Alexander “Zander” Rose is the executive director of The Long Now Foundation, which was founded in 1996 to become the seed of a very long-term cultural institution that fosters very-long-term planning. He was hired to build their clock that lasts 10,000 years. He’s also the founder of the Robot Fighting League, and a contestant on the ABC series Battlebots (airing Sunday nights)

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Show Notes:

Knipex Parallel Plier Wrenches $162 “You can adjust them, but then when you actuate them, they have flat jaws that stay totally parallel. They’re way more powerful than a crescent wrench even though they look like a set of pliers. They don’t damage the flat surfaces that you’re working against.”

Gear Drive Case Ball End Hex Keys $55 YouTube Video “There’s these little gears in the actual plastic case that gear them all together, so when you grab one wrench and turn it, they all turn out together, and so you can pull one wrench out and then relock them all back in. People who’ve used the most common brand, Bondhus, will know that you spend a lot of time wrestling with two hands trying to get hex keys in and out of the case.”

Bafang Mid Drive eBike $850 “Most e-bikes use a powered wheel and the bummer about that is that you have this extremely heavy wheel. If you want to use it in pedal only mode, you’re trying to turn a 40-pound wheel. This kit made by Bafang, a Chinese company, uses what is called mid-drive. This means that the power comes in at the cranks. That means your wheels are standard. Your transmission is standard. You can use normal gear sets and things like that in conjunction with your electric bike kit.”

Yuba Boda Boda Family Cargo Bike $1000 “There’s a lot of cargo bikes out there that are extremely long, by both Yuba and Xtracycle. The problem with those is that they don’t fit on bike racks. The Boda Boda by Yuba has a little bit longer wheelbase than a normal bike but still fits on normal bike racks.”

Chinese High Power Bike Lights $65 “Those early Lupine lights were $600 to $700 each and now, there’s just a plethora of Chinese versions. They’re down $50, so it’s affordable to have one on your helmet and one on your bars and have a total of something like 2,400 lumens, which is just pretty insane. You look like an F16 landing on an aircraft carrier when you have this setup.”

Water Activated Resin Cast Material $42 “This is a small tiny roll of what looks like gauze but it’s actually a resin-activated cast material. You can custom make it to any shape. If a bone is sticking out, you can work around that. If you have climbing tape with you, which generally we do, you can just make a splint up one side of their leg and then wrap around that or at their arm and wrap around that with the climbing tape and then it doesn’t have to be cut off.”

Skin Stapler $13 “Normal people are not good at suturing but if you want to close a wound and get somebody back to pavement and it’s going to take several hours or a day, then a person with very little experience can actually close that wound back up with the skin stapler.”

07/26/15