Years ago Philip Kirsten and his parents had dinner at our house. I think that Susie Stewart was also there at the time. If there was Grey Poupon on the table I cannot recall. I only remember that the subject of Evangel arose and suddenly Philip launched into a description of the biology teacher at Evangel College whom he described as being someone he had a personal problem with. I was not sure exactly what he meant by that. I cannot even recall now what the teacher's name was. However, at the time I did remember that I, too, had taken biology from that same teacher during the year that I was at Evangel and he had seemed to me boring in the extreme, monotone in his delivery of facts, which put me to sleep, even though he probably did know plenty about biology. Anyway, science always was my least favorite subject. What Philip's problem was with Evangel's biology teacher I really could not say. Phil had served as some type of assistant in the science department at Evangel but he was sort of vehemently incoherent on the subject over dinner. Anyway, I don't understand why I should care or be implicated in Philip's emotional problems, his immaturity and lack of communication skills. Anyway, Phil's Ph.D. is in chemistry if I remember rightly. However, I find it hard to understand these geeky science nerds. In my opinion, school politics is a subject to gloss over in a noncommittal way if you know what is good for your own career in academia because these little comments can come back to bite you later if you are not careful. Just look at what university politics did to Kent Stone's "Ph.D." career. So sad.
Along a similar vein, sadly we cannot give the Danish any credit for so devotedly obeying the Stereotypical Orders outlined in Nash's brilliant treatise. We are starting to think that Nash knew whereof he spoke, so generously have the Scandinavians attributed lavish credit to Nash's reputation as a scholar.
