My Great Uncle Bill invented Chevy's cruise control!

For real! I found this out over the weekend. The standard cruise-control-on-turn-signal design was a product of my kin. Uncle Bill worked for a design company so he didn't get the riches he undoubtedly deserved, but his name is on the patent for all of history to see. I find this to be highly impressive.

Perhaps even more impressive is that my great uncle doesn't have any sort of formal licensing or even a college degree. He was apprenticed to an engineer and learned all he needed to know in the field, so to speak. Which brings us to our overpopulation connection:

The days when you could succeed in life by taking the path of Uncle Bill are over. In an age when you can get a degree in turf management (!), you must know what you want to do early and you must go to school for it. Because if you don't, someone else will. I'm sad to live in a time when you can't just apprentice yourself out anymore. If Chevy was to look at a young Uncle Bill's resume today, they most likely wouldn't accept him. The result? Their cruise control design would be as lame as that on my Dodge Neon.