Lately I've heard some really dumbass shit on NPR.

At least 38 Venezuelans have died as a result of a suspected outbreak of rabies spread by bites from vampire bats.

And suddenly I'm concerned about Allyson's bat.

Mind you, it's one of vanishingly few things Bush has done that I actually think is nice and genuinely patriotic rather than jingoistic or malevolent.

Except that he looked bored out of his mind. If I thought he had any leadership skills, I would suggest that the Russia/Georgia problem might need his attention a bit more than Women's Gymnastics.

Oh, and now the McCain campaign and the RNC are saying that Obama's private school (that he attended on a scholarship) is evidence of his elitist background.

Team McCain and the RNC issued reporters a mock "Barack Obama's Hawaii Travel Guide," which lambasts Obama for attending the Punahou School from 1971 to 1979. Despite the fact that Obama, who was raised by a single mother and attended the school on scholarship, the McCain campaign depicted him as the child of privilege.

Of course, McCain's own prep school, which now runs $38K a year to attend, doesn't mean that he is elitist, no siree bob!

"While John McCain went to private school, he also went to public university," said [campaign spokesman] Bounds. "The Naval Academy is as public as public gets," he added, noting that a four-year military commitment is required following school.

His father being an admiral had nothing to do with his getting into that "public" university, apparently.

Of course, McCain's own prep school, which now runs $38K a year to attend, doesn't mean that he is elitist, no siree bob!

Or say, Bush, who not only went to Yale and Harvard, but also Phillips Academy Andover, which, as discussed previously, is one of the Select Sixteen. Apart from choosing Andover over Phillips Academy Exeter, it doesn't get more elitist than that.

Ha! Now the craxies have tied the Hawaii trip and the citizenship thing together.

He’s in Hawaii to try to somehow get around his forged Hawaiian Birth Certificate. Maybe his sister or grandmother have a connection to get a new one. His grandmother was a bank higher-up in Hawaii.

This would be awesome if it weren't so sad.

I wonder if this is to try to distract people from the legal question about McCain's citizenship (which, while valid, is also ridiculous).

High schools do it. Colleges do it. All of them. Students decline to get it

I dunno, I remember essentially being taught to plagiarize. In elementary school we'd get random assigned topics, and we were pointed to the nonfiction section, and we were supposed to spit back exactly what we read. Now, the point was to learn to use the card catalog and so on, I get that. But it's not like there was ever a speech about "you can copy IN THIS CASE because we simply want proof that you know how to look up manatees in the encyclopedia; this is not a writing class." Kids don't always learn the lessons you intend.

I know in 6th grade I did this report on black holes that was hugely plagiarized from one magazine article -- not just little snippets, but the organization, the examples, and at least one illustration were ripped off. I didn't get caught, and I remember it because a few years later I was like, "Oh, wow, that wasn't right at all, was it?" But at the time I truly had no idea I was doing anything wrong. I had a bibliography; I made it clear when I was quoting the article directly. Of course the whole report was just me paraphrasing other people -- what else was I supposed to do? It's not like I personally knew about black holes.

And in jr high, we were taught more about citations, but again, in order to give us practice at those things, we got lots of assignments where we had to have X sources, and I certainly got the strong impression that a research paper meant that we were supposed to summarize what other people had said. Period. It was kinda excting in college when profs were more explicitly asking us for our own opinions and analysis. But it doesn't surprise me if some kids, when asked to express some critical thoughts of their own, genuinely don't understand how to do so. Why'd we spend all that time teaching 'em how to copy if we didn't expect them to do it? I sure don't recall anyone teaching us how to have original thoughts.

I went to a fairly well-regarded school system and had a lot of great teachers. I think this is just a systematic problem where the cumulative effect over 12 years is quite different from any single lesson. And of course sometimes kids plagiarize when they know it's wrong, because they're lazy or stupid or whatever. But sometimes they're doing exactly what they were taught to do.

Really, the far-rightwingers are just spitting out a kaleidescope of accusations against Obama, and seeing what sticks. Never mind that a lot of what they accuse him of was also done by their hero, Reagan, among other Republican presidents.

I certainly got the strong impression that a research paper meant that we were supposed to summarize what other people had said.

Strega, that's true to a certain extent. Because lots of middle school research isn't cutting edge new info, it is the summarization of other information. But, it has to be paraphrased/summarized and, in the words of one of the most recent CWP Analytical Writing Continuum, it needs to be recapitulated with analysis. And that's the essential difference.

Teaching when to cite, in terms of plagiarism is extremely difficult. I often point out that if you information doesn't answer "So What?" Or "this connects to my main idea" then you have to cite it.

And I publicly fail students who don't, using their paper, with the name stripped, in a lesson about what is wrong with plagiariing.