Cathy Hutchinson imagined picking up her coffee from the table. She thought about bringing the red bottle toward her lips and taking a drink, without any assistance. Then, for the first time since a stroke left her arms and legs paralyzed 15 years earlier, she did it.

This is a really good video about the technology from Nature. Check it out:

Well…sounds peaceful!

Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) is seeing his foreign policy credentials come under fire after calling for Middle East peace negotiations between deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has been in a coma since 2006.

Pitts’s remarks were included in a form letter his office sent to a constituent last month. His office blames a bureaucratic snafu, but Pitts’s Democratic opponent in the November election sees an opening.

We see an opening, too: in a local McDonald’s. (And it’s not for manager…)

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It’s hard to know just how true stories like this are, but there’s no doubt that Lawrence Anthony was a remarkable man, and this would be a fitting tribute:

For 12 hours, two herds of wild South African elephants slowly made their way through the Zululand bush until they reached the house of late author Lawrence Anthony, the conservationist who saved their lives.The formerly violent, rogue elephants, destined to be shot a few years ago as pests, were rescued and rehabilitated by Anthony, who had grown up in the bush and was known as the “Elephant Whisperer.”

For two days the herds loitered at Anthony’s rural compound on the vast Thula Thula game reserve in the South African KwaZulu – to say good-bye to the man they loved. But how did they know he had died?

Goosebumps…

Here’s National Geographic on Anthony:

The world is saying goodbye this month to one of the most fascinating conservationists of this generation. Elephant Whisperer – so-called because of his ability to understand and calm otherwise violent and terrified elephants – Lawrence Anthony passed away from a heart attack on March 2, 2012, during a business trip to Johannesburg, South Africa.

And the New York Tmes. They talk about the work Lawrence did in Baghdad. This is what he arrived to:

He arrived at the zoo while fighting was still going on to find clouds of flies swarming the carcasses of animals. Looters had stolen many others. Of the 650 animals in the zoo before the invasion, just 35 were still alive, mainly large ones like lions, tigers and a brown bear native to Iraq. They were in such sad shape, he said, that he initially wanted to shoot them to end their misery.

Lawrence Anthony books:

The Elephant Whisperer

The Last Rhino

Babylon’s Ark

RIP, Lawrence Anthony.

After 15 hours of fist pumping, James Peterson felt the super glue holding his right hand closed begin to loosen.

That did not stop him from reaching his goal: 16 continuous hours in an effort to place his name in the Guinness World Records.

Fist pumping to the song Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen, Peterson stopped just after 3 a.m. Saturday at Manny’s Pub on Brown Street near the University of Akron.

Um, this song?

That’s funny.

Now: Obligatory fist pump photos.

First, the “I bellow like bull when I fist pump!” fist pump:

And who doesn’t love the “I talk to my fist pump when I fist pump” fist pump?

Beat that, Tiger Woods!

That sound you hear is Dan Brown moaning huskily:

ROME (Reuters) – Investigators attempting to resolve one of Italy’s most enduring mysteries on Monday opened the tomb of a mobster in a Rome basilica for clues to the disappearance of a Vatican schoolgirl nearly 30 years ago.

Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis, the feared head of Rome’s Magliana gang which terrorized the capital in the 1980s, has been linked to the disappearance in 1983 of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee.

Forensic officials, lawyers and members of the Orlandi family witnessed the exhumation on Monday.

They have to investigate the crypt more deeply before they’ll say anything, apparently. And, according to the story, “other bones” were found not far from the mobster’s crypt. It’s all quite the mystery. The New York Times:

Some theories have it that Orlandi was kidnapped on the orders of an American archbishop, Paul C. Marcinkus, the former president of the Vatican bank who was linked to a major Italian banking scandal in the 1980s. Others point to an anonymous phone call the Vatican received weeks after Emanuela’s disappearance, demanding the release of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot Pope John II in St. Peter’s Square in 1981, in exchange for her release.

Background on Enrico “Renatino” de Pedis.

The missing schoolgirl, Emanuela Orlandi.

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Here’s a pic of just part of it:

You grab the slider and go back and forth to go either smaller and smaller or larger and larger. Takes you right in there.

Enjoy.

[found on Stumble]

Things that make you go “Huh…whu?…WTABFHW?

Kodak may be going under, but apparently they could have started their own nuclear war if they wanted, just six years ago. Down in a basement in Rochester, NY, they had a nuclear reactor loaded with 3.5 pounds of enriched uranium—the same kind they use in atomic warheads.

But why did Kodak had a hidden nuclear reactor loaded with weapons-grade uranium then? And how did they get permission to own it, let alone have it in a basement in the middle of a densely populated city?

Nobody really knows. Kodak officials now admit that they never made any public announcement about it. In fact, nobody in the city—officials, police or firemen—or in the state of New York or anywhere else knew about it until it was recently leaked by an ex-employee. Its existence and whereabouts was purposely kept vague and only a few engineers and Federal employees really knew about it.

Can we just mention that that photo looks like a 1950 high school genius’s personal coffee machine, not a nuclear reactor?

Now here’s a song that must have been written just for you…

Bonus: From teh BBC – nature’s toughest mothers.

Playoff hockey is a world of its own. Game 7 playoff hockey – out of its own world.

• Here’s the NHL “ice-tracker.”

• Live blog from WaPo. And from Hockey Inside/Out.

• Live Blog from USA Today looks good. Bleacher Report too.

• If you’re into this sort of thing: Here’s the Twitter feeds of the Rangers…and of the Caps.

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• Rangers score, 1:32 of the first period.

1P 18:00 First goal has won each game in the series

by Mike Boone 9:44 AM

• After 2 periods Rangers are up in shots 20-19.

* 11:25 in third – have to go! Yikes! What a game!

Out in Chicago, a wild man who was apparently in a desperate need of deodorant, stole a Bobcat tractor from a construction site and then drove it through the gates, window and wall of a store. He grabbed a couple cans of deodorant, a few gift cards for good measure and then left.

You know how it is: You finally score a date with the girl of your dreams, but the boss makes you work late, and you don’t have time to go home for a shower, and then you lose your wallet  – and the Bobcat’s right there! All gassed up and the key in it and everything! WHAT DID YOU EXPECT HIM TO DO?!?

The judge should definitely take these things into consideration!