Conditions Of Aid Offered. Learn How To Order A Free Copy Of Your Credit Report From Each: Fill & Download for Free

Two disclaimers:1 - Despite my following reasoning, I don’t even believe ‘democracy’ is a fundamental end-all and be-all of what it means to be an optimal social primate. And as an American, I am looking at the word as representing the current Multi-national, neo-liberal, zero-sum trends.2 - Despite having American citizenship, I have lived over half my life in Japan … 36 years and counting, and with a permanent visa, this is probably a terminal relationship.On my answer —Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time — Winston ChurchillQuite a catchy tune … but I have no idea whether democracy is the worst, or better, or just another experiment in how to manage social primates that have bred to populations of herding / swarming size.I just see democracy as one of many tools for sustainability of the species … and if lucky, perhaps even a higher quality of life.But as any other tool, democracy can be used and misused, depending on one’s inclination and perspective. For example, anyone who has been marginalized as a minority will likely be aware of the dangers of tyranny of the majority.I don’t have the time or scope for exploring the implications of John Rawls’ original position on morality here. It leads down one heck of a rabbit hole. But I would like to make a plug for Michael J. Sandel’s definition of ‘corruption’ as — any time ‘lower level’ values displace ‘higher level’ ideals.Certainly this is a provisional social construct. But I think most of us would agree that ‘everyone has their price’ is an easy to understand euphemism for how Michael Sandel is defining corruption.For my short answer … Yes.Just follow the money — https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/27/fake-news-inquiry-data-misuse-deomcracy-at-risk-mps-conclude?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=282232&subid=10308016&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2It is not just democracy that is under threat.Family values and its institutions … adoption, weddings, birthdays, or funerals … are all under threat of being devoured by capitalism. It doesn’t take much triangulating to see the relationship between the misuse of corporate human capital in Japan Inc.’s ‘democracy’ to see the devastating effects on demographics … a falling population, but gutting the countryside for further concentration of power and opportunity in the Tokyo area.In pre-reformation Europe, the Catholic church similarly grew rich and therefore corrupt, partially due to selling special dispensations (those express train prayers to heaven) to the robber barons of that era.But here, in present day Japan, depending on the amount of donation offered to a priest performing burial rituals お布施, the deceased is given a new ‘spiritual’ name (kaimyou - Dharma name) that is ranked and correlated with the amount of money donated.I’d call that culturally sanctioned blackmail, but I guess we Americans do the same with weddings and funerals … the more money one has, the more lavish the ceremony is expected to be. I guess it comes with the package of what it means to be a social primate.But how much is ‘enough’? Where does one draw the line if it comes at the expense of others?This jives well with Sandel’s home run definition of corruption.Capitalism is devouring science.Common sense determines that neither scientific fact nor theory have been subject to the values of democracy, though lord knows it is not through lack of trying.I will leave it to the likes of Neil DeGrasse Tyson to point out the incompatibly of democracy with science in many of his excellent documentaries …or an even more scientifically capable contemporary, Steven Pinker …… but the good professors (institutionally sanctioned) are NOT making similar documentaries about how capitalism is devouring science.‘Publish or Perish’ — is NOT a scientific heuristics.It is an economic model, and an ultimately self-destructive one at that.In fact, they, among others (yeah, you too Michio) are making a tidy little sum riding off those gigs. It’s just too bad that the likes of Karl Popper or Thomas Kuhn are not so photogenic. Karl had much to say about what happens when science becomes subservient to capitalistic agendas in the Nazi form of Nationalism.And I think there is quite a bit much more than being ‘politically correct’ at stake when the whole scientific domain is being questioned as gender influenced … How Masculine and Feminine Traits Influence Science.For some examples of how capitalism is devouring of science, I modestly suggest reading Naomi Klein regarding Project MKUltra. Or Noam Chomsky on the M.I.T. - D.A.R.P.A. connection. Or for that matter Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Agra.As I am making this edit, today’s news alone (Thursday, July 24, 2018 spells it out … Monsanto-on-trial … again.And to bring it closer to home (in Japan) … a copy of July 27-28th news … https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/07/27/national/crime-legal/japanese-prosecutors-raid-jaxa-facilities-connection-second-education-ministry-bribes-case/#.W1xSNygVSHoAnd to make sure the article is not ‘lost’ … another source, JapanToday.Prosecutors raid space agency over bureaucrat's bribery caseJuly 28 — 06:55 am JST TOKYOProsecutors on Friday raided locations linked to the space agency after they arrested a senior education ministry official earlier on a bribery charge in the second graft scandal to hit the ministry in a month.Kazuaki Kawabata, 57-year-old former director general for international affairs at the education ministry, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of receiving bribes in the form of being wined and dined by a consulting firm executive in return for providing a favor to his firm.Prosecutors suspect former consulting firm executive Koji Taniguchi, 47, already arrested and indicted for alleged complicity in another bribery scandal involving a different senior education ministry official, provided 1.4 million yen ($12,600) worth of meals and drinks to Kawabata between 2015 and 2017.Kawabata was on loan at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency at the time and was in a position to evaluate the agency's business contracts.Kawabata allegedly helped Taniguchi invite astronaut Satoshi Furukawa to an event at Tokyo Medical University in November 2016 among other favors he offered him, according to sources close to the matter.Furukawa was allegedly asked by the former chairman of the university's board of regents, Masahiko Usui, about whether the astronaut could take part in the event, they said.Taniguchi bribed Kawabata by wining and dining him more than 10 times, the sources said, adding that Kawabata and Taniguchi have denied the allegations.Other sources said the education ministry bureaucrat is also suspected of receiving taxi vouchers from the consulting firm executive.Earlier in the month, another education ministry bureaucrat, Futoshi Sano, 59, and the former official of Tokyo Medical University were indicted for bribery.Sano, former director general of the ministry's science and technology bureau, allegedly helped the university get selected for the ministry's funding program in return for securing the enrollment of his son at the school.Taniguchi is suspected of bringing Sano and Usui together.The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology was preparing to set up a third-party committee to investigate the suspected bribery involving Sano, but the minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi, said the plan will be postponed in the wake of Kawabata's arrest.© KYODONo mistake, ‘greed-is-good’ capitalism is devouring science, not driving it.Education, since the dawn of the industrial revolution, has been in danger of being devoured.For one semester, even while I was an Associate Professor at Jissen Women’s College, I took a leave of absence and attended open-classes as a student at a rival institution, Showa Women’s College. Among the courses I took, one was taught by a professor and employee of the central Ministry of Education (For about 7 years, I also used to be one of 2 or 3 native English speaking informants as textbook proofreaders and cultural advisors for the Ministry 平成17年4月文部科学省教科用図書検定調査審議会専門委員（平成23年3月迄). His course was about the history of Public Education in Japan.The Japanese public education system is based on England’s Victorian era education, which in turn was based on the structure and heuristics of two other institutions at that time … the penal system and the military. A liberal arts education was largely reserved for the elite ruling class.That’s a pretty grim hint as to the traditional ways in which large populations are ‘managed’ through capitalist values.Tied up with education, racial equality is in danger of being devoured … DeVos Doesn’t Believe that Promoting Racial Diversity in Schools Is a Worthwhile Cause.That military thing of ‘corruption’ through replacing one value with a lower value can be found in the outsourcing of the U.S. government’s accountability in warfare. Blackwater Protection was and still is, a convenient excuse for the U.S. government’s plausible deniability. But I guess the ancient Roman army did the same thing with ‘barbarian’ mercenaries long before capitalism was a gleam in Adam Smith’s eye.And as hinted earlier, the penal system — in private, for-profit hands?For the CEOs … the more inmates, the merrier. And throw away the keys. There is no financial incentive for rehabilitation.As for U.S. Public Health policy? Outside of the U.S., the laughing stock of the ‘developed’ world. Inside, a crying shame.That alone is enough to make me question the distinction between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ as an arrogant conceit. A more accurate distinction between countries might better be found along a sliding scale of institutionally sanctioned, legalized corruption.Personal health care costs account for the single greatest cause of family bankruptcy in the U.S. On the the other hand, a cozy little group of insurance company executives and Big-Pharma CEOs can afford another private jet or island retreat.For the personally ambitious, there is big money to be made off of sickness, infirmity, and death.And those ‘closed-door’ international trade talks are closed for good reason.For example, one of the conditions of the TPP was that medical products banned in the U.S. could be used in countries with less economic leverage, and any claims from citizens of those countries regarding health or environmental degradation will not be subject to that