SkyFey | The Blog

A person who has had a stroke may experience dramatic (sometimes very negative) changes in his or her personality, but we don’t call those changes “mental” illness. Why, then, are depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, et al called “mental” illnesses?

The very decision to linguistically categorize these conditions as “mental” infers that they are “in or of the mind” — perhaps even “imaginary.” This usage can suggest that behaviors which develop from (or are exaggerated by) these disorders are caused by controllable errors in an individual’s thinking. That has led to a widespread sociocultural belief that “mental” illness is just symptomatic of a character defect or lack of restraint, and this has stigmatized terribly the individuals who suffer from any form of psychiatric illness.

(This was especially true in earlier generations. For example, my older daughter struggled most of her life with severe and frequently acute bipolar disorder, but my late father — an otherwise well-educated and cultured man who was the chief executive of a multi-national company — felt strongly that her problems were caused by insufficient discipline in my household. Unfortunately, that utterly wrong-headed notion is still seen today even among some younger people.)

I think I have a better idea . . . Read more »

I’m attempting to put myself in a bottle that will one day wash up on the beach for my children.”

That’s how Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Randy Pausch described the now-famous “Last Lecture” he delivered at the university in the fall of 2007 — when he already knew that he had only months left to live. In that legacy, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” his children (Dylan, Logan, and Chloe) will have something to cherish that few others ever will — or could — imagine. What Pausch couldn’t know at the time was that his lecture would also become a priceless legacy to millions of others around the world.

Pausch was a notable figure even before his lecture went viral on YouTube. He was one of the youngest individuals to earn tenure in his field. A widely respected teacher of video-game and virtual-reality technology, he led the development of Cargnegie Mellon’s “Alice,” a revolutionary, freely downloadable 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create animations for telling stories, playing interactive games, or making videos to share on the web. He was a key member of the university’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute and co-founded its Entertainment Technology Center, a master’s degree program that trains artists, actors, engineers, and computer scientists on collaboration.

“The Last Lecture” (Hyperion, April 2008) also became an international bestselling book that has been translated into 30 languages.

In tribute to the remarkable life Pausch lived, the Wall Street Journal’s Brightcove.com channel offers several videos about the professor. (Yes, Brightcove’s streaming-video commercials before every video are annoying. But they’re short, and I suspect that the pragmatic professor would say, “Get over it. They’re worth watching.”) CMU has posted a detailed memorial page.

Among the many pithy comments that Pausch’s lecture has made famous, one of my favorites is, “Brick walls are there to separate us from the people who don’t really want to achieve their childhood dreams.” He also said that “if you lead your life the right way, the Karma will take care of itself. Your dreams will come to you.” In his concluding remarks, he stated that his lecture was not really about how to achieve your dreams, but how to live your life.

Pausch, 47, died at his home in Chesapeake, Virginia early on the morning of Friday, July 25, leaving his wife, Jai, and their three children. Donations can be made to Carnegie Mellon’s Randy Pausch Memorial Fund.

Do you ever find yourself suddenly “knowing” the answer to something so deeply, so incontrovertibly, that you have to work the new “knowledge” backward just to figure out how you might have arrived there? Not long ago, while I was watching a piece on one of the morning TV shows about the massive die-offs of bats in the northeast, I abruptly “knew” — in what may seem to onlookers to be an unjustifiably absolute manner — what is causing the die-offs. At the same time, I also “knew” what is causing the mysterious disappearance in the same area of vast numbers of honeybees.

Cell towers. Read more »

Todd Small was stuck in quicksand again. It happened, as always, on the floor of the Seattle machine shop where he worked. His shift complete, Small was making the 150-yard walk from his workstation to his car, when he realized that his left leg was sinking deep in the stuff. Though this had happened before — it happened nearly every day now — he stopped and glanced down at his feet. His Nikes looked normal, still firmly planted on the shop’s concrete floor. But he was stuck, just the same. His brain was sending an electrical pulse saying “walk,” but as the signal streaked from his cerebellum and down his spinal cord, it snagged on scar tissue where the myelin layer insulating his nerve fibers had broken down. The message wasn’t getting to his hip flexors or his hamstrings or his left foot. That connection had been severed by his multiple sclerosis. And once again, Small was left with the feeling that, as he described it, “I’m up to my waist in quicksand.” For the 400,000 Americans with multiple sclerosis, Todd Small’s description will most likely ring true.

The rest of that New York Times article is worth reading, but the most salient feature is its pointer to a remarkable new resource: PatientsLikeMe.com, a Web site whose stated goal is “to enable people to share information that can improve the lives of patients diagnosed with life-changing diseases” — specifically, for people who have MS, Parkinson’s Disease, AIDS, ALS, or certain mental-health disorders.

The founders say they have created a community of patients, doctors, and organizations that “inspires, informs, and empowers individuals,” and that they are “committed to providing patients with access to the tools, information, and experiences that they need to take control of their disease.”

It’s worth a visit.

Do read a good post from columnist Paul McNamara over at NetworkWorld about the life-changing properties of FiOS—life-changing, that is, unless you don’t think a fire which puts at risk your entire family and everything you own will change your life.

I have too many user IDs and passwords to remember—and I’m required to use too many different IDs and passwords over the course of just a single day. I desperately want a simplified way of gaining access to password-protected online and real-world venues. And I would like that method to be more secure than the present means of typing in my ID and password online, or using a variety of PINs at various cash registers.

Would someone please develop—and make ubiquitous (otherwise, what’s the point?)—a simplified, universal, and secure access key? Read more »