[Vexed]

I played basketball tonight with a guy missing a leg. Dude was incredibly good. He could run. He could jump. He could pivot and shoot. All he had was some kind of prosthetic setup. Handicapped, my ass.

And check this out.

The Bionic Man is No Longer Science Fiction

Ms Mitchell, from Maryland in the US, is the fourth person, and the first woman, to receive a "bionic" arm that allows her to control parts of the device by thought alone. Designed by physicians and engineers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, the device works by using the brain's ghost memory of the missing limb, translating commands to move muscles in the missing limb to movements in the bionic arm.

Does this impress any one else? My god, I couldn't believe what this disabled dude was able to do missing half his lower torso.

Anyone else have similar stories?

I'm kind of in awe right now.

[robski]

This fellow is very driven, and the technology is just aiding his drive. Hopefully morality, drive and technology ( in that order) will assist us in combating the worst effects of peak oil.

[Carlhole]

Those prosthetic legs are technical wonders of design, extremely well-made, custom-fitted to the nth degree and very expensive. And the capabilities are made evident by someone who has mastered the use of the prothesis.

The other story - the woman with the bionic arm - has been developing incredibly quickly. I thought it was just last year (or maybe the year before) that I first saw a chimpanzee with a whole bunch of mult-colored wires emerging from the crown of his skull operating a mechanical arm in another room. The computer technology behind the arm essentially descrambled the monkey' brain's neuron storm associated with normal upper right limb movement and used it to operate the mechanical arm.

To the surprise and delight of reseachers the monkey independently learned to operate the mechanical arm while not bothering to use his real arm . And so, already, in two years time, this technology has developed for for practical human use.