7 Billion People (part 2)

Cubelets, A Modular Robot Construction System for Kids

These cool little modular blocks are a bit pricey ($520), but their potential for education would make them a pretty powerful tool in the classroom. As the website says....

"The cubelets KT01 standard kit comes with 20 magnetic blocks that can be snapped together to make an endless variety of robots with no programming and no wires. You can build robots that drive around on a tabletop, respond to light, objects, and temperature, and have surprisingly lifelike behavior. But instead of programming that behavior, you snap the cubelets together and watch the behavior emerge like with a flock of birds or a swarm of bees.

"Each cubelet in the kit has different equipment on board and a different default behavior. There are Sense Blocks that act like our eyes and ears; they can sense light, temperature, and how far they are away from other objects. Just like with people, the senses are the inputs to the system.

"On the flip side, the Action Blocks act as outputs. They do things. Some have little motors inside of them so that they can drive around or spin one of their faces. There are blocks that make noise, shine a flashlight, or display their information  through a light-up bar graph."

Here's a video. I'm impressed.

100 Things We Didn't Know Until Last Year

This is from the BBC News Magazine Monitor. So many things discovered last year. Who could've known?

Did you know that Elton John has no mobile phone? Or that people with full bladders make better decisions? How about that chickens feel empathy?

Doesn't all this change your world view completely? I'll tell you what my life changing discovery was...swearing relieves pain.

I feel better already.

Fun Time!

Claymation remake of John Carpenter masterpiece THE THING (1982).

More Tiny Homes

Here's an article from Jetson Green on 15 tiny home projects that they covered in 2011.

Cute Cardboard Robot Elicits Simpathy

This is from New Scientist. "Boxie," Alexander Reben's documentary-video-making robot, was designed to wander around shooting video of people it has asked to tell an interesting story. Enough stories were gathered to make the short film below.

Travel Photo of the Week

Buddha statue's view from Borobudur, Java, Indonesia.

Tiny House Porn

Here's a nice little website with lots of tiny home photos. It's a little shy on details, though.

Free College Education From Stanford

Last fall, Stanford University offered three of its most popular computer science classes to the public for free. Over 200,000 people signed up. Because of this, Stanford is offering seven more computer science classes beginning in January, and will expand its offerings to two entrepreneurship courses.

The online students don’t get credit for the classes. Stanford issues a "badge of completion" instead. Now a growing number of professors are invested in making knowledge available to the masses, regardless of their ability to pay. If this trend ontinues, an entire Stanford education may soon be available for free online.

I think I might take "The Lean Launchpad" class about taking my bright ideas and turning them into successful startup companies.

Happy New Year, Seven Billion People

Happy New Year, everyone on planet Earth! And that adds up to a lot of Happy New Years. Over seven billion of them. That's right, in case you haven't heard, there are now over seven billion people on the planet and just so you get an idea of where they all are on the tiny blue ball, here's a chart from the nice people at fathom.info:

Now we know where most of the problems are going to take place.