Via Ralph Luker: a warning on plagiarism from Dan Todman that begins thusly:

In 1641, William Ward, a Catholic priest, was executed in London:

He hanged till he was dead for he was ript whilst he did hang & being cut downe his members being cut off & cast into the fire, the Executioner ript him up and tooke his heart & threwe it into the fire which lept out againe & no man toucht it till the Executioner a goodwhile after threwe it in againe, his head and quarters were brought backe to Newgate & boyled & are to be set upon 4 gates of the Citty. (1)

Anybody who could inflict this sort of suffering and despoliation on another human being was plainly motivated by enormous passion, anger and fear. Yet most historians would consider this too light a punishment for those found guilty of plagiarism.

It almost seems Old Testament enough to fit in my southern politics syllabus, the latest iteration of which is online here (how’s that for a segué?).

I’m still working on my Introduction to Politics syllabus, but finishing that—and all the rest of the ambitions I had for a productive day—went down the tubes when I got stuck trying to diagnose why my office computer keeps hanging up completely. What I’ve figured out so far:

• It happens in both Windows and Linux, unpredictably.
• The computer spits out a bunch of weird USB errors on startup in Linux.
• I originally thought it had something to do with my USB KVM switch (how I switch my keyboard, mouse, and monitor between the Dell junker provided by Tulane and my computer that actually has the power to do anything beyond web browsing), but I didn’t hit the switch the last time it crashed.
• I don’t think it’s the hard drives. Diagnostics on them have turned up nothing.
• It only seems to crash in Windows or in X; I have yet to see it crash at a Linux console prompt (which would probably be the only way to diagnose the crash from error messages, alas).

I think it’s probably something hosed in the on-board USB controller, which probably means I’ll be investing in a new motherboard. Lucky me.

Odd that Google has switched from showing John McCain ads to now showing Barack Obama ads, while continuing to intersperse ads for Newt Gingrich’s weekly email or whatever. Perhaps the core demographic of my blog is “fans of members of Congress who will never be president.”

Instead of sleeping I emptied the office, mailed all the books I’m taking (I left a few desk copies, primarily intro and con law books, and some old college textbooks), and brought the rest of the junk home. Hopefully SLU doesn’t come after me for the monitor that I bought and paid for years ago (when 19” LCD monitors weren’t exactly cheap) but they stuck an inventory sticker on anyway.

Next project: start packing books, CDs, and DVDs around the apartment. Not sure how much I’ll get done before I leave for State College on Wednesday morning, but I figure I ought to at least give it a try. I also have to make time for some NCAA Football 08 on Tuesday after I go and pick it up (All Pro Football 2K8 also looks tempting, but that will probably have to wait until after the move).

Packing the office is going slower than I’d have expected—almost all of the books are now packed, but I ran out of tape before sealing up all the boxes. So it’ll be Monday at least before that project is done.

The good(?) news is that gives me the weekend to focus on the methods meeting paper, which has also lagged behind a bit this week.

The ice in my ice bucket this evening lasted less than five hours, and that was with me dumping out the accumulated water twice. This would be slightly less annoying if I didn’t have to traipse upstairs every time I wanted to get more ice because the ice machine on this floor is broken.

Maybe their ice buckets work in North Dakota, but they don’t cut it in New Orleans.

It took the postal service four days to carry out the “guaranteed overnight delivery” of an Express Mail letter from St. Louis to New Orleans. Regular first class mail probably would have arrived more quickly.

I don’t know whether to be ticked off at the sheer incompetence or happy that I’ll be getting my $16.25 in postage back.

I belatedly took the advice of Frequent Commenter Scott and changed the photo on my professional page while I was doing my regular updates. It’s not quite this casual, but I do have to maintain at least a modicum of dignity.

There’s nothing like the impending showing of one’s apartment to motivate some long-overdue spring cleaning.

Now if I could only figure out a way to create myself some similar incentive structures for doing research I might actually have a productive summer.

Ah, if only this had happened two weeks ago I’d have had something worthwhile to talk about during the last week of my Congress course.

þ (via email): My former student Jim Swift, who now works on the south side of the Capitol.

Frank Stephenson links a front-page WSJ article on disappearing from Google, which leads off with this tale of woe:

Before Abigail Garvey got married in 2000, anyone could easily Google her. Then she swapped her maiden name for her husband’s last name, Wilson, and dropped out of sight.

In Web-search results for her new name, links to Ms. Wilson’s epidemiology research papers became lost among all manner of other Abigail Wilsons, ranging from 1980s newspaper wedding announcements for various Abigail Wilsons to genealogy records listing Abigail Wilsons born in the 1600s and 1700s. When Ms. Wilson applied for a new job, interviewers questioned the publications she listed on her résumé because they weren’t finding the publications in online searches, Ms. Wilson says. [emphasis mine]

So when Ms. Wilson, now 32, was pregnant with her first child, she ran every baby name she and her husband, Justin, considered through Google to make sure her baby wouldn’t be born unsearchable. Her top choice: Kohler, an old family name that had the key, rare distinction of being uncommon on the Web when paired with Wilson. “Justin and I wanted our son’s name to be as special as he is,” she explains.

