Eideard

Sara Berg and Victor Giiesbrecht hugging

A motorist who had a heart attack but was kept alive by a stranger whom just minutes earlier he had stopped to help along a Wisconsin interstate has had a tearful reunion with that woman and the first responders who saved his life.

Victor Giesbrecht, 61, expressed his gratitude Wednesday to Sara Berg, the Eau Claire woman who performed CPR on him just a few miles further along the Interstate 94 from where he had helped her to change a tire.

“He said `thank you’ and we hugged, then we both started crying,” Berg told the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram. First responders also attended the reunion at Giesbrecht’s room at Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire…

Giesbrecht, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and his wife, Ann, were driving to Indiana Nov. 5 when they saw Berg, 40, and her cousin, Lisa Meier, stopped on the side of the interstate with a flat tire. Giesbrecht pulled over, retrieved a jack from his pickup and helped change the flat.

Minutes after driving away, Giesbrecht suffered a heart attack and lost consciousness. His wife brought their pickup to a stop and called 911. Then along came the women whom Giesbrecht had just helped. When Berg, a certified nursing assistant, discovered that Giesbrecht wasn’t breathing, she started CPR. First responders arrived a short time later and used an automated external defibrillator to restore a normal heart rhythm.

“If she wouldn’t have come along, I don’t think we’d be here right now,” Giesbrecht said.

What goes around, come around. Just usually not so soon.

Rob Spence, a Toronto-based film-maker, lost his right eye in a shooting accident on his grandfather’s farm when he was a teenager. Now 36, he decided some years ago to build a miniature camera that could be fitted inside his false eye. A prototype was completed last year, and was named by Time magazine as one of the best inventions of 2009. He calls himself “the Eyeborg guy”.

The eye contains a wireless video camera that runs on a tiny three-volt battery. It is not connected to his brain, and has not restored his vision. Instead it records everything that he sees. More than that, it contains a wireless transmitter, which allows him to transmit what he is seeing in real time to a computer.

The current model is low resolution, and the transmitter is weak, meaning that Mr Spence has to hold a receiving antenna to his cheek to get a full signal. But a new higher-resolution model, complete with stronger transmitter and a booster on the receiver, is in the works. He says: “Unlike you humans, I can continue to upgrade…”

As a film-maker, Mr Spence wants to use the camera to record “truer” conversations than would be possible with a handheld camera. “When you bring a camera, people change,” he says. “I wouldn’t be disarming at all. I would just be some dude. It’s a much truer conversation.”

His subjects would only become aware that they were being filmed after the conversation was over. Then he would give them a chance to sign, or not sign, a release form permitting him to use the footage.

He says: “There’s ethical issues with that, but I am a filmmaker. “If you’re averse to it, that’s fine, don’t sign the release form. I won’t put you in the documentary.”

The ethics may turn out to be bullshit; but, the documentary might be fun. Maybe even useful?

I presume these Canadian troops are marching away from a memorial to those who fell during the liberation of Belgium during World War 2. Yes, I remember all of those days.

My best friend died a few years back. He was the most decorated soldier from our home state in WW2. He had 16 months in hospital to reflect upon how he got there – not just the German soldier who threw a hand grenade at him at the liberation of a death camp; but, the corporate and political creeps who helped scum like Hitler into power.

We learned a lot together over the years. Both of our families came to the US from Canada, btw. Montreal and PEI.

I salute you, too, Clyde.

Thanks, Mister Justin

Suggested design for new Canadian coins

Canada’s paper money is going plastic, the Harper government announced in its 2010 budget yesterday.

Starting in late 2011, the Bank of Canada will replace the country’s cotton-paper bank notes – prone to wear and tear – with synthetic polymer ones that last two to three times as long.

These far-hardier bills won’t be indestructible – a flame is still a threat, for instance – but they will be virtually waterproof, meaning Canadians need worry no longer if their bank notes go through the washing machine by mistake.

The Bank of Canada is staying mum on the specific technology.

However, plastic bills introduced in Australia and elsewhere apparently harbour fewer germs because their slick surface makes it harder for bacteria to cling to the money…

Ottawa will rely on a sole supplier – an Australian company – of the special polymer bank-note material. In theory, the material’s scarcity means fraudsters will be hard pressed to create matching notes…

Plastic banknotes, first developed in Australia, tend to cost more than paper currency but the Bank of Canada’s Ms. Girard said this country will end up having to print far less bills overall – which is where the savings will accrue.

Plastic notes should also mean less headaches for merchants because history has shown they perform better in automated vending machines.

Don’t forget – folks in the GWN can also look to the South for inspiration on how to design money that is world-class ugly.

An Ontario man told U.S. border patrol agents that he was coming into the United States with $700 cash. But a scanning device that can X-ray vehicles for hidden compartments and a vigilant patrol dog showed his declaration was more than $2 million short of reality.

Eskender Mafarani of Richmond Hill, Ontario, appeared for a detention hearing in federal court in Detroit in what border patrol agents are calling the largest bulk cash smuggling case ever in the eastern district of Michigan.

Mafarani, 52, was crossing the Ambassador Bridge into the United States in a blue Volvo truck Friday when a border patrol officer asked him if he had anything to declare, according to a U.S. District Court affidavit. Mafarani said he had nothing to declare and was traveling with $700, the affidavit states.

However, border patrol officers used X-ray images to find hidden compartments in the truck. A patrol dog also alerted the officers to two different areas near the side walls of the truck, authorities said.

Once they searched the truck, officers found more than $2 million in cash wrapped in 138 bundles in hidden compartments, along with six cell phones, a laptop computer and $1,220 in Canadian cash.

Oops! Spare change for the toll booth?