They're Chinese made, so undoubtedly they're chock full of industrial poisons that will kill him within days, but for now, he's walking.

Despite having lost the entire lower half of his body to a truck.

Doctors at the China Rehabilitation Research Centre in Beijing found out about Mr Peng's plight late last year and devised a plan to get him up walking again.

They came up with an ingenious way to allow him to walk on his own, creating a sophisticated egg cup-like casing to hold his body with two bionic legs attached to it.

Thanks to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 11:43 AM | Comments (21)
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Kind of a cute story and the counterintuitively clever gambit -- when an armed thug shows up threatening to kill you, offer him Pinot Grigio and Camembert -- paid off.

But this story will be cited for the proposition that the best way to deal with armed and dangerous criminals is to just be nice to them. Like maybe we should just be nice to Al Qaeda. I can't fault the WaPo for running such an odd and compelling story; I'll just note they're rather less eager to run stories about citizens feigning off armed thugs not through fondue and sympathy but through brandishing their own weapons.

Suddenly, a hooded man slid in through an open gate and put the barrel of a handgun to the head of a 14-year-old [daughter of one of the adults at the party].

"Give me your money, or I'll start shooting," he demanded, according to D.C. police and witness accounts.

...

The five other guests, including the girls' parents, froze -- and then one spoke.

"We were just finishing dinner," Cristina "Cha Cha" Rowan, 43, blurted out. "Why don't you have a glass of wine with us?"

...

The would-be robber, his hood now down, took another sip and had a bite of Camembert cheese that was on the table.

Then he tucked the gun into the pocket of his nylon sweatpants.

"I think I may have come to the wrong house," he said, looking around the patio of the home in the 1300 block of Constitution Avenue NE.

"I'm sorry," he told the group. "Can I get a hug?"

...

"That's really good wine," the man said, taking another sip. He had a final request: "Can we have a group hug?"

The five adults surrounded him, arms out.

If it takes some wine and cheese to get your daughter out of the hands of a gunman threatening to murder her, hey, that's wine and cheese well spent.

I just can't help but think these people are drawing the wrong lessons from this story, and telling it as a cute little anecdote about how the power of liberal yuppie sophistication can turn a violent criminal, no doubt driven to criminality by economic desperation and social alienation, into a bosom chum.

And it will be sort of forgotten the guy put a gun to the head of a fourteen-year-old girl and threatened to execute her in front of her parents.

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Comments (65)
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"Person of interest" in young girl's murder is registered sex offender.

While they were registering him a sex offender (for incest), they sort of forgot to check if he was in the US legally at all. As he's being held now on an "unrelated immigration charge," it appears he's an illegal. (Though I think there's some doubt about that -- he could have a Green Card or something, but is in violation of its terms due to his criminal activities. Not sure.)

We'll see. But if he turns out to be an illegal, I want Geraldo Rivera to personally visit this murdered child's parents and explain to them how important it was for the aspirations of millions of "undocumented necomers" that he wasn't deported after his first violation in 1990.

Bonus: He's a registered voter.

Reserve Unwarranted: FoxNews' headline declares he is, in fact, an illegal alien.

Maybe that was in the earlier stories too. I confess just reading the bits Malkin had excerpted.

Posted by: Ace at 09:54 AM | Comments (12)
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Hmm... Didn't know a word meaning "faggot" could be used "playfully." Well, actually, I did know that, but I didn't think that claim would fly with the PC Police.

Will it fly for Richardson? Of course; he's a liberal. The media will not allow any macaca moments for the left.

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson said Thursday his use of a Spanish word that some contend is a slur against homosexuals was meant to be playful but apologized to anyone who was offended.

With critics revisiting the statement he made on a radio program a year ago, Richardson questioned the timing of their comments.

"My record is the strongest among the presidential candidates on gay rights issues and I'm puzzled by the timing of this. When it happened a year ago, nobody seemed to think it was terribly important. Now it surfaces," he told The Associated Press in an interview.

"It's probably a sign from other campaigns that they are little worried about me," he said.

Richardson, a Hispanic and the governor of New Mexico, was a guest on Don Imus' syndicated radio program on March 29, 2006. Imus, who later lost his job over making racial comments, jokingly said one of his staffers suggested Richardson was "not really Hispanic."

Richardson replied in Spanish that if the staffer believes that, then he is a "maricon."

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation says the word means "faggot" in Spanish.

In a statement this week, Richardson said that in the Spanish he grew up speaking, "the term means simply 'gay,' not positive or negative."

He told the AP on Thursday: "It was a playful exchange between me and Don Imus that was not intended to demean anybody, but if I offended anybody, I apologize."

So he's saying that people who doubt he's Hispanic are "simply 'gay,' not positive or negative"?

This is one of those deals, yet again, where I have to say none of this matters terribly to me, but if Coulter is to be pilloried for using the "F-word" (even a year later) and Democrats are still talking about "macaca," shouldn't Richardson face similar levels of outrage for "maricone?"

I look forward to the media's highly nuanced distinction-drawing here. Oh, wait -- that would be too difficult, too transparently biased, and would reveal them to be the bought-and-paid-for DNC operatives they are. So I actually expect them to never mention this prominently again.

Posted by: Ace at 08:50 AM | Comments (46)
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Vets of Iraq and Afghanistan organizing to push back against the anti-war movement.

Seems a little late notice for most, but they're marching on DC on Tuesday the 17th, and could use more numbers.

Thanks to someone.

Posted by: Ace at 08:41 AM | Comments (5)
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This seems appropriate.

Open thread.

Posted by: Slublog at 07:33 AM | Comments (38)
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Exactly what it says.

"My turban indicates I have a colorful, far-ranging sex life"

While the site segregates turbans into five classes, or, castes, ranging from "Super" to "OK," I would have preferred rating them from Brahmin (Kickin'!) to Untouchable (Kick To The Curb!).

Thanks to j.m.

Posted by: Ace at 04:46 PM | Comments (63)
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Ummm... probably because ugliness is not actually a terrible impediment to successfully mating and reproducing. It just limits your options, mainly, to other ugly people.

Ugly people want theirs, too. Trust me on this one.

But what do I know? These geniuses have an alternate theory: some genes which produce attractive features in male offspring produce ugly features in female offspring, and vice versa. Thus, the genes in question continue to be passed on, because there's a 50% chance they'll result in granting the offspring a better chance at mating.

I kinda doubt this. 90% of what makes women attractive (lean bodies, tallness, strong cheekbones, big eyes, etc.) makes men attractive, too, so why would all the genes resulting in the opposite, unattractive features have persisted, given that those genes produce beauty in neither sex?

Although I will concede: This theory would tend to explain moobs.

Posted by: Ace at 04:26 PM | Comments (88)
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I already posted this, but people wanted to know, where are the knockers?

Some below the fold. Extra knockers for extra cowbell. more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:49 PM | Comments (19)
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Turns out, all in my neck(s) of the woods. And yet I haven't enjoyed a "colorful and far-ranging sex life" since junior year in college, when I got to third base with a lighting rigger from Up With People. (Third base is "accidentally" brushing a tit with your elbow, right? That's how we always counted it in my posse.)

Notice Tennessee has a lot of women, at least in two areas, which I assume are Nashville and whatever other city Tennessee has in it. Knoxville or whatever. As does Washington, DC.

Notice also that LA/Hollywood is a full-on sausage hang.

Fred Thompson left Tennessee and DC for LA.

I'm not saying he's a homo. I'm just "airing the theory" that he made things awfully convenient for himself if he wanted to swing that way.

Posted by: Ace at 01:52 PM | Comments (39)
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