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Friday 28 April 2017
Post 166--From Murder to Execution in Peace
Wednesday 26 April 2017
Post 165—Labour Unions Hurting Social Fabric of Society
During my teen years I worked in
the lumber mills of Port Alberni in the centre of Vancouver Island. So did my
Dad after our immigration in 1951 and, for a few years, so did two of my
sisters in the plywood plant which was co-ed. We were all members of the IWA,
the International Woodworkers of America.
We made good money. The Alberni Valley had the highest per capita income
in all of Canada, thanks to both MacMillan & Bloedel and the IWA. I’ve written about this already in earlier
posts. I was aware that, as good as we had it, it could not last. I suspect the
CEO and his cohorts made the usual outrageously high salaries as they are wont
to do these days, but I was not aware of that issue at the time. I was aware of the fact that if our wages
would continue to rise almost annually, the IWA would sooner or later price us
out of the world lumber market. They did
rise and we did lose out eventually. The town shrunk with the reduction of jobs
as did other BC towns with the same industry and the same IWA. In fact, the IWA
no longer exists; it merged with another union.
It turned out to be its own enemy, more so than the company.
Labour unions have been a great
force for good at one time. They lifted up the working class, a fact we should
never forget and always appreciate. This, however, does not mean we should
grant them license to force themselves on the society at the latter’s expense—and,
ultimately, at their own expense. There is a movement afoot in Quebec province,
for example, to reign them in because of their excesses. Those excesses are not
only about wages and accompanying perks, but also in that they inhibit the
healthy social instinct for volunteering. I’ve seen it in Vancouver, but for
today the issue is in Quebec.
Giuseppe Valiante, a Canadian Press
journalist, has an article in the Vancouver
Sun of April 24, 2017, under the title “Paint
a school for free? In Quebec, that’s illegal,” with the byline “Union rules
blamed for hurting social fabric of society.”
Due to copyright issues, I cannot copy the full article here, but it is
about authorities, under the pressure of a union, stopping the mayor of Saint –Sebastien
from painting the town’s public school with the help of local volunteers. It
had not been painted for 33 years and there was no money from the school board.
So, the mayor took the bull by the horns and recruited members from the
community. An inspector came along and that was the end of this communal
effort. The volunteer job would have
cost roughly $3,500. The union came in and the price rose to $120,000! The union members did not even want to charge
them, but the union forced them to take full wages at around $94 per hour!
“Left-leaning media columnists and
provincial politicians argued parents shouldn’t have to paint their kids’
schools, because government has the responsibility to maintain public education
infrastructure,” writes Valiante. From my point of view, this is about as
absurd, convoluted and corrupt as things
can go! Where does this kind of “reasoning”
come from? My Christian reasoning
encourages communal efforts and holds parents responsible for their children’s
upbringing, including their education. Preventing parents and the community
from taking on their responsibility by powers with vested interests! I have no words for that kind of mentality
within my Christian vocabulary and the others I surely would not wish to utter!
I am so annoyed, I have difficulty
reining in my emotions at this point and restrain my language. So, I am inviting you to read this fine
article but terrible story for yourself.
Please go to: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/04/23/quebec-painting-incident-exposes-unions-hold-on-volunteering-rules.html.
Tuesday 18 April 2017
Post 163--The Empty Tomb
The Empty Tomb
My guest writer for easter is Father Raymond J. de Souza, quite a mouthful. When you read below about the positions he holds you have more than a mouthful. I appreciate these reflections on the empty tomb and hope you will as well.
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The blackened Edicule has now been restored to its original cream and rose colouring, almost luminous in what remains a dark church. The ugly girders are gone, having rendered their necessary service for seven decades.
All of which makes the church modestly more beautiful – and less embarrassing – to visit. Regardless, though, of the structural soundness of the Edicule, what remains remarkable is that is built to mark an absence. There is nothing inside.As the angel said that first Easter morning: “He is not here.”
The only lasting place mortal man has on this earth is the grave. We speak of the abundant resources of the planet as our common home, but the earth only provides for our life for some decades. For the longest part, what the earth gives to us is a burial place. It is more a cemetery for the dead than a home for the living.
So we have busily set about making our common cemetery decorous. We make the headstones. We landscape the grounds. We mark the graves: “Here lies….”
