These days, most people imagine that when they succumb to the inevitable and utter what must be their "last words", they will have time for little more than a brief, faltering sentence.
If they are lucky, it will be shared with a few close family members before being swiftly consigned to the scrapheap of history. Professor Randy Pausch is not most people, though.
In September, the computer science expert delivered a remarkable lecture to students at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh. Thanks to the wonders of technology, the hour-long speech did not disappear into the ether but went on to be heard by millions. It has since changed lives, touched American politics, and is about to spawn a publishing phenomenon.
At the centre of Pausch's remarkable tale is "The Last Lecture", an old academic conceit whereby teachers are asked to imagine they're near death and must therefore sum up the entire collection of wisdom they wish to pass on to their students in a single lecture. Pausch, a 47-year-old father of three, didn't have to imagine anything when he gave his own "last lecture" on September 18. He had just been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.
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