cerealjoe | They had never had a tyrant in Sparta. True story. (Reply)

Thought of the day: thank goodness I'm doing a PhD in mechanical engineering and not about ancient Greece.

Really, I'm quite certain that one would need to spend about ten years on a PhD in that field. I've been listening to the Yale University course by Donald Kagan about ancient Greece and oh boy, one must really fight it out to bring any kind of "innovation to the field" I bet! Still, it's quite a fascinating course, do have a listen it's on iTunesU, it's free and if you like ancient history, I'm sure you'll like it.

Then again maybe PhDs done about historical things like that are different. I actually don't really know what is required of a PhD outside of science... or outside of engineering science to be more precise. Heck, the requirements change from country to country and from school to school. The one thing everyone agrees about my PhD is that it's going to be damn hard to make a composite thesis (made up only of articles), neither of my supervisors has ever seen it done but I have faith! I still have two months and some to get to my goal of sending in two journal papers and if I advance as I have till now I'll have them done sooner than later! I will believe that till the last second, just watch me!

Anywho, I really just wanted to pimp out the course thing. I quite like iTunesU, there is tons of great stuff to be discovered but alas the user interface is still lacking a bit.

In other worldly wonders, have I shown this rose before? I bet those Greeks would have loved it! Or maybe not.