The Edicule in Jerusalem marks what used to be a grave, but has long ceased to be: “Here He does not lie…”
For those great personages whose lives are remembered beyond the circle of their own relatives, we fashion more impressive monuments, memorials that in time are themselves forgotten. Yet what is inside remains relentlessly egalitarian. Decomposing corpses are more similar than different, no matter the previous station in life.
The formative event of the Chosen People is the Exodus, when Moses led the Jews out of slavery in Egypt by the signs and wonders of the Lord God. By the time of Jesus, did the Jews still carry with them the handed-down memory of the tombs of the Pharaohs? Were there stories told about the great tombs built, the architecture so advanced that even today it remains a mystery of how they were built?
Ancient Egypt was wise. Its people knew that all that really lasts is the tomb, so they set about building grand tombs stuffed full of all that a dead man awaiting life could possibly need.
What Egypt did not – could not – realize, was that what man really needed was not a better tomb, but to leave the tomb altogether. When Israel came up out of Egypt, did they realize that the pilgrimage of salvation history is away from the massive tombs of the pyramids toward the empty tomb of Calvary?
The archaeologists who worked on the restoration of the Edicule removed, at one point, the marble slab covering the burial site itself. It was a rare time in archaeology where the expectation was to find nothing. There was fill material and other detritus of the ages, but nothing of Jesus.
Everything rather depends upon that, as St. Paul insisted: “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.”
The alternative to the empty tomb is to return to the busy work of grave building, the proper task of man absent the Resurrection. The Edicule is the reminder that man was created for life, not to spend his life building graves.
About the Incarnation we are accustomed to say that the eternal Son of the Father became a man like us in all things but sin. In His passion and death, He who had no sin was made sin, as it were, for our sake. Yet He was not touched by sin, and so had no need of what we need, the resting place of the grave.
He descended to the grave, but life cannot remain there, any more than a corpse belongs among the living. So the one who came to be present with us gives us the gift of a great absence, the empty tomb. It is the presence (absence?) already given in history of that day when all the tombs shall be empty.
We were not made for this world, and so the only enduring offer of this world – a grave, more or less comfortable, more or less grand – is not for us. We do not need what the world can enduringly give; we need rather, to not need that grave.
The Edicule marks the place where we began not to need it anymore.
A blessed Easter to all!
=======
Friday 14 April 2017
Post 162--Good Friday
Today Christians all over the world
for two millennia have been commemorating Good Friday. That is to say, the
death of Jesus Christ by one of the most cruel executions the ancient Roman
Empire ever devised, namely crucifixion. The story is told in the New Testament
of the Bible at various places: Matthew
27, Mark 15, Luke 23 and John 19. If you’re
not too familiar with the Bible, you will find the most understandable
translation to be that called The
Messenger. I was almost going to say
“the most pleasant translation,” but reading the story of Jesus’ crucifixion
and the events leading up to it is anything but pleasant; it is heart
wrenching, nothing pleasant about it.
In Post 161 I referred to Maudy
Thursday, the day before Good Friday. Many churches attend special services
that day, as my wife and I did in the evening at First Baptist Church in downtown
Vancouver. The choir sang a few very beautiful hymns, but the last one really
did me in. I broke down in tears, I was so emotionally overcome by the lyrics
themselves as well as the melody and, not the least, the way it was sung. I
played it on Utube again this morning and had the same experience. Even now, at
this very moment, I have tears in my eyes. I am a singer and when I hear songs that I know, I sing along. But both last night and this morning, I was too
overwhelmed to sing along. I could only listen and let waves of emotion run
over me—emotions, I hasten to add, of joy, gladness and peace, but also of
sadness and shame, because of the reason for all of this tragic drama, namely
the sin that has distorted the entire world and every individual in it,
including me.
Another word for sin is evil, both
words that we, heirs of the Enlightenment of some centuries back and the
subsequent rationalist philosophies it has spawned, including secularism and
postmodernism, do not want to hear.
Well, evil is one word we may tolerate, but sin? No way. That’s
nonsense, primitive. We will have no truck with it. Well, neither does God. But
He does not deny its reality as most of us do. Instead, He provides a way out;
He does not leave us stuck in or with it. The events from Christmas through
Good Friday are the prelude to His way of overcoming it by diverting the punishment from us to Jesus.
I know, for most of us it sounds
like a bizarre story, something that no one immersed in our culture could
possibly think up; it is simply too exotic for us. But, you know, much of our
Western culture is exotic to most of the world. Every culture is exotic to
another culture far away. But no matter what you do, it is always in the
context of a specific culture that is exotic to almost every other culture.
