"The Last Lecture" author Randy Pausch dies

Every few days, after seeing the YouTube video of his lecture, then reading his book, I wondered if computer scientist Randy Pausch was still alive. In the spring I'd read on Wikipedia that, after a period of "quiet," his cancer had spread. Later I saw an article noting Pausch was confined to bed. This morning I stumbled across the news that he died yesterday.

I didn't know Randy Pausch, at least I'd never met him. Reading his book, however, leaves one with the impression that they knew the man and how much he loved his family and loved living. It's not a masterpiece of modern literature. Nor is The Last Lecture a "tell-all" biography full of seamy slop. As Pausch described it, The Last Lecture --both as presented before an audience and as a best-selling book-- is a "message in a bottle" for his three children. Both are meant as a way of telling them who their dad was.

So though I never met him I'm saddened to learn that one more good soul is lost from our world. My sympathies go out to his family, friends, and the many whose lives he touched.

From the news service* obituary....

by Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Valerie J. Nelson

Randy Pausch, a terminally ill professor whose earnest farewell lecture at Carnegie Mellon University became an Internet phenomenon and bestselling book that turned him into a symbol for living and dying well, died Friday. He was 47.

Pausch, a computer science professor and virtual-reality pioneer, died at his home in Chesapeake, Va., of complications from pancreatic cancer, the Pittsburgh university announced.