Meet “Pepper,” said Richard Lawler in Engadget.com. Japanese telecom firm SoftBank unveiled a new, robot last week that it claims “can recognize human emotion” thanks to technology that allows it to “communicate through emotion, speech, or body language.” Pepper is also equipped with microphones and proximity sensors, and will feature upgradable software, allowing users to install apps and updates to […]
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Tired of the pretentiousness of the art world, artistic performer / radio personality Lisa Levy of Brooklyn, New York, took her stance by sitting on a toilet, naked and motionless, to protest artists’ “BS” by presenting herself in the “humblest” way she could conceive. This took place at the Christopher Stout Gallery in January. Visitors were invited to sit on […]
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A special-needs student scored a touchdown with his high school football team last month, after the team’s coach put him in for the final play of the game. Noah VanVooren, who has Down syndrome, usually acts as a manager for the Little Chute High School team in Wisconsin. But Little Chute and rival Clintonville invited him to take the field […]
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Few people have traveled to the South Pole since Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott reached the bottom of the world in the austral summer of 1911-12. Fewer still stay for the six months of darkness in the winter at the South Pole. The first crew to winter at the South Pole was in 1957, but only 1,267 people have spent the […]
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THE UNIVERSE IS A LOT OF THINGS, BUT EASY TO understand isn’t one of them. Take the fact that more than 80% of its mass is missing. Galaxies spin so fast, they would fly apart if the gravity of some unseen mass weren’t keeping them intact, sur rounding them like a glass paperweight encasing a butterfly. Cosmologists have been trying […]
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Born without her front legs and abandoned on the street by her original owners, Estrella, a one-and-a-half-year-old mutt, has not let her disability hold her back. Adopted by a couple running an animal shelter in the small Peruvian town of Tinga Maria, Estrella has gained celebrity status by hopping around — just like a kangaroo. An increasing number of visitors […]
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The meteor fallout may have stopped, but conspiracy theories are still raining down on Russians, said Alexander Malyshev. The 10-ton rock that screamed through the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk last week was captured on many of the dashboard cameras that are so ubiquitous in Russia to guard against police corruption and document traffic accidents. So there’s lots of footage of the […]
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■ A high school baseball team in Sacramento was practicing last week when they heard desperate cries for help. A teenage girl had been pinned underneath a car in the Valley High School parking lot. Without prompting, the 30-strong team quickly lifter the four-door sedan off the injured girl, allowing coaches Troy Quirillo and Brett Sawyer to pull her to […]
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The Antikythera Mechanism: The original mechanism apparently came out of the Mediterranean as a single encrusted piece. Soon afterward it fractured into three major pieces. Other small pieces have broken off in the interim from cleaning and handling, and still others were found on the sea floor by the Cousteau expedition. Other fragments may still be in storage, undiscovered […]
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If you are broke and hungry on Thanksgiving Day, George Dimopoulos will feed you. No charge. If you are lonely, he will hug you. Also no charge. Then he will feed you. Dimopoulos owns George’s Senate Coney Island, along Haggerty Road next to a nine-hole golf course in Northville. He also owns three other George’s Senate restaurants and, come to […]
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