Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2018-03

---

IN THIS ISSUE

• P. J. Rose describes an unexpected connection
• Catherine Nesbitt writes about their new home in Alberta
• Jean Sterling forwards a number of business signs
• Here are some far-out predictions about the future
• Irene Harvalias sends a story about squirrels
• The editors thanks readers for their birthday wishes
• Sites are suggested by Barbara Wear, Catherine Nesbitt, Don Henderson, Shirley Conlon, and Tom Telfer

In this Heroic Story, P. J. Rose of Wyoming writes about

AN UNEXPECTED CONNECTION

It was a lovely Passover Seder at our little temple in Wyoming, with centerpieces on each table sporting seasonal flowers in glass vases. After dinner, as we were helping to clean up, my friend Brian scooped up a few of the floral arrangements, and motioned for me to do likewise.

Brian told me to follow him and we walked through a mild spring night to a nearby nursing home. It was quiet and dimly lit inside, with the residents apparently all snug in their beds.

We carried the flowers to the nursing station, where my friend asked the nurses to distribute them as they saw fit. Never ones to pass up on a ready opportunity, we were chatting up the pretty nurses when we heard a squeaking sound behind us.

Turning around, we saw - complete with lace handkerchief in her sleeve and seemingly straight out of central casting - a little old lady slowly wheeling herself our way. She was thin, wearing a blue dress, with stiff white hair, and tortoise-shell glasses with a beaded neck chain.

Finally reaching the nurses´ station, with an obvious effort she pushed down on the arms of her wheelchair until she raised herself high enough to place her face right up to one of the vases on the counter.

After a deep breath, followed by a contented sigh, she slowly lowered herself back into her chair and said, "Ah, lilies. My favorite."

We watched her wheel herself down the hall toward her room for a moment before turning back to the nurses. To our stunned surprise, both of the young ladies were slack jawed and bug eyed, with astonished looks on their faces.

When they had regained their composure, one of them said that the woman in the wheelchair had not spoken aloud for more than a year, and was thought to have lost the ability to communicate!

Who could have guessed that such a random act of kindness instigated by my friend would result in a breakthrough for someone? Indeed, a person who had been assumed by the medical staff at the nursing home to have been "shut in" for a long time?

What had started as a small, kind thought by my friend made a huge difference in the life of someone who was thought to be beyond reach, as well as the lives of the other four people who witnessed a small miracle that April night.

ED. NOTE: E-mail subscriptions to HeroicStories are free. Sign up here:

htp:www//HeroicStories.org.

Catherine Nesbitt recently moved to Alberta from New Westminster. She writes about

MOVING ON

She has had difficulties with a hip transplant, which required two revision surgeries, and also two prosthetic knee implants. She wanted to be near her two daughters, who live near Calgary, so she and her husband left their home on the Fraser River and moved to Olds.

She writes: I´m having trouble attempting to write about my learning curve with Alberta weather. I feel as if I am in a strange country, with odd cultural norms and behaviour. The weather has been brutally cold on occasion, and quite comfortable at other times. The sun shines a lot, with a very harsh light - quite different from the sunshine in Vancouver/New Westminster. When the temperature is around -15 the snow is crisp. When it drops further, to -25 for instance, the snow squeaks when one walks. My daughter can gauge the temperature pretty accurately by the sound of the snow. Eventually I will be able to do that too!

Life in Olds is very much what I imagined a small town would be. Everyone is friendly, and many people that I have met have lived here all their lives. People know a lot about other long-time residents, which is foreign to me. The residents in our condo building do a lot of voluntary maintenance work to keep costs to a minimum.

There are a multitude of clubs, groups, activities in town, most of which are organized by volunteers. I am reminded of stories I´ve read about barn-raisings, and DIY people. Admirable, of course, but still a surprise to me. Square dancers are law-abiding people, but not so determined to help their neighbours as my new acquaintances.

Our condo is warm, and we enjoy the Monday coffee group, the monthly birthday tea, and the bi-monthly pot luck dinners. My daughter and I have signed up for yoga classes at the seniors´ centre. She will use the floor and I will try "chair yoga." We can walk to the seniors´ centre from my building.

When the weather is warmer, there are other activities to explore. All of these are led by volunteers, and people who take part contribute 50 cents each time to defray some of the cost of running the building. Our next-door neighbour is out at some group or other every day of the week. Many other people make daily visits to indoor walking circuits and public gymnasiums. I am surrounded by Good Examples! Sadly, my husband has a painful ankle and is reluctant to walk anywhere, but my near-by daughter wants to be active.

Jean Sterling forwards these

INTRIGUING SIGNS

A sign on a shoe-repair shop:
"We will heel you.
"We will save your sole.
"We will even dye for you."

At an optometrist's office:
"If you don't see what you're looking for, you've come to the right place."

On a plumber's truck:
"We repair what your husband fixed."

On an Electrician's truck:
"Let us remove your shorts."

On another plumber's truck:
"Don't sleep with a drip. Call your plumber."

At a car dealership:
"The best way to get back on your feet - miss a car payment."

Outside a muffler shop:
"No appointment necessary. We hear you coming."

In a veterinarian's waiting room:
"Be back in five minutes. Sit ... Stay!"

At the electric company:
"We would be delighted if you send in your payment on time. However, if you don't, YOU will be de-lighted.

In the front yard of a funeral home:
"Drive carefully. We'll wait."

In a Chicago radiator shop:
"Best place in town to take a leak."

