I didn’t last long as a Boy Scout, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the value of a good-looking merit badge. Boing Boing has some links to various nerd-oriented merit badges. I am particularly impressed with some of the designs and witticisms by the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique. This, in turn, reminds me of a post up at Kotaku about Activision patches (arguably the precursor of the “Achievement” system on Xbox Live).

If I were a craftier (and less busy) person, I would figure out some way to get the Geek Studies logo onto a patch or perhaps embroidered onto something. It’s not as scalable as logos I would normally design, but I had a burning desire to create a pixelated coat of arms in Adobe Illustrator.

Also, in my defense: I may have never gotten past “Tenderfoot,” but as a Cub Scout, I did come in second at the Pinewood Derby one year with a car emblazoned with the Flash’s insignia, and I won a creativity prize another year for my car designed to look like the Batmobile. (I assure you that it was a coincidence that my parents were Troop Leaders, or Den Parents, or whatever they were called, that year.)