The above picture is of a Tennessee man named Jesse Sullivan. His left arm, holding the paint roller is BIONIC. His newfound ability to paint, and engage in other fine motor controlled actions? Brought to him by the good folks at DARPA.

Mr. Sullivan's story runs in the Detroit News Online today. I'll excerpt some of the more interesting paragraphs, but really you should read the whole thing. Heh. Singularity? Indeed.

From the story:

"The motions are coordinated and smooth because his left arm is a bionic device controlled by his brain. He thinks, "Close hand," and electrical signals sent through surgically re-routed nerves make it happen.

Doctors describe Sullivan as the first amputee with a thought-controlled artificial arm.

Further down:

"That prompted researchers to make improvements, part of a U.S. government initiative to refine artificial limbs that connect body and mind. The National Institutes of Health has supported the research, joined more recently by the military's research-and-development wing, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Some 411 U.S. troops in Iraq and 37 in Afghanistan have had wounds that cost them at least one limb, the Army Medical Command says.

Although work that created Sullivan's arm preceded the research by DARPA, he said he's proud to test a type of bionic arm that soldiers could someday use. "Those guys are heroes in my book," he said, "and they should have the best there is."

"We're excited about collaborating with the military," said the developer of Sullivan's arm, Dr. Todd Kuiken, director of neuroengineering at the Center for Artificial Limbs at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Which reminds me of an important point. Perhaps Mr. Sullivan isn't on the frontlines in Iraq or Afghanistan. And maybe Dr. Todd Kuiken isn't off in some MASH unit somewhere. But in their own ways, these people are contributors to the war efforts and are heroes in their own right.

While I agree with Mr. Sullivan's assessment that the soldiers these limbs may someday help are worthy of the appelation of hero, so to do I feel that Mr. Sullivan and those with whom he is working to refine these life-altering technologies are heroes too.

But real heroes seldom claim the title for themselves. So, Mr. Sullivan, allow me to include you and Dr. Kuiken on the list. Because some day, sooner rather than later, a soldiers life is going to be made immeasurably better. And while he may not know who to thank, he will be giving thanks every day.

UPDATE: For every bionic man, there must also be a bionic woman. Iblis tips me to a story involving just such a woman/Marine using the same type of bionic arm described above. Interesting stuff. Thanks for the tip, Iblis.

Posted by: Ace at 11:24 AM | Comments (34)
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If only Kimveer Gill had heeded the wisdom of Leopold "Butters" Stotch.

Best quote ever at 1:20.

Posted by: Ace at 11:07 AM | Comments (19)
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Guess people didn't like Kinsey, huh?

Oh wait, it's not Liam Neeson, it's UK terrorist cleric Abu Abdullah.

Looks just like him, though. Sounds just like him too.

If only Abu Abdullah could have taken acting classes rather than sitting around a madrassah all day chanting about Allah's need for bloodletting. Then he could have directed his energies in a more positive direction, like beheading people involved in musical theater.

Posted by: Ace at 10:59 AM | Comments (6)
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Say Anything runs down the Damnable Eight, which includes Heather Wilson, who just proposed a very soft-on-terror "security bill" which Bryan Preston calls the dumbest pro-terrorist law yet.

BushÂ’s surveillance plan faces a difficult fight in Congress, especially in the House, where GOP leaders favor a different approach.

That measure, sponsored by Rep. Heather Wilson, R-New Mexico, and endorsed by the GOP chairmen of the Judiciary and Intelligence committees, would require the administration to wait until a terrorist attack to open an electronic surveillance program.

Ah. The perfect time to gather vital communications intelligence -- after a terrorist strike. Because it's important we spy on them giving each other email high-fives.

See? Fair and balanced. I knock the Republicans too.

Oh... There is just one more thing: Check out the list of Democrats getting a perfect 100 score from Al Qaeda's political wing.

Teaser: The list is a bit longer than eight.

"A bit longer" in the same sense that all of human history and pre-history is "a bit longer" than They Might Be Giants' Don't Let's Start.

Posted by: Ace at 10:24 AM | Comments (20)
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Imagine the stamps she could gang-lick with that thing. Why, sending out cable and phone payments would be a snap!

Gosh. She could type with that thing.

If I had her naked in my bed... I'd masturbate to that picture soooo hard.

(One of Adam Carolla's two funny jokes. His other one? He lists people who ought to be punched in the face, including guys who use the expression, "How so?")

Thanks to Erik.

Not That You're Interested... But here you can find a couple of pics of Lindsey Lohan's snootch, and what may be the side of Kate Bosworth's nipple.

