Occasionally I worry that the integrated circuit will be the undoing of childhood tinkering. Just look at how hard it is to work on your own car these days. "Infernal computers!" Then I see something like this, and I'm immediately reminded why childhood is sooo cool. It's an excellent mechanical, macroscopic, and home-made example of what our computers do everyday. Score one for the tinkerers, and well done kwilliam2.

This DIY adder is only one product of a thoroughly charming community, building mechanical analogs of what are now mostly digital devices. Here's a cool Lego adder.

TED talk by Wikipedia founder Jim Wales

What's TED? "It's like going back to college for three or four days a year, and you get all the best professors, and they can only talk for fifteen minutes."
-- Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal

If you have spent any time browsing this video collection you know that I have a fondness for linking to wikipedia. What is wikipedia you ask? If you don't know, please click on the clip, and let the founder explain.

The short version: their goal is getting a free encyclopedia to EVERYONE on the planet. How cool is that?

LINKS GOOD ON 2006-12-14

TED talk by MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte

What's TED? "It's like going back to college for three or four days a year, and you get all the best professors, and they can only talk for fifteen minutes."
-- Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal

I'm a teacher, and I have a firm belief that technologies are best utilized when ubiquitous. I know I didn't really start to use the internet in class until my computer was connected to a dedicated stay-in-my-classroom data projector. Sure, back in the day, I could have checked out a projector, but I never would have done that just to show a 15 second clip from YouTube. Just image what would happen if every student had a laptop. Well, this guy's working on that. Click on the clip to hear how.