Walt Disney once famously said, “If you can dream it, you can do it”. (He also went on to say, “Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse,” but that’s not where I want to go today). Disney’s spirit is echoed in the inspiration that drew me to join Saatchi & Saatchi: “Nothing is Impossible”. I love stories about people who transform dreams into reality and a great one has been taking place in where I live, New York City Theatre of Dreams
Can we change the heart of memoirs Last Lecture with Randy?
The NY Post reports on the auction for WSJ columnist Jeff Zaslow's book based on Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch's "last lecture," delivered in September by the 46-year-old computer scientist who suffers from terminal pancreatic cancer.
"I'm dying and having fun," Pausch said in the lecture, "And I'm going to keep having fun every day because there is no other way to do it."
The Post says "the lecture became an instant hit on the Internet, with people calling and e-mailing Zaslow to say how Pausch's inspirational words had helped them deal with their own problems, made them appreciate their families more and encouraged them to let their kids be more creative." The auction, by agent David Black, is said to have reached $6.75 million in NY Post dollars.
• Cold Lecture; [I am flattered and embarassed by all the recent attention to my "Last Lecture." I am told that well over a million people have viewed the lecture online Randy Pausch's Web Site ; Masters of the taxing film project: Elsa Ryan and her husband Warren are putting everything on the line to achieve their dream: Writing, directing and shooting their own feature film Shadows of the Past]
• · Ed Glaeser, who is always worth reading, writes a feisty fact-filled review of Krugman’s recent pro-Democrat book. He begins: Princeton Professor of Economics Paul Krugman talks about how the New Deal society has been dismantled in America, and the reasons for it. He brings it back to a revival of Southern issues about race being used by the 'Movement Conservatives' to undo various social policies during the present adminstration. Paul Krugman is also a writer and columnist for the New York Times.
Human knowledge is produced by intellectual combat that exposes weak premises and faulty conclusions to withering challenge. We are often improved more by our ideological enemies than by our friends, because our enemies push us hardest. In that spirit, I welcome the publication of Paul Krugman’s “The Conscience of a Liberal” (W.W. Norton, 352 pages, $25.95). The book espouses a world-view that is in many ways diametrically opposed to my own, but the process of intellectually disagreeing with Mr. Krugman fired my own passion for liberty more than the rhetoric of any current GOP presidential candidate does. Where is the Middle Class?]