That’s just the way we are; we exist in various cultures, all of them exotic to
others. So, if God was going to do something in the world of humans, no matter what, He has to do it in terms of a
specific culture. No way around it. That’s how we are created. He can’t do it
in every culture. No one will understand.
So, for His own reason, he chose
the culture that was started by Abraham and developed into Jewish culture of
the ancient past in the Old Testament. Of course, it is exotic to us, for we
live in another culture and have difficulty understanding that of the Bible.
So, why do you reject it just because it is expressed in an exotic culture? Why
would you insist that God did His special work with Jesus in our culture? Isn’t that selfish? Is that what you want to be? That ain’t very
nice, you know, to put it mildly.
So, we just have to bite the bullet
and recognize that we live in an exotic culture that finds it difficult to
understand events in another, but that does not make them untrue or false or a
figment of someone’s imagination. Nor is it because the people in those days
were primitive and ready to believe anything. There was an entire class of
highly educated Jews who disbelieved the very notion of a resurrection. Same
with some of the ancient Greek philosophers.
None of these people wanted to believe the story; it was too irrational
for them.
I herewith reproduce the lyrics of
the song that so moves me. After that, I offer you the URLs of five different
ways this song is sung. There are more and you can access them yourselves.
Please read these lyrics carefully, slowly, meditatively. And then, when you’re
done, as today’s newscasters tend to say, “Have a listen.” And respond with your heart.
Go to
Dark Gethsemane
Go to dark Gethsemane, you who feel the
tempter’s power;
your Redeemer’s conflict see; watch with Him
one bitter hour;
turn not from His griefs away; learn of
Jesus Christ to pray.
Follow to the judgment hall; view the Lord
of life arraigned.
O the wormwood and the gall! O the pangs His
soul sustained!
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss; learn of
Him to bear the cross.
Calvary’s mournful mountain climb; there,
adoring at His feet,
mark that miracle of time, God’s own
sacrifice complete:
“It is finished!” hear Him cry; learn of
Jesus Christ to die.
Thursday 13 April 2017
Post 161--Vimy Pride Can Never Diminish the Pain
Today is Maundy Thursday, the day on which Christians begin the weekend that ends with Easter, the day we celebrate Christi's resurrection. This being a blog devoted to the Christian faith, this post should really be about that tremendously important historical event. However, it happens to be the day that I read Joe O'Connor's report about the Vimy Ridge memorial week, when Canada remembers, mourns and celebrates the supreme sacrifice thousands of Canadian soldiers made at Vimy Ridge in France. It was such an important event that it has been credited with the birth of the Canadian nation.
I don't get a chance/time to write a post every day or even regularly, but I will try to treat you to some meditation on the Good Friday--Easter axis before the weekend is over. However, as a Christian writer I cannot simply ignore such an important and sad event for and in our nation. Actually the Good Friday--Easter axis has this in common with the Vimy story: they both include a very sad part and very joyful one. For Vimy, the sad part is the death of thousands of young Canadian men; the happy part is that it represents a young nation coming out of the closet of obscurity onto the world stage. We Canadians are proud of that. So, death leading to a new life.
Similarly, the sad part of the Christian story is the death of Christ through crucifixion for the sinfulness of the human race, including yours and mine. The celebration is about the resurrection of Christ: Death does not have the final word; it is not the real end, except of just a phase. And that resurrection spelled the beginning of a new awakening emerging from Jerusalem into pretty well all the nations of the world. Here, too, death leading to a new life.
But for today, the Vimy story as Joe O'Connor tells it in the "National Post in the Vancouver Sun (April 10, 2017). I decided to leave the newspaper's reference to "related stories" down below in place for your further edification.
============
Willie McGregor was sitting in a
tent, sipping on bottled water and peeling an orange. It was going to be a long
day, the 94-year-old Albertan said, as the hot April sun beat down on Vimy. The
last time McGregor was in France was June 1944. He landed on the beaches of
Normandy — as an army medic — and saw things that no person should ever see.
“There are
times when I’ll think about the war every night,” McGregor says. “I was asked
after I came back if I wanted to work in a hospital and I said, ‘No, I’ve seen
enough blood.’
“I went
into farming. I have had a good life.”
