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Paralyzed student uses robotic exoskeleton to walk at college graduation (video)
Austin Whitney hasn't been able to walk since a 2007 car crash left him paralyzed, but on Saturday the 22-year-old triumphantly strode across the stage to accept his degree from UC Berkeley. He had a little help, in the form of a specially crafted robotic exoskeleton developed by Berkeley engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni. Kazerooni and his team designed the exoskeleton with lightness and affordability in mind, resisting the urge to load it up with expensive hardware and tethering the mechanized walker to a backpack that houses a computer and a rechargeable, eight-hour battery. As a result, the Austin walker won't enable the kind of acrobatic leaps that would make Lt. Rasczak proud, but its reduced mobility comes at a reduced cost of just $15,000. That's certainly not an impulse buy, though it's a welcomed alternative to other exoskeletons that retail for $100,000 or more. Walk past the break for a video of Whitney's momentous steps, along with a clip of Kazerooni describing his creation.
Video games: the most important part of college
Sure, college is a great place to learn about life and everything, but where does most of that learning really come from? Once you take away the classes you slept through, the boy/girlfriend that you never listened to, and the parties you were too drunk to remember, the only remaining answer is the obvious one. That's right: video games!At least one college professor realized this essential fact and crafted his commencement speech to the graduating class of Bloomsburg University around the theme of lessons from video games. The speech name drops everything from Carmen Sandiego to Halo 2 in selling the lifelong lessons of gaming, including resilience, problem solving and teamwork. Sure, some of the analogies to life are a bit labored, and the whole thing reads like the author has only a passing familiarity with games. Still, it's nice to see someone using a commencement address to acknowledge what is no doubt the most important part of college for many graduates. And hey, it beats some guy droning on and on about sunscreen.
Ejected Survivor contestant quotes Steve Jobs
While watching Survivor tonight, I noticed something interesting at the very end. The contestant who was voted off (don't worry, I won't spill the beans in case you haven't seen it yet) sort of quoted Steve Jobs during his/her exit interview. During his commencement address at Stanford University last year, Steve urged the graduates to "Stay hungry, stay foolish," and tonight's unfortunate survivor urged young people trying to make their way in the world to "be hungry, be foolish." I thought it was kind of cool.Yes, I realize that this particular quote didn't originate from Steve, but I believe it's safe to say that most geeks today associate it with him.
