Building Battlebots

When not working the ER, or musing on ancient Egyptian medical care, Tacitus teaches middle schoolers how to build Our Robotic Overlords:

For me winter is Robot Season.  My middle school class is up and running, a Tuesday and a Thursday section with a dozen hyperactive DangerMonkeys in each.

...

Sometimes people ask me why I take a considerable amount of time to teach these classes.  I suppose I could instead be, oh I don't know, working or laying on a beach or something.  Well, first of all it is fun.  There is a little remnant of the destructive middle schooler left in most of us.

But honestly part of the reason I do this is that kids now days get almost no opportunity to tinker with things.  They don't build stuff.  The world they live in is largely defined by immaterial images on screens, generated by Chinese made printed circuit boards that you can't just rip out and play around with.  In my long ago and largely feral childhood we built go karts and dismantled home appliances and built things that would probably not be entirely legal if looked at in a certain light.

This (and the follow on post) are so filled with win that it hurts.  If we could just add in Carteach0 bringing the Bill of Rights, the little dears would probably be ready for Special Ops.  RTWT.