A big bag of interesting stuff, while we all sit in the echo chamber.

First of all, looks like the Yahoo club is plagarizing its own arguments from the last plagarism debate, as once again morphed into a debate over whether one should have experienced a work to be qualified to ask/answer questions on the work. The answer to that question simply has to be no. While it's a nice ideal to target, every single writer who tries to do this will fail. Omniscience is impossible, and to achieve this goal you need to not only know the work, but know all the summaries of the work, summaries of summaries, references in other works, and so on. It doesn't matter the field, whether it's a play, a battle, a law of physics, or the events of a baseball game. On any subject, at any time, someone can get you, even if you do "know more about it." You can't have certainty that your own knowledge of a subject will win out. Your studies only invests you in probabilities. They're good odds, but you are playing against the house.

On the original issue, plagarism is bad. It is the third rail, like betting on baseball, the non-recoverable act. That said, what really worries me is the natural third act of the club discussion. After we scream about plagarism, and then it changes into the nice intractable debate, we'll see someone accused of plagarism in the next month or so. I urge caution for all, because I fear someone's going to get reamed on a false positive. It's only the natural extension of the Benet's bashing. (Incidentally I've always found this one completely insane: the idea that the primary reason one should browse Benet's has morphed from actually learning something, to playing 'gotcha' when someone uses the same words in a question.) Now my copy is collecting dust, but I can wager that I could take the other books in my apartment, combine facts, and reproduce some of the articles. Not all the articles, and certainly not perfectly, but enough to raise suspicions. Is it that hard to imagine the same idea applied to a question? Be careful out there.
(Note that in this case I'm talking about the single question, it's the patterns that form in people's writing over entire packets that will make cases for plagarism.)

Two quotes that just amused me:
On the Twins infield: "The ragging comes in four distinct languages: English, Spanish, Spanglish and Canadian."
On the Batt/Cage lawsuit "Mine is a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds."

MattB brought this one up last week, but it bears reading, as the implications for quiz bowl are, to my mind, staggering. One of the big things I see when people dismiss quiz bowl as irrelevant is that it doesn't really create deep understanding in the subject matter, it just teaches recall. (I dispute that opinion, but I recognize that the more homogenized questions appear, the easier that viewpoint is to take.) Looking at this article, I have to say if this becomes the norm (and I saw enough of this when I was in school), then quiz bowl looks better and better, not just for the top kids in a school, but for all of them.

Quick notes on other people's top stories:
Carey, Hadn't thought about it that way, but yes, the roots could well be the same these days.
MattB, the ultimate test of donut synergy will be when Krispy Kreme hits Rhode Island. Of course, that may mean there will be no businesses left in the state that aren't donut places, but these things must be tested before accepted as scientific fact. It might also lead to the first ever fatally clogged artery having four lanes..
Edmund, if it's good balsamic, that's fine, but if it's plonk, then it's the same problem as Mad Dog. And if you start using it as a mixer, that's usually another good warning sign. Condiment abuse is at an all time high in this country. Witness this.
Craig (and readers of Craig's), the most valuable thing from the cuthroat pool? We can actually translate your weblog a clef!
And leaving us with a natural transition,
Hunter's back. Nothing like the original. Besides, Simmons is going to be insuffrable talking about football until the Pats lose a game.

And, so everyone else can get the idea out of their head, let me break the ice and start the Bison Dele-Jason Mewes conspiracy theory. I don't really need to say anything at this point, it's completely ridiculous, makes no sense, and just plays on coincidence. Thus it will spread like wildfire.

Okay, day job stuff.
One of the things that makes my job interesting is that they want me to assign a percentage done to a project every week. The fun part of this comes this week when I have a project currently marked at 85% which I need to demonstrate progress on (there's been some). However, the introduction of this metric that they wanted to use noted that at 90% it's considered shippable. Now then, I can't be psychotically pendantic and move it up to 89%, but I don't particularly want it shipping now. Fun, fun, fun. 90=100. It would only be more amusing if they were asking me twice a day if the number can be moved up.

Day 7.
7A. Independence and Union Movements (previously mentioned)
7B. Biography Center
7C. Anthropology News
7D. College Football Traditions
7E. Major Battles of the Civil War