What Kind of Geek Are You?

So, an artist named Scott Johnson had some free time and decided to draw up cartoons for all the different types of geeks he could think of and post them on his website here. When he was done he had 56 of them. I first thought I would take a look and see if I matched any of them. It got a little sad when my matches reached the double digits (I mean, come on, who doesn’t love Tron?).

Click on the link below to see all 56 geeks. Go ahead, see how many you match up with. Think you don’t match any of them? Here’s a fun game, find a spouse, roommate or some other “loved one” and have them see if they can find any matches for you. I think you’ll be surprised at all the wonderful and depressing insights you gain from that little exercise. 😉

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A Couple of Political Rock Stars

So, I’m not entirely sure what the message is in these videos, but whatever it is, I’m impressed.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3CmXGKXOmk

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1vwKZiDsY4

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Maus

For Christmas, Amy gave me the two-volume set of “Maus” by Art Spiegelman. I first read these books when I was in high school and was really affected by them. I had checked them out of the library so I never owned the set until now. I just finished re-reading them and I am just as amazed at the story as ever. Maus tells the story of Art Spiegelman’s father who was a Jew living in Poland during World War II. He takes you though his father’s whole experience first learning about the Nazis, being moved into the ghettos, going into hiding and finally being sent to Auschwitz.

What is really unusual about this is that Art Spiegelman is a cartoonist and he tells his father’s story in comic book form. In the book, the Jews are drawn as mice and the Germans are cats. It sounds like this would take away from the seriousness of the subject or be a distraction but it isn’t at all. It’s incredibly powerful and personal. The story of Maus has a way of pulling you into it and making you feel like you are right there with the characters. You feel their fear, their confusion, their helplessness, their despair and their determination. Anyone that wants to learn about the Holocaust needs to read Maus. Here are a couple of pages from the first volume.

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Amy’s Epiphany

The other day, Amy called me at work a little after lunchtime. She was telling me about her lunch with the kids. She made them bologna and cheese sandwiches and was a bit surprised about how much the kids liked them. She said she was thinking about why kids seem to like bologna so much when it came to her that “bologna is just flat hot dogs.”

This realization of Amy’s really made me laugh. It also made me want to have a bologna sandwich. I think it would make a great ad campaign for Oscar Mayer, “Bologna – It’s Just Flat Hot Dogs.”

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A Letter From My Dad

When I set up WhiteBinder a year and a half ago, I had a couple of items in mind that I wanted to make absolutely sure got posted there. One of those items I finally posted this weekend. It’s a letter from my dad that he wrote to me when I was on my mission. Posting this letter was really important to me because of the experiences my dad writes about in the letter and because I knew that this was one of the few things in my collection of articles, spiritual thoughts, etc. that really couldn’t be found anywhere else.

Hopefully, you’ll see why it took me so long to get the story posted. I had to edit my dad’s letter to remove the personal parts that weren’t relevant to the story and I had to transcribe a number of follow up letters between my dad and others that he sent me which continue the story he starts in the letter.

My dad wrote me the letter when he was an officer in the Air Force and stationed on Guam as the Chief of Safety for the Air Force’s Pacific region. There had been an accident involving an Air Force plane in New Delhi, India and my dad led a team investigating the accident. My dad’s story starts after their investigation is over and they’re given a tour of the Taj Mahal and other sites in the city of Agra. I don’t want to say any more because I really want you to go and read the letter yourself and come back and tell me what you think.

I’m very proud of my dad. He’s the most compassionate person I know. As a lot of you know, after he retired from the Air Force, he went back to school and earned a Masters and a Doctorate in Audiology. Right now, my dad is spending his Thanksgiving in the same place he’s spent it for the last several years. He’s in Ghana as part of a humanitarian aid group he organized shortly after he became an Audiologist. He’s there with other medical professionals and volunteers (26 this year, a record) operating a free clinic and distributing free medical supplies.

I am grateful for the example my dad has always been of love and sacrifice. He loves everyone he meets, and everyone he meets loves him. I hope by sharing his letter to me, other people will have a chance to “meet” my dad and feel that love, too.

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