Friday, January 27, 2012

Nao NextGen, a step forward for humanoid robots!

Almost 2 years ago Aldebaran Robotics released Nao, humanoid robot that was able to do amazing stuff like connect to the internet, play soccer and poker with you!

Only 2 years later the french society announced the new Nao, similar aspect with a ton of new features. It looks like a toy but it can compete for complexity with the most advanced robots on the market like Asimo.

The machine is provided with 2 cameras, tactile sensors, 4 microphones, face and voice recognition's software and a lot of other cool stuff. It is on the market only for researchers with an avarage price of 15,000 $ but the french society already said that they will improve it and place it on large scale market.

It will not be long till we'll walk with robots on  the streets instead of pets, future is happening!

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Thailand: Man marries dead girlfriend in a Funeral-wedding ceremony

Recently a man married his girlfriend of 10 years in Thailand.
Chadil Deffy, placed a ring on the finger of Sarinya "Anne" Kamsook, in a wedding-funeral ritual, it happened in Thailand's Surin province. The cuple planned to get married long time ago but they never set a date cause Chadil planned to finish his college's studies first. Sadly his ex-girlfriend (now wife) died in an accident but that didn't stop his will to marry the girl.


Onsiri Pravattiyagul, a friend of them wrote an article on Bangkok Post. That's a part of it: 


"Chadil wrote matter-of-factly online -- and would later give interviews in the same vein -- explaining that the motivation for this display was guilt, pure and simple: He felt he hadn't done enough for his girlfriend of 10 years while she was alive. Before her sudden death in a road accident, she had suggested that he marry her. But he had demurred, putting the idea on hold.
The "wedding" was his attempt to right a wrong, however belated the gesture might have been."

Can it be considered a "legit" wedding even if the girl didn't say  "Yes, I want it?"

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Maya: end of the world postponed to 2116

According to Maya's prophecies the end of the World should happen December 21 2012. Although this estimation was wrong! So it was said by  Bohumil e Vladimir Böhm , the first is a mathematician and the second is a Maya's history teacher. Following these brothers estimations we should expect the end of earth for 2116.


Studies where published on Astronomiche Nachrichten. It all starts by saying that Maya had different calendars: en fact the spiritual one was made by 260 days, the agricultural one of 365 days, their weeks were made by 9 weeks. Calculus made by the archaeologist John Eric Sidney Thomson which lead the world to think that the world ended 2012 were wrong cause he didn't consider the long war that interrupted their calendar missing entire years!


What to say,hopefully Mr. Thomson was really wrong and none of us (excluding the discovery of a new elixir to live longer) should see what happens. Even after these studies people are still making underground bunkers all over the world.



Tuesday, January 17, 2012

World record for the fastest skyscraper ever built

It belong to China the world's record for the fastes skyscraper ever built by man (previous record was owned by Japan). The building was built in 15 days, 370 hours with 'occidental' safety rules, it can survive up to a 9 intensity earthquake ( 5 times stronger than normal buildings). Here the video.

Italian tragedy, Concordia cruise ship stranded by the coast

It was an human error that caused a tragedy on italian's coast. The Concordia cruise ship was stranded in the costline near Giglio's island. The ship wasn't supposed to be that close to the coast but 2-3 miles away. Dynamics of the accident aren't clear yet, and probably never will. According to lastest news it was a captain's error which disabled the automatic pilot the main reason that lead the ship to collide on the rocks.
It isn't clear the number of death neither, as right now there are 11 deads and 26 lost passengers but these numbers are fated to go up. A phone call incriminates the captain who left the ship before make sure everyone was safe. Here's the phone call which accuses legally the captain.