Thursday, 24. December 2009
Topic: History - on December 24, 2009 at 10:21:00 AM CET
Mega-savant Kim Peek "Rain Man" dies
Kim Peek, one of Utah's most celebrated and unusual citizens, died Saturday at the age of 58 from an apparent heart attack.
Kim first leapt into the national and then international spotlight 21 years ago when he was acknowledged as one of the primary inspirations for Dustin Hoffman's character in that year's hit movie, "Rain Man," about a savant.
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Topic: LOST FOUND - on December 24, 2009 at 10:18:00 AM CET
The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan
In 1961, the name of Marshall McLuhan was unknown to everyone but his English students at the University of Toronto — and a coterie of academic admirers who followed his abstruse articles in small-circulation quarterlies. But then came two remarkable books — The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) and Understanding Media (1964) — and the graying professor from Canada’s western hinterlands soon found himself characterized by the San Francisco Chronicle as “the hottest academic property around.” He has since won a world-wide following for his brilliant — and frequently baffling — theories about the impact of the media on man; and his name has entered the French language as mucluhanisme, a synonym for the world of pop culture.
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Topic: ROBOT - on December 24, 2009 at 10:15:00 AM CET
A Review Of The Best Robots of 2009
2009 has been an amazing year in the world of robots and Singularity Hub is here to tell you all about it! Thats right, its time to unveil our second annual roundup of the best robots of the year. In 2009 robots continued their advance towards world domination with several impressive breakouts in areas such as walking, automation, and agility, while still lacking in adaptability and reasoning ability. It will be several years until robots can gain the artificial intelligence that will truly make them remarkable, but in the meantime they are still pretty awesome. If you haven’t seen it yet you won’t want to miss our best robots of 2008 story from last year, but now lets not delay any further and get on with the best robots of 2009.
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