country’s laws or judicial system. The multi-national corporation will have the right to regulate, judge, and penalize themselves … as they wish, or not, and citizens of those economically marginalized countries, democratic or not, will have no say in the matter.Even elected politicians are not privy to all of the information in those closed-door trade talks.Anyone here old enough to remember Perestroika or Glasnost?Evidently, ‘what’s good for the goose is good for the gander’ does not apply to Capitalist management.It just goes on and on.One. Horror. Show. After. Another.I would say the loss of ‘democracy’ to the corruption of money should be among the least of our worries.Yanis is brilliant, full stop.Spot-on analysis.And compared to reading Piketty’s massive tome, a lot easier to listen to.Besides, I think his barber is doing a great job.I am just weighing in because of his observations from about 1:10 of the YouTube video above — when he explains how the Chinese economic system may be more humane than the U.S. counterparts. The local governments may allow somewhat more freedom than the national government, and individuals may be arguably just as free to follow, ignore, or game the system as their American counterparts.This is the same in Japan, For now.But as we are seeing in the U.S. now, the authoritarian dynamics could change overnight, and I assume the same could be said for China.Japanese scientists are worried about the same thing — Japanese scientists call for boycott of military research. But that is already old news. Japan is well under way in following the U.S.’s model of tax funded research at M.I.T. being funneled into Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.I think it was only three or four years ago, that Tokyo University was bringing out damage control PR in denying they were involved in military related research. Things have changed in a very short time. … Scientists and defense research | The Japan Times——————————————In any country, the socially progressive left will always be less united than the right. It's like trying to herd cats ... or order a jazz musician to follow a note for note transcription of a military marching band score.IMHO, the above observation points to something fundamentally contradictory about human nature.As a social primate, we do pretty well in small communities with empathy-driven morality. Of course even small groups can be led by bullies, and many a spouse has suffered at the hand of their 'beloved'.But when we become herding primates, probably anything larger than Dunbar’s Number, and guided by a rule-driven morality (or algorithm), it is just a matter of time before we become self-destructive swarming primates ... that 'Tower of Babel' thingy.I guess part of it is because large populations necessarily become hierarchically institutionalized, and therefore dependent on a rule-driven (legal/logical based - not empathy based) morality.But when empathy is no longer the basis for morality, the 'Dark Triad' personality types are most able to take advantage of the inevitable gap between empathy and rules ... the narcissists, machiavellian opportunists, and psychopaths among us.You know … your boss.(kudos to Alan Louis)Altruists become relegated to fools ... Diogenes carrying a lantern in the daylight, looking for an honest man.Diogenes … my hero, the template for ‘pro-social trolling’ … and the capitalist in me is wondering if I can get a copyright on that phrasing ;-)Compared to more egalitarian communities which are small enough for us to acknowledge and recognize each other as unique individuals, large populations and accompanying institutions simply provide too many niche opportunities for those dark-triad types to rise to the top.It might be useful to think of the ratio of dark-triads to altruists in a hierarchy as similar to the increase of surface area to volume of any structure as it increases in size.This surface area to volume ration, as biologists understand, is a salient variable which limits the size of living things.Surface Area to Volume Ratio - OBEN Science 7EAnd to extend the metaphor, as the surface area of hierarchies expand in proportion to the volume of its limited natural resources (can’t outsource costs and losses forever ya know), those dark-triad vampires, also proportionally increase to the point that those behavior traits become the dominant culture of the institution.Hmmm … the capitalist in me wondering if I should coin the above observation in the domain of social sciences as ‘Martin’s Law’. Or in the spirit of open source … ‘more like guidelines’.No matter what 'fool-proof' system is in place, those dark-triad types will suck the human capital dry, siphoning all resources into their own gated communities, until inevitably, 'too big to fail', fails, like a dinosaur collapsing under its own weight.'Housing loan crisis', 'Lehman Shock', the Great Wall Street crash of the ‘20’s ... a stinkweed by any other name would smell as rank. Alas, were it just restricted to smell.2012, what we ‘learned’ — Fukushima reactor meltdown was a man-made disaster, says official report.As a former Comparative Culture teacher, I should say a bit about how Japan Inc. parses ‘human error’ and ‘man-made’ disasters. Imagine a wide range of meanings ranging from an ‘honest mistake’ at one extreme, and getting caught doing what hierarchical social primates are primed to do … ‘gaming the system for personal advantage’ at the other extreme.Those two terms conveniently cover the gamut.Well hey, it’s the Fourth of July, 2018, and following good pedagogic practice, let’s see if, indeed we ‘learned’ anything.Just 3 stories today is enough to say it all …1 — Nuclear watchdog OKs restart of aging Ibaraki nuclear plant hit by tsunamiPhoto: REUTERS file(Read it while it’s ‘hot’ folks, to aid our short collective memories, Japan Today will typically delete the article from its archives in a week or so, so I have it copy-pasted for any future readers interested, assuming there is a future.)Yours truly, as an English teacher at the Tokai Mura nuclear power plant - before.And after?Can’t really say. Like the weather and earthquakes, that will be up to the Watchdog Committee’s official stamp of approval.2 — Japan oks ambitious nuke energy target plutonium reuse plan — Japan on Tuesday approved an energy plan that sets ambitious targets for nuclear energy use and sustains a struggling program for spent-fuel recycling despite setbacks after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.(But praise the lord we have government officials and Watchdog Committees!)3 — Senior education ministry official arrested over bribery — Tokyo prosecutors on Wednesday arrested a high-ranking Japan education ministry official on a bribery charge, suspecting he granted a research subsidy to a medical school in exchange for admitting his child as a student.Oops.Might as well add another few for good measure …(edit July 7, point 4, because of the relevance to points 1 and 2)4 — 5.9-magnitude quake felt in Tokyo, no tsunami warning. I felt that one. ALL of Tokyo felt it … and for close to 30 seconds.Mother nature couldn’t give a f.f. for the government’s official approval of where and when the next temblor will be permitted. But money-driven authoritarianism and mother nature have never been on good speaking terms, much less happily wedded.5 — Fukuoka's 'guest teachers' of English outstay their welcome. — After 36 year years of studying and teaching here, I found out the hard way that Japanese work contracts are not worth the paper they are written on. And this is not restricted to lay-teachers … Cautionary tale: Bern on how no protections against harassment in Japan’s universities targets NJ regardless of Japan savviness and skill levelHaving worked in American and Japanese Universities, high schools, and volunteered at kindergartens, I know a little bit about education. Now, having resigned in protest from a tenured Associate Professor position (qualifications here … Steven Martin, I am forced to pick up odd jobs at universities, but not as a professor — though still desperately trying to hang on to my identity as an educator, following its best, subversive to authority, liberal arts tradition. Now working for a subcontractor, likely similar to those mentioned above in the Fukuoka article.I have a contract here before me, that I will not sign. It makes no mention of accountability to the students who educators should be serving.Educational content and pedagogy have been boiled down to little more than economic constraints and opportunities. Just like any other business, everything is based on the bottom-line.Now with falling demographics and numbers of Japanese students to draw on, the overabundance of ‘educational institutes’ are forced to accept anyone who can breathe, and now an increasing number of the young and restless from China and Southeast Asia. This makes for some interesting cross-cultural possibilities.But it is an extra pedagogical burden on those who speak only Japanese and English, and these outsourcing companies are choosing teachers whose main qualification is ‘they look foreign, speak English, and are desperate enough for money to just sign on the dotted line and follow orders’.I try to make do.Here is a sketch done in my English class last week, by a speaker who maybe can say ‘Hello, how are you today?’ — yet she could visualize and understand Plato’s Allegory of the Cave better than most American counterparts. Bright girl.The ‘most recent comment’ under the following YouTube link describes how I got their attention last week, kept it, built on it .., and enjoyed a blast from the past.As bad as my situation is, still can’t pay the rent, it could be worse.6 — Japan’s open to foreign workers. Just don’t call them immigrants … The latest LDP plan is to open the door to 500,000 low-skilled, kkk workers (no not Jeff Sessions and company), the 3k jobs are kienai, kitsui, and kikken (dirty, hard, and dangerous) — jobs that anyone tries to avoid, but dirt-poor immigrants see as opportunity. There are just two teensy-weensy conditions to the special 5 year visas (10 years if language skills are up to snuff).• There is no legal path beyond the expiration date of that visa allowing for immigration or naturalization. When that visa expires, the worker has no choice. They MUST return to their native country.• If the 5 year or 10 year worker has a spouse or kids, even those immediate family members will not be allowed into Japan. All human needs will be taken care of by the Japanese company they work for.