My MA diploma says the degree was conferred on me “with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto.” Ever since, I have been trying to figure out what rights and privileges I have pertaining thereto. I once even met one of the people who signed the diploma. When I asked him, he said, “Beats me.” Can you tell me where the phrase comes from and what it means? –Edith W., Greenbrae, California
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It’s about time somebody called the diploma industry’s bluff on this. As far as I can tell, the only rights my degree conferred on me were the right to get into the university library after 3 PM and the right to receive unlimited fund-raising letters from the development department. (Don’t hold your breath, gang.) A diploma does give you the right to say you’re an alumnus, not an entirely trivial matter, but otherwise its significance is pretty nebulous. One of my sources grandly declares that it grants you “the privilege of being counted among the community of scholars.” Pardon me while I gag. I gather the phrase is used in lieu of some more practical benefit, e.g., a “job,” which, as holders of English lit and anthro degrees can tell you, isn’t necessarily part of the program. The phrase is redolent of 19th-century humbuggery, but exactly where it originated is unknown.
I’m from the Midwest (North Dakota, to be specific, which spawned Eric Sevareid), widely held to be the paradigm for the nation, pronunciation-wise. Back home we called the year that begins the next millennium “two thousand one” and the year following it “two thousand two.” The year 2000 is the last year in this millennium. Just what do you think happened in Year Zero, anyway?
Unless I’m missing something, you slipped a bit in your discussion of area codes. You said “the switching system requires that the middle digit in each code be a 1 or a 0, which means there are only 152 numbers available.” If this in fact were the only constraint, there would actually be 200 possible combinations (10 x 2 x 10). But I believe there’s a further constraint: the first and third digits may not be 1 or 0. This leaves eight digits available for positions one and three, or 8 x 2 x 8 = 128 possible area code combinations. So where does 152 come from? And if in the future the constraint on the middle digit is eliminated, how do you figure there will be 792 potential codes? –Paul Chapin, Reston, Virginia
