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What was your favorite course of study? (yeah, it's biased -- do your best!)
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The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words
return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday February 02 2018, @01:34PM
When I was a teen boy I read the then much more recent books like Ignition! about the development of rocket fuels in the 50s or Gergel's insane autobiography of being a small time OSHA-free EPA-free organic chemist in the 40s and 50s and I was entranced, but reality struck that unless I developed a time machine to go back to 1930 or so, AND found a way to be one of the couple of guys who had a lot of fun without dying, I was going to be bored to death with chemistry.
Only a couple guys in history got to play with Florine based rocket fuels or OSHA-free organic chemistry synthesis in 1950, the rest of the time its pretty boring, but as you mention electronics is fun because from their invention until today, people have been goofing off sticking small electrolytic capacitors across the power line to blow them up. Tantalum's are even funner because there's no labeling standard and the always blow up eventually but blow up faster when hooked up in reverse (did I mention the lack of a labeling standard?). And "smoke emitting diodes", I don't know how people can F up simple power supply circuits other than intentionally but those labs were crazy, and those idiots are probably designing pacemakers and nuclear reactor control systems now which is pretty scary.