‘Special work visas’? I would call that a legal euphemism for ‘human trafficking’.It appears that Japan Inc. is hell bent on using hidden labor to build the infrastructure catering to the wealthy visitors who come to ‘do’ Japan. Not so different from Qatar, the UAE, and other oil rich sultanates.(edit) Today’s morning headline in Japan Today … https://japantoday.com/category/national/japan-firms-used-foreign-trainees-at-fukushima-cleanup-reportsI have saved the above to hard disc because as per policy, that website typically deletes its articles a week or two after posting it. No wonder we fail to learn from history … we are not allowed to even make a collective memory. So for anyone who wants the details of the article above (which are few — even the guilty companies were not named), I have saved the article to hard disc. And again, that title …4 firms made foreign trainees do Fukushima decontamination workYokoso (welcome to) Japan … tourists and ‘trainees’ alike.Japan’s 4th of July headlines is one for the record books … to hell in a hand basket. A big one.————————————So class, what have we learned since that 2012 official government report?Hmm. Something about a dead parrot?More like a whole menagerie — George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' in a nutshell.Credit: Carl Glover via FlickrJust a guess, but those 'dark triad' types probably make up between 1 and 5 percent of any population.But even among the remaining, more typical, members of ours species, Hannah Arendt .... and then later the behavioral psychologists Solomon Asch (conformity experiment), Stanley Milgram (experiment in obedience), and Philip Zimbardo (the malleability of identity in the Stanford Prison experiment) pointed out how easily even the average Joe Blow's behavior can be manipulated with relatively light touches of authoritarianism.Noam Chomsky in 'Manufacturing Consent', and later later Naomi Klein in 'The Shock Doctrine', shows us some blueprints. Antony Loewenstein is showing how this is playing out down under with Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe.And William Blum shows us some of the gut-ugly details in Killing Hope.A couple of yeas ago, Stephen Hawking wrote an editorial for The Guardian saying This is the most dangerous time for our planet ... implying we will either make it to Mars and exploit its resources, or destroy ourselves in a final malthusian meltdown over the remaining resources on earth.An increasing number of STEM specialists believe we may have already passed a species-ending tipping point.Chomsky, in his 2010 Chapel Hill speech, 'Human intelligence and the environment’ began that speech with a couple of paragraphs referring to the debate between Carl Sagan and Ernst Mayr regarding the probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos. Predictably, and sensibly, Sagan argued for the probability, on statistical chance alone.But Mayr gave a surprisingly sensible counter-argument from an evolutionary biologist's point of view. The biological record indicates an average of about 100,000 years for the shelf life of an apex (dominant) species ... and we are at about that point.Mayr said that while there is probably life out there, it is not likely to have a human-like intelligence. He went on to further imply that human intelligence is not the apex of evolution — it is merely one of many tools for the survival of a social primate.But worse, he suspects human intelligence is more likely a fatal mutation. An evolutionary spandrel at best.The more I observe of our swarming, self-destructive nature, the more I tend to agree with Mayr.

Bangalore in the early eighties?Sigh!Where should I begin?Okay, here you go. I am writing randomly whatever thoughts and memories flood my nostalgic mind.In the early eighties, I was a young man in my early thirties, a qualified structural design engineer, specialising in the design of steel structures in Industrial buildings, and working for a leading consultancy organisation in Bangalore.Transport in Bangalore:======================The excellent network of bus routes you see today, including Volvos etc, did not exist.You depended on the BTS buses (BMRTC buses were called BTS buses those days. BTS stood for Bangalore Transport Services)Japanese motorcyles were not available. They came during the nineties after the great economic liberalisation introduced by the Narasimha Rao/Man Mohan Singh Combination. Only Ambassadors and Premier Padminis (earlier called Fiats) dominated the roads. The 800cc Maruti came later. Autorickshaws were the only means for private transport but they were not allowed to seat more than two passengers. This was later relaxed to three. The ubiquitous horse drawn Jatkaas around city market, Malleswaram and Chamarajpet and Basavanagudi had just been withdrawn. No cycle rickshaws existed here as in Delhi.New Scooters were available only at a premium price. Vespa and Lambretta were popular. You had to wait for years to book and get a new one.So scooters had a fancy second hand price (More than the new one)Vijay scooter came later. Kinetic Honda made an appearance in the mid eighties and attracted a lot of attention due to the battery operated self starter and the gearless transmission.I used to ride a Yezdi motorcyle (250 cc two stroke engine) that gave me 29 to 30 kms per litre of petrol. I used to get a conveyance allowance of Rs 60 per month. Not bad! Petrol cost only Rs 3.11 per litre when I bought my motor cycle.Those who valued economy, chose the Rajdoot (175 cc, two stroke engine) that gave 40 kms per litre and started rather easily with just one light kick. The Yezdi wallas had to kick harder and more often to get it started. But the chaps say they loved the noise made by the Yezdi and had contempt for the sputter that Rajdoots produced. Most young motor cyclists had contempt for scooter riders and called them "effeminate". But most motorcyclists later switched over to scooters after getting married and having kids and becoming more mature in their thinking!I had bought a brand new Yezdi motor cycle from Haji and Sons at St Marks Road for Rs 6250/- (on the road price) in 1976 and sold it in 1984 for Rs 7000/-We envied the guys who went around on a Bullet. Other than Policemen and the house building contractors (also called "Bullet Maistries") very few ordinary young men rode a Bullet.It was expensive and the mileage was low.In 1983-84, I finally bought a second hand Bullet, just for prestige, not utility. I paid 8000/- and it was cheap because my brother who was emigrating, sold it to me at a discounted price under pressure from my mother. I sold it a year later for just Rs 10,000/- and it was a distress sale because I needed the money urgently. I inserted an ad in Deccan Herald and the day the ad appeared, right at 7 am in the morning, there stood a Bullet Maistry, outside my door with a thousand rupees in cash, and who offered it to me telling me not to sell it to anyone else and promising to bring the rest of the money before noon.The market price was at least 12000/- for a five year old Bullet that had already covered over 60,000 km.Real Estate:===========Banashankari, JP Nagar, and Indiranagar were developing localities. All these Hallis, Sandras, and Puras did not exist and they all remained villages, struggling to cope with modernisation. To be considered as living in a good locality, it needed to be some "Nagar" planned by the BDA.Multi-storied residential apartment complexes could be counted one one's fingers. The few that existed were all commercial. Unity Buildings at JC Road near the town hall was a prestigious landmark, till it was eclipsed by the Public Utility building on MG Road and later by the LIC building near the GPO.People never thought of buying an apartment. That was considered a Bombay life style. Malleswaram started the apartment boom sometime in the nineties. Large sites with owners dead and whose children had emigrated were sold to developers and a new trend started in the nineties and the old sprawling mansions with Mangalore tiled roofs were demolished to make way for Apartments.Till the eighties, people here liked to buy a small plot and build a house of their own. Most middle class homeowners bought a 30'x40' plot and built a small two bedroom, hall and kitchen house. Some put up a stair case outside the house, adjacent to the compound wall and built an upstairs portion usually for letting it out.Many of these houses did not have overhead tanks. Water pressure was sufficient to reach the first floor. BWSSB was doing a great job, supplying Kaveri Water to thirsty Bangalore when the Tippagondanahalli reservoir was found inadequate to meet the city's needs. The overhead tanks came later.Those with better resources opted for 60'x40' sites and built a larger house with a garage too.We had contempt for apartments. We could afford to do so. Plots were available and all locals (Kannadigas) and also outsiders who had lived here for 5 to 10 years were eligible to apply for and be granted a house site at greatly subsidized rates. Land acquisition problems did not exist. Farmers were glad to offer their lands to BDA and litigation was rare. They could see the city expanding towards their fields. They were growing old. Their children did not show interest in agriculture. They saw wisdom in selling when the prices were attractive and they could get in a lump sum much more than what agriculture yielded. Besides many were also given some plots of land after the development, as part of the deal, which they hatched for a few years and sold for much greater prices.In 1978, I had progressed sufficiently in my career to be able to afford to rent an independent house with a sit out, hall , two bedroom, kitchen, and single bathroom and toilet with an attached garage located on a 60'x40' plot in Jayanagar 7th block for Rs 450/- as monthly rent. The house could have fetched more if it had been better planned and if it had had a mosaic floor instead of the commonly used redoxide cement floor. A stair case from the sit out lead us to an open terrace.I lived happily there for 5 years and the rents increased from 450/- to 700/- when I finally vacated it. In 1984, I bought a site from the BDA at an auction in JP Nagar and built my own house. I spent Rs 5 lakhs totally(including the site value) on a two storied house with all modern amenities and finishings and with a built area of 1900 sq feet. HDFC financed a portion of it and the interest rate was 14 percent.Shopping:Malls did not exist. Most of us went to MG road and Commercial Street for fancy shopping and combined the shopping experience with an ice cream treat at Lake View or had our "tindi" at India Coffee house and watched a movie at Plaza, or Galaxy or Rex. You never needed to know Kannada