As we enter this silly time of the year, let's make note of the folks who are being doctored in the universities of the world. For starters, there's William Shatner, being doctored next month by his alma mater, McGill in Montreal, who responded, saying, "Dammit, I'm a doctor, not a captain." Who else? Note: in the course of my research for the 'honorary degrees' chapter of a possible forthcoming Bear's Guide, I discovered what may be the first honorary doctorate in America. Most accounts say it was Harvard President Increase Mather in 1684 (so that Harvard could have a 'doctor' on its faculty, and thus award its own doctorates). But in 1663, the Assembly of the Colony of Rhode Island gave an honorary medical degree, the Doctor of Phissicke and Chirurgery, to one John Cranston, says Frederick Waite's "Annals of Medical History."