Who is Randy Pausch...

...and why are we hearing so much about him?

About a month or two ago, I created a new email address for myself. You don't need to know the address -- it's just for junk mail. So I can visit a new book store and when they want to give me a discount for simply giving them my email address, this is the address I give them. Alllll the junk goes to this address and I never have to clean it out.
Hypothetically.
Well. It had been a couple of months and it occurred to me that I couldn't remember whom I had given this address to. Had I used it at all? So I accessed it and it turns out I must have only given it to said book store. Because that's all the email I had in it -- 22 emails from this bookstore. In two months.
I scanned the email headers and chose to open only one of them: "The Year's Most Inspiring Book."
The email referred to a new book out by Randy Pausch, named The Last Lecture. He's a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where they have had for some time a lecture series entitled, "The Last Lecture." The theory is that speakers come and say what they would say if it were their last speech. Dr. Pausch was invited to speak, and his lecture had one twist: he actually is dying.
It's odd to me that I ran across this book in such a random way and the very next day, my DS2 had a nanosecond alone with me and shared that the family had heard the coolest lecture on the radio in their recent travels. It was by a fairly young guy who is dying...
"And he talks about childhood dreams?" I asked. "His name is Randy Pausch."
Apparently the video has been quite popular on the internet. I know it's an hour long, but it might make your life richer. Check it out.