Plagiarism is the highest form of flattery... right?

One day when I was in the trenches of the FSView, editing hell out of some Word documents that my writers submitted, I nudged my mouse a bit. I was reading through a review for a movie that had just been released, and when I nudged my mouse the cursor on my screen absentmindedly hovered over a bit of text. As I read ahead in the review, out of the corner of my eye, I could see a little yellow box pop up near my cursor.

That's queer, I thought.

What was even more queer was that the little box was a url. To Roger Ebert's website. In two clicks I was reading one of his recent reviews (for the same movie) and I happened to read the same sentence there that I had just read in that Word document. Hmm.

A mediocre newspaper lost an above-average writer that day due to plagiarism. The writer said in defense that she normally looks at other reviews to get ideas, but she ends up changing the words before she "writes" her reviews. Naturally, I began suspecting all of her past reviews of "sharecropping," (I just made that up. Mad copyrights on that!) but I couldn't find another instance of intense borrowing. To be honest, I think I was okay with her continuing to write (so sue me, we were really hurting for writers), but she just stopped submitting things.

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One day, years later, while I was sitting at work at my current job, in the front office of the History Department of Florida State University, a professor came in and started telling this story while holding up this paper he had:

"So I get this paper from a student. The front page is full of the instructions he wrote to someone else on how to write the paper. The rest of the paper is plagiarized. And some of the paper is plagiarized from my own work on the subject." [Lots of paraphrasing here; it's been a while.]

I'd heard about cheating before, but this was simply stupefying. I could not believe it.

A few months later at the same job, I came across The Chronicle's piece on "shadow scholars," people who work at companies that write academic papers for students. You know, "for reference use only." It's a good read.

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Finally, this morning, whilst checking my social media, I found a tip from someone pointing me to this blog post. Now, I didn't know the person sending me the link, and I didn't know the person who posted on this blog, and I didn't know what it was all about. When I finished reading the post, it took me a second to figure out that I, too, may have been plagiarized.



ding-ding-ding-ding-ding

The above really weird recommendation blog post from Andy "Short Stack bassist" Clemmensen is a huge ripoff. (The Google cache is here. The original post is MIA as of right now.)

The first 1.5 sentences are from the first part of the final paragraph of my Kanye review. And the middle third of the second paragraph is all mine as well.

Does it really take less time and effort to rip people's words from different reviews? You (or, more likely, some intern somewhere) really can't slog together 277 words for your bullshit column?

Give me a fucking break, Short Stack.

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Update 12/13/2010. 9:44 AM EST:

Feel free to harangue world-renowned bassist Andy Clemmensen on Twitter!

http://twitter.com/andyclemmensen

http://twitter.com/justindlc/status/14327449760301056

Library, censorship, wtf

[Note: Despite the questionable subject matter of this post, the links are entirely legitimate. And, outside of some strong language, are entirely safe for work.]

One time in my university's library I was doing research and writing up stuff at one of their many publicly available computers (and this was before they started making everyone scan in with their student IDs to get into the library). During a paragraph I was writing on 19th century copyright practices or some such brilliance, I happened to take a stretch and noticed what the guy no further than a foot from me was looking at on his computer.

pr0n

He was just searching and scrolling away. Pictures, videos, whatever. Don't exactly remember. So I did my civic duty: saved and closed my documents, got up, and tattled on the dude to the nearest library worker.

Years pass.

Now, this fall, I've been spending most Thursday evenings in my local public library. I work until 5 pm, I head to the library, I have an online class at 6 pm, and Jessica volunteers at the library (teaching people how to do basic things with computers) from 6:30–8:30 pm.

There have been the occasional disturbances: a guy listening to music too loudly on his phone; kids running around screaming. These are usually tamped down in a timely manner by the library workers. But last night, in the library, while I was online, in class, listening to presentations from my fellow students (thankfully after I had done my own presentation), a young man walked up to another young man at my table and greeted him with:

"Yo, cousin, I just got off the phone. I was on the computer when they called. The deal is, you get three days free. You can fuck any bitch you want. Then they set you up with an agency, and if you still like it, and you still wanna do it, it's like $300 to $3000 per scene!"

