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Plagiarism links

Plagiarism is an issue for faculty and students on virtually every campus.

One site at MWC (or UMW if you wanna) that defines plagiarism is "Understanding Plagiarism," by Jeffrey W. McClurken, Assistant Professor, Dept. of History and American Studies.

Today, I came across the site "Plagiarism" by Sharon Stoerger MLS, MBA. ( Thanks to Neat New Stuff) Stoerger's work contains over one hundred links to items arranged into categories that include articles, case studies, information for instructors and students, as well as additional resources.

Definitely worth checking out.

With God on Our Side

"With God On Our Side" by Bob Dylan was released in 1964 on his album The Times They are A-Changin'. It think that song echoed the feelings of many of us that the world seemed to be headed for self-annihilation.

I was thinking about the song yesterday while working in the garden, some 40 years after its release. It doesn't seem that the world is as close to nuclear war as it was then. If we take it that the end of the cold war and collapse of the Soviet Union alleviated that threat, then maybe god was on our side, if you give, as is currently popular, President Reagan some of the credit for that. But we paid the price.

God in fact punished us because Reagan was president and the policies he and his cronies encouraged, and implemented through legislation and decrees, have done nothing but hurt this country for 20 years or more.

It's a good song, though. "Masters of War" on Freewheelin Bob Dylan is another great one - with Dick Cheney being the poster boy for that song.

The usual: Republicans slander and lies

Once again the RNC showed its colors at its convention this week. The speeches were particularly hateful, slanderous,and filled with lies. Who can believe or trust them? They want my vote? I know I can do better than that.

Here are some links that I found interesting to read on the subject:

Lies, Damned Lies, and Convention Speeches
Smear and Pivot
Feel the Hate

Why doesn't the RNC deal with the real issues, such as the economy, health care, and quality of life for our society?

The Universal Computer

In his book "The Universal Computer The Road From Leibniz To Turing,"
Martin Davis presents a history of the development of logic that focus on creating a system in which computation is purely symbolic .

Starting with Leibniz's 'wonderful idea' - a language based on an alphabet whose "elements represented not sounds, but concepts. A language based on such an alphabet should make it possible to determine by symbolic calculation which sentences written in the language were true and what logical relationships existed among them." In his exposition he takes a clear path from Leibniz to Boole to Frege to Cantor to Hilbert to Godel and then to Turing. As a former student of mathematics (in the 60's and 70's, and current teacher of computer science (since the 80's) my appreciation of his exposition was enhanced by my own recollections of the names and events he describes. Furthermore, he gives you the feeling that you're reading something written by an insider - telling us stories and tidbits that we on the outside can enjoy and appreciate. The book is nicely done with extensive notes. Give it a read when you get the chance.

A more detailed review is available at "Read This! The MAA Online book review column" , by Mark Johnson.