UD’s delighted…

… to see her cowritten book in distinguished company (Danto, Felski, Scarry, Donohue, Dutton) in a list of “notable works” on aesthetics. The list appears in The Routledge Companion to Literature and Art.

 Cynical ambition. Laziness. Incapacity.

See this post, where UD lists some of the motives for plagiarism. She forgot an obvious one: money. Expert witnesses often get paid TONS (I’m looking at you, Feinerman), and professional expert witness Fancy Harvard MD has been in the trade for awhile. As with the Georgetown Law guy in my parenthesis, Harvard’s Dipak Panigrahy knows a get rich quick scheme when he sees one. Get paid – I dunno, $500 an hour? – to get one of your underlings to plagiarize vastly in your expert report. Pad it up good with gobs of plagiarized material for more moolah and place your bigshot name upon it. Voila.

Only, as with that parenthetic Georgetown guy, someone bothered to examine the report, and discovered – in the judge’s dismissive word – a ‘mess.’

Yeah, he threw the whole thing out.

Will the dude get paid anyway?

What a deal. Thousands and thousands of dollars for … uh …

“Indeed, the plagiarism is so ubiquitous throughout the report that it is frankly overwhelming to try to make heads or tails of just what is Dr. Panigrahy’s own work,” [said Judge Dalton].

Lucky’s Monologue

Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was. The Battle of Gettysburg. What an unbelievable, I mean it was so much, and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways. Gettysburg. Wow. I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to look and to watch. And the statement of Robert E. Lee ― who’s no longer in favor, did you ever notice that? No longer in favor ― ‘Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.’ They were fighting uphill. He said, ‘Wow, that was a big mistake.’ He lost his great general, and they were fighting. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys!’ But it was too late.

UD was thrilled to spot a white lined sphinx

photo didier descouens

in a garden where we stopped on the way to the Grand Canyon.

UD takes a day trip from Sedona to the Grand Canyon tomorrow.

Mighty purdy round here. But hard to forget how fucked up the place is.

***************

UD thanks Al.

Limerick.

Don Wilson he pulled out his cock.

At his rich flow of pee he did gawk.

‘Dear Lord, what a man!

Piss a bucket I can!

Now what did I do with that Glock?’

Another One Bites the Dust.

UD does wonder, as the plagiarism pins keep falling, why people do it. Naive question, ja, but in weighing whether to

1.) ruin your career and humiliate yourself by doing something you really don’t have to do; or

2.) grind the thing out (what do they want? fifty? a hundred pages?) even though you really have to drag your ass to do it, and the result may be an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own,

doesn’t it seem obvious you should just grit your teeth and write the fucker?

Because one of the many bad things about plagiarism is that it makes people wonder whether you actually ever had the capacity to write a serious scholarly work of a certain length. Why, after all, did you plagiarize?

None of the answers is good. Cynical ambition. Laziness. Incapacity.

Historic District, Phoenix.
In the Phoenix historic district…

… a house with everything to love. Including a real rooster on the front steps.

UD couldn’t stop photographing this little paradise.

Francesca Gino switches her specialization from honesty to crisis management.

Every day’s a new… challenge … for the Harvard B School whizkid. She’s already suing the school for 25 mill because some mean people analyzed her work on ethics and uncovered research fraud. Now a different set of mean people have uncovered plagiarism all over her books. Her technique appears to be chiaroscuro — a scattering of pieces from this place and that for an overall intriguing mix of elements which must have caught the eye of the mean people.  “Gino never reached out to me for permission to use my words and my thoughts, something that high school students do on a regular basis when asking if they can use my articles for their school assignments,” said one of her, uh, sources. To which Harvard University says OUCHIE.

Statement from Nicole Beausoleil, about her daughter, at the Crumbley sentencing.

“While you were purchasing a gun for your son and leaving it unlocked, I was helping her finish her college essays. When you knew the gun was missing, you called the police, knowing it was your son that took it. I was having family call every hospital describing what she looked like. While you were hiding [from the police], I was planning her funeral.

The negligent parents of a high school mass shooter get 10 – 15 year sentences.

Mysterious Dr Seussy object in window of…

… Corning Museum of Glass. Taken on UD’s morning walk in that sweet city. Tomorrow she goes to Sedona, AZ.

Limerick.

Subpoenaing Gosar and Biggs

Makes me break into jubilant jigs.

Bizarros of MAGA

Don’t get any more gaga.

Let’s watch them and break out the cigs.

*************************************

(Yes, subpoenaing contains every vowel.)

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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
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From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte