This Spring’s Hottest New Accessory: a Bionic Limb?

As if people weren’t worrying enough about advanced prostheses making amputees stronger than normal humans, now we have to worry if they are going to make them sexier, too. The prosthetics industry is growing rapidly, and, according to Hugh Herr, the director of MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics Group, advanced prostheses will soon become envied in the same way the newest electronic gadget or the hottest car is today.

This story does make you wonder.

A Barbarian Still Roars

Your barbarian has been off fighting wars upon distant shores. For far too long he has been called upon to defend his home land from raiders who wish to take it from him.

The battles have been fierce and have taken a severe toll upon him. At times he has noticed that the light that shines in his eyes has been dimmer. A grim expression is a daily companion and a bad attitude has been made worse.

Every day he wades into the fray and wonders if that day will be the day that he finally falls in battle. Every day he comes home covered in blood and wonders if it is worth it. He doesn’t know how he has made it as far or as long as he has. He just knows that he has.

It is no way to live. It is a grind and a punishment. And just when he thinks that he cannot take it any more he gets angry.  The anger sustains him. He feeds upon the energy that his rage and frustration generate. There are moments where he allows the rage to control him and to take him where it may.

It feels good to let go. It is freeing, refreshing and he exults in it. The demon takes over and he savors the carnage around him. But deep inside the barbarian silently laments the need because every time he sets the demon free he loses a small part of himself.

And he cannot help but wonder if one day he will no longer be able to contain the demon. The demon is not mindless. He is canny, clever, conniving and vicious.

The demon never sleeps. He whispers in your barbarian’s ears and seeks to lull him into submission. The whispers are relentless and are always based upon your barbarian’s weak spots. The demon knows them intimately and preys upon them, seeking to shear the shackles.

With a loud sigh and a shrug your barbarian ends his musing. Life is a series of compromises. Without the demon he most certainly would have succumbed to any number of things. For now he feels as if he has no choice other than to let the demon feed.

If he can hold on a little bit longer he thinks he will see daylight and he will send the demon back to the tiny cell he normally occupies.  Until that time he’ll accept that every time he sees his reflection he can see the demon staring back at him.

Still Around

Your barbarian hasn’t forgotten this place. He has been called away to fight alongside his barbarian brethren.

Plunder and pillage requires a lot of time and has yielded scant moments of freedom.

Unfortunately that rarely has been somewhere with an Internet connection. We’re working on changing that.

She Helped Take Down The Ft. Hood Shooter

She is something else, a hero at the least.

KILLEEN, Tex. — The police officer who brought down a gunman after he went on a shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army base here was on the way to have her car repaired when she responded to a police radio report of gunfire at a center where soldiers are processed before being sent overseas, the authorities said Friday.

As she pulled up to the center, the officer, Sgt. Kimberly Denise Munley, spotted the gunman, later identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, brandishing a pistol and chasing a wounded soldier outside the building, said Chuck Medley, the director of emergency services at the base.

Sergeant Munley — a woman with a fierce love of hunting, surfing and other outdoor sports — bolted from her car, yanked her pistol out and shot at Major Hasan. He turned on her and began to fire. She ran toward him, continuing to fire, and both she and Major Hasan went down with several bullet wounds, Mr. Medley said.

Whether Sergeant Munley was solely responsible for taking down Major Hasan or whether he was also hit by gunfire from her partner is unclear, but she was the first to fire at him, the authorities said.

Stolen 1965 Volkswagen van recovered after 35 years

This was kind of neat. An insurance company owns it now. Wonder what they are going to do with it.

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) – A 1965 Volkswagen van stolen 35 years ago in Spokane, Washington, was found by customs agents in a shipping container in the Los Angeles port last month, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official said.

The blue van, in pristine condition, was bound for Germany along with several vintage Volkswagens, Customs and Border Protection Port Director Todd Hoffman said.

The Arizona company that was shipping the van had no idea the vehicle was stolen from a Spokane auto shop in 1974, Hoffman said.

Holocaust survivors at greater risk for cancer, study finds

Haven’t they gone through enough already.

(CNN) — The 12-year-old girl plucked cold, slimy potato peels out of the garbage containers in a village in eastern Poland. When those trash scraps became scarce, she ate clover.

Crumbs and decomposed food sickened Betty Potash Gold and her family members, causing diarrhea and bloody vomiting, as they hid from the Nazis.

Although Gold lived through extreme hunger, mental duress and near-death experiences during the Holocaust, she and other survivors face another peril decades after the war.

“Jewish survivors of World War II who were potentially exposed to the Holocaust were at a higher risk for cancer occurrence later on in life than those not exposed,” concluded a study published in the November issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Intense calorie deprivation, such as what Gold experienced, has long-term effects on survivors, said Dr. Micha Barchana, one of the study authors.

“We know that people who went through the Holocaust suffered severe calorie restriction,” he said. “Calories they were taking in were 200 to 800 in this period.”

Click here for the full story.

I have Been Hanging Out Over Here

Been Hanging out at Jack’s Place reading stuff like:

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An Up and Coming Writer

I should blogroll this guy or at least send him an email saying that I think that his writing is pretty good.

‘Harry Potter’ cast answers your questions

I am looking forward to seeing the next movie. Want to learn more? Click here.

Relations Between Israel and Pakistan

There is a conversation about this topic right here.