Fun Computer Science Tasks

C is a big language with a lot of features, and it’s easy to get lost in how fun it is. But you can’t really appreciate a feature without knowing what it’s like to do without. So do things with limited resources. Make a binary adder using falling dominoes. Make a functional digital clock with neon bulbs, resistors, capacitors, diodes, wires, and a wall plug. Make a Turing machine with LEGO blocks. (Use a crank to run it.) If you’re really ambitious, make some logic using fluidics wi...

 Electronics as the Buddhist Third-Way?

Newton's physics is the mechanics of power and the unconciliatory two-party system, in which the strong win over the weak. But in the 1920's a German genius put a tiny third-party (grid) between these two mighty poles (cathode and anode) in a vacuum tube, thus enabling the weak to win over the strong for the first time in human history. It might be a Buddhistic "third way," but anyway this German invention led to cybernetics, which came to the world in the last war to shoot down German planes...