effort founded on egotism has foundered on egotism. Like attracts like; Negroponte brought other narcissists into the fold, only to see them leave to find more room for their self-loving to expand. Mary Lou Jepsen, OLPC's hardware chief, left in January to start a for-profit company, Pixel Qi; now Walter Bender, OLPC's former head of software who left in April, has started a rival for-the-children effort.