in this part of Bangalore. The middle class locals went to shops around the Majestic area, Chickpet , Balepet. For daily needs the vegetable vendors brought them to our homes, pushing their carts and shouting out the prices of the individual vegetables. In South Bangalore where I have lived all along, those who had a fridge, went to Gandhi Bazaar for vegetables till the Jayanagar shopping complex was finally completed. Large families or groups of families who had cars would go directly to City Market and buy more at better prices and share the purchases.While Nandini Milk was popular, many families with elderly members, who were living with their adult children were not too happy with milk in plastic satchets and chose to get their milk from milkmen who brought the cow to their gates and milked it in their presence. You don't see that happening now.In 1974 when I landed in Bangalore the Jayanagar shopping complex was under construction. The Janata bazaar there (and also the one at Kempegowda Road) were the nearest we had that resembled a department store and it was a novelty for housewives with their kids when they could walk into a shop and explore the shelves, with a trolley and pick up what they wanted. But queues at the payment counter were long. They did not have modern methods of scanning bar codes and preparing and printing bills and of course no credit cards existed so the experience was not so pleasant. The vast majority still patronised the usual "Ganesha Stores" or "Manjunatha Stores" or "Raghavendra Stores" around street corners and each locality had at least one with these standard shop names. Their only competitors were the Muslim Malayalees from Kerala who set up their own chain (popularly called Kaaka shops) and you could identify them easily from the "secular" names displayed on the boards.Usually "National Stores", "Royal Stores" "Simla Stores" etc,Restaurants:None of today's Darhshinis, and Saagars existed. Eating houses were much lesser in numbers. The really famous ones had very modest interiors and were usually called "Bhavans" like Udupi Bhavan, Gopalkrishna Bhavan etc. The Kamaths, and Pais dominated and they monopolised the Grade II eating houses. Their only competition came from the chain of Janatha Hotels all over the city which served the same stuff at prices less than Kamat and Pai restaurants.Some modest and cramped eating houses had established reputations that they frankly did not quite deserve. I never understood why Vidyarthi Bhavan at Gandhi Bazaar and MTR near Lalbag north gate was hyped up so much. I have visited both and at MTR, after those experiences that taxed my patience, I swore never to visit them again. I had no grouse against quality. I admit the stuff they served was superlative and rich in "tuppa" (Ghee) and they served divine coffee in silver tumblers. The coffee might get cold but not the silver cups!But the waiting time to get a seat was killing. It would take more than half an hour sometimes to get a place to sit. What was more irritating was that as I sat enjoying my masala dosa with an appetite aggravated by the long wait, another customer would be waiting right behind my chair and also holding it with one hand as if to say, "This seat is reserved for me and I am going to sit on it as soon as this fellow gets up". While eating I could feel this waiting customer's glare on my back wondering how long I am going to continue sitting and why I was not hurrying up.Half the pleasure of eating out was lost due to these experiences.Theatres and entertainment.Multiplexes did not exist. We had superb movie theatres with great audio at Galaxy, Nartaki, Santosh, Rex, Lido etc and also cheap ones for desi films that did not need all the sophistication.I remember being greatly impressed by the Sound system in the movie McKenna's Gold which I saw at Galaxy.Majestic area had about 21 theatres, (I think) and most of them have been demolished.TV was introduced around 1980 in Bangalore, years after Delhi and Mumbai. There was just one channel in Black and white, and the programs started around 5 pm and the transmission was in Kannada till 8:30 pm. The Kannada news was read out at 7:30 pm. After 8:30 pm, all the regional centers around the country hooked up with Doordarshan Delhi and the programs were in Hindi and English. This caused considerable heartburn in Non Hindi speaking states.TV was free. We had a crude looking antenna on our roof tops that received the signals. DVDs, VCRs, and cable television did not exist. The Ramayana and Mahabharata were telecast by Doordarshan and the streets used to be empty during the telecast and the only other time this happened was when India and Pakistan were playing a cricket Match.Dr Rajkumar was a stalwart who dominated Kannada Cinema. Vishnu Vardhan and the Nag brothers (Late Shankar Nag and Anant Nag also had their own following. Lokesh and Srinath were not so popular. Puttana Kanagal,GV Iyer and others were legendary and Aarti was the leading actress if I remember right.Electronics:Personal computers, laptops, tablets, cell phones etc DID NOT EXIST!Having a landline phone on your table with a direct line, in the office and not having to go through the switch board and having an extension number was a prestigious perquisite for senior executives only. STD calls were rare and expensive. Bosses locked up their phones fearing "misuse" by their subordinates. Even these bosses were required to maintain a register logging all their STD calls and recording the date, time and duration. Imagine if you youngsters were required to do all this today!You will never realise the value of these blessings. Old timers like me have had the rare privilege of being productive professionals who managed to get a lot of work done without these aids and slowly adapted to these modern devices and gadgets and learned to use them. Heck, during the first few years I did all my design calculations using a slide rule. Calculators came later.I was better off than most of my colleagues. I was a computer literate fellow, having learned the new subject called Fortran Programming while doing my engineering studies and I was among the handful of engineers in my organisation who could write a few lines of code to solve simple programming problems. But minicomputers, PCs, did not exist and we used the IBM 360 mainframe computer at Indian Institute of Science. I used to ride my motor cycle all the way from KR Circle (where my office was located) to IISc campus and punch the cards there and submit my deck of cards for processing. I would come back next day to collect my output. Any mistake of even one byte, in the code or in the data would render our effort and trip fruitless and I would have re-punch those cards and resubmit, and return the next day. IISc maintained a queue system for jobs submitted by their customers. They rented out computer time to us. All jobs that could be processed in less than two minutes were called Quick. Those that took more than two minutes but less than 10 minutes were called "Express" jobs and those that took longer were called "Jumbo". Even longer jobs were scheduled during the night shift.Jobs that take a fraction of second today, to process, used to take 5 to 10 minutes those days and sometimes even half an hour.We punched our code and data on cards, and fed them into the card reader of the mainframe computer to get printed output. It was only later that the VDU terminal was invented in the early eighties and soon it rendered obsolete punched card or paper tape input. It also obviated the need for printing the output and we would print on fast line printers only if the output seen on the VDU terminal appeared okay. Terminals displayed in black and white only. Only text and numbers, not images. It was a novel thing those days and the highlight was the introduction of remote processing where the inputs would be received from VDUs and keyboards located at the customer's premises and the processing would be done at IISc's DEC System 10, using modems and telephone lines. The speeds were nothing to boast about but those days we had not known what "broad band" or any band was and any speed was impressive as it saved us a trip to IISc.Slowly minicomputers invaded Bangalore but they were primitive compared to today's laptops. We had 8" floppy disks, (360K capacity) followed by storage mediums for PCs viz 5 1/4" disks with 360 Kilo bytes capacity followed by 3 1/2" floppy disks with 1.44 Mb storage capacity.Just as cars and mobile phones are being advertised today, the eighties saw the advent of the first personal computers in Bangalore and the computer culture spread here faster than at other cities. HCL and Wipro were the main contenders for the top slot and Siva PCs made by Sterling Computers at Chennai (sorry, Madras as it was called those days) who sold the Siva brand of computers, Eiko, Uptron etc offered cheaper competition. The machines were shockingly primitive with barely 64 K to 128K core memory. Our office paid Rs 80,000/- for the first HCL PC we bought. It was "state of the art", a PC-AT (Advanced technology, as it was called) and had a 'whopping" 40 Mb as hard disk storage space and a crude low resolution colour monitor and the memory was an "astonishing" 512K! There was no mouse those days. We used the arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate and called up drop down menus using hot keys. Software developers boasted that their software was "user friendly" and "menu driven" in order to beat the competition.The One Mega barrier took some more years to breach and the Giga was simply not even known as a word! Project that price (Rs 80,000/- ) during the early eighties and see it's equivalent in today's prices and you will get an idea how special a computer was. No wonder these PCs were housed in special air conditioned rooms and in my company, the systems department would not allow any of us to enter the computer room with our shoes on. They were the high priests in charge of the machine and treated it as a deity kept in some sanctum sanctorum and would discourage us from using them thinking that we, the country bumpkins, would damage them. Most of us were computer illiterate any way and were easily bluffed into believing all the hype that they trotted out. With just basic knowledge of word processing, and spread-sheeting (using Word Star, and Lotus 123)and an ability to churn out a few lines of simple code in Basic, they posed as systems experts and impressed the top management with tables and reports neatly printed out on the noisy dot matrix printers in vogue then. Our office used these PCs more as glorified typewriters than as computing machines. Bosses