Jessica Biel's anteater tongue, Kate Bosworth's tastefully exposed nipple, Lindsey Lohan's pooter ready to take over for Yul Brenner in The King and I... The movie just writes itself.

In my pants.

Posted by: Ace at 10:09 AM | Comments (22)
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Allah wrote to let me know I'd seriously lowballed the number of Americans believing in 9/11 conspiracy theories.

I guessed 12%.

It's quite a bit worse than that.

Third of Americans suspect 9-11 government conspiracy

By THOMAS HARGROVE
Scripps Howard News Service

More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.

...

Suspicions that the 9/11 attacks were "an inside job" _ the common phrase used by conspiracy theorists on the Internet _ quickly have become nearly as popular as decades-old conspiracy theories that the federal government was responsible for President John F. Kennedy's assassination and that it has covered up proof of space aliens.

At least Scripps notes the company they keep. Props.

...

Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them "because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East."

"One out of three sounds high, but that may very well be right," said Lee Hamilton, former vice chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also called the 9/11 commission.) His congressionally appointed investigation concluded that federal officials bungled their attempts to prevent, but did not participate in, the attacks by al Qaeda five years ago.

Seems as good a time as any to re-link an old rant about the intellectual insecurity twinned with rampant egotism that drives the psychology of conspiracy theorists:

I have a friend who is fond of this sort of "deeper truth" conspiracy-theorizing. I keep warning him: You are succumbing to an intellectual vanity, and a very foolish one at that. You wish to believe you "know more" than the average citizen. You're better informed, more enlightened, more clever, and more open-minded about the "real truths" of the events of the world.

And you demonstrate this supposed intellectual superiority by postulating "secret knowledge" the public is either too stupid or too cowardly to see with their own eyes.

That's what drives these sorts of krazy konspiratorial konfabulations. For every behavior there is a psychological need or drive. In this case, it's the desire to differentiate oneself from the "sheep" that make up the vast majority of the American population, through the demonstrated possession of hidden, secret, or, dare I say, occult knowledge, known only by an elite few.

And this is what drives people, too, to create or join cults.

And I'm afraid what we have on our hands is basically a political cult, a cult of the perpetual enemy of many tentacles, Cthuluesque in shape and power.

Or this briefer one:

There's a certain madness to conspiracy-theorizing, of course. And that madness is ego-driven. From time immemorial, self-deluded charlatans have believed themselves possessed of Secret Knoweldge that made them special, made them superior to their fellow men.

Conspiracy-theorists seem to be of a similar psychological type, same as serial killers are. They're smart, but not stand-out smart, sort of smarter than average but not smart enough to achieve any sort of undeniable success. And their frustration over that -- the knowledge that while they are smart, others are smarter, and they'll never be big leagues -- compells them to invent fantasy worlds only they understand and thereby prove their superiority over their friends and co-workers and bosses.

Posted by: Ace at 09:49 AM | Comments (47)
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The reason I am and have been so angry at this administration is because I believe we had an astonishing chance to turn around the Arab-Muslim world with a serious effort to transform Iraq, and Bush didn't trust the American people enough to do it. I regard that as a betrayal of his 9/11 promise.

That's the reason, Andi?

Andi, you seem to have turned on Bush at the precise moment he championed the FMA.

Still wondering-- You spend all that time in Provincetown. You probably own your place. Spend six months in Massachusetts and you'd be a legal citizen of the state. Just three or so months more than you spend there now.

Why no wedding bells, Andi?

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (10)
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I question the timing.

The American people have no right to engage in a more serious evaluation of the issues right before an election.

Forty-seven percent (47%) of American adults approve of the way that President Bush is performing his job. Fifty percent (50%) disapprove. Those are by far the best numbers for the President since mid-February.

The spike is fueled largely by a resurgence of support among the PresidentÂ’s base. Eighty-five percent (85%) of Republicans now offer their approval. At its low point earlier in the year, just 66% of the GOP faithful approved of his job performance.

...

Since this is just the third day of a bounce, it remains to be seen whether this reflects lasting change or is nothing more than statistical noise.

Up from around 40% in January.

Too bad elections aren't held in January, huh?

Posted by: Ace at 09:19 AM | Comments (26)
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Un. Fucking. Believable.

Meanwhile, ABC sweats whether or not it shows soldiers in position to take out bin Ladin, a fictionalized (but essentially true) version of Clinton's 8-10 declined chances to take out the architect of 9/11.

t was the Canadian Left at its absolute insensitive and appalling worst.

