[ale] Am I the only one that is laughing out load at this question?

[Mike Harrison]

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008, Greg Freemyer wrote:

> In school, which subject was your favorite?
>
>       a)  That's hard to say. I enjoyed advanced calculus, trigonometry,
> and quantum physics.
>
>       b)  Orchestra.
>
>       c)  Computer programming.
>
>
> I went for a), but I truly was laughing


c) did not exist when I went to high school, although
    I was exposed to some early "computers" then,
    including a greenbar paper teletype w/acoustic coupled modem
    that could "play" a football game, printing the field on greenbar
    paper. It could also run some math programs and print results.
    (Circa 1978)

So I opted for b), partially because I played the trombone,
but also because there was a bleeding edge class in electronic music that
had a genuine Moog synthesizer (monophonic, one note at a time)
and 2 reel to reel tape decks that we could layer tracks on
and my first Oscilliscope, Lissage patterns were sooo kewl..

As for a), the embarrassing real source of a childhood nickname "Muon"
which I spell as "Meuon" as a unique (now less so) login/moniker
is from when I corrected, and insisted I was correct when my high school
science teacher said atoms were made of 'Protons Neutrons and Electrons'
and I started in with all the other sub-atomic particles, spins, and 
half-lives.. why a Bohr atom representation was more accurate than
the simple rings and valence levels.. and... and.. the teacher told
the rest of the class, and me.. that I was crazy and shouldn't believe
what I was reading from those trash Sci-Fi authors. At the time,
Isaac Asimov's fiction and non-fiction textbooks were staple reading 
materials for me. The next semester, we got a real science teacher
who de-villified me (and I got A's) but the name stuck.

If my high school has had a decent program and teachers for for a),
it might have been a better experience.

To be on topic a bit more: I still do electronic music with a Midi 
Keyboard and Linux, and while RoseGarden, FluidSynth and Hydrogen
are good. "Reason 4.0" on Windows is one of the few reasons I
boot Windows at all at home, it's that good.

I haven't done much beyond basic business math with computers,
some geometry sometimes when I build things at home....