4 ms·

This article reminds me of the scariest joke: What do you call the guy who graduated last in his class from medical school? Doctor.

• SilasX 11y ago
  I've always felt that was ho-hum, as zingers go, since the standards can be so high that the lowest rank is still pretty good in absolute terms. It's like saying, "You know what I call a bronze medal? Last place." Er ... a bronze medal is still very impressive. If you want a clever anti-doctor zinger, I'd use something like, "You know what it's called when a really well-read expert diagnoses you wrongly on a hunch, gets it wrong, leaves you suffering for years, and never has their work reviewed? Medicine."
  • FroshKiller 11y ago
    A bronze medal is third place, not last place. Twenty-five countries competed in the luge in the 2010 Winter Olympics, and twenty-two of them went home without medals.
    • SilasX 11y ago
      That's my point: bronze is last out of an unhelpfully narrow subset of the population, just like "last in your class of medical school" is last out of a well-qualified group of people to begin with. And even if you were last at the Winter Olympics you mentioned, that's still better than the overwhelming majority of the world, and would say very little to establish that you're a bad athlete, as suggested by the medical school quip. To rephrase it in terms of your example, it would be like if I said, "What do they call the 25th best skiier in the world? Last place [at the Olympics]."