Start Your Day Refreshed

Every time I get that "Noli nothis permittere te terere" kind of day, I am vividly reminded it can be worse by Randy Pausch. The former professor who has added incredible grace and dignity to his departure from this life has managed to live long enough with pancreatic cancer to see the publication of his book based on his famous "last lecture."

In other internet news, our good friends at Center for Citizen Media have a pair of stories.

One is not so good for TV as CBS adds to its public woes. After acknowledging talks with CNN to "outsource" its national coverage, huge cutbacks are on the way for its 27 company owned local stations.

But, if you jump across the digital divide, according to the New York Times, blogging will kill you. The story starts by describing the digital-era sweatshop -- your home -- and relates the unfortunate coronary demise of three bloggers. I also find the counterpoint from ZDNet compelling, and reassuring in a Pausch-like way:

Let’s put a little perspective on this blogging thing. You could be getting shot at in Iraq. You could be a single mom working three jobs to stay afloat (Happy Birthday mom). You could work in a coal mine. You could be in a life and death battle with Leukemia. You could be doing any one of thousands of high-stress jobs. Sure, the Web has a lot of stress but let’s get real: If you’re stressed out over 5,000 RSS feeds chances are good you’d be stressed by any profession you chose.

So what's that phrase at the top? Oh, you thought I meant Illegitimi non carborundum, but of course, being connected citizen I was able to discover that old chestnut is at best dog-Latin, bastardized (all pun intended) by "Vineger" Joe Stillwell. The Second World War general was a constant nemesis of Claire Chennault. It does my heart good to learn how illegitimi his Latin was, since in regard to many issues Stillwell certainly was a bastardes himself.