On Sunday,
McGregor was here, at Vimy, positioned in the shade near the soaring Canadian
Memorial. “It is an honour,” he said. The 25,000 other Canadians who came, many
wearing red and white, would agree. A 21-gun salute was fired, replica biplanes
flew past, bagpipes played, a minute of silence was observed. Prime ministers,
presidents and future kings gave speeches. Justin Trudeau elicited roars from
the crowd, speaking of “the burden they bore, the country they made;” the
Prince of Wales intoned, “this was Canada at its best;” while François Hollande
said the “message of Vimy was to stand united.”
Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images
But Vimy,
at its core, is for the Canadian people: a memorial to 3,598 farmers, city boys
and fishermen, killed taking a ridge that no other nation could take. The land
is a gift from France, paid for in Canadian blood. Walter Allward’s soaring
monument exudes an aura of permanence.
In northern
France and nearby Belgium, the war — even 100 years after Vimy — is not viewed
at a distance, but up close. people hear that you are a Canadian and some smile
with surprise. Every village has a cenotaph. Every other field, it seems, a
cemetery.
Kurt
DeBacker was born in Ypres, Belgium, the site of the world’s first gas attack,
a town pulverized during four years of fighting, a place full of Canadian
ghosts.
DENIS CHARLET/AFP/Getty Images
“I grew up
in the world’s largest graveyard,” DeBacker says.
When
DeBacker was a kid — he is 46 now — his mother would tell him to watch out for
the rusty bits in the garden, shrapnel pieces that he and his pals dug up by
the bucket and traded in at the museum for Snickers bars. He was 13 when his
school principal appeared at the class door and asked his friend, Laurent, to
step outside.
“Laurent
didn’t return to school for two weeks,” DeBacker says. “His father was a sugar
beet farm. He ploughed over an old shell and was killed when it exploded.
“My
friends, we grew up playing in the Commonwealth cemeteries — we were respectful
of them — but the grass there was always so soft and green.”
That grass
was once mud. Deep and thick, and full of the dead, about 50 per cent of whom
were never identified. What sometimes gets forgotten in the memory wars — in
the tribal custom of honouring our dead — is that the Germans were boys, too.
With moms and dads and brothers and sisters and stories and dreams that died in
the mud. In this land of bones, it is hard to find a place more lonesome than a
German cemetery.
Christian Hartman/AFP/Getty Images
I went to a German cemetery and it was very emotional for me,” says Heike Hemlin, a German-born public servant who moved to Canada 25 years ago. Hemlin grew up in
a culture of silence, when being German meant being ashamed of what your
grandparents and great-grandparents had done. “We were the bad guys,” she says.
Commonwealth
cemeteries are full of light, colourful flowers, manicured grass and white
marble headstones. German crosses are black. The men are buried in mass graves.
There are no flowers. Germany rents the land — in perpetuity, relying on groups
of schoolchildren and volunteer donations to maintain their burial sites. It is
punishment, everlasting, for starting the war, and it is part of the tragedy of
it.
The pain is
everywhere: John Kelsall’s father, Sam, fought at Vimy. Sam would often tell
the story of a farm boy in his unit from Saskatchewan. When a hand grenade
landed in a trench full of men, the boy pounced it — sacrificing himself for
his friends.
“My father
would tell that story with tears in his eyes,” Kelsall says.
Peter
Robinson’s great-grandfather, Pte. Edward J. Clement, survived Vimy, but was
killed three months later near Arras. His widow, Elizabeth, lived for another
seven decades.
“I saw what
his death caused,” Robinson says. “Sadness, anger, financial strain — not least
because the politicians of the day were so indifferent to the widows’ plight.”
Related
·
Vimy Ridge database: Search
the names of ancestors who died in the historic First World War battle
Six days
ago, Gen. (ret.) Rick Hillier addressed a crowd of Vimy pilgrims on a boat
gliding up the Seine River and told them how, if they were proud of being
Canadian now — if their hearts beat red — that their hearts would be bursting
come Sunday, April 9th. There is pride, indeed, great big chests full of it,
being here, on this day, and listening to stories about our
great-great-grandparents’ generation, dying, living, fighting like lions to the
everlasting gratitude of the French.
But pride,
perhaps, isn’t the correct word at Vimy, with its soaring monument, and with
the politicians on-hand to give speeches on the 100th anniversary of an event
where nothing needed to be said.