were impressed by buzz words like Lotus, Dbase and Wordstar and I lost count of how many times I explained the difference between bit and byte to my boss. He never understood till his retirement!Needless to say, the Internet did not exist. I got introduced to it in the late nineties and my first internet connection at home used the telephone line and the download speed was 4k per second. It was useless for anything except for email without attachments.Other office equipment:The photo copying machine was still very primitive. Xerox was becoming famous. Just as any steel almirah was called a Godrej those days, any photo copy started to be called a Xerox copy. Before their advent, the copying technique had just been introduced and it used some kind of oil that smelt of a mixture of kerosene and machine oil. You had to expose the orginal several times once for each copy and keep the copy sandwiched between two glass sheets with micro fine carbon balls and allow the balls to roll over the sheet to produce a readable copy that smelt for a day of oil before the smell died out. It was a messy affair.More popular was the stencil that could be used instead of plain paper and mounted on the roller of a standard typewriter and then mounted on a "cyclostyling" machine (The Americans called this the mimeographing machine) to produce any number of copies.Telex was the mode of communication between offices for urgent messages. The messages were often received in garbled condition and important words and figures would be typed twice to ensure correct reading. Full stops and commas were written as (STOP) and (COMMA), Figures would be repeated in words and digits to avoid miscommunication.Most of the routine standard communication was in typed letters and posted using Snail mail. The common man used Telegrams for urgent communication. They paid by the word. So standard messages like "Reached safely", "Congratulations" "Best wishes for a happy married life" , "May heaven's choicest blessings be showered on the young couple" etc were given code numbers and these numbers could be quoted to save on expense.The fax machine came much later and create a sensation. Today emails make even faxes look primitive.Routine letters were typed on Manual typewriters (later on electric typewriters) using carbon paper for copies and sent by post or special company couriers for large companies. College Boys and girls during the admission season would be frantically going around looking for "gazzetted officers" who were important because they had the power to "attest" a copy of their mark lists and certificates which were painstakingly typed out. A batallion of typists sat under trees near the Passport office, Registrar's office and other Government departments, typing out documents for customers.Games and socialising:Children played games.They were physically active. Video games were unknown.We, adults, went out and met friends and relatives at their homes and entertained them during return visits. There was no "social media" like Twitter, or Facebook. We spread rumours and indulged in Gossip the old fashioned way using our tongues and hearing gossip with our ears. We laughed cried, joked and quarreled directly not using a computer screen and the internet! TV and internet that has now replaced all live human interaction did not exist. A movie was a special treat to be looked forward to and talked about for days afterwards. A visit to a circus or zoo was a super special treat for the children. Drama had a market and a willing audience.Classical music during Ramanavami was looked forward to.You had asked me about the area near Pallavi talkies, Banashankari and Cubbon park.The present Kempegowda tower there did not exist. The large dome built by L&T housing the indoor stadium did not exist.The direction of traffic movement was totally different. Nrupathunga Road was two way, and so was District office road.Banashankari induced fear! So far away! I thought it was a forest area before I saw it for the first time and felt charmed by the ups and downs and the views of the landscape. The Banashankari temple attracted crowds on certain days and the Kanakapura Road and Bannerghata road was used by us for driving our motorcyles at high speeds for continuous long stretches to recharge our batteries in the motorcycles! Hardly any traffic existed on these roads once you left Jayanagar and rode further south.I could reach Bannerghata National park in twenty minutes from my house in JP Nagar.Cubbon park had practically no encroachments. All roads were two way . None of the entrances was blocked. The Seshadri Memorial library was always full of readers. My kids enjoyed the toy train ride and we often visited Bal Bhavan for attending the programs there. I wonder if any modern kid goes there now.The above is just a limited list of topics that I have chosen to write about.The list of topics I have not written here is even larger but I know your patience is limited and before you run out of it let me stopI thank Chetan Achar who asked me to answer this question.Feel free to ask me anything else you are curious about in the comments section and I will do my best to answer.RegardsGV

Fair warning, this is going to be a big (10 pages) info dump. Just skim the pictures and read the description paragraph if it sounds interesting. Links are included for those who want to know more.The toolboxThe best multimeter ever – MooshimeterMost multimeters are the size of wallet or a book, and can only display information in a string of digits. You must be within a foot or two of what you want to measure, have three hands, and the meter can’t save the information it displays any better than binoculars can.The Mooshimeter changes all that. It’s a bit smaller than a normal meter, runs for six months on two AA batteries and connects wirelessly to your cell phone. This means you can tuck it under the hood of your car and monitor that finicky electrical hiccup while driving down the highway at eighty miles per hour. It also records up to six months of data, so you could record voltage and current (yes, both at once) on a given circuit breaker to compare spring vs summer AC usage at home. The auto ranging display also makes diagnostics much simpler by showing complicated information in a simple graphical format. Take a look at the link above to see all the details.-Armored heat seeing cellphone – Cat S60-This phone is does everything you expect a good Android phone to do, and so much more. If the Nexus series phones were a team of trendy sedans, the S60 would be a mad max armored truck. It can survive a six foot drop onto concrete and a one hour swim in the 16ft deep end of the pool.This thing can literally see in the dark; not night vision or by amplified star light, no, it see’s the heat emitted by everything around it. Animals in the dark, overheated machinery in a factory, hot water pipes hidden behind a wall, they literally glow in the S60s thermal camera. If you work with your hands it doesn’t take long to find uses for this technology. Handyman? See drafts and missing insulation through walls, trace water pipes, check for overheated circuits in a breaker box and find out where that infernal drip of cold water is coming from. Police officer? See which cars have been driven recently by their glow and track suspects in total darkness by body heat and the hand prints they leave whenever they touch something. Parent? Find your daughters pet when they get lost in the woods or hide in the crawlspace. Take your sons temperature when he’s sick or help him get the oven temperature right to bake cookies.Steel wire banding tool strong enough to clamp a hydraulic hose on – Clamp tightClamp tight is like having hundreds of high quality stainless steel hose clamps, zip ties, and fasteners of every time, yet still it still fits in your toolbox. This thing was developed for use on ocean sailing boats as there tend to be very few hardware stores floating out at sea, and boats break down like everything else. To use it, you wrap the wire around the piece to be secured, then around the tool. Turning the bolt pulls the slack out of the wire then rotating the tool locks the wire down like a giant copy of the wire tie that holds a bread bag closed.It does have one obvious weaknesses – you have to have enough clearance to rotate the tool, so some automotive repairs are out of the question because there just isn’t enough room. Overall though, it would be tough to find a more compact and lighter way to repair so many different breakdowns.Nice self-contained butane soldering iron the size of a highlighter – WellerI can’t vouch for this one personally, but a small reliable iron that heats up in seconds and can be used on no notice anywhere it’s needed is a huge help. How often have you needed an iron, but not had a ready plug and stand for it where you were working under the dashboard of the car?1000 lumen rechargeable flashlight by NitecoreGrowing up, ‘flashlight’ was a word that meant ‘that big heavy plastic thing we keep in the kitchen drawer that glows a dim yellow and always has dead batteries when we need it’. No more. Nitecore makes a variety of good lights, but this is the one I keep clipped to the lip of my pocket. Because I work with my hands, I like to be able to see what I’m working on, and very few things break down in the middle of a well lit work bench in the garage. When something needs attention, it always seems to be at night, up underneath a dashboard, deep in a computer cabinet, or some similar difficult to see location. Since I got this light I’ve never had trouble seeing what I’m doing. It has the usual high/medium/low settings with some flashing options for emergency use, and when I need everything it can do, 1000 lumens is as bright as two car headlights. The battery usually goes a month or two between charges, and any 18650 charger can recharge it in a few hours.$300 CNC Laser cutter/etcher toolThese $300 laser cutters have become avalible recently on Ebay, and they offer remarkable utility at a very reasonable price. Various reviews are available; the user interface takes some getting used to, and the mirrors often need alignment after being shipped in from overseas, but after that the cutter will cut and etch words, pictures and just about anything else onto an area the size of printer paper (about 8 by 12 inches). The cutter can be used to make puzzles, pet tags, precision cut wood and plastic, etch metal and glass, etc. A very helpful maker tool.Paper thin microscope lens that sticks to your cell phone - BlipsThe link says it all – this thin slip of plastic the size of a post-it note will turn your cell phone camera into a microscope. Useful for outdoor adventurers, detectives, teachers and anyone else interested in the world around them.