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The real Rain Man

Way back in the 80’s when Dustin Hoffman gave his Oscar acceptance speech for the movie Rain Man he publicly thanked and acknowledged Kim Peek – he said it was the least he could do for the man who was the inspiration for the character Hoffman played. But this was by no means the pinnacle of Peek’s career, it was just the thing that helped usher him a little closer to the limelight.

Peek was born in 1951 with an abnormally large head and showed developmental difficulties from a very early age. He wasn’t able to walk until the age of four, and even then with a strange, sidelong gait and he couldn’t button his own shirts, for example. When enrolled in school, he was expelled after one day for disrupting class. But he also showed flashes of unusual abilities even at that early age: reciting books he read line for line with perfect recall.

Despite his prodigious feats, Peek’s IQ was only 87, and he lived a quiet life in the care of his family… until Rain Man. Afterwards, he often toured the country with his father, advocating tolerance for disabled individuals and demonstrating some of the amazing things that he could do.

One reason Kim was able to provide so much detail and depth from his voluminous memory was that he could speed-read anything put in front of him. He could open a book and read each of the two facing pages at the same time – the left eye reading the left page, the right eye reading the right one, effectively absorbing both pages at once. Even thick books were filtered into his brain in under an hour using this technique.

Among his other reading materials at the library, he absorbed maps, atlases, and travel guides. Using a combination of his near-perfect recall and his prodigious mathematical calculating abilities, Kim could calculate the best routes between any two cities in the world in his head in an instant, years before Google Maps could do it.

Kim loved Shakespeare and with his high-speed reading skills didn’t have any trouble absorbing the entirety of the Bard’s body of work. He also enjoyed going to performances of Shakespeare’s plays, but there was a problem… not all of the actors could remember their lines as perfectly as Kim did. When an actor deviated, even slightly, from the original work, Kim would stand up mid-performance to correct them. An impressive feat of memory, but not something that went over well with the Shakespeare in the Park crowd.

Kim Peek passed away in 2009 of a heart attack, but his feats will not soon be forgotten, thanks to Rain Man. Nor did Peek ever forget his own role as inspiration for the movie—to his dying day, one of his most prized possessions that he carried with him everywhere he traveled was the golden Oscar statue given to him by the screenwriter who won it for penning the movie.

source: appliedbehavioranalysisedu.org

1. Miért említette meg Dustin Hoffman Kim Peeket, amikor átvette az Oscar-díjat?
2. Milyen szerepet játszott ez Kim Peek pályafutásában?
3. Milyen fejlődési rendellenességek jelentkeztek Kim gyermekkorában?
4. Mi történt vele az iskolában az első napon?
5. Milyen különleges képességei jelentkeztek már kiskorában?
6. Hogyan változtatta meg az Esőember című film az életét?
7. Mi segítette abban, hogy sok dologgal meg tudja tölteni a memóriáját?
8. Mire volt képes olvasottsága, memóriája és zseniális matematikai képességei segítségével?
9. Milyen problémát okoztak kivételes képességei a színházban?
10. Mi volt az egyik dolog, amihez a legjobban ragaszkodott?

keys/megoldások:

1. Mert ő adta az inspirációt a szerephez, amit Hoffman alakított.
2. Nem jelentette a csúcsát, csak kicsit közelebb vitte a reflektorfényhez.
3. Négyéves koráig nem tudott járni és akkor is csak furcsa, oldalazó mozgással, az ingét sem tudta begombolni.
4. Kicsapták, mert zavarta az órát.
5. Sorról sorra tökéletesen vissza tudta mondani, amit olvasott egy könyvben.
6. Addig csendesen élt a családjával, utána járta az országot az édesapjával, hirdetve a fogyatékossággal élők iránti toleranciát és bemutatva bámulatos képességeit.
7. Az, hogy egyszerre tudta elolvasni egy könyv két oldalát, az egyiket a bal szemével, a másikat a jobbal.
8. Egy pillanat alatt kiszámolta a legjobb útvonalat a világ bármely két városa között.
9. Kívülről tudta Shakespeare műveit és amikor a színész nem pontosan mondta a szöveget, felállt és helyreigazította.
10. Az Oscar-szobor, amit a forgatókönyvíró kapott és neki adta.

by Balázs Dezsényi

Have you ever wondered which cities in the world are the most challenging, most exciting, or most eventful to live in? We have a few answers! Let’s take a look at the most extreme cities around the world.

The Coldest: Yakutsk, Russia

How cold does –8.8ºC sound to you? Imagine living in a city where this is the annual mean temperature. That place is Yakutsk, the capital of Russia’s Sakha Republic, Temperatures in Yakutsk regularly drop below –40ºC and the coldest-ever temperature was recorded at –64.4ºC. Even though it can get warmer than 30ºC in the summer, the ground is all permafrost and it never thaws up. And when the coldest months arrive, you have to keep your car running all day to save the battery from dying, and you can see the haze of residents’ breaths cover the city.

