Wednesday 4 June 2008

Doctor! Doctor!

I had dinner last night with a lady who has two PhDs. If you ask me, this cheapens the doctoral currency.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I take the same approach to PhDs as Groucho Marx took to any club that would admit him.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Ha! Actually, this scholar did her PhDs proud. Quite the cleverpants. Decidedly unimpressed by my ignorance of the fact that her homeland, Sardinia, is an island. Did you know that Sardinia is an island? Apparently every schoolchild knows that Sardinia is an island.

Anonymous said...

My Mediterranean geography is all Shakespherian, I'm afraid. I was under the impression that Sardinia was an island, but I couldn't have ventured much further than that.

I don't know how the Italian higher education system compares with the rest of Europe, but perhaps the second PhD was a habilitation? Two PhDs in two different subjects shows an extraordinary dedication to manic depression.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Oh, well, maybe.

Exciting news from the OED: sardines, so called because they swim around Sardinia.

TimT said...

No, no, no. Don't be offput by her unimpressedness. She was just speaking in her native language, Sardonic.

You should be grateful she didn't hail from the isle of Crete. Because then she would have spoken like...

Anonymous said...

That is an exciting update from the OED. Equally delightfully, last night there was a Werner Herzog doco on SBS and it concluded with the most beautiful images of swifts flying through waterfalls (they live behind them, you know). God bless animalkind!

Walter Benjamin failed his habilitation and couldn't teach in German universities as a result. As Groucho said, any club...

Anyway, Tim is right. If that schoolchild line is a direct quote you shouldn't be bothered by it for a second. Some people are forever engaged in the pointless exercise of establishing themselves at the top of the pecking order in every conversation they have. Unfortunately you meet a lot of these people in academic circles.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Oh, no, no. She was very nice, and as someone who does smug and superior all too well, it was just the thing, to be sardonicised upon.

Anonymous said...

Oh darn it! Well, I guess I won't be outraged on your behalf then! ;-)

Sorry to jump to conclusions like that, but it sounded like something I've seen too often.

trixie said...

The advertisement of two phds poses an ohs risk, harlinator. how are those of us with just one to rest comfortably on our laurels knowing that our achievements have been doubled by a charming sardinian?

trixie said...

Delighted too to discover that it were the island that begot the fish and not the other way around, x

TimT said...

I thought it was the can wot begot the sardine, and Sardinia wot begot the can.

Sardinia, land of cans! Has a nice ring to it.

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Trust me, Trixie, my laurels were feeling pretty teensy. This lady had books and fellowships and manifold achievements coming out of her ears. All I had was a recipe for a salad with mangoes in it.

Lefty E said...

In Germany, she we would referred to as Dr Dr.

Which in turns reminds me how amusing "Portuguese Irregular Verbs" by Alex McCall is.

hehehee.