May 2016 Monthly Archive

Plagiario: “slave stealer”

Filed under “Irony”

slave stealer PLAGIORI

“The first person to use the term ‘plagiarism’ in connection with literary works was the Roman poet Martial, who lived in the first century C.E.” — Stuart P. Green Continue reading →

Tuesday, May 31, 2016 |

“George Orwell, call your office.”

If you want to read an indictment of American academia, as if you needed one, then I recommend Plagiarism and the Culture War. In it, Theodore Pappas documents the wholesale plagiarism committed by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his doctoral work, not to mention the varied and wondrous contortions of the academic establishment as they sought to studiously ignore this indisputable fact. Of course, this particular instance is not the sum and substance of modern academic corruption, but it does provide a wonderful example of how it all works. If you are in any doubt about how advanced our public corruption is, just write a letter to your local paper on how MLK was a plagiarist, and see what happens. Suddenly, mirabile dictu, people like you who believe that a man should be judged by the content of his character and not by the color of his skin will be branded . . . racists. George Orwell, call your office.
Douglas Wilson

“Theft and fraud are driven by zero-sum thinking”

But sin is like that. Sin is blinkered and it naturally and easily assumes, in the grip of envy and covetousness, that more for him is less for me, and since I am in this for me, we have to work on more for me and less for him, and devil take the hindmost. Theft and fraud are driven by zero-sum thinking, which is one of the underlying theological reasons for opposing and rejecting them.
Douglas Wilson

“see you later, alligator”

You don’t have to cite anyone when you write ‘on the one hand’ or ‘on the other.’ And as my son once observed (please note the citation), no one knows who was the first person to say ‘see you later, alligator.’ But perhaps I should take that back. Maybe somebody does know. Maybe I am just the one who does not know. It sounds like it might have come from one of those Tin Pan Alley songs in the twenties.
Douglas Wilson