Saturday, March 29, 2008

Why The Name?

When I was in High School I took a Calculus class with a good friend of mine (All names are neglected here to protect the guilty). The class was easy, but I had a hard time with the teacher. She was horrible, she was more concerned with what instrument you wrote with rather than what you knew about the subject. One of those math teachers who didn't know to much about math and so graded you on what she knew, which was nothing. Needless to say, I got a C in the class.

I was a C student. Not really dumb, but I didn't apply myself. I have learned from my mistakes and corrected that. Now, back to the real story.

At one point in the class we were required to write a paper on Calculus. Interestingly this was the second ten page paper I had been required to write on the history of Calculus, the first coming in 8th grade. I wrote on Leibnitz: ten pages of mediocre writing. I got a C; I deserved it. I should note however that I went to the library, and actually put some effort into this paper.

My friend however, put extra effort into the paper. He decided to moc the teacher as he suspected she didn't really read the papers at all. His paper was entitled Diahretic Expostulations on Calculus. Think of it as Bullshit on Calculus. My friend was one of the few people with a computer at the time, he switched his font to Greek charters and typed like a monkey to fill the first page with Greek letters. The borders were 1.5 inches and the font was something like 15p. with 2.5 spacing. The entire ten pages could be condensed to about half a page of single spaced type with a normal font. The paper read "Calculus is cool, especially when written with pencil." He got an A+.

I hope my blog meets with as much success as his paper.

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