$6.50 tiny pocket telescope you can carry everywhere - DXThis inexpensive tool weighs next to nothing and is tiny enough to fit in anywhere. Good for tracing wiring in a high ceiling, aircraft or bird watching, hiking, playing spy with the kids, etc.Pipe style building materials that use electrical conduit at $3.50 per 10ft section – Maker PipeThere are many build systems that can be used to build anything, but most of them like 80/20 cost a fortune (think $15 per ft!). Maker pipe uses simple, inexpensive clamps plus cheap 3/4inch electrical conduit to build nearly anything you could imagine. If you need to build anything from carts to furniture to equipment, give this one a look.Must have Chemical identification – WISER web site and WISER appdownloadWISER is a chemical identification book long carried by firefighters who need to quickly find out: “what’s in that burning tanker truck, and what will it do to us?” The book used to cost less than $20, but today the entire program is available for free download as the WISER app. If you ever find yourself facing a mystery chemical spill, do you want to be one of the clueless people wondering what to do, or do you want to be the person who looks up the chemical in the first thirty seconds and tells everyone what it is and what you have to do next? The app is free and will happily wait on your cell phone until you need it; don’t be clueless, be WISER.Industrial and special purpose toolsLaser paint scraper and cleaning tool – P Laser and in action videoAn interesting scraping process similar to sand blasting, CO2 blasting and bead blasting. I can’t vouch for this product, but I’ve never seen anything else like it either (as of 2016).On site, eco-friendly cleaning and sanitizing liquids from saltwater –Pathosans - videoIf you use cleaning chemicals in any significant quantity, you need to watch this video and check out this system. Just as your water softener uses salt to remove minerals from your drinking water, this system uses bulk salt and tap water to produce huge quantities of cleaning chemicals and sanitizing liquid on site.The process is simple but clever: electrical current is used to split the salt apart in salt water. Salt (sodium chloride) in water is split and filtered to become sodium water (Patho clean) and chloride water (Patho sans). Patho clean is good for scrubbing carpets, washing surfaces, etc while Patho sans kills germs wherever it goes. Agricultural companies use Pathosans units to sterilize live animal contact surfaces and hotel chains use it to produce cheap and effective cleaning products. The cost of the cleaner and sanitizer is around five cents per gallon. The machine itself commands a high price, but if your business buys its cleaner/sterilizer in 55 gallon drums, this system stands a good chance of saving you a lot of money.Industrial forklift crash prevention – sees around blind corners and runs on batteries – Collision SentryThis handy gadget runs on D batteries and uses magnets to stick to metal racking at blind 90 degree corners. When someone approaches from one side nothing happens, but when someone approaches from both sides simultaneously the device lights up a flashing warning to prevent a collision.Interesting ring knife for people who open a lot of packages – Handy Safety KnifeThis product is intended for people who use hand knives to open a lot of packages. It is inexpensive, disposable, and always to hand. There are plenty of places these would be unsuitable (any workplace with powered conveyors or equipment comes to mind), but the idea is so unique it deserves to be included for the one person who has the problem this tool answers.Two way radios for $15 instead of $300 –It turns out that two way radios have gotten a lot cheaper over the years, but just as a teenager can charge grandma money to fix her computer, so the contractors that most companies get their radios from are not in a hurry to tell everyone how easy the job has become. BaoFeng radios cost between $15 and $30, and do everything you expect from a walkie-talkie, but unlike what you’re probably using now, BaoFeng uses better equipment and lithium ion batteries standard. This translates into much longer run times and better performance. The simple $15 radio and more complicated $30 radio can be found here, along with the cable used to program them. This link here discusses how to do it.Rust prevention in existing concrete structures courtesy of NASANASA has a lot of concrete structures near the coast, and saltwater corrosion is a problem for them. So they figured out a way to rust proof metal after it had been encased in concrete for years. If you have any concrete structure that’s showing its age, take a look at this link.TravelA handy power strip for world travel – Power donutA power strip that is tiny, travels easily, and adapts to different electrical systems around the world.Medical toolsA skin magnifier to diagnose skin cancer - HUDA handy tool that uses your cell phone camera to take pictures of worrying moles. The results can be texted to a dermatologist for evaluation and a diagnosis remotely.Emergency blood stopping powder, a must have for first aid kits - Celoxand how to useThis product is used to keep someone alive long enough for the ambulance to arrive in the event of severe bleeding. It forms a jell to stop blood flow at the injury and comes as powder packages, bandages, or a syringe full of the powder for gunshot wounds. Pioneered in the US military, this is one of several good haemostatic products that are must haves for any serious first aid kit. If you own a gun or a knife, does it really make sense to be totally unprepared for the results of gun and knife wounds?Emergency blood stopping pack – a second choice after Celox - QuikClotand how to useQuickClot stops severe bleeding by absorbing the water out of blood, thus causing the clotting agents to become super concentrated at the injury site and stop the bleeding faster. As with Celox above, this will help keep someone alive long enough for the paramedics to arrive and save them.Liquid band aid – a cheap, generic must have for first aid kits – example linkThis is a generic product for minor to moderate injuries that sterilizes a cut and protects the injury site like a band aid. Good for use on tight locations that flex where band aids wouldn’t work. Because of its utility and tiny size it’s a good addition to any first aid kit.Betadine – inexpensive sanitizing solution for cuts used by EMT’s - LinkIn the old days parents used to use iodine or alcohol to clean and sterilize small cuts and scrapes (hydrogen peroxide will bubble dirt out of a wound, but it does not sterilize). Today we all have access to the same inexpensive product nurses and surgeons use; Betadine. It cleans and sterilizes wounds with much less burning than the old options, and most of us are familiar with it already as the brown skin staining wipe that doctors use before drawing blood.Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation or TMS – a new treatment for depression, OCD, and Autism – Related techTMS is a revolutionary new tool that uses very strong magnetic fields to induce current flows near the surface of the brain. It’s essentially a big capacitor bank and a hand held coil employed for ten to twenty minute sessions to treat Depression and other mental conditions. Its painless, has virtually no side effects and is FDA cleared for a few conditions, but it’s in its infancy as a treatment. Promising studies have shown its potential to improve OCD, Autism and several other conditions.Ultrasound for your cell phone – production pending - ClariusFor those trained to use it, Clarius is a new handheld ultrasound probe that allows diagnostic procedures to be done anywhere you have a cell phone. Production is slated to being in 2017.Athletic personal cooling gadget used by NFL and the military – pending shipping - RTXThe RTX is intended for use by athletes or those working in very hot conditions; it’s essentially a plastic box filled with ice water you stick your hand into. What makes it effective is the small vacuum pump that puts a gentle suction on the hand, thus preventing the body from shutting off the supply of warm blood from the body’s core. This technology was pioneered by DARA and is now widely used on the NFL sidelines, but the huge price tag has thus far kept it out of the reach. The much cheaper RTX system expects to ship in 2017.Third world travel, missionary and prepper technologyClean burning hyper efficient cook stove – see videoThe Aprovecho Research center designs and sells extremely efficient cook stoves for camping and long term use in the third world. These stoves have a core made from lightweight clay that reflects heat back into the fire box, allowing a few sticks and twigs to burn hot and clean with no smoke. The top of the stove is built to channel the hot gasses onto the cooking pot for maximum heat transfer with minimal fuel. To first world campers this translates into a neat (if heavy) stove that can burn almost any handy material to boil water and cook. For church groups and other organizations working in the third world these stoves are a way to drastically reduce expenditures of time and money on fuel for cooking – see video. For large orders, the stoves can be shipped in by cargo canister at prices as low as $5 a stove for the bare clay core that actually makes the unit work. Anyone that has to think about where their cooking fuel comes from could benefit from this technology.A light that runs on gravity like a grandfather clock – Gravity lightGravity light is a small generator that uses a sack full or rocks to produce electricity for simple indoor lighting. Just like a grandfather clock, as the weights descend their energy turns the mechanism, in this case turning a generator to drive the lights. While campers can use this product, it is intended for the third world where indoor lighting after dark means kids can learn to read and go to school. Anyone living without electricity could benefit from this product.One way to internet everywhere – Outernet – See videoOuternet is the best of the internet, broadcast one way only to earth from a satellite. The ‘Lighthouse’ model mounts to a standard direct TV dish and downloads many MB of data per day, while the ‘Lantern’ is a portable solar powered device that can travel anywhere and downloads at a slower rate. Both access the same information such as educational materials for students, warnings about local emergencies, weather forecasts, censorship