HW Assignment: Watch "The Professor's last Lecture" Randy Pausch of CMU

Professor Randy Pausch, of CMU (Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg is dying of pancreatic cancer. "So in case there is anyone in the room who wandered in and didn't know my back story, my dad always said, 'If there is an elephant in the room, introduce him,'" Pausch said in the lecture.

"If you look at my [CT] scan, there are approximately 10 tumors in my liver. The doctors told me I had three to six months of good health left. That was a month ago so you can do the math."

The diagnosis was a grim reality, but Pausch doesn't do grim and he doesn't do self-pity.

The Wall Street Journal called it "the lecture of a lifetime" and those who have seen it have more than agreed.

-----> Mark sez: I agree, and I want EVERYONE who ever reads me to go Here to Google video (and spend TWO hours of your life, watching, listening, and if you're like me, making NOTES while he talks...)
(or play it HERE-- but it's TWO hours LONG!

A beloved professor at Carnegie Mellon, Pausch got a standing ovation from the 400-member audience before he even opened his mouth.

"Make me earn it," he told them.

And I really DO think he earns it.
I will (I hope) be annotating the video with specific points that I noted, such as at 1:18 (1 hour 18 minutes) in the videotape when he mentions one goal/point:

• How do you get people to help you?
• Truth
• Be Earnest
• Apologize if you're wrong
• Focus on others
• Example
• Brings out birthday cake for his wife, whose birthday was day before lecture.

I really think that this is a life-changing lecture. For sure, it was for him, as at the end of it he reveals that it was really for his three children (who are now 5, 3 and 1, and wont really know him when they grow up--except from this video:

Challenge (NOT OPTIONAL)

Pick out THREE points of the video that you'd like your spouse/significant other/children
to internalize.

My List?

1. His childhood list of things to achieve
1. Disney Imagineer
2. Experience Zero Gravity
2. His entertaining story of how BRICK WALLS are placed in front of us to separate the WHEAT from the CHAFF.
1. and how he eventually DID work for Disney, even after being rejected!
   
3. How he worked with his team to introduce a new programming metaphor to encourage girls (and kids) to program, without telling them it's programming!

I'd like this to become a Meme to celebrate the spirit of Dr. Randy Pausch. I am much disappointed that I never met him, but his

• Courage
• Strength
• Determination
• and most of all, VISION

are truly inspiring to me. I'd love for you too, to view the video, and make this a tribute to him, and the values he represented.

Thanks again

MidEasT: Urban Planning 2,000 years ago!

Shades of the game"Adventure" !

2,000 years ago, the designers of the city of Jerusalem dug a drainage channel under Jerusalem.

The channel was dug beneath what would become the main road of Jerusalem.

The Israel Antiquities Authority, said excavators looking for the road happened upon a small drainage channel that led them to the discovery of the massive tunnel two weeks ago.

"We were looking for the road and suddenly we discovered it," Shukron said. "And the first thing we said was, 'Wow.'"

The walls of the tunnel made of stones 3 feet deep reach a height of 10 feet in some places and are covered by heavy slabs that were the road's paving stones, Shukron said. Several manholes are visible, and portions of the original plastering remain, he said.

Pottery shards, vessel fragments and coins from the end of the Second Temple period were also discovered inside the channel, attesting to its age, Reich said.

The discovery of the drainage channel was momentous in itself, a sign of how the city's rulers looked out for the welfare of their citizens by developing an infrastructure that drained the rainfall and prevented flooding, Reich said.

The discovery "shows you planning on a grand scale, unlike other cities in the ancient Near East," said Joe Zias, an expert in the Second Temple period who was not involved in the dig.

But what makes the channel doubly significant is its role as an escape hatch for Jews desperate to flee the conquering Romans, the dig's directors said. `

As Jerusalem was being conquered by the Romans in 70 A.D., numerous people took shelter in the drainage channel and lived inside it until they fled Jerusalem through its southern end, the historian Josephus Flavius wrote in "The War of the Jews." (who by the way was what is called an apostate (a Jew who converted!)

"It was a place where people hid and fled to from burning, destroyed Jerusalem," Shukron said.

Tens of thousands of people lived in Jerusalem at the time, but it is not clear how many used the channel to escape, he said.

About 100 yards of the channel have been uncovered so far. Archeologists think the tunnel leads to the Kidron River, which empties into the Dead Sea.

Mark here again...

WOW.
Not only did the city have the water tunnel, but a drainage tunnel too?

TECH: Jesus ALBERTO JUST SAY NO NO NO

Oh WHAT a FU**ING ASSHOLE

Stop the ATTORNEY GENERAL

Wired Covers the FULL STORY HERE

What did he do NOW, you ask?

He caved in to the MEDIA GIANTS... AND those GREAT folks who brought you the
DCMA

To quote Wired:
Proposed Crime of the Century: Attempted Copyright Infringement

**RIAA and MPAA are enthusiastic of course **

The Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, proposed to Congress on Monday by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales,

would amend current U.S. copyright law to:

• give the government far more power to investigate and prosecute cases,
• would expand the scope of what constitutes a criminal act,
• would stiffen penalties
• including adding a life term for those whose activities cause death.
  

