Well, well, well -- quite the summer has passed.

I traveled through 12 states with my dog Scout, visited some old friends, made some new friends, and am now watching the movie known as “what in the name of sam hell is going on with the financial markets and why are these rich and grasping greedheads ruining our party?”

People were living high off the hog, borrowing money they shouldn’t, but this current nonsense is mind boggling on many levels. I hope those people who bought their kids matching luxury cars because that’s what kids need these days to fit in don’t get burned too bad.

Anyways -- Chance and I are both keeping busy and I have a few posts to write over the next month or so.

Here is some music.

2002 Remake

Original from 1972:

PITTSBURGH -- Randy Pausch, a former Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist whose “last lecture” about facing terminal cancer became an international sensation and a best-selling book, died Friday. He was 47.

MSNBC Article announcing that Dr. Randy Pausch has passed away

His last lecture.

As a child I enjoyed Lego in its endless array of things I could build. Nowadays most Lego seems heavily themed, in that each kit builds something specific. This artist, Nathan Sawaya, has an enviable job in which he creates Lego sculptures that are commissioned by clients. He has a large gallery with lots of interesting themes.

Some artists use paint, others bronze – But for Nathan Sawaya he chooses to build his awe-inspiring art out of toy building blocks. LEGO® bricks to be exact.

With more than 1.5 million colored bricks in his New York studio, Sawaya’s sculptures take many forms.

Sawaya’s art is currently touring North American museums in a show titled, The Art of the Brick. It’s the only exhibition focusing exclusively on LEGO as an art medium. The creations, constructed from nearly one million pieces, were built from standard bricks beginning as early as 2002. More information on the tour, dates and locations can be found here.

A full-time freelance artist, Sawaya accepts commissions from individuals, corporations, and … well just about anyone with a good idea! He’s also available to design and build custom creations at events, photo shoots and conventions.

So let Sawaya know what you have in mind, there are literally no limits to what he can create out of LEGO.

Nathan Sawaya’s Web Site for his Lego sculptures

I saw an article from BusinessWeek yesterday about “affordable global real estate” and I thought I’d share the link and my observations here.

In The Worlds Most Affordable Housing Markets, writer Maya Roney lays out where the smart money chooses to live based on an index of home prices, cost of goods and services, local stability and quality of life. Keep in mind that the article is from Business Week and explicitly uses a standard based on the needs of a youngish middle manager and his or her average sized household / family, or about — 4 bedrooms.

The top pick is Bogata, Columbia which I admit isn’t a place I normally think of as “stable” but if you enjoy tropical on a Canton Ohio budget there are probably worse places you can wind up in. Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt comes in at number two in affordability, and honestly — looks absolutely gorgeous with a cost of living comparable to Muncie, Indianna.

The top 10 including 3 rather cold but gorgeous locations in Canada, and both Nicaragua and Panama and the top 25 including locations in Malta, Poland and Honduras. Viva!

Each city is compared to a US Market to give the potential home buyer a reference point on which to base their explorations, and each location includes one color picture which is supposed to symbolize that particular environment. The pictures are very “stock” and the article runs over as many pages as possible no doubt to maximize their ad exposure and SEO. The navigation frame for the top 25 locations is easy to use, and that makes comparing the cost of a home in the Carribean to the cost of a similar home in Bozeman nearly painless.

The idea here is that real estate in the US may be flat, but the international market is still bullsih. There may be some truth to that, though for most non-retired folk, such a move might be problematic unless they had recently been offered employment in Cairo.

As for me I have decided to retire in Mexico; surf all morning, sleep all afternoon and play Troubadour all night long for rich touristas. Viva baby!

–Dex

The Nietzsche Family Circus pairs a randomized Family Circus cartoon with a randomized Friedrich Nietzsche quote.

Finally, the Family Circus is funny.

Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Visit it here: Nietschze Family Circus

I found this site recently and have been transfixed. He uses long exposure times and turns human existence into ghostly motion. Visit the photographer’s web site here:

Some of my favorites:

I was visiting a blog site of someone I admire earlier today and was reminded of this video again. I watched this video when it first came out, transfixed by someone who is dieing of pancreatic cancer give one of the most powerful and moving speeches of my life. He gave the speech for his three very young children. Dr. Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon professor, beloved teacher and an important researcher in the virtual reality field.

If you have 70 minutes and want to watch something meaningful, I humbly suggest this:

From New York Times: Keeping Priorities Straight, Even at the End.

The 70-minute talk, at www.cmu.edu/randyslecture, has been translated into seven languages, and this week Hyperion is publishing “The Last Lecture,” a book by Dr. Pausch and a collaborator, Jeff Zaslow, that tells the story behind the story of the lecture.

“The whole thing is very strange,” Dr. Pausch said over lunch at a diner near Norfolk, Va. “I just gave a talk. I gave talks my whole life.”

But of course, this wasn’t just any talk. “Let’s not ignore the obvious,” he said. “If I’d given that lecture but I weren’t dying, it wouldn’t have had the gravitas. Context is everything.”

Dr. Pausch, 47, is dying of pancreatic cancer, a disease that kills 95 percent of its victims, usually within months of diagnosis. Except for a pill bottle on the table in front of him, there were no outward signs of the deadly tumors growing inside him. Though he had just recently recovered from heart and kidney failure, he looked boyish, with a red knit shirt and a head of thick dark-brown hair.

Last fall, after doctors told him that he would probably have no more than six months of good health, Dr. Pausch stepped down from his academic duties and relocated to be closer to his family. But he decided to give one last lecture to a roomful of students and faculty members at Carnegie Mellon.

The lecture was not about cancer. Instead, he says, it was simply a father’s effort to digest a lifetime of advice for his children into one talk — a talk that Dr. Pausch knew he would not be around long enough to deliver in person. The children are Dylan, 6; Logan, 4; and Chloe, almost 2.

Although he could have set it up on a home video, he liked the idea that one day they would watch his last lecture and see their dad at work, in his element.

“I’m speaking only to them,” he said. “I didn’t set out to tell the world about how to live life.”