First, I’m not sure that naming your son after a faucet company is a good move, no matter how unique the name is. Second, I think Ms. Wilson’s travails might have easily been averted by giving full citation information for her publications on her CV, including her maiden name.

The lesson I draw from this: people (mostly, but not exclusively, women) with established publication records shouldn’t adopt married names for their professional careers. The lesson I don’t draw from this: I should name my firstborn “Moen Delta Lawrence.”

I spent several years of my life learning to pronounce a proper name like the locals did… but for the next 24 hours, to avoid sounding like a southerner (usually not a problem for me, except for the occasional “y’all”), I have to consciously pronounce the name the way northerners pronounce it—if only so people can understand the proper name I’m using.

I wouldn’t be up now if I hadn’t forgotten I had things sitting in the washing machine for several hours.

Well, actually I probably would still be up given my chronic insomnia, but at least I wouldn’t be waiting for my laundry to get finished.

Heather Mills denies she’s a “gold digger.”

I have real no post, I just wanted to channel Kanye West. Or make fun of Ringo Starr.

On one of my flights headed to my latest job interview, my seat was directly in front of one occupied by Sandra Bullock, who I wouldn’t have recognized in a million years (except that her travel companion, whoever he was, seemed to make a point of announcing her name to people). I do have to say that without professional makeup and in jeans and a sweatshirt, she basically looked like any moderately attractive 40-year-old brunette of average height and weight (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

An anonymous writer (but my money is on Megan McArdle) has a hysterically funny post up at Free Exchange that mercilessly takes the piss out of this New York Times article relating the sad stories of Ms. Elizabeth Davidson, who recently lost her gold elite status with US Airways, and other newly-plebeian air travelers.

In related news, first-class passengers on a flight from India to Britain were upset when British Airways recently had the temerity to move a dead passenger into the first class cabin. Presumably they would have preferred the airline leave the passenger in steerage economy.

My copy of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War from Amazon.com was on my doorstep when I got home at around 1:30. It was read by 5:00—and that included interruptions to eat lunch and to make arrangements for Yet Another Phone Interview.

This compulsive behavior on my part creates two immediate problems for me: I now need to find another book to read on the plane Monday, and I will probably have to pay retail for it.

Yay, Lent. Or something. Bah humbug.

All of the snow around here is disappearing at a shockingly rapid rate. Not that I’m complaining, mind you; it’s just really freaky to see it all disappear in a matter of a few hours in what I’d hardly call balmy weather (although, I suppose by St. Louis standards 56 is balmy for mid-February).

BigJim says I have to do this, so I guess I will. So here are five things you may or may not know about me.

1. I watch professional wrestling on TV and have been to two wrestling shows in my life.
2. Like Jim, I have a pen fetish. Unlike Jim, I have never shoplifted any pens.
3. I have smoked one cigar in my life: on the day Frequent Commenter Scott got his PhD.
4. I didn’t drink alcohol until the day after the 2000 presidential election (by coincidence; at that point, all I knew for certain is Harry Browne didn’t win).
5. I have never voted for a Republican presidential candidate.

By the way, a bonus: in my copious free time, I will be contributing to a new Rebel sports blog organized by Jim. If you’re a real hardcore Rebel sports fan, you’ll be able to identify the section and row the header graphic was taken from at Vaught-Hemingway. (Incidentally the UMAA is trying to get me to donate $100 to keep my crappy seat in Section L. Pass.)

I won’t tag anyone with this meme, since I think I’m about the last person to get it, but if you want to play along let me know and I’ll link your post.

All that’s keeping me going today is knowing it will be nearly 70 degrees on Friday, at least for me.

If you’re a celebrity (say, Paris Hilton) and want to use an alias, knock yourself out, but some victims of name misappropriation would rather you follow the example of Michael Vick and choose a name that few, if any, other people are likely to share.

Incidentally, the Ron Mexico name generator suggests “Sarah Venezuela” for Ms. Hilton’s future alias needs.

Even with this new chest of drawers, I'm still not sure I have storage space for all of my clothes.

I illustrate the aphorism thusly: at the drive-thru this afternoon at Burger King, I was given too much change ($7.00 – $6.12 ≠ $0.93, even in my world of half-learned arithmetic), so I gave the extra nickel back to the cashier; when I get home, I find out that I ended up with a Whopper, complete with green crap that might have been lettuce in a former life, instead of a BK Double Stacker, which doesn’t come with that crap on it, and has tasty bacon to boot.

Now, given the whole Schrödinger’s cat business, if I’d not have given the change back would I have ended up with the meal I was supposed to get? Probably not, since the receipt also listed the Whopper instead of the BK Double Stacker… but we’ll never know, especially since I didn’t look at the receipt until after I returned the nickel.

Over the holidays I finally got sick of dealing with SLU’s email quotas and am now forwarding all of my work email to my GMail account with “slu” labels attached. It seems to be working well so far; the only thing I miss is being able to use a different work signature at the end of my messages automatically. Nonetheless, I think I need to do more to get my email intake under control, as it’s a real productivity killer.

I wish my readers a happy and prosperous 2007.