Supercourse Newsletter, April, 17 2005
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Supercourse: http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/
Break on Through to the Other Side:
The Doors in the early seventies aptly described what our global
family did last week. We �broke on through to the other side�
Eugene just told us that the Supercourse crossed two barriers.
The first was that we surpassed the 2,200 lecture mark in record
time. It seems like we go to the India Restaurant 3 times we
reach yet another 100 lecture milestone the pace of lectures
quickens. It is fantastic what you and our Supercourse team has
done. The second is that we have 1,001 teaching faculty. We re-
cently received a lecture from our 1,001 faculty member. To put
this in context, our school of Public health in Pittsburgh has
about 100 faculty. We likely have more teaching faculty than the
top 10 schools of public health... combined. This is truly in
interdisciplinary, global effort.
Pittsburgh, Some Place Special:
Jan Dorman, Soni Dodani and I will be meeting with Chancellor
Nordenberg of the University of Pittsburgh in about 7 days. We
are to discuss with him the concept of a pan-university Super-
course. We have sent several notes to the faculty at the Univer-
sity, and an amazing 450 have joined from 63 different disci-
plines. We hope to make our university a model for others in the
world. We believe that all major universities should have a pan-
university multidisciplinary program in Global health. We would
love to hear about your program so we could create a lecture ti-
tled �Building a Global Health Research program at your univer-
sity�. If we start developing this together, we can collaborate
and promote multi-department and multi-school collaboration.
Please send your thoughts to mailto:ronlaporte@aol.com.
The Faint Smell of Death and the Epidemiology of Reincarnation:
We as epidemiologist can tell you that the odds are high that
you die. We will be censored from the global life table of life.
Last year of the 20,400 faculty about 20 faculty have become
really, really hard endpoints. The age spread of our faculty is
21-89, most certainly as time marches on into this new century
we will many more than 20 deaths next year. You might ask what
does this have to do with the Supercourse? Our lives in academia
are simple, we are born, we go to kindergarten, we become emeri-
tus and we die. Sadly there has been very little research on the
epidemiology of reincarnation. Many of us do not believe in re-
incarnation, or if we do, we fear that we will come back as a
black fly. Clearly there has to be more studies on the epidemi-
ology of reincarnation.
When we retire, and when we die, our wisdom and knowledge dies
with us. Does it have to? No. Our lectures capture our wisdom.
Most of us have our wisdom in the form of PowerPoint lectures
sitting in our hard drives. When we retire, or journey into the
blackness our lectures sadly die with us. Our bodies are �dead
meat�, our lectures are �dead wisdom�. It is a difficult issue
to talk about... but... Have you given ANY thought as to where
your wisdom will go when you die? We have.
A Modest Proposal:
The Supercourse can be the reincarnation of your knowledge. You
wisdom and knowledge can be re-cycled by a young faculty member
in Kenya, or Mongolia, or Chile if you sign up for �Lecture Do-
nation�. Your wisdom can be reincarnated, not into a cockroach,
but into an assistant professor. What more could you want out of
life (and death).
Our proposal is simple, a living will of wisdom, where you de-
cide where your wisdom will go when you are signed out.
All we ask is that you fill out this living will, and keep it
with your own will.
Last Will and Testament
I ___________________________ being of sound mind donate my best
PowerPoint lectures to the Supercourse to be used as the global
teachers see fit.
_______________________ Signature
_______________________ Date
_______________________ Witness
Only kidding of course, but wouldn�t it be a shame if your lec-
tures wind up in a land fill in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania? With
out a living will for lecture donation, this will happen. Don�t
you want to �save the life� of a lecture given by an assistant
professor in Malaysia?
We care currently trying to push through the legislature at the
University of Pittsburgh the idea that we indicate on our Uni-
versity cards, that we are �lecture donors�. As soon as we die,
an epidemiologist can go to our Thinkpads and extract our lec-
tures. Programs like this might be considered for other coun-
tries.
Best regards from a very sunny day in Pittsburgh. Jan and I are
sitting on the deck watching the turkeys. It is �that time of
year� if you know what we mean for the turkeys.
Despite this humor, we very much want to thank the 1001 of you
who have contributed. You lectures will live on, and on, and on.
RIP
Please re-incarnate this newsletter by passing it on to your
friends.
Ron, Faina, Mita, Soni, Eugene, Ezzelden, Tom, Ted Williams
mailto:super1+@pitt.edu