If the attorney general has his way, copyright law will work more like drug laws:

• The government could seize your personal property,
  
• wiretaps in counterfeit cases would become legit,
  
• violators could face lifetime prison sentences,
  
• and, in an ambiguous and far-reaching provision,
  
• the mere attempt to violate a copyright would become a crime.
  

JESUS fu*king CHRIST...

ALL THIS from a man WHO ALREADY broke the LAWs of the UNITED STATES by:

• AUTHORIZING WIRETAPPING against US CITIZENS.
• Authorized and Promoted BREAKING the Geneva Convention against TORTURE.
• FIRED 9 US Attorneys because of POLITICAL interference of the WHITE HOUSE.
• HAS shown CONGRESS he has NO idea what is legal
• Has shown Congress HE isn't in charge of his OWN department
• HAS shown that he can't/won't accept responsibility for his own actions.
  

More:
Among the proposed changes:

The bill would:

• add stronger penalties for repeat offenders
• make it easier to charge someone as a repeat offender.
  
• Expand forfeiture provisions
  
• would allow the government to seize any property used in the commission of a crime -- like
  
• a PC,
  
• a home,
  
• cash on hand -- making copyright law similar to drug laws.

• make it a criminal act to export pirated materials
• as opposed to merely importing it.
  
• Allow the government wiretapping authority when investigating copyright and trademark cases, a power the government does not currently have.
  

• A new "attempt" provision:
• It wouldn't require the actual commission of a violation:
• , the bill could conceivably be expanded, in an extreme case,
• to interpret a computer full of music next to a spindle of blank CDs as an act of piracy.

** An RIAA representative said the organization had not had time to review the bill yet, and could not yet comment on the proposed legislation.

Gayle Osterberg, VP of communications for the MPAA, says that organization is also still going through the bill and hasn't had time to fully analyze it yet. However, she did offer boilerplate support for the process, if not the bill itself.

DetroiT: Energy Efficient vs. SUV's (continued)- updated 4-1-09

Updated 4-1-09 about GM and the streetcars at end...

OK. Wired asks a valid question:

Why is it there are Clean Cars Aplenty Outside U.S. but only 2 available in USA?

Automakers are producing more than 100 fuel-efficient vehicles, but you can't buy them in the U.S.

A study by the Civil Society Institute and 40MPG.org says there are now 113 vehicles rated at 40 mpg or higher available internationally, but just two (the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic Hybrid) here.

Oooh... This is MY blog, so I get to pontificate...

Reasons we don't have better fuel(ed) cars in the USA

1. Detroit Lobbies and pays the Senate/House HUGE campaign contributions, therefore no increase in the CAFE fuel stands in 25 years
2. The OIL industry has also lobbied the Senate/House, witness the TERRIBLE (I don't own oil stock- so it IS terrible for me) profits of EXXON/MOBIL this year..
3. Assholes Idiots who claim that global warming isn't real.
4. Assholes Idiots who think that CORN based ETHANOL is the way to go in this country.
5. Supid-*ss Presidents who think that 500 Billion dollarsspent on a WAR is money well spent.
6. Our congress has never looked into the concept of alternative sources of energy, such as solar, wind, THERMAL, (and SUN based "free") energies.
7. Our COLLECTIVE stupid-ness at using SUV's to go to get a gallon of milk

ANd my Number one reason why we have problems???

THE Car companies themselves..

Until the 1940's there were local trollies/light rail companies in MOST towns in this country.
UNTIL GM and a consortium of the BIG oil companies CONSPIRED to put them all out of business, so that GM could SELL BUSSes to replace them...

This is the reason we have NO mass transit left in this country. IT is the BIGGEST SCANDAL of the 20th century.

And a subject of a FUTURE post (anyone care to research?)

4-1-09 update (has it really been three years???(As usual I answer myself...)

See HERE for a post in my OThER blog regarding Detroit, the decline thereof, and the great streetcar scandal here

Tech: New cancer treatment?

SlashDot (aka /. ) says

Cancer Drug Found; Scientist Annoyed

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16975360/

This is good!:

A cancer researcher's carefully cultured cells were dead. Katherine Schaefer was annoyed, but just a few minutes later, the researcher realized she had stumbled onto a potential new cancer treatment.

She has discovered a new way to attack tumors that have learned how to evade existing drugs. It seams that tests in mice suggest the compound helps break down the cell walls of tumors, almost like destroying a tumor cell’s skeleton.

I made a calculation error and used a lot more than I should have. And my cells died,” Schaefer said.

A colleague overheard her complaining. “The co-author on my paper said,’ Did I hear you say you killed some cancer?’ I said ‘Oh’, and took a closer look.”

They ran several tests and found the compound killed ”pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines we have seen,” Schaefer said. Epithelial cells line organs such as the colon, and also make up skin.

It also killed colon tumors in mice without making the mice sick, they reported in the journal International Cancer Research.

Slashdot report above, original report at MS-NBC HERE