Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Wow-Just Wow.

Did you hear about the latest plagiarism "scandal" to hit the Interwebz?

Long history of faking it: 

"Only last month, Mr. Lehrer had publicly apologized for taking some of his previous work from The Wall Street Journal, Wired and other publications and recycling it in blog posts for The New Yorker, acts of recycling that his editor called “a mistake.”

Acts of recycling? Like that idiotic thing I do with boxes and cans at home?

Umm...writers don't get to "recycle" other people's stuff.

You can be inspired, pay homage, etc...but copying is not just lazy it's really stupid, too.

Apparently, this guy studied neuroscience!

Meaning-he is supposed to know something about the human brain.

So, if he ostensibly knew something about the human brain, why coudn't his human brain process the difference between one's own thoughts, stuff someone else already thought of and published and then factored in the risk of trying to pass off the later as the previous? Perhaps he should have studied Risk Management?

"Mr. Lehrer, who majored in neuroscience at Columbia, rose to prominence writing about science in the mold of Malcolm Gladwell or David Brooks through his blog on Wired.com, which then moved to The New Yorker, and quickly became a popular paid speaker at conferences."

[Ed note: Both Gladwell and Brooks are highly overrated and boring writers.]

I guess the money and the fawning was good, but the neuroscience brain from Columbia university (didn't POTUS go there, too-and wasn't Ahmedinejad there recently...weird...) could not handle the difference between original material and "recycled". Or he knew it, and decided it was worth the risk even in the digital age.

Oh well. Another one bites the dust.