Ah, yes, I remember writing university essays. The process assumed that a mere student could never have an original thought. Anything that deserved thinking had been thought before. Therefore every assertion had to be referenced. I spent hours in the library, frantically thumbing through texts that I was sure I had read but now seemed utterly unfamiliar, looking for a page on which I was sure I had seen a particular sentence that I didn’t realize would be important at the time I read it, so that I could properly footnote it. Of course, in those days we assembled our data on 3x5 file cards. We didn’t have Google. Or Wikipedia. Or TurnItIn. TurnItIn? TurnItIn is a software program that compares a selected text with every other word that has ever been written -- or at least committed to computer memory -- to find instances of plagiarism. There are dozens of such programs. Wikipedia and Google have made it almost too easy for students to plagiarize. You search for some ideas; you find a few relevant paragraphs; you copy and paste them into your text -- Bingo! You have an essay! Universities now routinely apply programs such as TurnItIn to flag these examples of plagiarism -- copying someone else’s words and claiming them as your own. The practice is not only cheating, it’s often illegal. It violates copyright law; it steals someone else’s creative work. It’s like printing off a Robert Bateman painting and signing your own name to it. I may be hypersensitive to this issue. Years ago, someone sold one of my articles to a magazine, under his name. When I protested, I got an apology; he got the cheque already.
As individual as fingerprints
As we all know now, Melania Trump plagiarized parts of her speech to the Republican Convention last Monday night. She assured the news media that the words she spoke were her own. And probably 90 per cent of them were -- or at least her own ideas, polished by a professional speechwriter. But about 100 words were stolen from a similar speech, given by Michelle Obama eight years earlier. A Republican Party apologist defended Ms Trump’s speech, saying that she had merely used “common words and values.” His comment displays a lamentable lack of understanding of how language works. The English language contains several million words. Most of us, however, use only a few thousand words regularly. Further, every one of us has our own unique way of putting those preferred words together -- the order, the choice of modifiers, the structure of sentences, the metaphors and figures of speech… Those language patterns are as unique as fingerprints. Those subtle variations, for example, enable biblical scholars to ascertain -- 20 centuries after the fact -- that the Paul who wrote to the Corinthians, the Romans, the Galatians, and the Philippians was not the same Paul who wrote to Timothy or Titus.
Writers’ styles are as different as, say, the brush strokes of Rembrandt and Van Gogh.
Like lip-syncing
When TurnItIn compared Melania Trump’s and Michelle Obama’s speeches, it concluded that the chance of coincidence was one in a trillion! The likelihood of coincidence fades even further when you see the two women on a split screen, saying the same words with the same intonations, as if lip-syncing each other. Similar software has caught other plagiarizers. Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente’s personal nemesis, Ottawa blogger Carol Wanio, has repeatedly caught Wente lifting text from other writers, and paraphrasing others’ research without attribution. The Globe’s editor-in-chief, David Walmsley, had to apologize: “This work fell short of our standards.” Wente herself acknowledged in a column that she had been “careless.” (Disclosure: I copied those quotations from the Toronto Star and Wikipedia.) So far, only a lowly speechwriter has accepted any blame for Melania Trump’s indiscretion. Perhaps, at the upper Trump level, mistakes simply don’t exist. ********************************************************
Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved. To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN
Last week’s Sharp Edges column was about the ability of the internet to disseminate hate messages. Isabel Gibson pointed out that new technologies have always offered both blessing and curse: “The printing press gave us wide access to the Bible and to Shakespeare, as well as to hateful political tracts. Film gives us amazing documentaries and horrific videos of child abuse. All technologies -- not just communication ones -- are both a blessing and a curse because we have both those inside us. “There are three key differences, I think, in the internet: -- The small level of effort and technical skill required, throwing it open to more people to create content -- The anonymous nature of so much of that participation -- The reduced transmission time “Finding ways to counter venom is more important than ever, so thanks for your thoughts. “I wish you better reactions than I've had when I suggest to people who forward false (not virulent) messages that they check the status of these stories with Snopes.com. Based on those reactions (always negative), I've pretty much stopped advising people to do that, or even letting them know that Snopes debunks the story.”
Jennifer Flanders-Rose shared Isabel’s pessimism: “I too receive unsolicited bigoted Facebook posts. On each occasion I try to refute the hyperbole and downright lies, and I'm here to tell you people just don't care to know the facts. They prefer their outrageously inaccurate memes to anything resembling the truth. It's like peeing into the wind. But I will continue to try to educate the obtuse and hopefully I will embarrass enough of them that they stop sharing this nonsense with me.”