free news, etc. Outernet devices slowly download this information and then allow users to log in and browse what is stored locally. The downside is that the data flow is one way only, but the upside is the system works as an end run around missing power and data infrastructure as well as censorship rules.Clean drinking water from any source - LifestrawAccess to safe drinking water is essential to health, and many of the worst diseases spread via contaminated water. The lifestraw family of products is invaluable to hikers and those working in the third world because it allows anyone to turn dirty water into clean safe water. The absence of safe water doesn’t just kill and sicken people, it drags down their finances, ensuring that those in crushing poverty stay there caring for the sick rather than using that time and money to send children to school.Freshwater from saltwater – the water cone.A simple plastic cone that makes 1.5Lts of freshwater from saltwater.Water transportation from river to home – Water wheelIn some areas of the world, even getting water to the home for cooking and bathing is a major job that pulls time away from education and other productive tasks. The water wheel cuts that time in half and improves quality of life.Kitchen ToolsPortable drink carbonator – Bubble CapA hand held drink carbonator that accepts standard CO2 bottles and standard soda bottles unlike the SodaStream.Parents corner$100 Life saving product to prevent SIDS in infants - Snuza Hero -If you or someone you know has a child under a year old, this is the most important thing on this page. The Snuza Hero clips onto an infant’s diaper to monitor motion and breathing. If no movement or breathing is detected for 15 seconds the device vibrates to wake the baby, but if nothing is detected by 20 seconds it sets of a loud alarm.When SIDS kills a baby, all too often it happens in the middle of the night when both parents are asleep and it’s completely silent. Without some kind of alarm it’s almost impossible to intervene in time, so this can be the most important $100 spent on your baby. It saved our daughters life, and a quick read through the product reviews shows many more parents with similar saves.Free math and school tutoring - Khan academy - promo videoKhan Academy helps anyone at any level learn about math, science, and a variety of other school subjects using recorded lectures by skilled professors combined with interactive tests and automated tutoring. It’s hard to oversell this site; everything is free to use, nearly all subjects are covered, you can log in as a student, parent or teacher to monitor progress, and the site even has test prep for all the major tests like SAT and MCAT. The math section that started the site is particularly clever – when a student first logs in they take a ten question test that helps the program figure out their skill level, and then it suggests new math topics and tracks progress while periodically refreshing old topics as well. If you know anyone in school as a student, parent or teacher, tell them about this program. Odds are good they’ll thank you for it.The drug talk – “Licit and Illicit Drugs by consumer reports”The do’s and don’ts of drugs are usually right up there with the ‘sex talk’ when it comes to uncomfortable conversations parents really need to get right, but often put off or miss altogether. Fortunately, consumer reports wrote an excellent book on the topic which is available for free online. The organization has a well earned reputation for impartiality, and it shows as the book talks about what each drug does, how it was discovered, and how it got to be legal or illegal. Having the facts makes smart choices possible, and this free resource is a must read for anyone over ten.$1.25 calculator wrist watch loved by grade school kids – LinkKids 5th grade and younger find these to be the height of fashion and prestige. If you want to reward a child with an inexpensive gift that will help them academically, search Google for ‘calculator watch’ and order a few.How to get started in life and live well on less - Poorcraft.Unless you’re lucky enough to start life as a millionaire, most of us have to start out on very small incomes working long hours at unpleasant jobs. There are scams and businesses beyond count built to take advantage of the young and un-educated. If you or someone you know earns less than $50,000 a year, spend $5 and get this book. It’s a comic book format packed to the brim with useful tricks and tips delivered in an easy to read humor format.Kerbal Space Program - LinkThis game is a great way to build STEM interest in children and adults as you run a space agency for the ‘Kerbals’ and try to land on the moon or go to mars. All technology in the game also exists in the real world, rockets can be built from parts like Lego bricks and all the physics are as close to real as they can make them.Google Sky, Moon and Mars + the 100,000 stars project and the scale of our solar system.Bit of an astronomy dump here, but if you want to learn about our universe or teach your children, these are excellent resources. Google Sky, Moon and Mars let you explore these places in the same way Google earth explores the globe. The 100,000 stars project is an accurate, searchable 3D model of the nearest 100,000 stars to the earth, and the ‘scale of the solar system’ video shows how small we are by building a huge model in the desert.FanFiction.netThis is a good way to encourage reading and incentivize writing practice. For any book, movie or TV show, there are fans who write stories about the canon, such as ‘what if she did this?’ or ‘what if this happened this way?’. These works of ‘fan fiction’ can read just like the original work, or can be very different with only characters from the original work. Everyone enjoys some kind of media, and FanFiction is a good way to get them reading about something they already like. In many cases, the instant availability of interesting reading material on any internet capable device boosts reading skills and sets up a situation where writing is undertaken enthusiastically and for fun. We’ve all seen people type out angry rants when ‘someone is wrong on the internet’. Fan fiction sets up situations where the reader will find a story about characters they’re very invested in and say ‘This story is awful! I could write a better story that this!’. And they do. And the posted story gets comments about what the bran-new author needs to work on. And so they write some more to show them, show them all.After several months the same student who had to be forced to write a three page paper will be feverishly banging out ten page chapters twice a month to keep their fans happy.Chemistry article referencing the periodic table and nuclear tableHow different engines workAnyone teaching STEM classes or with an interest in engines may find these animated diagrams useful. They’re not the most detailed, but they cover many different basic types of engines. This link shows the standard four cylinder auto engine in more detail.Scan expensive text books or digitize your library – CZUR scannerCZUR is a $300 machine that connects to any computer and scans books into e-books. Scanners that automatically turn the pages cost more than a luxury car, so this unit is an inexpensive way to digitize pricey school textbooks, unusual books from your library, or just anything you want to read but don’t feel like lugging around in paperback. Speed is about one photo (which covers two pages of the open book) per two seconds, so a 300 page book will take about eight to ten minutes to scan. If your college still uses paper text books, consider spending the $300 once on the scanner, instead of two or three times a year at the bookstore.Bizarre wheels for projects, forklifts and robots – Mecanum WheelMecanum Wheels are wheels that allow a vehicle to slide sideways by counter-rotating its wheels. They’re used on forklifts that work in narrow aisles, and in other specialty applications. Anyone building a wheeled robot for a competition should be aware of these because of the performance edge they provide.Fun projectsThe Long Now foundation building a clock that will run for 10,000 years.The long now is a society dedicated to long term thinking, which involves several projects including a four story tall stainless steel clock that will run for 10,000 years, a project to record all human languages, and another to record old computer operating systems for backwards compatibility.Hundred year time capsule for a dollarA simple article on how to build a time capsule from a wine bottle that will last for one hundred years or more. This is a quick afternoon project that lets anyone from grade school kids to adults send a message to people decades or centuries in the future.Free satellite TV for $250 of equipmentIt turns out that free to air satellite TV is still around, and $250 worth of equipment will get you everything you need to watch it. This is a Ku band system (think direct TV sized) and mounts anywhere with a clear view of the southern sky. The programs are a mishmash of low budget shows and international content, but there are hundreds of channels, and they work anywhere you can see the sky. This package is understandably popular with members of the armed forces who want access to their own TV programming while stationed abroad.They also sell the old huge C band dish systems (8 ft across and larger) that still pick up content as well as direct downlink video received by news trucks. Programming varies wildly, but there are some reliable shows – Nebraska for example broadcasts their PBS stations down on C band.Telecom – how antennas work + satellite coverage map + how bandwidth works + KU vs C band pro conJumping shoes that give 6 ft of air – Kangaroo shoesKnow as ‘acro stilts’, ‘power striders’ or ‘kangaroo shoes’, these toys allow for ridiculous jumps and let anyone run faster than the world’s fastest sprinter. They use a composite spring very much like the flexible part of a compound bow and arrow to greatly increase the efficiency of running and jumping, and like skate boarders, are popular for the tricks skilled users do with them.Software defined radio – see and hear everything on every channel with thisthumb stickWe all know AM and FM radio from cars, and some know more types of radio like citizens band, ham radio, etc, but until recently, receiving on more than one channel required many different radios. Not anymore. Software defined radio uses a computer to translate the signal, and this model costs $25, is the size of thumb drive, yet can receive anything from 500 Kh up to 1.7 Gh. In automotive terms, this would be like a car that could fly, drive, float on the water, dive under the water, rocket into space, yet it fit in your back pocket and cost $25. If you’ve ever thought about dabbling with radio, it’s never been cheaper or easier than this.A bee hive that dispenses honey through a tap – no mess, simple and easy.Not something I ever thought about before seeing this, but smoking out bees and opening up a hive of angry stinging insects isn’t the easiest way to get honey, especially considering the resulting comb still has to be scraped and filtered. These guys figured out how to get bees to fill an artificial honeycomb with honey, and it can literally be emptied with a tap.Learn to knit… steel rings into medieval body armor – ringlord.comAnyone into the SCA may find this old news, but some people still make armor and jewelry out of steel rings called chainmail. This site sells everything necessary to weave just about anything you want to make.Incredibly powerful magnets designed for particle accelerators – United NuclearFor all your incredibly powerful magnet needs. These magnets were intended for use in physics labs, and while prices range from $80 to $200, they are strong enough to amputate an arm if careful handling is not used.Magnetic wedding rings for magicians $25. Or use for cashiers to wipe credit cards – Super magnet manThese magnetic rings look and feel like normal jewelry, but can be used in magic acts, or by cashiers to dish out vigilantly justice to abusive customers. While there are many potential applications, take care not to touch your wallet while wearing one.Multitool business card – about $1 per card to be remembered by clients/employers – Card + Label (Avery 5317)Business cards tend to lead short lives, but they don’t have to. The listed multitools are the size of business cards, yet they can perform a variety of useful functions, and with the addition of the linked label, they can become business cards. If you think it’s worth one dollar to have a client keep your card in their wallet for the next five years, consider some of these.Ultimate privacy monitor – no one can see your computer screen but you! –Hack how toThis clever hack is useful for those who need a privacy monitor. Essentially, all monitors have a thin skin of polarizing plastic in the display to produce a useable image. If you take the monitor apart, peel off this layer and apply it to a set of glasses, only the person wearing the glasses can see the screen – everyone else just sees a blank white light.Home, construction and architectureBuy a $2000 cargo/shipping container for an indestructible backyard shed -LinkCargo canisters are ugly but very durable and less expensive than most methods of construction. Suitable for backyard sheds, or even as the basis for tiny homes and larger structures, it can be useful to know this is an option.Color changing heat sensitive tile for showers – Moving colorMost of us have seen that black plastic that changes color like a mood ring when held in a warm hand. It turns out someone made them into bathroom tiles that change from black to a rainbow of vibrant colors when the hot water comes on.In floor heating tubes for very cheap winter solar heating (no solar cells needed)If you ever build your own home, remember this trick. Home heating is usually done with forced air through ducts, but this requires a very small area to be very hot (the firebox of the furnace). We all know burning gas and oil gets expensive, but most of the time it’s our only option; solar concentrators can heat water to 150 degrees F, or even 180, but they can’t approach the high temperatures needed for a forced air furnace firebox. However, if you cast plastic water tubing into the floor of the building when its being built, now you have a very larger area that only needs to be warm in order to heat the whole house. A solar hot water panel made up of black copper pipe encased in vacuum tubes can be hooked directly to the system to heat your entire house for free even in the dead of winter.Hunting, ballistics and security relatedZ-Modo home camera systemTrying to secure a home or business is never easy; almost by definition anything that gets broken/stolen happens when you aren’t looking. An eight camera system with DVR is a good fix for this, and Z-Modo makes many fine systems for around $200 to $300. Have you ever heard of a break-in that cost less than $300?Normally when you find out about a break in it’s far too late to intervene, and in most jurisdictions the police need three to six months to get the results back on a fingerprint search, and that’s assuming there are prints to find and the person leaving them already has a record with prints to search for. If someone gave you an assignment at your job would you still remember three months later?By contrast, an eight camera system deters some break ins, and if a break in does occur, it preserves video of everything that is taken, and everyone involved. The police normally have a pretty good feel for who is causing problems in a neighborhood, but can’t do much about it without clear evidence. With a camera system you can run the video back while you wait for the police to arrive, and then play them the video with everyone’s faces. Quite often the result is “Hey, I know that guy! Wait here while we go pay him a visit.” In this way a camera system can permanently remove bad actors from a neighborhood and help everyone sleep better.The slingshot channel. Yes, this is a thing.If you want to see things hit by overpowered homemade slingshots built by an engineer/body builder and his wife, take a look.How to build a potato cannon for fun and ballistics demonstrations – spud gun & Pumpkin chuckingFor everyone who ever wondered how to build an air cannon to throw potatoes, here is an expert. See also Pumpkin chucking for similar designs.Pocket sized slingshot $20– Pocket shotA remarkably tiny slingshot that still throws for distance.Super compact Taser $300 - PulseA recent shooting taser that is a nice mix of small size and functionality.Cheap disposable pepper cannon $40– Pepper blaster - test videoA tiny but highly effective way to deliver capsaicin to the face as cheaply as possible. While not a firearm, the device uses percussion caps to propel the pepper sludge, meaning it works at any temperature, in the rain in the wind, and doesn’t need to be charged up like a battery or a pressure can.Blackpowder derringer $180– yes they still make themAn interesting tiny firearm that loads just as it did in the 1850s.World’s smallest full power bow $900– Liberty Bow - test videoThis manufacture figured out that compound bows no longer need the heavy aluminum bar between the spring arms, so they removed it to create a bow with a 70lb draw weight that fits easily in a backpack. Pricy, but interesting.Computer toolsRun a ‘who is’ search to find out who owns a website –eg, slanted news vs propagandaThere are many sites on the web that purport to say something, but are owned by someone who has every reason to lie. A ‘who is’ search is a way to quickly find out who owns the website you’re reading. For example, if a web page claims solar panels cause cancer, a ‘who is’ search might reveal it to be owned by British Petroleum.Find old versions of software to roll back bad updates – Old versionSometimes it’s handy to be able to undo a bad software update, or re-install a program for the distant past; Old version allows you to do just that, simply and easily.Google Earth and Google Maps to navigate and explore our worldThese are known to almost everyone, but on the off chance someone hasn’t heard of Google maps, or its portable 3D parent Google Earth, take a look. Navigation and exploration has never been simpler.Aircraft and pilotsYes, you can fly small planes if you want toAircraft are not solely the domain of the rich and famous. You can buy or build an aircraft for the price of a luxury car, and with a small propeller driven plane, your time is suddenly much more valuable.Draw a circle on a map with your home at the center and a radius of 8 hours driving. That’s about what most of us can do in a weekend; anything outside that circle is out of reach, or requires careful advanced planning. With an aircraft, that circle suddenly grows to 1000 or 2000 miles. Someone living in DC can hop into their plane after 5PM on a Friday and be relaxing on the beach in Florida before the sun sets.Cars and automotiveThe best motorcycle helmet ever – Scully AR-1For those who ride, this is the dream helmet: continuous rear view camera, heads up display with GPS, turn by turn directions, integrated calls and music, you get the idea.Automotive DashCam by ‘Boomyours” for $60This strangely named camera of Russian manufacture is an indispensable tool for any car. When paired with a $5 micro SD card and adapter (not included, must be purchased separately or it won’t run), the camera suction cups to the windshield like a GPS and records everything happening inside the car and visible through the front window. It starts up as soon as the car starts, records about a month of driving, and automatically overwrites the oldest videos so no action is required by the user, just plug it in and forget it.If you are hit by another driver, now you have video of the other person’s mistake and no amount of lawyers can change who is at fault. “It was my fault because I was on my phone? No, actually, the video clearly shows you hit me and I was not on my phone. That, and the GPS and G-force data shows where, when and how hard you hit my car.”In addition to crash uses, the camera also records what happens during a traffic stop, and many users find the police are more polite when they are being recorded. If not, well, you now have video of exactly what happened and YouTube is free. Finally, the micro-SD to SD card adaptor allows you to quickly pull the card after a hit and run, put the video onto the responding officer’s laptop, and show them exactly what happened within minutes of the accident, resulting in an APB and a much higher chance of catching the hit and run driver.BlueTooth OBD2 car diagnostic scanner for $7This tool links to your Smartphone using the Torque app and allows you to read and reset trouble codes and check engine lights. It’s a cheap but invaluable tool, and great to have in any glove box.Convert your car to run on French fry grease – Golden FuelsFor those interested in free fuel, Golden Fuels sells all the equipment needed to run your diesel truck on waste vegetable oil. The process is simple enough, mainly centered around filtering, and if you find yourself driving many miles in a diesel truck, using McDonalds as a fuel stop can be quite appealing.