Another permanent-magnet-less motor design is the switched-reluctance motor. Its primary advantage over the induction motor is its dirt-simple rotor construction - it's essentially just a properly shaped chunk of iron, where an induction motor would require a copper squirrel-cage.
Its disadvantage relative to the induction motor is that it requires some cleverness in its controller and/or sensors in order to run at all. I actually wrote some control software for one as a side project - it was a somewhat frustrating experience (though a good portion of the frustration was due to malfunctioning hardware).
It seems like if this explanation were to make sense, whoever implemented the string-to-number conversion was careful enough to implement saturating addition, but careless enough to not use a numerical type large enough to hold every possible phone number. I don't know if I buy that.
For my computer architecture class at Berkeley, they decided to give Bb a try. It lasted about three weeks before they gave up and reverted to the tried and true command-line scripts for submitting assignments and viewing grades. Hopefully canvas will fare a little better.
The Quora responses reveal an important point regarding Dr. Chua's book: the book was written in response to the failings of the super-strict parenting style.
The WSJ excerpt makes no mention of this, which is a bit misleading.
On another note, my mother attempted to raise me in such a manner, but she was always too busy working to do a complete job of it (she didn't bother with my older brother as much, as he was way more self-motivated than me). I'm actually a bit curious as to how Dr. Chua managed to find time to hound her daughters like this while being a professor.
If what you're comfortable with is lower level stuff, one possibility is to look at an implementation of an object system in C. In particular, I found reading the Python source code to be helpful when learning about object orientation.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Animaniacs has withstood the test of time for me. Actually I found it a little better than before, as some of the humor went over my head when I was a kid.