

CMU professor gives his last lesson on life - amichail
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07262/818671-85.stm

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Shooter
This guy is very inspiring. Such a great attitude!

I recently found a red mole on my wife's skin. It was just a fluke that I
noticed it. I once designed pattern recognition software to help recognize
skin cancer, so I knew what to watch out for. Anyway, she had it biopsied and
it came back as malignant melanoma - the worst form of skin cancer. She had
surgery to remove it and several of her lymph nodes two days after the
diagnosis. She is cancer free now (PET scan), but it was quite a scare. She is
young and had never had much sun exposure, so we were initially surprised with
the diagnosis. It turns out that some skin cancers are predominantly genetic.
And skin cancer is one of the most common types of cancer, especially among
young people.

//PSA Portion of post//

Check your skin monthly to see if you have any unusual changes. As with most
cancers, early detection is the key to higher survival rates. If you notice
something unusual, go to a DERMATOLOGIST (not a GP.) Dermatologists have much
better detection rates than regular docs. My wife had a GP and a surgeon tell
her the red mole was nothing, and she only had it removed because I kept
nagging her. Dermatologists measure size/penetration etc. with skin cancer to
determine survival rates. My wife's survival rate was 85%, but .02mm deeper
and it would have dropped significantly. My doctor had a patient with the same
type of melanoma, for example, and she died within three weeks of noticing a
new mole. She took a "wait and see" approach and it killed her. So don't wait!

A mnemonic for things to watch out for: ABCDE.

A=Asymmetry (Uneven Surface); B=Borders (Irregular mole borders); C=Color
(Varied colors are bad. Reds and blacks are bad); D=Diameter (Larger than your
pupil/a pencil eraser = bad); E=Evolving (Any changes, such as bleeding,
crusting, etc.)

//End PSA//

Wow. My posts are too long.

~~~
jimbokun
"My posts are too long."

In this case, no.

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pistoriusp
I think Steve Jobs said it best:

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap
of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no
reason not to follow your heart.

Now I just need some courage.

~~~
omouse
We're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz!

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nickb
Oh man, that was extremely painful to read yet it was so inspirational! Cancer
in family is so hard to get over and as someone who has experienced it first
hand, I can tell you that it impacts the whole family, not just the person
affected by it. He's a fascinating man and we'll all be at loss if he passes
away.

I wish him and his family all the best.

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ivankirigin
I knew lots of folks that loved this guy's class. Building Virtual Worlds is
the kind of class where you may as well not take any others that semester
because you will have neither the time nor the inclination to work on anything
else.

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rms
A few weeks ago, I was out to dinner with my parents and my grandparents. My
grandfather is 90 years old and in relatively good health but he's slowed down
a lot recently. My family has gotten much less religious over the years (we're
Jewish) as it has come out that no one really believes in the religion, from
my grandparents on down. The thought of my grandfather facing his own death
with no faith really depressed me.

Have any secular individuals here come to terms with their own mortality? I
haven't yet, but I sure hope I have a while to figure it out. Right now all
I've got is a hope that a singularity will grant immortality. Or that this
reality is a computer simulation and we wake up in a bigger computer
simulation where we get bored sometimes and choose to spend lifetimes during
interesting periods of time.

Either of these are much more likely than the eternal afterlife of a theistic
god, but not nearly likely enough to give me any comfort. Dr Roth's lesson on
mortality seems to be that death is inevitable, but that doesn't give me any
satisfaction, for now.

~~~
amichail
My guess is that all people -- religious or not -- are completely terrified
towards the end. But maybe religion can bring comfort to some, so that they
are terrified to a lesser degree.

~~~
whacked_new
I don't think I would be terrified, nor you.

While I'm too young to say, I think at the time you are old, your brain would
have changed (or degraded) sufficiently enough to handle it with relative
ease. That's the only way it makes sense to me when I read about ailing people
talking about seeing the exit, the final candle, or whatever.

That aside, I also consider "what happens after you die" to be the ultimate
question. Because nobody alive, dumb or smart, knows the answer, and nobody
has come back to tell us. It just depends on when you think you are ready to
find the answer. Perhaps after you solve the unified field theory everything
will converge.

~~~
amichail
_While I'm too young to say, I think at the time you are old, your brain would
have changed (or degraded) sufficiently enough to handle it with relative
ease. That's the only way it makes sense to me when I read about ailing people
talking about seeing the exit, the final candle, or whatever._

Even if true, not everyone would die after their brain has degraded in this
way.

Sleep disorders are quite common in the elderly and I would guess that this is
mostly due to a fear of death while asleep.

------
DocSavage
I knew Randy when he was a rising star at UVa and doing work with us on
neurosurgical planning using VR. When we played recreational football, Randy
was one of the guys to watch. Great guy who cares about his students. I'm
really sad this happened to him. People that know him wouldn't be surprised of
his attitude. And we owe it to people like Randy to not waste the time we've
been given.

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amichail
You can find a streaming video of the talk here:

mms://wms.andrew.cmu.edu/001/pausch.wmv

~~~
ralphb
Aw shit. 'Twas getting pretty misty here by the 'second head fake' moment.

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jaed
It's sad that we have to be reminded of it, but this just reaffirms that the
little bubble world of YC, TechCrunch, and Web 2.Oh really don't mean a whole
lot in the grand scheme of life. This guy wouldn't trade some extra time with
his family for all the startups and VC cash in the world. It just puts things
into perspective.

~~~
steve
Better to live a day as a lion... you know the rest.

Maybe I'm not old enough, maybe it's because I don't have a family, but I'd
rather do something few others have done than just lay around with my family
until they send me off to the retirement home.

So, I disagree with your position 100%.

Anyone have a link to video of the guy who rides on top of the high speed
train shortly before he dies of cancer?

~~~
bluishgreen
[http://www.metacafe.com/watch/353732/man_surfing_high_speed_...](http://www.metacafe.com/watch/353732/man_surfing_high_speed_train/)

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far33d
I just watched the whole thing on youtube. He's amazing. A great speaker, a
great teacher, and I've heard nothing but good things about him as a person.
The moment near the end where he brings out a cake for his wife is incredible.

We have a lot in common... same advisor, similar dreams. He's just older and a
whole lot smarter. It just brought his whole message home for me. Brick walls
are there to make you want it.

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dmpayton
Wow. I'm sitting here in class not doing my work (Intro to Computers. Feh.)
with near-misty eyes. if I'm ever hit with the cancer dart, I only hope I can
be so strong.

Awesome read, indeed.

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staunch
Seems like a good guy. I don't think I'm nearly as strong. Good luck Randy
Pausch.

_"Somewhere during my treatment, somebody asked me if having cancer had made
me believe less, or more, in God. I replied that I didn't know, but it sure
had made me believe more in people."_ \--
<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html>

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bluishgreen
I scanned the whole of reddit and this is the one article that I clicked and
read. And in the next few minutes this is hitting the top in news.yc. News.yc
feels like a reddit that finally understood me. :'(

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fleaflicker
tried to read this all day but it's been down...google cache version:

[http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:http://www.post-
gazette....](http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:http://www.post-
gazette.com/pg/07262/818671-85.stm&hl=en&sa=G&strip=1)

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acy
indeed great speech & life lesson

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PStamatiou
great read.

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michaelneale
WOW