Words can’t
capture the magnitude of the place. Look east, away from the monument, over the
Douai Plain, and what you see is beauty: farmers’ fields, rich and green in the
April afternoon light. Walk around the base of the monument, however, and the
meaning of Vimy is clear. It is carved into the stone — 11,285 names of the
Canadians who died in France and whose bodies were never found.
“We haven’t
learned a thing, have we?” Willie McGregor said, his voice full of wonder. “I
think of this world, and it is still a terrible mess.”
Tuesday 11 April 2017
Post 160--Tomorrow--Wonderful and Scary Technology and Life
A friend forwarded the document below to me. This could be the world of your children and, more certain, of your grandchildren. I am not sure whether I'm happy I will be gone before most of this materializes. On the one hand, exciting; on the other, scary. If anything near to this comes true, the entire world will go topsy-turvy, with nothing, absolutely nothing, remaining the same.
Well, not quite true. God will still be there in all His splendour and glory AND, most important of all, with His love and compassion for this world. Way in the early beginning, He gave us the job to develop this world. It took and while, but now we've gone so far with all that, that most of us wonder what's ahead. We seem to be on a treadmill without a turn-off button. We're outsmarting ourselves.
Maybe, just maybe, that's what that ancient tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Bible book of Genesis comes in. It may have been telling us that there are somethings we should not know, for they will devour us. We could be close....
But thanks for Lou Haveman, a friend from Grand Rapids MI, for sharing this document with all of us. Here goes:
==============
Don't know if all the facts check out but as predictions go, it is pretty interesting and a little bit scary. It is indeed a very interesting world we live in.
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 3 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, and 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 US , 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% less lawyers in the future, only omniscient specialists will remain.
6A. Watson already helps doctors diagnosing cancer and treatment options, and its 4 times more accurate than humans only.
7. Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.
( NEVER!/Albert)
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 anymore. 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 licence and will never own a car.
8A. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% less 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 mi (10 million km). That will save a million lives world wide 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 neighbourhood.
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.
16. 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. Goodbye, self-serving medical practitioners and establishments.
17. 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.
18. 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 amount of spare parts they used to have in the past.
19. 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.
19A. In China, they already 3D printed and built a complete 6-storey 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. This will require a rethink on wealth distribution.
21. Agriculture : There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field 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).
24. There is an app called "moodies" which can already tell in which mood you’re in. By 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions, if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it's being displayed when they’re telling the truth and when they’re not - it will ultimately compel all politicians to be truthful (a truly unique & novel occurrence).
25. BY 2020 (or sooner - some might suggest this is happening now) WHAT A UNIVERSITY STUDENT LEARNS IN THE FIRST YEAR OF A THREE YEAR DEGREE - WILL BE IRRELEVANT AND REDUNDANT BY THE TIME THE THIRD YEAR IS COMPLETED!
The world's first virtual shopping center opened in Korea. All the products are just LCD screens. That allows you to order the items by touching the screen and when you get to the counter, your items are already bagged and ready to go.
A cellphone you can bend as much as you like and it will still do everything a smart phone does.
Your personal computer ring can play music, check your email, give you alerts and even
allows browsing or chatting with others.
This man is demonstrating the ability of his prosthetic eye, which has a camera installed in it.
No longer using the camping stove just for cooking. A new line of camping stoves uses the heat energy to power up lights and chargesphones or anything else that can be charge by a USB cable.
This trash can follow you around and calculates where to stand to catch your thrown garbage!
Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet
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This motion tracking table morphs its surface to mimic your movements, allowing you to control objects from the other side of the planet if you so choose
Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet.
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This windowed door turns opaque whenever it is locked.
Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet.
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This incredible app translates signs from video in real time!
Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet.
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The new 'Google Fiber' has started to be deployed. It will offer users an internet connection that is about 100 times faster than what they are currently using.
When did car panels start looking this advanced?
A stop sign using water to project the image
Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet.
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An example of the new E-Ink in action. An ink that stays flat on the page and can be printed but still moves on the printer page.
Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet.
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All of the devices required 20 years ago that are now done by a single smartphone.
New casts can be printed with a 3D printer, are lighter, more comfortable and just as strong.
Bionic hands are now so advanced they can perform even delicate and complex movements.
Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet.
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Welcome to the world of Tomorrow............
Well actually, it's already Here
--
"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels inevitability. Every step towards the goal of justice required sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Without persistent effort, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social destruction. This is no time for apathy or complacently. This is a time for vigorous and positive action." Dr. Martin Luther Kind Jr. in Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, Chapter XI Where Do We Go From Here?
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