{"id":46344,"date":"2009-01-15T04:35:31","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T09:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/?p=46344"},"modified":"2017-08-13T04:46:29","modified_gmt":"2017-08-13T09:46:29","slug":"uncle-john-vincent-atanasoff-and-the-odd-one-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/uncle-john-vincent-atanasoff-and-the-odd-one-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncle John Vincent Atanasoff and the Odd One Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

’90s rapper Coolio in today\u2019s news credited extraterrestrials with computer science and jet planes.\u00a0 “You think [technology] came from this planet?\u201c he asked?\u00a0 Well, I know it did because my uncle was<\/span> John Vincent Atanasoff<\/a> , the American physicist known as the<\/span> Father of the Modern computer<\/a>.\u00a0He invented the first automatic electronic digital computer and in 1990, President Bush awarded him the U.S. National Medal of Technology, the highest U.S. honor for achievements related to technological progress. Google him or see Wikipedia at<\/span> http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Atanasoff<\/a>.\u00a0He\u2019s my uncle because my mom\u2019s sister married his brother, Aunt Leslie and Uncle Hachet, whose real name was Raymond but he had a distinct facial profile so everyone called him Hatchet.\u00a0 My cousins in Tampa are all Atanasoffs and all creative geniuses.\u00a0 And we all knew of Uncle Hatchet\u2019s mad scientist brother who was famous in that weird scientist kind of way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every family has that odd one out, don\u2019t they?\u00a0 The one that breaks the mold and goes against the grain?\u00a0 The one that delves into all sorts of things that no one else understands?\u00a0\u00a0 You\u2019re probably the one in your family, if you\u2019re reading this. \u00a0The path less traveled is just that, less traveled.\u00a0 Not everyone wants to walk that lonely path.\u00a0 You notice there are areas of your life that you can\u2019t talk about with certain friends or family members and so you stay off those religious or political or whatever topics with them.\u00a0 But that makes for a lot of superficial talk, and you\u2019re just not into that anymore.\u00a0 Yes, it\u2019s social, it\u2019s polite, but it\u2019s neither constructive nor fulfilling for you. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>You are left alone with your thoughts and ideas on those topics, sometimes with no one else around you – for years – sharing those views, or with whom you can discuss them.\u00a0 You read everything you can on the topic and still don\u2019t find much outside interest, so it is indeed a lonely path you are walking here.\u00a0 It is a time of great incubation, where the Universe has designed it so that you have time alone to keep you from disbursing your energy until you have sufficiently built it.\u00a0 With no one to talk and discuss with, your thoughts and ideas will have time to gather and brew, and you are likely to have profound meditations at this time.\u00a0<\/span>That\u2019s usually what is going on with the eccentric family member.\u00a0 That quiet one at the table may simply have a very active life – inner or outer – elsewhere.\u00a0 Outside the interests of friends and family.\u00a0 That places her off to the side of the hamster wheel and gets her labeled as the odd one out. \u00a0I guess that makes us all the O3\u2019s right?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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