I've heard those guys at NASA are pretty dangerous, too...

Dad sent me an article the other day about a strange paper published at the University of Oxford. Apparently someone figured out that more terrorists come from electrical engineering backgrounds than any other profession. (Hey – so THAT’S why terrorists are always wearing pocket protectors in those threatening videos they make…) I guess there are not too many terrorist florists, or terrorist waiters, or terrorist musicians… or even terrorist lawyers. Nope. They’re all a bunch of crazy electrical engineers. The paper claimed that engineers have “peculiar cognitive traits and dispositions” that mesh well with a terrorist mindset. Well, obviously we all know the stunning ramifications of these assertions. That’s right – dad is a terrorist…

Of course dad, being the terro— uh, I mean, electrical engineer he is, always says that you should look for the simplest explanation when a question arises. The question here is – why are so many terrorists electrical engineers? Personally, I think the “simple” answer would be – because they’re the ones who know how to build the bombs. Right? I mean, you can recruit all the angry florists you want, but all they’ll be able to do for you is create some sort of Death to America-themed float for the Rose Parade. (“Look at how exquisitely the chrysanthemums spell out ‘death’… that is some quality work right there…”) It’s kind of like saying, “gee, it seems like an awful lot of chefs go shopping at Williams-Sonoma… what’s up with that? Perhaps chefs have bizarre reasoning abilities that cloud their judgment when faced with expensive cookware… instead of simply visiting the kitchen department at Target, something in their heads draws them towards over-priced culinary objects… weird…”

I suppose you could get into a debate about whether the “cognitive traits” of engineers predispose them to becoming highly immoral, illogical and insane people… but aren’t there far MORE engineers who have done good for society as opposed to engineers who have gone off the deep end? And we certainly wouldn’t want to upset them… it would be mechanical-pencil-and-schematic anarchy…

Anyway… I’ve been very slow with the blog posts lately, because I had some work (as I mentioned in the last post) and the number of people wanting to come by and see our house has increased quite a bit the last couple weeks. Some days I feel like the only thing I’ve done all day is clean the house and run out the door five times over (even though I don’t think we’ve had more than two showings a day… but it SEEMS like much more…). At least I’ve been remembering to keep the outside gate locked, so I haven’t been surprised by any more walk-in realtors. Unfortunately, I failed to lock it soon enough one afternoon and was accosted by a very persuasive magazine saleswoman… somehow, she talked me into three subscriptions, which I immediately regretted paying for as she walked through my should’ve-been-locked gate. Rick faxed in a cancellation notice the next day. Sigh… I’m a much-too-nice person who needs to learn how to angrily turn people away without such concern for their feelings… (perhaps it would be easier if I was an electrical engineer??)

Rick and I will be on our way to Chicago in a couple days – we were planning to go next weekend, but we’ve decided to spontaneously switch things up and go this weekend instead. That gives Eric much less time to figure out where he can hide so as to avoid visiting with us. So hopefully I’ll have some cool pictures to post over the next week or so.

In the meantime – everyone beware the electrical engineers…