Nice People Thread Part 9 - and so it continues

lostinrates

Oh, and in other news

Rip to Bombay duck doughnut ( bombolone) the feral cat who looked like part snowshoe cat part beaver. She was found this week in by next door farmer in his straw barn having died sometime this summer.

chewmylegoff

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I follow my Dad's prejudices in relation to qualifications - anyone who puts his qualifications in random emails / letters / etc is an idiot, and only a medical doctor should call himself "Dr. Smith" or whatever, except in purely professional matters where it is justified. I also agree with him that Captain John Smith (ret'd) is a sure sign of someone you wouldn't want to get stuck with in a lift.

I get confused by doctors because once they get sufficiently senior they seem to start calling themselves "Mr" again.

I got an email from an estate agent who had LLB in his signature the other day. It did not increase my opinion of him!

Anyone who lists their qualifications in correspondence should be given a firm slap.

Other annoying things in email signatures:

Patronising messages reminding me not to print the email out in order to save the world.

Writing your full name but inserting your middle initial. Chew M. Legoff. Even worse: C. My Legoff Jnr.

Not capitalising your the first letters of your name (I have a friend whose company "style" was not to use capitals at all, thankfully he has left).

Worst of all is using a whole rainbow of colours, especially light greens or yellows which I can hardly read on a white background.

lostinrates

chewmylegoff wrote: »

I get confused by doctors because once they get sufficiently senior they seem to start calling themselves "Mr" again.

I got an email from an estate agent who had LLB in his signature the other day. It did not increase my opinion of him!

Anyone who lists their qualifications in correspondence should be given a firm slap.

Other annoying things in email signatures:

Patronising messages reminding me not to print the email out in order to save the world.

Writing your full name but inserting your middle initial. Chew M. Legoff. Even worse: C. My Legoff Jnr.

Not capitalising your the first letters of your name (I have a friend whose company "style" was not to use capitals at all, thankfully he has left).

Worst of all is using a whole rainbow of colours, especially light greens or yellows which I can hardly read on a white background.

I don't capitalise to friends often. I mean...come on, you've seen my efforts. Most of the time I just sign my stuff 'l' . If they are lucky.

In pale lime. Or primrose.



Actually I have a fantastic pen that rights in marble colours, I love it, even though I realise its target audience is ten year old girls. I will not give it up till it dies.

neverdespairgirl

chewmylegoff wrote: »

I get confused by doctors because once they get sufficiently senior they seem to start calling themselves "Mr" again.

I got an email from an estate agent who had LLB in his signature the other day. It did not increase my opinion of him!

I had an email a while ago from a managing agent which ended with his signature BA (Hons). Ditto your feelings.

Signed:

Never D Girl LLM (London)

misskool

chewmylegoff wrote: »

I get confused by doctors because once they get sufficiently senior they seem to start calling themselves "Mr" again.

This is mostly for surgeons who (in the 18th century, did not have to be a medical practitioner). They were part of a guild of surgeons and therefore, didn't have the right to be called dr.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119265/

There's something about barbers and the red and white stripe as well but zag will soon be along to tell us about it

neverdespairgirl

misskool wrote: »

This is mostly for surgeons who (in the 18th century, did not have to be a medical practitioner). They were part of a guild of surgeons and therefore, didn't have the right to be called dr.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119265/

There's something about barbers and the red and white stripe as well but zag will soon be along to tell us about it

it was, for a long time, the "Guild of Barber-Surgeons" rather than different bodies. Barber-surgeons cut your hair, shaved you, pulled your teeth out, set broken bones, let blood, and did surgery, too. So the red and white pole outside a barber's shop stands for blood and bandages, I think.

Barber-surgeons didn't just set up in shops, they got a lot of business from the Army and Navy, too.

I have a vague feeling that monks and priests who were physicians or hospitellers needed to associate themselves with a surgeon or two, because those in religious orders were forbidden to shed human blood. That's why the Dominicans used hot pokers, the rack, and similar for torture to sniff out heresy, because apparently that was OK, not involving blood. Similarly, fighting bishops, such as the Bishop of Durham or York who fought at Crecy (can't remember which one it was) used a mace or a morning star whe fighting, because that was a crushing weapon, not a blood-spilling one like a sword or bow.

