Professor, full or not, is NOT a degree; it is a job title. Though professors usually hold relevant scientific degrees, it is really up to the employer to determine what qualifications to require, and sometimes considerable exceptions are made when a candidate is perceived to be “the right person”. For a mad-scientist, securing a chair as full professor is mostly a sign of having enough patience to navigate the internal university politics (since the other obvious obstacle, of finding funding, has various nonconventional solutions).

Plus, getting to full professor after only ten years of academia is quite fast (though not unheard-of); ten years (give or take a few) is closer to what you’d expect for a PhD. But Helen, having far less patience than that, probably hasn’t seen enough of academia to quite realise that. (Time spent in the lab or otherwise doing SCIENCE is not necessarily time spent in academia.)

It’s a loosely-defined “Gilligan Cut”. (No, I didn’t give the link to TVTropes. You’re welcome.)

I’ve always felt that the chinstrap is actually quite sinister in and of itself – and ever since the introduction of Gendo Ikari to the world stage, I’ve been telling people that my suspicions were confirmed.

      We were quite the imaginative pair as children.  It’s good that our parents let us spend time together and develop our relationship as gifted outsiders so early on.  Somewhere I still have a unicorn puzzle with your childhood signature on it that you gave me when I was sick.

Love, Joshua Wigley

johnnyeczema@gmail.com

Smartest dinosaurs!