Erica, Erika

The New York Times Corrections column makes for unpredictably enjoyable reading:

An article on Jan. 11 about the television show United States of Tara, whose protagonist has dissociative identity disorder (once known as multiple personality disorder), misidentified a soap opera character who has the illness and the actress who portrays her. Viki Lord Davidson, a character on ABC's One Life to Live played by Erika Slezak, has the disorder — not Erica Kane, a character on ABC's All My Children portrayed by Susan Lucci.

The Four (at Least) Faces of Tara (New York Times)

My friend Stefan Hagemann caught this mistake last month. Stefan, feel vindicated!

[The Times correction links to the wrong article; I've linked to the right one above.]

George Schneeman (1934-2009)

[Window. Color photocopy, 2006.]

The painter George Schneeman died a few days ago:

If George Schneeman was an “unfairly obscure” painter, as The New Yorker once called him, he did not mind it very much.

For Mr. Schneeman, making art was a deeply personal act, though also a highly social one. He was known in an intimate New York circle for his long, fruitful collaborations with a flock of well-known poets, among them Peter Schjeldahl, Anne Waldman, Larry Fagin and Ted Berrigan.

George Schneeman obituary (New York Times)
George Schneeman slide show (New York Times)

Plagiarism policy plagiarized?

There's a Little Rascals short, Hook and Ladder (1932), in which the kids spot a fire in the firehouse. "Fire in the firehouse!" they shout.

If Southern Illinois University had a firehouse, it would be burning today. The committee developing a university-wide plagiarism policy appears to have plagiarized Indiana University's plagiarism policy.

Here's the relevant passage from Indiana:

Plagiarism is defined as presenting someone else's work, including the work of other students, as one's own. Any ideas or materials taken from another source for either written or oral use must be fully acknowledged, unless the information is common knowledge. What is considered "common knowledge" may differ from course to course.

a. A student must not adopt or reproduce ideas, opinions, theories, formulas, graphics, or pictures of another person without acknowledgment.

b. A student must give credit to the originality of others and acknowledge indebtedness whenever:

(1) directly quoting another person's actual words, whether oral or written;

(2) using another person's ideas, opinions, or theories;

(3) paraphrasing the words, ideas, opinions, or theories of others, whether oral or written;

(4) borrowing facts, statistics, or illustrative material; or

(5) offering materials assembled or collected by others in the form of projects or collections without acknowledgment.

And now behold the following passage from Southern's draft policy, offered without attribution:

Plagiarism is presenting another existing work, original ideas, or creative expressions as one's own without proper attribution. Any ideas or materials taken from another source, including one's own work, must be fully acknowledged unless the information is common knowledge. What is considered "common knowledge" may differ from subject to subject. To avoid plagiarizing, one must not adopt or reproduce material from existing work without acknowledging the original source. Existing work includes but is not limited to ideas, opinions, theories, formulas, graphics, and pictures. Examples of plagiarism, subject to interpretation, include but are not limited to directly quoting another's actual words, whether oral or written; using another's ideas, opinions, or theories; paraphrasing the words, ideas, opinions, or theories of others, whether oral or written; borrowing facts, statistics, or illustrative material; and offering materials assembled or collected by others in the form of projects or collections without acknowledgment.

Says Arthur M. "Lain" Adkins, chair of the SIU committee that created the draft policy, "It could be a coincidence."

Says SIU administrator David West, "We think this is a non-story. It hasn't become official yet. If there's a problem with the draft, we will correct it."

As a college prof, I'm familiar with student use of coincidence and draft defenses. They don't work. Words and phrases and sentences don't organize themselves into parallel series as a matter of coincidence. And when work is submitted for critical evaluation, it becomes something more than a draft. Saying that one hasn't yet added the necessary citation defies any measure of what's plausible. SIU's draft policy has been publicly available for download, as its creators sought comment from the university community. USA Today reports that SIU's trustees will be voting later this spring.

Read more:

SIU accused of copying plagiarism policy, with links to relevant documents as PDFs (The Daily Egyptian)
Southern Illinois' plagiarism policy appears plagiarized (USA Today)

A related post
"Local Norms" and "'organic' attribution"

A few words from Harvey Pekar

One of my favorite moments in the film American Splendor (dir. Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, 2003) comes from Harvey Pekar's story "Alice Quinn" (words by Pekar, art by Sue Cavey). Pekar has been thinking about a college classmate and "all the decades of people" he has known:

The more I thought, the more I felt like crying. Life seemed so sweet and so sad, and so hard to let go of in the end. But hey, man, every day is a brand-new deal, right? Just keep on working and something's bound to turn up.

Leave Me Alone!, a jazz opera by Pekar and Dan Plonsey, streams from Oberlin College tomorrow night, 8:00 EST.

Related reading
All Harvey Pekar posts

Naming names

People mentioned by name in Rod Blagojevich's closing argument to the Illinois Senate:

Phil Bredesen : George W. Bush : John Cullerton : Jimmy DeLeo : Willie Delgado : Dick Durbin : David Ellis : Rahm Emanuel : John Glenn : William Holland : Ted Kennedy : John McCain : Bob Menendez : Barack Obama : Harry Reid : Bill Richardson : Elizabeth Taylor : John Warner

Yes, Elizabeth Taylor.

Homonym accident

From a Rural King circular.


Related post
No job too small

Snowbound

(A house, in the village.)

MAN
    My little house must think it queer
    To watch my woods fill up with snow.

(He looks out his window, at his woods, distant, wistful. Curtain.)

Life imitating life

"Let me make this perfectly clear. Let me make this perfectly clear: I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing."

Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, on The View this morning, after declining an invitation to do his (reportedly great) Nixon impersonation

A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup!

In the news:

A team of Swedish and Danish researchers tracked coffee consumption in a group of 1,409 middle-age men and women for an average of 21 years. During that time, 61 participants developed dementia, 48 with Alzheimer’s disease.

After controlling for numerous socioeconomic and health factors, including high cholesterol and high blood pressure, the scientists found that the subjects who had reported drinking three to five cups of coffee daily were 65 percent less likely to have developed dementia, compared with those who drank two cups or less. People who drank more than five cups a day also were at reduced risk of dementia, the researchers said, but there were not enough people in this group to draw statistically significant conclusions.

Dr. Miia Kivipelto, an associate professor of neurology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and lead author of the study, does not as yet advocate drinking coffee as a preventive health measure.

Coffee Linked to Lower Dementia Risk (New York Times)

[Post title from the song "Jave Jive" (1940), words by Milton Drake, music by Ben Oakland.]

Hi (and Lois) tech

Last week, the Flagstons sat in their living room watching a wood-grained grey television set. On Inauguration Day, the living room held a flat-screen television. And now it's gone. Perhaps it was a rental?

In today's living room (whose curtains, by the way, have lost their spots), the television, tucked away in a corner, appears to be of a still-older design (as does Thirsty Thurston). Nothing too surprising here: the Flagstons have changed refrigerators twice in the past four months. (Thanks, Jai, for pointing out that second new fridge.)

Elsewhere in today's living room, Hi is talking on an LPhone, whose name derives not from Lois' telephone habits but from the L-shaped dock. Note that the keypad changes as you talk. Sweet.



The strangest bit of Hi (and Lois) tech in the room is that light switch, resembling no known light switch.

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts