We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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“Academic cheating is a major problem and has negative results on everyone involved.”
So goes the first sentence of a recently composed essay on cheating in academia. To get the whole essay, though, you’ll need to pay for a membership at DirectEssays.com, an Internet operation that promises access to “over 101,000 high-quality term papers and essays.” For $19.95 a month, you can see the anticheating tract in toto, and a lot more besides. DirectEssays is one of several Internet operations selling term papers that students hand in as their own work, and business is booming.
Cheating, especially Internet cheating, is becoming more and more the way of the academic world. A recent study found that 38 percent of the students polled had committed “cut and paste” plagiarism – that is, copying sentences or even several paragraphs from the Internet and implanting them in their own work. Forty percent of respondents admitted to copying without attribution from written sources – books, journals and the like – in the past year.
This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future.
– Attributed to Adolf Hitler, 1935
Emma, in a piece here entitled “Outnumbered 15 to 1”, touches on a problem that I find gruesomely fascinating, and have had to deal with a lot over the years. How do you conduct yourself when in company which you want to keep in with but which holds your opinions about some hot issue of the day in very low regard?
Scenario: you are at a dinner party with several friends with whom you enjoy discussing all sorts of things NOT including politics.
One friend, in passing, drops in a little “it’s all about the oil” or [with sarcasm] “well, the french were just cowardy custards, that’s why all good patriots hate them”, or [in tones of deepest contempt] “it’s just finishing off what Daddy left undone”.
Do you
A) Remove the rather good bottle of Australian wine that you brought, leaving them to drink some French blanc de plonk that one of the Guardian readers brought along, and never darken their doors again.
B) Reply “were the Normandy landings an equally unjustified completion of unfinished business?” (or equivalent riposte, depending on the precise nature of the comment), segueing neatly into a heated discussion in which no one will listen to anything anyone else says and everyone will go home riled up.
C) Change the subject to more neutral ground through whatever means necessary. “Oops, I seem to have spilt red wine on your yellow dress” would serve a dual function of diversion and oblique admonition.
What is the best strategy when talking to people about matters on which they disagree with you? – child rearing, say, to pick an example at random. Persuasion? Leading by example? Dropping in odd hints to indicate that there is an alternative and viable point of view? Careful avoidance of tension filled areas?
Help!
I suggest that for the purpose of this discussion we set aside the matter of whether we actually agree with Emma about the Iraq war. The point of these questions is to dig out some general principles for conducting ourselves in company which disagrees about some contentious public issue, but with which we wish to remain on cordial speaking terms. → Continue reading: On keeping friends by not trying to influence them
Our government is determined that we shall be numbered and identity carded no matter how long it takes or how much opposition has to be ground down, and if they can’t do it by persuading adults, they’ll do it by habituating (and I can think of ruder words than that) children.
Every child in England is to be given a credit card-style ID number in reforms aimed at preventing a repeat of the murder of Victoria Climbie, the Government has announced.
The long-awaited Green Paper on children’s services also included a proposal to create a Children’s Commissioner for England, whose job it will be to speak up for under-18s and ensure their views are “fed into” Government policy.
It set out a large number of changes to the structure of children’s services, which will see education, health and social care combined and dispensed from neighbourhood schools.
Tony Blair said the proposals were a “significant step” towards ensuring there was no repeat of the Climbie case.
One thing is very certain about this new ID numbered world which they are determined to create. It will still contain outbursts of evil like Victoria Climbie’s murder. ID numbers won’t stop that. → Continue reading: ID numbers and Hidden Europe
Our government is determined that we shall be numbered and identity carded no matter how long it takes or how much opposition has to be ground down, and if they can’t do it by persuading adults, they’ll do it by habituating (and I can think of ruder words than that) children.
Every child in England is to be given a credit card-style ID number in reforms aimed at preventing a repeat of the murder of Victoria Climbie, the Government has announced.
The long-awaited Green Paper on children’s services also included a proposal to create a Children’s Commissioner for England, whose job it will be to speak up for under-18s and ensure their views are “fed into” Government policy.
It set out a large number of changes to the structure of children’s services, which will see education, health and social care combined and dispensed from neighbourhood schools.
Tony Blair said the proposals were a “significant step” towards ensuring there was no repeat of the Climbie case.
One thing is very certain about this new ID numbered world which they are determined to create. It will still contain outbursts of evil like Victoria Climbie’s murder. ID numbers won’t stop that. → Continue reading: ID numbers and Hidden Europe
The public wants compulsory ID cards, but doesn’t like their cost, says Stephen Robinson of the Telegraph:
The public overwhelmingly supports the idea of compulsory identity cards, says a YouGov opinion poll published today in The Telegraph. But it strongly objects to having to pay £40 for them.
Seven per cent of those asked were so opposed to the cards that they said they would refuse to acquire or carry one. This suggests that if the Government introduces legislation for cards this year, as expected, the police would have to act against some three million “refuseniks”.
In other words, the costs of compulsion could be a lot greater than the public now realises. When the public realises a few years down the line that the benefits of it aren’t that great either, how will they feel then? Let’s hope we can explain the meagreness of those benefits to them now, soon enough to stop this thing.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
– H. L. Mencken
A report in The Times suggests that the Police Superintendents’ Association (PSA) will this week call for a compulsory national DNA database. Kevin Morris, chairman of the PSA, insisted that “people were not as fearful as politicians believed”.
He’s wrong.
The article also stated that Big Blunkett hopes to announce this month that he is to go ahead with his plan for compulsory National Identity Cards for innocent British citizens.
Call me cynical but I suspect a smokescreen. The row over a compulsory DNA database could obscure the arguments over Identity Cards. The tactic appears to be to set up the DNA database as a bogeyman so that compulsory ID Cards don’t seem as bad.
Now is the time to write to your MP about Identity cards. Next month could be too late.
Partly cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe
I can not tell whether this is real or a joke. It could very easily be both of course.
Fuss has recently been made about an amphibious sports car, which seems genuine enough, if rather extravagant. But this, linked to by BoingBoing, is an amphibious bus, and is strictly for the luxury end of the bus market:
John and Julie Giljam, a married couple from South Carolina, created a first-class motor coach that doubles as a yacht.
The Terra Wind is an amphibious 42 ½ foot motor home. The RV can cruise down the highway at 80 mph, and when it hits water it becomes a yacht … with just a few maneuvers.
What it looks like when in water is a drowning bus caught in a flood. I seriously wonder how seaworthy it is. So how well is it doing?
The Giljams said there has been a lot of interest in the amphibious motor home. They plan to show it off at boat shows, RV shows and yacht shows.
Oh dear. “A lot of interest.” They “plan” to show it off at shows. This is salespeak for no one wants to buy the bloody thing. → Continue reading: Floating luxury bus anyone?
That’s RFID as in Radio Frequency Identification for Business.
News.com’s Eric Peters explains the point which RFID has now reached:
Earlier this summer, Wal-Mart announced that by January 1, 2005, radio frequency identification technology would become a requirement for doing business with the world’s largest retailer. A line was drawn in the sand: RFID was going to happen.
More recently, Wal-Mart said it would not put RFID technology in retail stores, and a flurry of “not ready for prime time” RFID responses followed. But Wal-Mart’s retreat from shelf RFID tags neither suggests a retreat on its earlier commitment to RFID nor a signal for the halt of adoption.
Product level RFID tagging may be years away, but a technology inflection point has been reached. Many companies are now extremely interested in the technology, and the potential is just too attractive to ignore. Globally, RFID will not sell more razors or bars of soap. What it can do, however, is redistribute the market share of the different companies that sell razors and bars of soap.
The costs of not making your supply chain RFID-compliant far outweigh the costs and obstacles of implementation. As with other high-impact technologies, the early adopters will get a disproportionate share of the wealth, and the laggards will be the companies who suffer lost market share.
So RFID (like surveillance cameras) is (are) here to stay, and will have to be lived with.
My thanks to David Sucher of City Comforts Blog for emailing me about this piece.
Every time there is even a semi-serious debate in this country about the provision of health care and reform of the NHS, the reactionaries cry ‘Do we want to be like America?’. It is the British equivalent of ‘Do you want Farmer Jones back?’.
Well, do want to be like America?
Patients who have major operations on the National Health Service are four times more likely to die than Americans undergoing such surgery, according to a new study.
The difference in mortality rates was blamed on long NHS waiting lists, a shortage of specialists and competition for intensive care beds.
One of these fine days, that plaintive, theatrical and bogus rhetorical bleat is going to result in a resounding ‘yes’.
Dot com. The phrase is synonymous with failure and self-delusion. But some people are making money out of the internet, even if it is only the city slickers who set up this deal.
Lastminute.com announced yesterday it had raised €103m (£74.6m) through a placing in convertible bonds which the online travel agent will use to continue its acquisition spree and develop products.
The rapidly expanding company said last month that it expects to post its first net profit by 2005. It has spent about £98m in the last two years on purchases, including the acquisition of the travel company Holiday Autos.
The bonds, which will mature in 2008, will convert into shares of Lastminute.com at 364.5p, 28 per cent more than Monday’s closing price, the company said in a statement.
Well I don’t know what all that means, but it sounds to me like someone reckons that lastminute is doing some real business.
My reaction to the story was to go myself to the lastminute.com website itself, which I’d never got around to doing before. A tenner for a theatre ticket? Hey, these guys are ticket touts! (Of the nice kind, who lost their bet.) I might have some of that myself, and then maybe I could write about it and double my theatre-going pleasure. Normally London theatre is nearer thirty quid, which is beyond what I’ll pay for something that only might be excellent.
The internet continues to work its economic magic. It isn’t just for give-it-away pulpiteers like us.
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