Common Sense

Reading this book reminded me of a lecture by John Stossel("the 'stache), which I attended a couple days ago. The main point(s) of his lecture included
-lessening government controls (because:_)
-government controls usually end up hurting the people they are trying to help
and more importantly,

-government controls and regulations hinder new improvements and discourage experimentation and creativity

In the book, the idea of common sense was cited as reason for ruling against an airspace/property law, to protect the commercial enterprise. Even though this covers the main topic/thesis of the book, I'm still going to repeat: Where is our common sense? Where is the voice of reason when the consumer, the very people the companies are making a living off of, is being violated?

Plagiarize This

Almost as much fun as plagiarizing was, even more fun was telling everyone my homework was to plagiarize at will.
"I'm going to the library to pick out a book and completely plagiarize it for my paper."
...
"You're what?"

At first glance, I thought the assignment was going to be easy. When I actually got down to writing though, I realized that it reminded me of ghostwriting in the sense that I had to camouflage my writing in order to blend in with the plagiarized text. Furthermore, as a huge hint to anyone who's reading mine, I didn't know exactly how to go about blending my own text and the real text in-so I made up whole paragraphs instead of slyly inserting words or sentences and rearranging the syntax. Unfortunately for me, I do think my plagiarism should be somewhat easier to detect because of this.

Finally, I also did not feel a sense of guilt as some others said they felt in class. I did feel somewhat more detached, but objectively, I knew I had to plagiarize for the assignment and I did. I went to the library with a specific purpose in mind to pick out a random book, discredit that author's work, and use it as my own. As "cold" as that may sound, if it was the assignment, I had no choice other than to do it, and I didn't have any lingering doubts about it.

When I think about it, the difference between plagiarism and non plagiarism is a couple quotation marks and some brief annotation at the end stating where those words originated from. That's all it takes to change from receiving an "A" on a paper to getting kicked out of school.

I didn't like it

For my ghostwriting paper, I used my friend as the writer to base my work off of. Now I'm no Shakespeare when it comes to writing, but trying to emulate my friend's work was painful. Granted he's not a "writing" type of person, but when the first sentence of your sample paper starts with a run on sentence-you know you're in for a fun time.

Since I knew his writing style somewhat well before this project, I had a slight idea as to what I would be doing. As a concrete example, I borrowed a paper he had written previously on a somewhat broad subject and started from there. Naturally, when one approaches a very open ended project like this, one has to choose to write about a topic the author has almost no idea about. That's why I chose abortion (and the consequences on society of abortion), yes abortion, to write my "fictional" research paper on. I have no idea why I chose that topic, and more specifically the effects of abortion on society, to write about. Maybe I needed to get in touch with my inner pregnant woman dilemma, that all guys need to do...or not.

Run on sentences, random questions in the middle of the paragraph, improper use of quotations with no citations, and way too many pronouns were just some of the land mines I had to not only step on, but plant in the paper myself. Coming from a very structured, organized approach to writing and having to ignore that same "subconscious" writing voice in place of a looser, more liberal style was difficult to say the least. I could compare it to Tom Brady being forced to copy the form and throwing style of a high school quarterback. That inner "instinct" would tell him to keep his foot or hold the ball differently than the high school quarterback, yet he would have to ignore it. I also remember some others saying the same things in class.

Combine all that with subject material that I knew next to nothing about, and you have the ingredients for a winning paper. I just hope there was no permanent damage done.

Don't tase me bro!

Reading the university rules for academic misconduct made me feel like I was out on parole, scared that a "investigating officer" could raid my room for suspicious documents and send a whole SWAT team to tase me. (Don't tase me bro!)

It's always fun to see what different "communities" regard as particularly vicious and dirty tactics. We all live by a general set of guiding principles and common law, but the real fun starts when looking at the rules, both written and unwritten, in these smaller "communities." For example, in the sports circuit (except for baseball, which doesn't count as a true sport), steroids are the lowest form of cheating a player can instigate. Floyd Landis recently lost his tour titles because of this.

In the world of academics, plagiarism takes the place of steroids. Intellectual theft seems to be regarded as even worse than physical theft, with most of the critique and criticism directed at students. Where are the subjective microscopes for when professors poorly or even fail to credit the students who do most of their work for a publication? Issues like these are why plagiarism is not as clear cut as say steroids, for example.

I would be interested to see the university policy on plagiarism in say, music or the arts, but I wouldn't want to get tased.