Leap Thoughts February 29, 2008

OK, not really, just a smattering of items from blogs today. 

•  This post over at SA is a delightful segue into a story I’ve been following all day about a White House staffer plagiarizing in a newspaper (this post started it all). A lot. What is interesting to me in the academic hand-wringing about Google and the Internet and their effects on increased plagiarism is that the hand-wringers and students don’t understand that just as easy as it is for people to steal material for their own purposes, it’s just as easy for me and others to find the original texts (today’s story is an example of this — people finding many more stories than the original example where this doofus plagiarized through Google — as well as the growing trend of citizen journalism aided by the Internet, typified by the recent Polk award given to Talking Points Memo). I’d bet that while plagiarism has increased, so too have findings of plagiarism have as well — and I wonder whether the latter has outpaced the former. [Update: he's done; boy, things happen fast these days]
• I have only been slightly following the two recent deaths of gay teens – one, 15yo who apparently asked a peer to be his valentine, who later shot him, and another who was beaten to death while in drag. The latter has been big news in Ft. Lauderdale, because of the gay-bashing that has gone on there in the past; the former has been touched on by Hillary, Barack, Anderson, and Ellen. Ellen said it well: as many strides as have been made in the past decade, gay people are still a long way from being treated as humans, let alone equally.
• On a lighter note, ALOTT5MA has a great post on an issue, again, that I’ve only been periodically following: the inevitable theft of the Sonics from Seattle. First, I think it’s admirable that the city is deciding to say, um, no to millionaires who want cities to fund their stadiums. OK, sure, that was after doing so for the Mariners and Seahawks, but at least they’re drawing a line; other cities (ahem) have still not got the message, even though everyone says they don’t pay off (including a Villanova professor who spoke at Ursinus last summer because I invited him:)). While I don’t have the passion for the Sonics like I do for the M’s, or even the random interest like I do the Seahawks, I do have fond memories of the Supes: I remember the excitement of the championship (Seattle’s only in any pro sport), I remember the heyday of Payton/Kemp, and I have a lingering fondness for Nate McMillan and the continually stoned Sam Perkins. I have always thought Seattle had something of an odd relationship with the Sonics, I think in no small part because of our own hang-ups with race, but it’s been a cornerstone of the sports scene for as long as Seattle has been a real city. There’s something to be said for that, and it will be too bad when the Sonics leave. Plus, they have had some fun logos, especially that first one.