A BETTER MOUSETRAP

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A BETTER MOUSETRAP

YOUNG AFRICAN INVENTORS HAVE MANY OPPORTUNITIES

“Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door” is a phrase attributed to the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson in the late nineteenth century. The phrase has turned into a metaphor about the power of innovation and is frequently taken literally, with more than 4,400 patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for new mousetraps.

Well…. young African inventors have the opportunties to invent and improve life by developing solutions to so many challenges accompanying life in developing countries. Tharaka Invention Academy’s mission is to train local youth in the mindset, tools, and practices of successful inventors! They will learn to use computers which run design and simulation software which are so powerful because of their speed, power, and precision. These qualities are absolutely essential to any individual or group hoping to compete and succeed in the 21st century. My apprentices may elect to try and improve a mousetrap but they will more likely work at developing a solar powered bicycle or motorcycle or ways to transport water from source to nearby farms as inexpensively as possible. I’ve seen farms on hillsides that require irrigation water carried by hand or donkeys up the hill 300 meters higher than the water sources like wells or streams. Life this excruciatingly difficult is begging for solutions. Yes, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door”.

Supercharging Kenya’s transition to electric bikes. Nairobi-based e-mobility startups like Roam, Stima, eBee, Kiri EV, and Jua Bike are rapidly increasing access to e-motorbikes in Kenya. E.g. Roam has clinched a deal to supply 3,000 e-bikes to Uber, while Stima is in the process of rolling out 3,000 electric two-wheelers in Nairobi. Accelerating the country’s transition to e-mobility will improve health outcomes – air pollution caused ~5,000 premature deaths in Kenya in 2019. Also, e-bikes are helping bike taxis, popularly known as boda boda riders, to earn more from their livelihood through reduced maintenance costs. “With an e-motorbike, there are no gears, clutches, air filters, exhaust pipes to replace or engine oil to buy” one rider says. Kenya’s motorbike sector employs 1.5mn riders and contributes 3.4% to national GDP generating $10 million every day.

Prof. Oku Singer, Mechanical/Solar Engineer

INVENTION SCHOOL’S SIGNATURE SERIES

The technological progress of Africa and its diasporans was dramatically broken beginning with slavery and later through its colonization by European powers. With the arrival of the 21st century, a new era of an awakened Africa has dawned. In the graphic novel series “Invention School”, curious young African students explore their creative potential for solving everyday problems through a subset of engineering skills under the watchful and loving guidance of an expatriate African American engineering professor. Watch this uplifting graphic novel series. If you find the series and its content useful, please share widely.

GORGING YOUR LEARNING APPETITE

Powerful media giants continue feeding us steady diets of stories, games, music, and images of exploitation, mayhem, helplessness, victimization, sexism, murder, adultery, preposterous wealth, torture, drugs, deceit, vampires, zombies, thuggery, glorified gangsterism, demonic spirits, horror, war, despair, brutality, crime, vengeance, sex, addiction, psychic disorders, occultism, savagery, lust, hate, prejudicial beauty/virtue standards, and stale mind-numbing escapism. Never underestimate the power of the subliminal messaging in this media content to accustom your subconscious to your further takeover and control. The groundwork is being laid and we are being deliberately manipulated for easier subjugation. The “collusion” between Hollywood and complicit agencies like the CIA is clear. Hollywood has played a little known role as a propaganda machine for the US national security apparatus for many years. Carefully look at the proportion (you’ll be shocked) of currently available movie fare that embodies these themes rather than embodying themes that uplift, transform, and inspire. “Just coincidence”, you say? After a steady diet of this psychic fare (garbage in, garbage out), what normal person would ever be in a position or mindset to connect and collaboratively formulate creative solutions and healing to man-made problems that beset humanity, earth lifeforms, and Mother Earth herself? These incapacitating but profitable offerings by these media giants stifle any visions of progress and action we might otherwise take to deliver ourselves out of the quagmires our modern societies have created that affect the entire world. Why do these companies market and sell so much of this awful, depraved content?? Could it be:

• Predictive Programming is aimed at creating “world culture” and has been assigned to Hollywood to carry out. “Predictive Programming” refers to the use of entertainment and other cultural artifacts to introduce us to planned societal changes. As we come to see these potential changes as familiar, we also have an easier time imagining them to be normal, acceptable, and inevitable, no matter how heinous.
• Social engineering by an elite few? (neutralization and control)
• Prophecy?
• Conspiratorial takeover and mind-control through strategically embedded thought police?
• Greed? (whatever sells)
• Cultivated apathy?
• Cloaked suppression of liberating technologies through powerful diversions?
• Rampaging decadence?
• Modern “ divide and conquer” algorithms for fun and profit?
• Conditioned acceptance of streams of manufactured crises?
• Non-disruption of the current order (disorder)?
• Karma?
• Improperly tuned/authored “New World Order”?
• Stupidity?????
  

  BUILD A BETTER DREAM

• Speak your truth or somebody will speak it for you.
• Vote with your feet and/or pocketbook
• Contribute your uplifting stories and discoveries to the global pool
• Never believe that mainstream media corporations will deliver the full truth to you as they have their own agendas
• As a free enlightened agent, regain control/understanding of the narratives affecting your well-being
• Spread awareness (articles, blogs, email, texts, advertisements, social media, art forms, workshops)
• Activist collaborations
• Dump or carefully scrutinize cable/satellite television’s agenda-packed (often subliminal) content
• Values-ladened family time stories and sharing
• Notify content creators & distributors saying what you DO want. Money is sharper than a sword.
• Dinner table/classroom discussions and viewing vetted movies like this one above.
  

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  Enjoy!

  Prof. Oku Singer, Mechanical/Solar Engineer

  

  

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