First Knights and Compentent [sic] Researchers

This heavily disguised blog post is comprised of two parts: a true story involving some coworkers, modified for your reading pleasure and my legal protection; and an email (also heavily edited to protect the guilty) with an allegedly true story sent to me by Toque McToque, who thought it would make good blog fodder. I will let my 5.6 loyal readers be the judge of that.

Once there was a king who had promised lands to some of his knights, and one valiant knight was promised an especially beautiful parcel of land overlooking a river. However, the highest-ranking knight in the kingdom decided that he wanted that particular parcel of land. Not only that, he wanted to keep his original castle because it was close to the village, where all the action was, so he occupied two parcels of valuable land in the kingdom, because he could. This was known as the “right of the first knight.”

So Miss Sara Thooster spake thus: at Hardknox University she wrote her history Masters thesis on the history of the concept of the Right of the First Knight. Except she got it wrong every single time. Something like 180 references to the Right of the First Night, including in the title of the paper.

No one on her committee caught this. Her thesis was approved and published this way. Then about a month later, a professor (not on her committee) pointed out to her that the Right of the First Night is a completely different concept having to do with kings getting the first crack at new brides. He suggested, as she wrote to her thesis office, it could "call into question my compentency [sic!] as a researcher."

Ya think?

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