The Hottest: Kuwait City, Kuwait

Far from the Russian plains, Kuwait City’s temperatures peak around 34ºC all year round. In the summer months, however, it can get as hot as 45-47 degrees! In fact, Kuwait City had a record highest Asian temperature of 53.8ºC a few years ago. Constant sunshine might sound very attractive, but it is not without its dangers: being outside in the heat for too long can be life-threatening, and the government introduced a ban on outdoor work from 11 am–4 pm throughout the summer. There are more than 2 million local residents that live through the temperatures and sandstorms here.

The Driest: Aswan, Egypt

 If hot weather isn’t your favourite, you will probably want to avoid the Egyptian city of Aswan, where it is not only warm, but there is less than one millimetre of rain throughout the year. Thankfully for Aswan residents, the city is not without water, since it lies on the Nile, close to a dam that is one of the largest artificial water bodies in the world (Lake Nasser). Funnily enough, the name of Aswan is an old Nubian phrase, which means “too much water”. That, however, is because of the flooding of the Nile, not the precipitation.

The Wettest: Mawsynram, India

 The city of Mawsynram in India’s Meghalaya state is practically trapping all clouds with the Himalaya Mountain Range nearby, which means rain can’t escape to the north and usually falls right onto the city. There is an annual 11,871 millimetres of rain in the area. The only drier season is during December and January when there is only about 60 millimetres of rain. Locals always carry umbrellas and use basket-like covers (full-body umbrellas) for working on the fields, and visitors can enjoy the rivers and waterfalls nurtured by all the water coming down.

The Highest: La Rinconada, Peru

 Living in very high places takes quite a bit of adapting from the human body. Because of a lack of oxygen, natives in the highest populated mountain ranges of the world often have bigger lung capacities than “regulars” from lower areas. The highest of all of these cities is La Rinconada, a mining town in Peru. It lies at 5,100 metres above sea level and has about 30-50,000 residents. Like most high-elevation cities, locals in La Rinconada have extreme circumstances, but they can expect to have healthier hearts and longer lives.

The Most Isolated: Perth, Australia

People often forget how vast the Australian continent is, but the residents of Perth need no such reminders. The city is two full days’ drive away from the nearest large city in the country, and the desert journey there is so extreme that people taking it often put bumper stickers on their cars to celebrate their success. Perth is actually closer to Jakarta, Indonesia than Sydney, Australia, and it is quicker and cheaper to fly to Bali than to the eastern Australian coast. Despite its remoteness, Perth is usually voted as one of the top cities to live in worldwide.

The Windiest: Wellington, New Zealand

 The best-known “Windy City” of the world might be Chicago, but its wind-speeds are dwarfed by the capital of New Zealand, which sees average winds of 29 km/h throughout the year. Wellington is located right where hot air from the Equator meets the polar vortex (cold air) from the South Pole – the city is essentially a wind-breaker for all the winds generated here. In fact, there are winds close to 60 km/h almost half of the year, and at least 20 days annually where wind-speeds exceed 74 km/h.

The Most Populous: Tokyo, Japan

Out of the roughly 127 million people in Japan, more than a quarter live in the capital city of Tokyo. With its population of 38,830,000 (including the agglomeration), Tokyo has the most residents of any city on Earth and will continue to hold this record until about 2030 even as its population is declining. No wonder so many visitors are surprised at the sheer size of crowds at sightseeing spots, intersections (Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo is the busiest intersection of the world), or regular streets of the city.

The Most Crowded: Dhaka, Bangladesh

It may not be the largest city on Earth, but Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh is arguably the most densely populated. With more than 47,000 people per square kilometre and most housing in slums, life in Dhaka is always crowded. More than 1,400 people move to the city for work and other opportunities every day, even though it already boasts 17.4 million residents. Despite the population problems, there is plenty to see here – in fact, the city used to be known as the Venice of the East.

The Largest: New York City, USA

Trumping Dhaka and even Tokyo, New York City is easily the city with the largest land area in the world, as well as one of the most important financial, political, entertainment, culture, research, education, and touristic hubs on the globe. It is often said that the Big Apple is too big to ever truly discover, and with an area of 8,683 square kilometres (1,700 more than Tokyo, and almost as large as the whole US state of Connecticut), that is not hard to believe.

A cikk elolvasása után döntsd el, hogy a következő állítások igazak (T, ture), hamisak (F, false) vagy nem volt róluk szó (NM, not mentioned) a cikkben.

1. Although Yakutsk is the coldest city, in summer it can get warmer than 30ºC so the ground can thaw up.
2. It is forbidden to work outside between 11 am and 4 pm throughout the summer in Kuwait City.
3. Lake Nasser is one of the largest natural water bodies in the world.
4. Tourists in the city of Mawsynram should wear basket-like covers when they are on sightseeing tours.
5. City-dwellers of Perth prefer visiting the eastern Australian coast to flying to Bali because it is cheaper.
6. Big Apple with an area of 8,683 square kilometres is the greenest city as well.

keys/megoldások: 1. F, the ground is all permafrost and it never thaws up even in summer as well; 2. T; 3. F, it is an artificial dam; 4. F, locals wear them when working on fields; 5. F, it is cheaper to fly to Bali than visiting the eastern Australian coast from Perth; 6. NM whether it is the greenest or not