'Night, Randy. See You In The Morning.

Carnegie-Mellon professor Randy Pausch, famous for his contribution to Carnegie-Mellon's "Last Lecture" series, finally succumbed to pancreatic cancer this morning at his home in Virginia, nearly two years after he was given three to six months to live by his doctors. He was surrounded by his family and loved ones. He was 47.

In case you've been living under a rock for the past year or so, Pausch created the lecture as part of a series Carnegie-Mellon put together last fall, wherein college professors gave the lecture of their lives, speaking passionately on the topics that mattered most to them. Presumably, for most all of the other professors, the exercise was figurative. For Pausch, already a year past his original diagnosis of terminal cancer, however, it was all too real. (In what we writers like to call "irony," Carnegie-Mellon retitled the lecture series "Journeys." Pausch joked, "I thought, damn, I finally nailed the venue and they renamed it.")

In the lecture that Pausch entitled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," the computer technology professor takes an unpreachy, earthy look at the world, human character, and relationships, and gives his opinions on how to overcome obstacles and get everything you want out of life.

Here's the entire lecture on YouTube, just so we can remember him as he lived. Bear in mind that everything he lists as a childhood dream, he accomplished, with the exception of playing for the NFL. He was even given a walk-on, one-line role in the new "Star Trek" movie, due out next summer. Equally poignant is his public service announcement for the Lustgarten Foundation, which funds and promotes research of pancreatic cancer. The latter includes clips of an interview with Pausch's wife, Jai, who might well be one of my top five picks for most desirable new best friend.

Randy is survived by Jai and their three young children, Dylan, Logan and Chloe.

Peace, Randy. See you in the next lifetime.

~C~

Uhhh... Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire?

This interview with RTI interviewer Carol Coleman was taped in 2004. The White House "discouraged" it's showing on American television. Remember 2004? When most of middle America thought George Bush was just hunky-dory? Yeah. (Whatever happened to those people anyway?)



At least we know why President Bush invaded Iraq -- because seven one-handed guys showed up in his office.

For the first time, I think I'm willing to concede that Bush may not be an idiot. But I think it's clear from this interview (among others) that this man is clinically insane. His connection with reality is so tenuous as to be non-existent. I also truly believe that he might not be a puppet of Cheney or Rove, but might just be sincerely, profoundly evil in his own right. I think he needs a nice, long rest in Crawford, Texas, where he can undergo extensive occupational therapy, pretending to be a cowboy.

Just a few more months, people, and we'll be free of him.

~C~

P.S. I think my favorite part is where, several times, he answers a question, stops talking, Coleman goes to answer another question, and Bush burst forth with, "Lemme finish! Lemme finish!" Then he says at once point, "You ask the questions, and I'll answer them." I laughed and laughed and laughed.

All Heart

Dr. Michael DeBakey died last night in Texas at the age of 99.

What is there to say about this great, great man. At the time of his graduation from medical school in 1932, there was, by his own account, "nothing you could do about heart disease." At this point, he had invented a pump that, rather than emitting a compression-driven pulse of spray, used rollers to emit a steady, consistent stream. He felt there was a medical use for this device, though it would take twenty more years before the roller pump became the central component for the heart-lung machine, which made open-heart surgery possible. Not incidentally, by the end of the twentieth century, the roller pump had also been developed as an indispensable tool for agricultural and industrial uses as well.

For the next nearly 70 years after his graduation from medical school, DeBakey dedicated himself to developing new techniques and procedures -- as well as the tools, such as clamps and forceps delicate enough for the human heart -- that changed the face of cardiology and cardiac surgery forever.

In his lifetime, it is estimated that DeBakey had performed over 50,000 surgeries himself ("Man was meant to work hard," he once told an interviewer), and as an educator, touched millions of lives. In fact, DeBakey saved his own life, in 2006, when he underwent surgery on his damaged aorta, his surgeons employing a technique that he invented. The surgery and recovery were difficult for a man in his late 90's, but DeBakey felt sure it had saved his life.

DeBakey altered the way the medical profession treats cardiac health care. He has given millions of people the gifts of hope, health and time. Every time someone you love undergoes an angioplasty or a bypass, say a little "thank you" to this amazing pioneering spirit.

~C~

The Smell of "No-Palm" in the Morning

"Senator Helms certainly was no bigot. He was a man, however, not into subtlety. You know what he thought about a particular issue. You certainly knew because he was not into the kind of nuance and subtlety that so often divides American politicians." - Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), about the late Senator Jesse Helms, who passed away today at age 86.

I realize that when people die, and those that knew them try to eulogize them on the spot before microphones, some weird stuff can pass through the media ether. But I find this statement to be just plain bizarre.

Not a bigot? Really? Jesse Helms could be counted on in his years in the Senate for his vote against any kinds of civil rights, gay rights or reproductive rights legislation that came his way. He castigated homosexuals, civil rights protesters and activists, feminists and anti-nuclear activists without hesitation.

Now, I suppose, in some academic way, it could be argued that Helms wasn't arguing against civil rights, but rather for states' rights. If a state didn't want racial equality, we can imagine that argument would go, why should it be forced to tolerate it? Okay. I'll pick up that gauntlet.

Because racism is wrong.

Not just a little wrong, like, say stealing those orange roadwork cones or vandalizing bus benches. Big wrong. It's slavery wrong. It's witch-burning wrong. Racism is a violation of everything we say we believe as a democratic society. When it is practiced by local politicians on a local level, it is an insult to social justice and common decency. When it is practiced on the state and federal levels, it becomes an even bigger wrong, because it abrogates the very essence of the freedoms granted to all people in the Constitution. Five times in his life, Jesse Helms stood up, put his hand on the Holy Bible and swore, presumably with great reverence and a damp eye, to uphold and defend that Constitution of the United States. Then he turned around and said, in effect, that there were folks in this country that weren't entitled, either because of their sexuality, their race, their belief in equal rights for women and minorities, their stand against war and its instruments, to the freedoms and rights that Constitution guarantees. Which Constitution was he upholding and defending? The one written for only the white, straight folks who know for sure that a woman's place is in the home?

Since when does defending people who are being denied their basic, elemental human rights require qualities like nuance and subtlety? How about just a little compassion and humanity instead? Was he lacking in those qualities as well?

Merriam-Webster defines the word "bigot" as follows:

"a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance."

I know that Senator McConnell, a fellow Republican and Southerner, who grew up with stalwart traditions like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, was probably trying to pay tribute to someone he thinks of as a legend the best way he knows how. But how on this good, green planet Earth can he say with a straight face that Jesse Helms was not a bigot when Helms' own voting record so categorically defines him as such?

Rest in peace, Senator Helms. I can only hope you find the enlightenment and empathy in the next life that you so resisted and overlooked in this one.

~C~