Arduino “Counter Intelligence” II

Arduino project for catching my cats on the kitchen counter, while they’re up there doing food intelligence work 🙂 Arduino nano in iPod Touch box. Switch arms toy gun, Knob controls trigger distance. Opto-isolators fire toy gun. Maxbotic ultrasonic rangefinder senses distance and determines if sonar field has been interrupted ( by cat). The gun … Read more

Getting Into Robotics

The Open Source Robotics Foundation, Inc. is an independent non-profit organization founded by members of the global robotics community. The mission of the OSR Foundation is to support the development, distribution, and adoption of open source software for use in robotics research, education, and product development. One major project is ROS (Robot Operating System) which … Read more

James Bond Theme by Robot Quadrotors

Flying robot quadrotors perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and the debut of an adapted guitar built from a couch frame. The quadrotors play this “couch guitar” by flying over guitar strings stretched across a couch frame; plucking the strings with a stiff wire … Read more

Intelligent Design v. Mindless Causation

[E]very mechanism that is characterized by extreme complexity and automatism, combined with a far-reaching range and unity, must inevitably conceal the originative mind from every intelligence that is far below its own capacity, and must therefore appear to such an intelligence as wholly “mindless”, although its real nature may be quite the reverse.  —J. E. … Read more

The Makings of the Master Teacher

When we recall what keen interest children take in all work with tools, how they follow eagerly each process, and what pleasure they derive from using chips, blocks, and shavings as playthings, we may be sure that however humble the carpenter’s shop of Joseph, it afforded inexhaustible delight to the child Jesus and his playmates. … Read more

The Quotient of a Lifetime

Renunciation really taught a great life-policy, though no one was aware of it. It is the method, in its refined form, of increasing life’s fraction by lowering the denominator of demands instead of striving always to increase the numerator of satisfactions. It comes to be one of the great life-philosophies. —Sumner & Keller (1927)

Survival Tip — Stay Focused

Where the eye is upon superfluities, either of quantity or quality, rather than bare necessities, there self-maintenance passes over toward self-gratification, and vanity-wants and pleasure-wants supersede hunger-wants.  —W. G. Sumner and A. G. Keller (1927)