I was at Indiana University touring the campus with a group of parents while my daughter Natalie was registering for fall classes. As I was looking up at the tower rising above the student union building I recalled the tragedy of the sniper at a Texas university in the 1960’s. I tried to remember his name, but could not. I called a well read friend and trivia bank, Deborah Adler and she could not recall either.

As I was walking away, a fellow university parent tapped me on the shoulder and said “Charles Whitman.” He had over heard my conversation and being a bit of a trivia buff as well, looked it up on his Blackberry.

We are surrounded by so much connectivity to so much information that unlimited data pours at us by just raising the question out loud. We have the equivalent of an entire university library available on an inexpensive pocket device. It is amazing and it has to herald a new age of man.

I still do not have a Blackberry and I do not even travel with a laptop often. I still carry books (at least two) and articles to read, and generally keep my cell phone on silent or vibrate. I am a dinosaur at age 55. I value quiet more than connectivity.

from Wikipedia:

Charles Joseph Whitman (June 24, 1941 – August 1, 1966) was a student at the University of Texas at Austin who killed 14 people and wounded 31 others as part of a shooting rampage from the observation deck of the University’s 32-story administrative building on August 1, 1966. He did this shortly after murdering his wife and mother. He was eventually shot and killed by Austin police.

An autopsy requested in Whitman’s suicide note revealed that he had a Glioblastoma brain tumor. This has led to speculation that the tumor was responsible for his rampage.[1]

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