Ruth Lilly, a prolific philanthropist who was the last surviving great-grandchild of pharmaceutical magnate Eli Lilly, has died at age 94.

A family spokesman said Lilly died Wednesday in Indianapolis.

Over the course of her life, the Indianapolis native gave away much of her inheritance from the Eli Lilly & Co. fortune. Court documents showed in 2002 that Lilly had bequeathed nearly $500 million to charitable and arts-related groups.

Rest In Peace, Ruth.

In 1988, the film “Rain Man,” about an autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman, shed a humane light on the travails of autism while revealing the extraordinary powers of memory that a small number of otherwise mentally disabled people possess, ostensibly as a side effect of their disability.

…

Mr. Peek was not autistic — not all savants are autistic and not all autistics are savants — but he was born with severe brain abnormalities that impaired his physical coordination and made ordinary reasoning difficult. He could not dress himself or brush his teeth without help. He found metaphoric language incomprehensible and conceptualization baffling.

But with an astonishing skill that allowed him to read facing pages of a book at once — one with each eye — he read as many as 12,000 volumes. Even more remarkable, he could remember what he had read.

Indeed, Mr. Peek, who died Dec. 19 at home in Salt Lake City, had perhaps the world’s most capacious memory for facts. He was 58. The cause was a heart attack, said his father, Fran Peek.

Rest In Peace, Kim.

Posted from slobokan's posterous

Isaac Schwartz, the composer whose music adorned some of the most popular movies of the Soviet era, has died. He was 86.

Schwartz died at his home just outside St. Petersburg, Russia, on Sunday, the St. Petersburg Composers Union said. The group didn't specify the cause of death.

Rest In Peace, Isaac.

As many of you know, it's been almost one full year since I was laid off by The Big Fat Liar®. I spent the first three months looking for work, at which time I started my own business to bring in what money I could.

I am hoping to get things rolling full steam in the first quarter of 2010, but I will be continuing my job search at the same time, because any full-time work would be better than the unknown. Right?