The Last Lecture

Maybe this blog entry is too serious to be the first in 2010, but I think it is worth its price.

Have you ever thought about what you want to talk in your last lecture? Stop! I am not talking about the kind of last lecture you normally give when you leave your company, retire or move to a new place. I am talking about the kind of last lecture you give before you die.

Randy Pausch was a charismatic young college professor at Carnegie Mellon University of computer science and human-computer.  He learned that he had a terminal case of pancreatic cancer and died in July 2008. Before he died he gave a remarkable lecture entitled “The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. In his last lecture he talked about his childhood dreams, how to enable the dreams of others and his lessons learned, which is his advice how you can achieve your dreams or enable the dreams of others.

Again, if you had one last lecture to give before you die, what would it be?

You can find more information about Randy Pausch and his last lecture via the following links:

• The Last Lecture | Randy Pausch
• Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture
• Randy Pausch’s Homepage

A Smiley Story

Storyteller and poet Rives tells an amusing little story about a guy and a girl—all using smiley’s. That’s kind of random, but it kind of makes sense when he talks with it.

Ebola with wings

Last year I wrote a blog entry about James Nachtwey’s speak which he did during accepting his 2007 TED prize. Ever winner of the TED prize a granted a wish—a wish to change the world.

James Nachtwey used his TED Prize to create a video of his photos that show the global impact of XDR-TB (extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis). The photos are absolutely astounding and will help you to realize that nearly two million people die every year from this curable and preventable pandemic.

Called “Ebola with wings” by some, XDR-TB is entirely human made as a result inadequate treatment programs. XDR-TB cases have recently been reported in 49 countries, including every G8 member country. That may just be the tip of the iceberg, as few countries in Africa have the laboratory capacity to detect, track or treat drug-resistant TB. It is as dangerous as Ebola and even more deadly because it is airborne. Breathing in bacteria that have been left behind in a room by an infected person several hours ago may be enough to contract the disease. One infected person who laughs, coughs, or sings, can result in an epidemic and yet we can stop it. We have to spread the story and stop the disease! Visit XDRTB.org!

All The Best Nick Donofrio

Flying …

Two days ago I was flying with a colleague in a sporting airplane. It was a great experience and we had a lot of fun when we felt the wind how it shakes the little airplane. We were flying around the Hohenzollern castle, which is a very good turning point because is very difficult to oversee it.

The castle is about 50 km south of Stuttgart in Germany, considered home to the Hohenzollern family that came to power during the Middle Ages and ruled Prussia and Brandenburg until the end of World War I. Hohenzollern castle is located on top of Mount Hohenzollern at an elevation of 855 meters, above Hechingen on the Swabian Alb. It was originally constructed in the first part of the 11th century.

You can find my favorite photos below.

A nice video film is available via this link and more pictures can be found on Flickr.

Last Days …

Have you ever thought how your last day in your company wills look like? In the following video you can see Bill Gates’ last day at Microsoft.

The voice of the voiceless

Winston Churchill once said, “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” My understanding is that a good photography can tell the history of an entire country or a decade.

Today, I saw James Nachtwey’s speak which he did during accepting his 2007 TED prize. The TED prize is unlike any other award, because beside a prize of $100.000 each, every winner are granted a wish—a wish to change the world. James talked about his decades as war photographer and presented a slideshow of his photos, which he already published in his book Inferno. His photos telling stories like a man who had just been liberated from a Hutu death camp, which was badly scarred by machetes or a skeletal man, crawling past a dilapidated hut.

When I first looked at Inferno it was hard to believe what I was looking at. I was thinking myself how many suffer a heart or soul can take until it gets badly damaged. It’s eye opening. I’m sure that if you have the courage to look at his photos then you have the courage to say the mankind learned basically nothing from history. Be warned, the photos are very powerful!

But why is it needful to have photojournalists like James Nachtwey? I think as long we have mighty people who are thinking that an unaccomplished mission is accomplished or didn’t realized the genocide in Rwanda because they thought it was just a civil war (the sad true was that in 100 days approximately 800,000 people were killed) we need remarkable people like him. His photos catch the world’s attention and can truly drive action and change. He can be the voice of people, which lost their voice—the voice of the voiceless.

Space Toilet

Have you ever thought how an astronaut is doing is business in space–without gravity? In the following YouTube video you can find Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency, which spoke about some of the very human aspects of space travels. Chris describes at the end of the video how you can create your own meteoroid. Believe me, such an explanation will destroy every romantic moment you can have with a girl during you watched falling starts in a beautiful summer night. ;-)

The Power of One

A friend sent me a video link on YouTube which I want to share with you. The video was produced by the Earth Communication Office (ECO) to create some of the most inspirational environmental messages ever produced. I really like this video, not only because the music was made by Oscar winning film score composer Hans Zimmer. In my opinion, Hans made some of the best music I ever heard on earth. ;-)

On the ECO homepage you will find more videos like this one. I hope you will like it, too.