Although barbers and surgeons went their own way centuries ago, the Guild of Barbers in the City still calls its hall the Barber-Surgeons' Hall - I went to drinks there, once. It's just a short way south of where we live, near London Wall.

Edited to add - there were lots of jolly public dissections in the Hall during the Restoration, where attending an "anatomisation" was the height of fashion.

zagubov

vivatifosi wrote: »

Zag, if you're around can I please ask you a question? As an OU tutor, what percentage of people would you say did it for a qualification and what percentage did it for the enjoyment of the subject/enrichment/other non-quali related reasons?

I'm curious as to whether or not the OU is losing students now that their prices have gone up. Not so much the degree students but the ones who did it for other reasons.

I've seen a course I quite fancy (it's world history) on Coursera. It is a Princeton Course that runs for the same 3 month period with the same lectures as the actual Princeton course. The lectures are recorded and uploaded the same time as the paying students take it. You buy and study the same core text (£29.99 on Amazon). Only difference is that as Princeton can't mark 70,000 essay scripts, you upload them for peer review, which follows a set of guidelines. Plus of course you don't get a certificate to say you studied at Princeton.

I'm trying to think why the second group will continue with the OU when there's so much good stuff for free.

I thoroughly enjoyed teaching my group (I was heavily into the adult ed. side of FE).

They almost all had no prior degree and felt that it was time to fix that and they had consciously chosen this particular course. Being awarded the degree qual at the end did seem to be an important target for them.

I would have loved to continue with the course. It ran until about the mid -noughties but DS arrived, and I started a part-time MSc.

misskool wrote: »

This is mostly for surgeons who (in the 18th century, did not have to be a medical practitioner). They were part of a guild of surgeons and therefore, didn't have the right to be called dr.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119265/

There's something about barbers and the red and white stripe as well but zag will soon be along to tell us about it

Thank you missk, I'll handle this one: it was a compromise between the medical schools of Lancashire(red) and the surgical schools of Yorkshire (white). the diagonal stripes were a symbol of the perpetual crookedness of British teeth. If it rotates, that indicates to us that healthcare costs are spiralling out of control.;)

dryhat

This has provided some good material for my upcoming thesis on forum psychology.

I will be signing the finished work using my official title...

Dr. Yanek Hat

silvercar

lostinrates wrote: »

One of the utterly charming things about fil (and some other men in my life actually) is they often book restaurants in their first names only. This results in them being called, mr first name all evening of course, but its utterly honest and Normal and charming I think.

Much nicer than people who just whip out titles 'just for the purposes of reservations' at the other end of the extreme. I don't know why, as it doesn't bother me when people do that. But I do like going put for the evening with mr found in stead of mr in rates sometimes.

lostinrates wrote: »

Doesn't work for us. I book thinks in our surname. My first name leads to too much confusion,

Our first pear from the garden ever is ripe!

So much excitement.


In fact....I should check the figs too......

misskool wrote: »

I enjoy booking restaurants in my name then DH becomes mr kool

My father always used to book restaurants in his first name because his (as in my maiden) surname was long and people used to splutter over it rather than spell it exactly as it sounds.

From that I learnt that we should do the same. My surname now is very short, and if anyone hears it slightly wrong, you can never guess what the correct name is eg they miss hear "car" and write ""star" so you ask for a table reserved for "car" and they can't find it. OHs first name is used as a surname, so no-one bats an eyelid.

vivatifosi

dryhat wrote: »

This has provided some good material for my upcoming thesis on forum psychology.

I will be signing the finished work using my official title...

Dr. Yanek Hat

Mmmm.... I guess that now may be a good time to come clean. We are not human at all. Rather the NP are very adept rhesus monkeys and are already part of an experiment on forum psychology to see whether - through our virtual IDs - we can get other humanoids to come out to play. When we are not here our human masters have taught us to trade bitcoins.