One Spur

Well, the holiday celebrations are behind us, school is back in session, and for most of us, this is the day 2010 begins in earnest. Time to start taking those resolutions seriously.

And here's something that's been in research since 2001, but I've only just read about. It's a product called ReWalk, which is a cybernetic suit (something called an "exoskeleton") which, when used with crutches for stability, allows paraplegics to walk again, and even climb stairs.

Developed by a paraplegic in Israel, it looks like the company is still looking for partners to mass produce the suit, and like any new technology, it won't be cheap (some estimates put the exoskeleton at $10-15,000) ... but then again, that may indeed be cheap for the chance to walk again. At least to someone.

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A cowboy walked into a tack shop one afternoon. "How much fer a pair of spurs?" he asked the clerk.

"Forty dollars," came the reply.

The cowboy went through his wallet and all of his pockets and managed to put together just a little over half that amount. He looks at the money on the counter, deep in thought. Finally he looks up. "I'll take one spur," he says.

"One?" the clerk asks. "What are you going to do with just one?"

The cowboy rubbed his cheek and replied, "Well, I reckon if I can get one side of the horse to go, the other side'll go with it."

[Joe's Clean Laffs]

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WORD for YOUR WEEK: Here's a word you hear every now and again: eclectic. As in, "John had an eclectic taste in music." It means drawn from a variety of sources. It's from Ancient Greece and is another of those compound words. Originally it was eklegein; "ek" meaning out, and "legein," meaning gather or choose. It was originally coined to describe a group of Greek philosophers, who selected doctrines from several different belief systems.

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