Sign on the back of a septic tank truck:
"Caution - this truck is full of Political Promises."

From Sunday Family Humour, here are some far-out

PREDICTIONS

1. Auto repair shops go away. A gasoline engine has 20,000 individual parts. An electrical engine has 20. Electric cars are sold with lifetime guarantees and are only repaired by dealers. It takes only 10 minutes to remove and replace an electric engine. Faulty electric engines are not repaired in the dealership but are sent to a regional repair shop that repairs them with robots. Essentially, if your electric "Check Motor" light comes on, you simply drive up to what looks like a car wash. Your car is towed through while you have a cup of coffee and out comes your car with a new engine.

2. Gas stations go away. Parking meters are replaced by meters that dispense electricity. All companies install electrical recharging stations.

3. All major auto manufacturers have already designated 5-6 billion dollars each to start building new plants that only build electric cars.

4. Coal industries go away. Oil companies go away. Drilling for oil stops.

5. Homes produce and store more electrical energy during the day and then they use and will sell it back to the grid. The grid stores it and dispenses it to industries that are high electricity users.

A baby of today will only see personal cars in museums.

1. The FUTURE is approaching faster than one can handle. In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt.

What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 5-10 years, and most people won´t see it coming.

Did you think in 1998 that three years later you would never take pictures on film again?

Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore´s law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a time, before it became way superior and became mainstream in only a few short years. It will now happen again (but much faster) with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture, and jobs.

Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Welcome to the Exponential Age!

2. Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

3. Uber is just a software tool, they don´t own any cars, yet they are now the biggest taxi company in the world.

4. Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don´t own any properties.

5. Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go-player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

6. In the U.S., young lawyers already don´t get jobs. Because of IBM´s Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future, only omniscient specialists will remain.

6A. Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, it´s 4 times more accurate than human nurses.

7. Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

8. Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don´t want to own a car any more. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. The very young children of today will never get a driver´s license and will never own a car.

8A. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars for that. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.

1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 60,000 mi (100,000 km). With autonomous driving that will drop to 1 accident in 6 million miles (10 million km). That will save a million lives worldwide each year.

8B. Most car companies will doubtless become bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels.

8C. Many engineers from Volkswagen and Audi are completely terrified of Tesla.

9. Insurance companies will have massive trouble because, without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

10. Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood.

11. Electric cars will become mainstream about 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity.

12. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact.

13. Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. Energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that simply cannot continue … technology will take care of that strategy.

14. With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination of salt water now only needs 2kwh per cubic meter (@ 0.25 cents). We don´t have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.

15. Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies who will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes
your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it. It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medical analysis, nearly for free.

16. 3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies have already started 3D printing shoes.

17. Some spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large number of spare parts they used to have in the past.

18. At the end of this year, new smart phones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home.

19. In China, they already 3D printed and built a complete 6-story office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that´s being produced will be 3D printed.

20. Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go in, first ask yourself: "In the future, do I think we will have that?" And, if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner?

20A. If it doesn´t work with your phone, forget the idea. Any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st century.

20B. Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a short time.

21. Agriculture: There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their fields instead of working all day on their fields.

22. Aeroponics will need much less water. The first Petri-dish-produced veal is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows. Imagine if we don´t need that space anymore.

23. There are several startups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labeled as "alternative protein source" (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

Irene Harvalias shares this story about

SQUIRRELS

The Presbyterian church called a meeting to decide what to do about their squirrel infestation. After much prayer and consideration, they concluded the squirrels were predestined to be there and they shouldn´t interfere with God´s divine will.

At the Baptist church the squirrels had taken an interest in the baptistery. The deacons met and decided to put a water-slide on the baptistery and let the squirrels drown themselves. The squirrels liked the slide, and unfortunately, knew instinctively how to swim, so twice as many squirrels showed up the following week.

The Lutheran church decided that they were not in a position to harm any of God´s creatures. So they humanely trapped their squirrels and set them free near the Baptist Church. Two weeks later the squirrels were back when the Baptists took down the water-slide.

But the Catholic church came up with a very creative strategy! They baptized all the squirrels and made them members of the church. Now they only see them at Christmas and Easter.

Not much was heard from the Jewish synagogue. They took the first squirrel and circumcised him. They haven´t seen a squirrel since.

FROM THE EDITOR´S DESKTOP

Many thanks to all those readers who remembered my birthday. Among them were Ann Kemp, Carol Hansen, Catherine Nesbitt, Irene Harvalias, Jackie Stevens, Judith English, Kate Brookfield, Rafiki, Shirley Conlon, and Stan French. I appreciate their kind thoughts and good wishes.

SUGGESTED SITES

Barbara Wear reminds us of the video of the pale blue dot, narrated by Carl Sagan 27 years ago:

Barbara also sends the URL for a video of two-year-old William Stokkebroe dancing the jive:

Catherine Nesbitt forwards this link to a compilation of great dancing by old-time movie stars:

Don Henderson sends this URL to an article in Snopes, which claims that the article about charitable compensations in last week´s issue was mostly outdated and inaccurate:

Shirley Conlon forwards this link to a number of historic photos, some of which have never been seen before:

Tom Telfer sends the URL for a video of incredible para-skiing in the Alps. These guys are fearless and lucky:

An anonymous donor has made a staggering $100-million gift to Toronto´s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health:

Greenpeace has a petition to create the world´s largest protected area for the many wonderful creatures that live in the Antarctic. To sign this petition, click on