Commuterrant

Preventing Plagiarism – A Novel Idea

Having spent years in the publishing industry, I’ve been following the recent controversy about the young Harvard author, Kaavya Viswantahan, and the discovery that she had inadvertently plagiarized internalized content from author Megan McCafferty, who wrote Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings for her own first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life. 

Viswantahan garnered a huge amount of publicity due to her age and the fact that her publisher, Little, Brown, paid her gobs of money for the book.

We blame the author. We blame the publisher. We blame the book packager, 17^th Street Productions. But let’s stop looking at blame, and solve the problem! Here’s an idea – let’s let a big company with an already-existing huge presence online and lots of money scan all the books out there, index the content and make it freely searchable on the Web. Then, when a publishing house has a manuscript, they can pick a sampling of passages and run a search, to see if the verbiage has been previously published. And this whole mess can be avoided.

As an extremely profitable by-product of this effort, the publishers and owners of the scanned content can add links to purchase the book, either directly, or from booksellers, both chain stores and independent bookstores (the few that are left), based on the searcher’s ZIP code. Readers will be exposed to content they otherwise might not have found, and there will be a huge, new revenue stream for publishers!

Oh. Wait. Google has already tried to do that. And the publishers are suing them. Never mind.

Too Much Caffeine on the Green Line?

At Park Street this morning, I boarded a C train and sat down as commuters continued to pile on. A man wearing a black Guiness baseball cap came charging on, clearly intent on something. He shoved his way through the crowd and bolted toward an unassuming woman making her way to the back of the car. He proceeded to SMACK her on the back and yelled something along the lines of "Thanks for pushing me! You pushed me!"

She mumbled something about someone else having pushed her; her assailant, meanwhile, had turned around to head back toward the middle of the car.

He HIT her. No one else seemed to notice. Is this normal commuting behavior now? It's now okay to hit people if you perceive that they have wronged you on the T?

He spent the rest of the ride hanging on to a ceiling rail, jittery, bobbing up and down uncontrollably. Maybe he could have used a Guiness for breakfast.

Pink is the New Red White and Blue

Proud of my homegirl from Philly:

Watch the video.

Cruise, Holmes and Shields in Maternity Ward Mix-up

Yesterday, Katie Holmes gave birth to a baby girl, her daughter with Tom Cruise; the couple have named the child Suri. Ironically, Brooke Shields gave birth on the same day, to her second child with husband Chris Henchy, a daughter named Grier. But in a stunning development, the mothers were accidentally switched before leaving the hospital, sending Brooke Shields home with Tom Cruise.

This made for an awkward couple of days, since the two celebrities had a very public disagreement last year after Cruise criticized Shields' use of medication for post-partum depression. Shields documented her battle with depression after the birth of her daughter Rowan in her book Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Post-Partum Depression, and came out swinging after Cruise's assertions.

Tom was so bowled over by the birth of his first mini-Scientologist that he failed to realize he went home with the wrong baby-mother. Meanwhile, Shields became so enraged by Cruise's "I have a baby!" furniture-jumping antics that she picked up the diminutive superstar and threw him out a third-floor window. She was not suffering from post-partum depression at the time. After her rescue from the Cruise mansion, she called the defenestration “the most sensible thing I've done since Suddenly Susan."

Counting Green Cars

For the second time in a week, as the Green Line train I was riding approached Arlington Street, an announcement came over the P.A.:
"Those of you in the third car, exit at the front of the car."

I ask you: how am I supposed to know if I am on the third car or not? My geospatial skills are not that refined, but it did become obvious when the train pulled into the station and I saw only the darkness of the tunnel outside the mid-car exit. It was then that I used my powers of deductive reasoning to determine that, indeed, I was on the dreaded third car.

Do people count the cars before boarding, in case of such situations? Being a Safety Girl, I understand counting the number of seat rows to determine how far you are from the exit row on an airplane, but now I'm expected to know which car I'm on when I ride the T? And how come the Green Line suddenly can't fit into the Arlington Street station? Did it gain weight?

And another thought: can't the MBTA be a little more user-focused in its communications? They always use T-centric lingo that only a seasoned MBTA employee would find meaningful.

I am reminded of the T-car doors that used to carry the message, "These doors do not recycle." That always befuddled me, as I took it as a warning not to use my brute strength to rip the door off of its hinges and tote it back home, where I could gently place it in my bright yellow recycle bin, thereby doing my part to save the planet. But they changed the signage to be a little more clear. I have to double-check this, but I believe they now say, "These doors do not re-open automatically," which is only slightly less vague. I think what they're trying to say is, "If you stick any appendage in these doors while they are closing, you will suffer death and/or dismemberment. You've been warned."

And the driver with the big-ass Green Line train that can't be accomodated by the Arlington Street platform? He should announce, "If the train stops and you see only darkness, you are still in the tunnel. Do not pry open the doors; do not get off of the train. Do not panic. These doors do not recycle. Whether you are on the first car, second car, or third car, it's no matter. Just walk to the front and exit there."

What the Pug Thinks of the Mom

The day that Stepdaughter the Younger came up with her artistic rendering of Hazel the Pug, she and I were spending quality time drawing together. I drew a few pictures of Hazel myself, and this is how Hazel responded:

She picked up her bone, came over to me and flopped her head down on the sketchbook, looking devastated. Was she trying to tell me something?

What the Kid Thinks of the Pug

I just dug this picture out of a pile of papers. What does Stepdaughter the Younger think of when she thinks of Hazel the Pug? Playing? Yummy dog kisses? Cuteness?

No. She thinks of Hazel scratching her butt on the rug.

   

Will Commute for Blog; Will Commute to Work for Food

I never blog about work (or while at work), but it seems as though I have  been laid off. If anyone knows of an opportunity for a multi-faceted Web content, marketing, e-marketing, e-mail marketing superstar, please let me know. Otherwise, this blog could get very boring. Resumes and references are available upon request.

Note: alternatively, if anyone knows of a full-time blogging/writing opportunity for a ranting commuter with a sense of humor, do let me know. Thank you!

Medical Study Subjects Wanted

I love reading the ads for medical study subjects on the T. One that I recently spotted piqued my curiosity. It’s a Harvard Brain Study, and it begins with the question:
“Do you believe you have ESP, telepathy or a sixth sense?”

I read this question and thought, “Hmm…at times I have wondered.” And it continued:

“Do you have anxiety or discomfort in situations with unfamiliar people?”

Yes, sometimes that happens. But not too often.

“Do you have few close friends?”

I do have friends. How many close friends is too many to qualify for the study?

And then, the final question:
“Do you mistake noises for voices?”

Whoa. Hold on. You drew me in with a perfectly reasonable premise, and now this!? What do you think, I'm crazy?

It started off so innocently, with questions that many people might have answered in the affirmative, and then descended quickly into psychosis. I've decided to advertise for my own, informal study, with the following:

Do you ever feel like you have to go to the bathroom?
Have you ever cried when a loved one died?
Have you ever been the last person to see someone alive?
Have you ever killed anyone?
Is there something in your past that you did that’s so horrible that you’ve never told anyone, that you would now be willing to share with a total stranger?