On the eve of the 9/11 remembrance ceremonies, the leftist, anti-Bush Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CanadaÂ’s national public broadcaster, aired an outrageous and disgraceful documentary on a Sunday news program regarding half-baked 9/11 conspiracy theories that only served to insult the memories of those who perished that tragic day.

Titled 9/11: Truth, Lies and Conspiracy, the only fascinating thing about the CBC show was its complete absurdity and the fact that it actually made it to air.

...

This is a widely downloaded internet conspiracy film that is being translated into different languages. The CBC swallowed it whole.

...

The leftist CBCÂ’s reasons for allowing this travesty of journalism to be broadcast to a countrywide audience are probably several. Perhaps first and foremost, the innate anti-Americanism of CBCers, like the anti-Bush attitude of CBS journalists involved in the Dan Rather scandal, causes these America haters to lose journalistic perspective. As well, the anti-Bush position of the two conspiracy theorists matches the CBCÂ’s anti-American agenda. Many such theorists believe 9/11 was government engineered, so the Republicans would have a pretext to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. And while the CBC may not go along with this theory, it will give a nudge and a wink to it, since it is against the Bush administrationÂ’s foreign policy.

...

“When the so-called film-maker suggests that airplanes and the passengers on it vanished harmlessly into thin air is when a real news organization would walk away,” said [Canadian columnist Joe] Warmington.

...

Sadly, a recent poll on another Canadian television network showed that 22 per cent of Canadians believe the American government was involved in 9/11. Another 53 per cent are of the opinion that US foreign policy was responsible for the attack. All of which shows a diminishment of trust in American government, especially Republican government, another leftist goal.

“It’s amazing to me how the Left seem to like bin Laden and other terrorist leaders better than their own president,” said Warmington. “It’s hard to win a war when you’re being eaten from the inside like that. But they better be careful. They may like fiction, but one day it may come back to bite them.”

Mainstream, baby.

They are looking for any pretext to finally achieve their real ambition of making common cause with bin Ladin to fight the real enemy: President George W. Bush.

My liberal friend still doesn't believe this is anything but a fringe movement.

22% of an entire Western country is not fringe.

Given that Pacifica Radio offers DVD's of Loose Change as promotional give-aways, I would put the figure in America at about 12%.

Fringe? Fringe in its dementia. But not fringe in its numbers.

Where is the media in all of this? Why does Time Magazine play a game of nudge-nudge-wink-wink with these people, postulating that their lunacies are plausible?

The media likes to endlessly repeat that some portion of the American public believes Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11, and endlessly "debunk" that sentiment (though there is plenty of evidence suggesting Saddam/bin Ladin cooperation on other matters).

Why, then, are they so unwilling to run a major primetime special exposing these maniacs as the paranoid morons they are?

Posted by: Ace at 09:04 AM | Comments (21)
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Yes, you read that right. Hezbollah committed war crimes against Israelis, according to Amnesty International.

Of course, this statement is made a month or so after the ceasefire. Not during the actual conflict itself, when it might have been useful in countering the daily deluge of anti-Jew propaganda.

Apparently Amnesty International needed time to study and reflect upon the issue of whether firing 4000 poorly aimed rockets into civilian centers constituted a war crime or not.

Now here is a legitimate cause for "questioning the timing."

Good Piece From Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald: He was nice enough to send it to me. He finds it less of a cynical ploy than I do. Or at least hopes it's less of a cynical ploy than I believe.

It is a move that could get Amnesty International out of the business of politically tainted moralizing and back into the business of independent examination of fact. Western societies and institutions, which tend to be aggressively self-regulating, are big enough to handle this kind of independent examination.

It will be interesting to see how world bodies and nations react to this report on Hezbollah and the report on Israeli actions to follow.AI has just made it harder to ignore HezbollahÂ’s crimes without being accused of rank hypocrisy.Given what we know about the Israel attacks in Lebanon, the only card AI will have left to play is the "proportion" card, as if nations should be expected to play tit-for-tat with heavily armed terrorist groups on their borders.

But perhaps we can look forward to this kind of evenhandedness becoming a trend. Terrorist organizations, long given a pass as liberation movements for whom all manner of criminal activity is overlooked, will not bear up well under this kind of scrutiny.The ripple effect of this kind of report from so prominent an organization at Amnesty International could be huge, if honest, proportionate examination of criminal activity comes into vogue among those who watch from the sidelines, and view warring parties with moral indifference.They may begin to recognize that in intent, action and at heart, there are parties in this global conflict who are intensely interested in justice and rule of law, and those who are not.

I can only say: "I doubt it." Doesn't matter what AI says. The world hates the Jews.

And America.

In that order.

Posted by: Ace at 07:54 AM | Comments (16)
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