A Sign Unto You

Police State vs. Groundhog

Welcome to the Plagiarism Police State?

Don't worry, education will break you, Joe Parent. But it'll feel so good after it stops hurting.

While Da-da's boys are years away from this, it's inevitable that one of them will be forced to use one of the increasingly rampant, "plagiarism prevention" tools being used by so many schools today (with a 100% penetration into the Singaporean edu market, if this tells you anything). Having worked in K-12 and post-secondary education markets, Da-da has conflicted opinions about this "tool." An educator once told Da-da, "A good teacher knows when kids are plagiarizing; they don't need a computer program's word for it -- or the hefty bills associated with it." However, given how easily kids can now just cut-n-paste wikipedia articles and other content from the 'net into their papers and call it their own, there might be a need for some type of safeguard.

Meanwhile, the point appears to be moot: the Plagiarism Police are making sizeable fortunes playing on the fears (and laziness) of some academics -- and kids now, too, with moneygrubbing "lite" versions marketed directly at kids, so the already academically paranoid can "vet" their paper to get their, "originality score." Sure, it makes sense to be original and keep your money, but even original kids who do their own work are being made to feel paranoid about their papers, just so some company can make a profit. What kind of lesson is this teaching? 

Like other Orwellian Borg-o-types, the Plagiarism Police State pretends to care, telling you it's a teaching tool... but is this what it's really being used for? The fact that prices for these services (which are just web-based computer algorithms) go up in price 8% every year, even when things are bad-going-to-worse in education, worldwide, should tell you something about the mindsets of those running the companies. Perhaps if a not-for-profit arose to do the same thing, partnering with the schools instead of preying on them?

Plagiaristically speaking, it should be noted that the best schools don't hype or subscribe to the plagiarism police state (Da-a won't list them, you can uncover them for yourself). These last bastions of academic trust rely on their educators, where the onus should be in the first place. So, if you're the head of an academic department or a dean or provost, you need to ask yourself a question: Is this plagiarism prevention service really worth the money? Or should you use that moolah to pay for more teachers?

The biggest academic ship taking on water is TRUST. Da-da has worked with kids for years, and there's a special magic to giving a group of kids your trust and having them work to keep it. Sure, there are setbacks; people are inherently imperfect (no, really), but if you give them your trust first and foremost, they often far exceed expectations. YES, there will be a few who abuse said trust, but they're just hurting themselves and will feel their self-inflicted pain later on in some other way. Bottom line: children need to be NURTURED, not policed.

But don't take the word of a parent who is the future gateway to countless hundreds of thousands of dollars of future education-buying potential. Nooo, don't do that. Like governments and the Federal Reserve, corporations really do have your kid's best interest in mind. No, really. Jeez, how could they not?

Timmy meets his new first grade teacher.
"Do your work, citizen, or there will be... trouble."

Groundhog Day THX-2012

Weatherwise, this can't be good.

2020: The Year the Future is Banned...

Welcome to the future! (courtesy POPSCI)

As usual, Da-da doesn't like to comment on the media, as it's typically 99.9999% wrong, but some things are wrong-er than others. Popular Science has a new article called, "2020 Vision: A Look Forward to the Promises of a... Truly...Amazing..." whatever. Da-da stopped reading at that point, then had to force himself to go on. Popular Science exists only because of armed forces recruitment advertising. Alas, "The Future" has been so-ooooo oversold for so-ooooo long, that only the truly obtuse would buy into this future-hawking crap. The teaser goes on: "Get ready for the first complete synthetic human brain, moon mining, and much more!"

[sigh]

Ok. Da-da will try to be brief.

1. Synthetic Human Brain. Why? Computers were supposed to free humans from all kinds of drudgery, making our lives a 24/7 Shangri-la of ease and refinement. Turns out that all computers do is pollute landfills and allow fewer and fewer people to do more and more work so The Man can employ fewer and fewer workers and show a better bottom line to analysts so the stock goes up for an even smaller few. Mmmm, that's a great life, huh?

2. Moon Mining. Big problem. WE AREN'T ALLOWED ON THE MOON. We were warned off the moon. How can Da-da tell? It makes tons of sense to go there and build a base and learn how to construct ships in lower gravity while mining moon ore, etc... but we've never been back. The Man won't tell anyone why, but the truth remains that we aren't going to the moon anytime soon. People ask why and are ignored.

3. "Future Cities! In the year 2020, cars will fly, cities will power themselves with sunlight, biofuels, and minerals mined from the moon, computers will be more powerful than the human brain, and everything will be a touchscreen!" Just shut up. Cars will never fly in this society for the average schmoe. But for the military elite, firing machine guns onto civilians from flying armed Hummers at $10M each? That's a no-brainer.

4. "Facial recognition and other biometrics will be commonplace." Believe it or not, this kinda thing would cause people to violate existing laws by wearing masks in public, defeating sumigraphical devices and law enforcement efforts to track and monitor you. And guess what? Wearing masks in public is against the law. On Halloween, lots of people violate this law, but no one is arrested. Try wearing that same mask to Walmart or your bank in May, and see what happens. Sure, they might arrest YOU, but what if we ALL started wearing masks? Wait, aren't we wearing masks already?

5. Chips in your head. Huh. Ok. There's only one reason people want to do this: virtual reality pumped into your sensorium for 4-D force-feedback kinesthesia (read VIDEO GAMES and PRON). The latter will be the biggest moneymaker in human history, and be such a social/spiritual setback that some countries will become PRON-FREE zones. Talk about an addiction problem waiting to happen.

6. "China will connect Beijing to London via high speed rail." Da-da would like to comment, but he can't stop laughing.

7. "Cars will drive themselves." Of course they will. Because it's so easy to standardize cars, AND deploy wireless POPs along every road and highway in the entire world. Ahh, good plan. Da-da's cellphone doesn't even work on his street. However, when the RF saturation from car networks and oxymoronic SMART meters kill everyone on earth via cancer, the robot cars can still drive around and generate toll revenue for robot corporations! Yay!

8. Universal translation software will indeed get better, but people will only use it for sex and spam-marketing, which is ostensibly all that our civilization can offer, long-term.

9. "We'll finally see some decent Artificial Reality (AR) glasses!" Uh huh. (See #5.)

10. Finally, note that the pretty graphics and predictions in the article -- a fancy monorail, flying army cars, cities with solar panels everywhere, wireless car networks, etc. -- all tend to NOT work very well in high winds, rain, ice, snow, tornadoes, hail the size of baseballs... you know: ON EARTH. By the way, what are those things that we use all the time that dislike temperature extremes? Oh, yeah. PLANTS. Less crop yield means less food. Besides that little Soylent Green inconvenience, the future will be much hotter and much colder, often on the same few days back and forth as seasons tussle, causing greater material and power failures and extreme weatherage, spawning so many more lawsuits that the government will finally step in and simply legislate away the future, at least for the many. For the few, the future looks bright!

In the future, it's Halloween every day!