Look into the Magic 8 ball

Published 11:51 pm Saturday, October 6, 2007

Who knows what the future holds? When it comes to home prices, Herald columnist Steve Tytler says he’s got a pretty good idea, and it didn’t come from a crystal ball.

We don’t have a crystal ball, either, but we do have a Magic 8 ball, so we’d like to make a couple predictions of our own:

A British adventurer on Saturday completed a 13-year journey to circumnavigate the globe using only human-powered transportation. Before he began, the trek seemed “wildly romantic,” he said. But then he was hit by a car, attacked by a crocodile and thrown in an Egyptian jail.

Prediction: He’ll spend the next 13 years pursuing a different kind of wild romance by wooing girls with stories about how he was hit by a car, attacked by a crocodile and thrown in an Egyptian jail.

Magic 8 ball says: “Outlook good.”

Businesses in Japan are developing a variety of robot technologies to help elderly people be more independent, including a swiveling arm fitted with eating utensils, a “muscle suit” to help people lift heavy objects and an intelligent wheelchair with sensors that allow it to avoid obstacles.

Prediction: The wheelchair maker will be sued after the sensors fail and the chair runs over the family Roomba.

Magic 8 ball says: “Cannot predict now.”

But that doesn’t mean we’re wrong.