This is dead serious.

Jesus.

Yes, there are now available ‘word generators’, based on random number theory.

I have a programmer friend who produced a ‘pornograhic generator’, utilizing the same theory, hilarious.

To me it simply smacks of either unbelievable megalomania or sycophancy (abject arse-licking, in other words)

Petty bourgeoisie indeed.

@Qeghdin Sew. What you say doesn’t undermine Baxxter’s accurate assessment. On the contrary, it proves his point.

@Qeghdin Sew

Saif Gaddafi, most notoriously, had a PhD supervisor. The much respected – and now reviled – and accomplished academic David Held supervised Gaddafi’s PhD ‘research’.

That infamous thesis passed muster, because no one involved had any interest in preventing its progress until, well, you know what happened next.

Now Gaddafi senior is dead, Gaddafi junior is a guest of his country’s security forces, the LSE’s director has been replaced, and Saif Gaddafi’s former supervisor has washed up at a quiet univeristy, well out of plain sight.

Muscat’s supervisor may well have known what he was (or was not) doing. Don’t make the common mistake of assuming that every academic is beyond reproach.

Abulafia, I’m a huge fan of yours. Your comment on distance learning PhDs and the ridiculous title of Doctor has just increased my admiration tenfold.

You ended your book on Frederick II with something about “ex oriente lux”. I suppose you could have added that ex meridione stercus.

So we have people getting PhDs who are incapable of doing their own proofreading.

No wonder the world is in the fucking gutter.

If you can’t write your own thesis, properly and beautifully, and do your own proofreading, then you shouldn’t be getting a PhD, whether it’s in IT or any other subject.

PhDs are now worth jack shit precisely because every two-bit zaghzugh with a keyboard is being let through. You only have to look at our parliamentary line-up. There are more PhDs between them than there are brain cells.

Bingo.