The first guy, let's call him "Asspiring [sic] Male Pr0n Star" (AMPS) then proceeds to hand the other young man (let's call him "Earbuds"; he spent the previous hour sitting at the table, looking around, rocking out his earbuds, bobbing his head, and nothing else) his cell phone. AMPS asks Earbuds to call the last number in his phone. He then tells 'Buds to talk to the girl on the 800 number.

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AMPS: Tell her you're [AMPS' actual name, REDACTED].

Earbuds: (Each time when speaking, removing cell phone from ear, bringing microphone end of cell phone close to mouth.) I'm [REDACTED].

AMPS: Hey, ask her what her name is.

Earbuds: Hey, what's your name? ... (to AMPS): [unintelligble]

AMPS: Hey, hey. Ask her if she's a porn star.

Earbuds: Are you a porn star? (shakes head at AMPS while listening to answer)

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It was like some kind of stage play scene. A guy in the corridors telling a man onstage how to woo a lady.

After the phone call was terminated, over the course of the next hour, AMPS continues to encourage Earbuds to do "it" too. Despite being in a public library, AMPS has no qualms with talking about this subject matter at an audible level. He even once turned around, faced the open library, and said at a louder volume, "Who here wanna be a male porn star?!"

So during this time I'm reacting in various ways. I'm:

-Trying to pay attention in class.

-Trying to analyze the characters in conversation in front of me to see if they will be a threat to my well-being.

-Trying to determine if they are making up this conversation (I had my headphones on — maybe they were messing with me?).

-Pulling my laptop a little closer when AMPS starts saying that he just "needs to find a computer. Somebody must have a laptop around here." because the library blocks "adult websites" and he needs to follow up on his online application.

Sooner or later, Earbuds got to thinking. He asked AMPS who he had heard this stuff from:

AMPS: I heard it from myself, cousin. I found the website. I went to www.ask.com — you know, they tell you anything you want to know there. So I put in "How do I become a male porn star." And they got all the websites right there, cousin. They got gay porn, you know, girls looking for girls, and I found this website, [REDACTED]. Just go there, fill out the application, you put your phone number and they give you a call. They told me they got two locations in Tallahassee.

AMPS went on to say something about him having to put $2.97 on his debit card to get the gig. Then he talked about how he spent $100 on Extenze, how he got a month's supply, and how if it doesn't work you get your money back and you get to keep the pills... but it does work and "your dick grow half an inch a day! Girls be running from you when they see that." (I struggled with the logic here: I'm guessing "you" want to take Extenze so "your dick grow" so you can impress girls; however, it works so well that "your dick grow" too much, and you scare the girls off. Yet, this is still a good thing, I guess, because AMPS was still pimping Extenze. Hmm...)

"Pop some Viagra and Extenze, that makes your shit stand up straight like the Statue of Liberty!" (AMPS extenze [sic] his left arm straight up to the ceiling, like he's holding a torch.)

You know, one time one of his friends had to go to the hospital because of it.

So I kept thinking that a library worker would walk by and "SHUSH!" them, but it never happened. Then, after an hour, moving just as quickly as when he first (*cough*) came in, AMPS was headed for the door, with Earbuds trailing close behind.

Riddle

A plane holding multiple men and their sons crashes alone in the woods on the border of the USA and Canada. One of the surviving sons with two coins (one of which is NOT a nickel) totaling 30 cents in his pockets is rushed to the hospital and the surgeon refuses to operate, saying, "I can't operate on my own son!" What two coins are you paying the surgeon to get the surgeon to explain the meaning of the comment and also to get the surgeon to answer that if this plane crashed in the woods without anyone around, would it make a noise where you bury the survivors?