Strangers look askance when I tell them how long I've been working on my dissertation. I never know how to respond, except to sputter some pablum about intellectual honesty, scholarly responsibility and the difficulty of acquiring COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE in normative time.
Then I read a sentence in a peer-reviewed article from a leading journal that compels me to question whether I need COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE to write my dissertation. To wit:
The penalty [for identical murders committed years apart by siblings] was precisely the same—three months in prison and a fine of 700 pounds. As [Sherlock] Holmes observed in A Study in Scarlet, "There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before."
Now, I understand that the work in question focuses on Holmes, but the unacknowledged irony is too much. Is this poor soul so entrenched in THE DOYLE OEURVE that even the rudiments of COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE escape him? Do I actually have the upper hand on someone?
(Note: this post has been thoroughly Google-proofed. I don't write to mock, but sometimes a little incompetence on the part of someone else is good for soul and liver.)
Does it really say "The penalty were," too?
Posted by: Kerry Higgins Wendt | Friday, 08 December 2006 at 08:40 PM
No, it didn't. Chalk that up to my inexpert job o' masking.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Friday, 08 December 2006 at 09:33 PM
That would have been a real gift.
Posted by: Kerry Higgins Wendt | Sunday, 10 December 2006 at 02:09 AM