Randy Pausch died last Thursday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 47, leaving behind a wife and three kids. Seems glum, but he certainly didn’t feel that way. For those of you who haven’t seen his “last lecture” at Carnegie Mellon entitled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, it’s here (1h 16m). Highly entertaining and absolutely worth your while.
He’s also written a book entitled The Last Lecture, which I plan to get my hands on soon. I’m told it’s very inspiring.
In truth, while a lot of people find his ideas on how to live life to be fresh and radical, I’ve been exposed to the exact same ideas all my life, as a cultivational Daoist. The difference is that he presents the concepts miles more practically than I’ve ever seen. Kudos to him, and may he RIP.
By the way, this “last lecture” idea isn’t the first. Those of you who have read or seen Tuesdays With Morrie know what I’m talking about.
I was at the Duke Medical Center today and I saw a poster entitled “10 things to do while having a heart attack.” Something like that definitely catches your eye. Didn’t have a camera on me, but I managed to copy down the text. I think most of it is only mediocre, but #2 definitely stands out to me.
10 things to do while having a heart attack:
Relax. (Panic depletes your oxygen supply.)
Remember life or its lack cannot be taken personally or too seriously.
Think how surprised all the people who accused you of not having one are going to be.
Call up your happiest memory, whether a desert sunset of shimmering turquoise skies shot with flickers of scorched gold, or how much you gypped the IRS out of.
Tell the rescue squad how angelic they look even without wings.
Be glad you have on clean underwear.
Congratulate yourself on convincing the Life Flight helicopter pilot not to cut your Nikita Koloff tee-shirt off.
Wish you had paid closer attention when the American Heart Association began preaching the cholesterol gospel.
Arrange for a sibling to feed your Siamese cats and to call your supervisor at work conveying profound regrets for unavoidable nonattendence.
Pray.
— Virginia Love Long, DUMC patient
Poetry in the Halls project, Cultural Services Program, DUMC
Life is simply a natural creation that has a beginning and an end. So like nature, it is impartial — generous, yet unforgiving. How, then, can we take it personally? “Life or its lack cannot be taken personally or too seriously.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.
A group at Harvard came up with this incredible, realistic animation of the inner workings of a cell. There are two versions. One is a 3-minute animation with (good!) music; the other is an 8-minute animation with narration.
The “story” is about leukocyte extravasation, or the movement of a white blood cell out of the bloodstream and into infected tissue. A fairly decent background in science will be necessary for anyone to get a good grasp of what’s going on in the video, but even the common person will be impressed or even amazed by how intricate our bodies are, down to the very molecules. (I would recommend the 3-minute version if you find yourself short on science background.)
We live in an amazing world, we are amazing worlds, and, in light of this video, each one of our cells is an amazing world. Who knows, molecules and atoms could also be worlds of their own, far more complex than we could ever imagine. Nature works in astounding ways.
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The only thing scientists, partially including myself, might have against this is that the animations of the molecular movements are too “perfect.” In reality, molecules wiggle against each other randomly (Brownian motion) until these things happen naturally – more of a chaos really. Of course, if they were to show that in the video, it would probably greatly confuse the viewer, so I can see why they decided against it.
If you’re skeptical about the kinesin motor “walking” protein (and you have every right to be), there’s also a video that breaks down the process of how it “walks,” courtesy of the Milligan lab:
A while back, I wrote about this idea of becoming “one” with the universe. Before I go on, I need to first establish the idea that, throughout time, the basic principles of the Universe, as a whole, have never changed. Even when the world undergoes cycles of big bangs and shrinkages, even when solar systems collapse and reform, even when seasons change, the Universe, as a whole, remains unmoved.
Pi can always be described as the ratio 3.14. A circle’s circumference will always, just helplessly, be a little greater than three times its diameter. An equilateral triangle will always have equal sides and three angles of 60º. The three angles of all triangles will always add up to 180º. A wave’s frequency will always be inversely proportional to its wavelength. Gravity will always be proportional to the masses of the two objects. A physicist would be able to give you a whole slew of constants and physical relationships that most people haven’t even heard of. These are all bits and pieces of what I like to call the “definition” of nature.
Of course, these numbers are only mere representations of nature. I hope my main idea isn’t obscured by this. The important thing is that there exist (∃) features in the universe that are constant and everlasting. Continue reading ‘The Universe, yourself included’
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Birth. Life. Death. A meaningless cycle, really. But you can give life a meaning if you want to. From my standpoint, a life is only meaningful if you take the time to learn the essence of the universe and become “one” with it. It is the only way that your essence won’t be isolated from everything else when it becomes unchained from your physical body. It is only then that you can vanish from all existence and become the universe itself.
That put a really poetic twist on an actually very simple idea. Who are we as individuals? Nothing. We are simple manifestations of our surroundings. I don’t care what about us you think is “individual,” it ultimately came from somewhere around us. Our appearances, thoughts, ideas, bodies – they all came from our surroundings and lineage, be it our ancestors, food, or the simple reaction to outside stimuli. Therefore, in truth, there really is no “I” distinguishable from everything else. Individuality is an illusion – how can we break from that?
Quote of the moment
"I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility." — Albert Einstein
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