22 October 2007

Please watch this

Overall, I've fallen out of love with Oprah. She's at times a caricature of herself, and sometimes her show leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Today was not one of those days.

Here in Eugene, her daily show repeats at 8:00 p.m. Tonight there wasn't much else on, so I tuned in. The first segment was on a lovely young woman and her battle with cancer (which she is winning without chemo). This caught my attention, so I started watching. Very interesting.

Then they brought out Randy Pausch, a professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon. He reprised part of his final lecture at C-M, which is an actual final lecture since he is dying of pancreatic cancer. I was moved to tears, and I don't cry that easily. They weren't maudlin, sad tears, but tears of admiration and...I don't know, maybe you could call it joy. His talk is moving and inspirational, and I urge you to watch at least this segment of Oprah's show. Click on the link about halfway down the page to start the video.

Evidently his full lecture is almost two hours, and is available here. I plan on watching this as well.

Seriously, watch this. You won't regret it.

Today's Second Favorite Video

A coworker was referring to giving someone the "beef and cheese" routine today, so I had to go look this up. It's awesome.

I'll be using the phrase Throne of Lies liberally as well.