>> I'm still impressed about the guy who got a grant to find out whether 
>> or not a duck's quack really does echo. WTF?
> 
> I am not sure that is true.

Well, I saw the team interviewed on the local news station, together 
with the duck they used for their experiments. The researcher (who 
looked like a lad from down the pub to me) stated that a duck's quack 
does, in fact, echo, and it is merely that ducks are not usually found 
in places where you would expect to find echoes.

> Anyway I saw it both on Brainiac and on 
> Mythbusters tried and falsified.

Unsurprisingly.

>> Surfing Wikipedia for a few hours is one thing. Somehow finding and 
>> actually reading academic papers is much harder. (I failed epically at 
>> this last time around...)
> 
> I still think you should try. But there is the problem of that BSc.
> BTW I am also not very good at reading papers. I have this problem that 
> I get distracted by possibly unrelated ideas popping into my head so 
> often that I can hardly finish a sentence. The only place I can read 
> seems to be in bath. That cuts the reading time to about an hour per 
> week. I should read at least 4 or 5 hours so...

Some of the papers on GHC are really well-written. (Mind you, I showed 
you SPJ's advice on writing a paper, right?)

>>>> Yes, but does anybody actually employ PhDs? Most of the ones I know 
>>>> of still hang around universities...
> 
> There should be a couple in your company. At least in the US, but given 
> what you do, also at least one in the UK. (if there isn't one, that may 
> explain some things).

Our boss sometimes introduces himself as "Doctor". OTOH, he's an idiot. 
And a self-important idiot at that.

>> (Of course, it's not like they have labels on them, so I can't be 
>> sure...) Most of the people who work here have degrees.
> 
> What degrees would that be?

Chemistry, mostly.

>> Most worryingly, I don't think anybody I met at uni had a PhD 
>> either... o_O
> 
> Could be. In other disciplines than computer science it is quite rare 
> not to have mainly PhD's in the staff.

Most of our staff seemed to be random Polish/Scandinavian/Ethiopian 
people with a vague grasp of English.

Not that I wish to imply that not speaking English is a bad thing, but 
when you're paid to speak to people in English, it would seem a 
necessary job requirement...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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