Barb Taft described her tactics: “When I receive emails similar to the ones you described I usually reply, ‘These are not my views.’ A return email often states ' These are not my views either.' I guess I should reply, ‘Then why send them?’”
And Cliff Boldt wrote, “Your curse and benefit of the internet hit the bull's eye. I am on another list where normally calm Christians have embraced some current BC racism issues around housing and tours to the Holy Land. “The challenge is for adults to assist young people discern the message and draw some conclusions about what they see.”
Tom Watson shared his experience: “Whenever I receive one of those ‘Muslims are taking over’ emails, I am reminded of the the mid 1970s, when I was a student minister in Straffordville, Ontario. One of the parishioners had a Baptist minister friend from Toronto who visited her periodically. She asked me to meet him. Lovely man, born in Ireland, minister at a Baptist Church on Bathurst Street in Toronto, had been a missionary for a time… He told me that he wasn't sure how long he was going to be able to keep his church open. Italians were moving into the area in droves and they were all Catholic. “I said, ‘You think this is all a plot to close your church?’ “He answered, ‘Yes...directions from the Vatican.’ Having grown up in Ireland, he was virulently antiCatholic. “I guess a lot of us choose who it is we are convinced are coming to take over what we understand to be our turf.”
Jorgen Hansen: “We too receive Muslim hate articles from some Catholic friends; they’re thinking that we also ‘hate’ Muslims. I never forward these, and think that people who do so are very small between the ears. We live on a very small planet and the internet connects us all.”
David Gilchristwrote, “I’m glad it isn’t just me! I have been amazed at how many of my friends -- people who are intelligent and educated, and whose opinions I have respected in the past -- forward this stuff. Most of this stuff has just enough verifiable truth to appear quite legitimate; so the gullible then simply accept the erroneous conclusions that get imbedded. That makes it so easy to disseminate false information (or opinion stated as fact) to those who have learned to trust. The most honest people are the easiest to persuade: because we try to be truthful, we expect others to be also. “The latest came yesterday, urging us to contact our MP and stop the move to remove ‘Under God’ from our currency and the Ten Commandments from Government “installations”. I pointed out that that is about the USA -- not Canada. I also told the sender that forwarding anything she didn’t verify amounted to gossip: bearing False Witness against a neighbour. I got a reply at once, saying that it came from a good friend in her congregation; and that she wouldn’t forward anything more -- to me! I had hoped to convince her not to forward stuff to anyone. So I guess, like you, I got cut from her mail list!”
Robert Caughell commented not on the internet but on the kind of incident carried on it: “I support the police but I feel that too many of them over-react, are trigger happy, have a shoot-first-ask-questions-later attitude. “People calling the police need to be more specific in their descriptions when reporting a possible crime or suspicious character in the area. The latest shooting in Miami demonstrates that. A young man with autism and a toy truck got out of a group home. Someone reported seeing him with a gun. A social worker told the police it was a toy, but the police shot the black social worker, who was lying on the ground on his back with his hands up.”
Final note. You remember that two months ago I wrote about the fire in Fort Mcmurray, and of the kindness of an RCMP officer to a woman fleeing the flames. This week, this e-mail arrived: “I’m Nicci De Leeuw. And that officer who reached into my truck and took my hand was my undoing. I hadn’t cried intil then but when I looked into his face and saw the kindness in his eyes I could no longer hold back the tears.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
This column comes to you using the electronic facilities of Woodlakebooks.com. If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, at jimt@quixotic.ca. Or just hit the “Reply” button. To subscribe or unsubscribe, send me an e-mail message at the address above. Or subscribe electronically by sending a blank e-mail (no message) to sharpedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca. Similarly, you can un-subscribe at sharpedgesunsubscribe@lists.quixotic.ca. You can access several years of archived columns at http://edges.Canadahomepage.net. I write a second column each Wednesday, called Soft Edges, which deals somewhat more gently with issues of life and faith. To sign up for Soft Edges, write to me directly, at the address above, or send a blank e-mail to softedgessubscribe@lists.quixotic.ca
PROMOTION STUFF… Ralph Milton has a new project, called Sing Hallelujah – the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.com Ralph’s HymnSight webpage is still up, http://www.hymnsight.ca, with a vast gallery of photos you can use to enhance the appearance of the visual images you project for liturgical use (prayers, responses, hymn verses, etc.) Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca> Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town – not particularly religious, but fun; alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list. Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” – ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatso@gmail.com or twatson@sentex.net
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