Follow Up on the "Last Lecture"

Hey everyone. This is the follow up i said i'd post on Randy Pausch. (This post probably might not count as an econ thing, Mrs. McDaniel, but i'll post another one. I wanted to follow up on the post from before.) This is a little about Pausch.

Randy Pausch (born October 23, 1960) is a Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In September 2006, Pausch was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer. He pursued a very aggressive cancer treatment that included major surgery and experimental chemotherapy; however, in August 2007, he was told the cancer had metastasized to his liver and spleen. He then started palliative chemotherapy, intended to extend his life as long as possible. At that time, doctors estimated he would remain healthy for another three to six months.

This link below is a website from ABC. I posted the link for the whole lecture on the previous post. This one below is the stories from the interview of ABC. There are5 different "parts" in the whole story. It is definately a worth while thing to watch. Hope everyone can take a little from it.

http://abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=randy%20pausch&type=

Game Theory

I liked the movie today on game theory and the Nash equilibrium. It is an interesting concept and i like how he put it into understandable terms with the girls in the bar. However, i don't know if he said it or not or if it said it somewhere in the book, but it still seems unrealistic. Like with perfect competition, it is the perfect way for the economy to function but it is highly impractical. For Nash's idea to be correct, (the idea that all the friends would block each other out if they all went for the blond) he is assuming that all the friends would prefer the blond over the others, and also that the blond would want all of them equally, and not be able to choose. However, in real life, this is not realistic, but maybe he wasn't using people as the best example. Because with people, the blond would not have an equal preference for all of the guys. And the idea that they should all go for other ones is assuming that all the guys are equal. If you were a stud and a nice guy, you wuold have an obvious advantage and would not have to follow the "Game Theory." In economic terms, this would mean that all the items being dealt with would have to have all identical properties with identical demands, as well as all the people dealing with the group would have to have the same preferences.

Here's the clip from "A Beautiful Mind"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0JDoQb6A2YI

Last Lecture

I don't know if you guys saw or heard about this on the news, but this is really good. This guys name is Randy Pausch. He is a proffesor at Carnegie Mellon and is dieing of Pancreotic Cancer. His speech, which i haven't got to finish all of yet, is mainly on how to live life and what needs to be focused on while living. Although it may sound somewhat far off, i think it applies to economics. Economics is all about choices and the individual importance of a choice and what you are giving up for that choice. Also, you need to take into account how other people way in on the decision you are making if they are involved in it. His speech is about the same things, expect on a much deeper level, not just about material objects; about life, time, friendship, family and compassion.
I will try to get more information and update this with the whole story but you guys should definately take a look at this, even if you aren't in Mrs. McDaniel's AP Econ class.

Type in "Randy Pausch Last Lecture" on youtube.