academic suicide

At the beginning of our American History class yesterday our prof gave us some disturbing news concerning the papers we submitted last week. The first two papers she read had been plagiarized! She was obviously quite upset by this and no one in the class had anything to say. When you hear something like this from a prof you really start to question yourself - at least I sure did. The wheels start turning, "I am sure that I gave proper credit to all the sources I used in my paper, but did I miss something..."

It is easier than ever to access the work of others and pass it off as your own, but at the same time professors today are very sharp when it comes to catching this kind of academic short-cutting. Issues surrounding intellectual property have become increasingly important in the information age and I am glad to see that the faculty at the university take the issue as seriously as they do. I just feel for the two people who were busted. There is no excuse for plagiarism, but at the same time a part of my can sympathize because I have been up late working on a paper on many occasions thinking about how much easier it would be if I could just "borrow" someone else's work on a particular topic. Not to mention that the consequences of plagiarism are severe. Not only will the guilty students receive a failing grade on that assignment, this transgression will become a part of their permanent transcript and it will follow them throughout their academic carrier.

we didn't know what we were getting into...

Wesla and I love to go to the Movie Mill. It is a great little theater that shows old films at a discounted rate. Often, if we feel like being lazy on a Saturday afternoon, we will see what is playing on the Mill Website and we head 'er on out.

The following description for a movie called The Work and the Glory sounded interesting to us, especially since Wesla likes the "pioneer" time period:

In November of 1833, the state of Missouri turned a blind eye as hundreds of its peaceful inhabitants were hunted down and driven from their homes in the dead of night. Against this impending strife, a young man with a divine vision leads a people against the aggression of an anti-hero with a vulnerable past.

We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into...

Check out The Work and The Glory website for yourself if you like, we should have done that before we watched the movie. It turns out that the movie is the second part of a series of fictional books about Joseph Smith and the LDS church called American Zion.

On one hand, the movie was remarkably well done. The acting was superb, the sets and the costumes were top notch, and the plot really was quite interesting - in fact at the beginning of the film I couldn't quite tell if Smith was going to be portrayed as a messiah or a quack, it turned out that the former was the case.

As the movie progressed it became abundantly clear that it is a "soft-sell" evangelism tool for the Mormon faith. I don't object to Joseph Smith being portrayed on film, nor do I have anything against the LDS church telling a story that reflects upon the persecution they endured in the early part of the 19th century. What I do have a problem with is not being told that I am going to watch a movie about Joseph Smith, and then I sit down to watch a movie and it is all about the Mormon patriarch. In my humble opinion the promotional description of the movie deliberately leaves out the fact that the "hundreds of peaceful inhabitants" who were being persecuted were Mormon, as to not scare off potentially unsuspecting viewers from hearing their proselytizing message.

Obviously, there were several elements of the movie that got my back up. I will save my ranting to a few of the finer details.

First, everyone who was not a Mormon in the movie was portrayed as either a drunk, a gambler or a raving bigot who was out to kill the morning. Throughout the film the audience was led to identify a "doubter" who was slowly coming around to the faith, and to pity one of the sons of the doubter who was persecuting the faithful. Each argument directed toward the main character who was questioning the faith was a not so subtle apologetic directed toward an unbeliever in the audience. It was masterfully woven together, and it really ticked me off.

Second, several parallels in the movie were made between Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ. The most offensive moment to me was in one scene where Smith was in prison getting beaten up by a bunch of heathen thugs. They had Smith's eyes covered and they yelled at him, "Testify to us prophet, which one of us has struck you!" On another occasion, Smith had an encounter with an orthodox minister that was strikingly similar to many of Jesus' contests with the Pharisees. In the end Smith heals a crippled woman's hand. I was waiting for him to walk on water, but maybe they are saving that for the third installment of the series.

Finally, this is a movie based upon a fictional series of novels, but the audience is steadily left with the impression that it is retelling the historical events of the first days of the LDS church. Because this is a work of fiction, the author is free to take as much artistic license as s/he wants and the audience is left with no idea where historical reality ends and where imaginative reconstruction begins. My feeling is that many people would watch the movie and not question the historicity of many of the events that were portrayed in the film.

This experience has really made me think twice about evangelism, and how it feels for someone to be blindsided by it when s/he is least expecting it. If I was so upset by this experience, how often do we, as Christians, impose the same kinds of feelings upon others.

100

Weeeeee this is my 100th post!

just for jayson

I am in the middle of writing a wack of papers, so I don't have a lot of time to post at the moment. I ran across these poker chips a while back and I was wondering if Jayson would like some of them for Christmas...

the kingmas invade lethbridge

Auntie Wessy and Uncle Jay very much enjoyed the Kingma's invasion into Lethbridge this past weekend. Thomas and Weida (Wesla's sister) brought along their three little ones (Karston [4], Sarah [3], Jonathan [1]) for a little visit and we had a grand old time.

Wesla and I are not used to playing host to our family because we have lived so far away from our family for much of our married lives that we tend to be the ones who do the visiting. This time, it was great to play host and to get a little bit of insight into all the work that goes into caring for three children under the age of four.

my new toy

My old Jornada 548 Pocket PC finally died the other day, so this meant I had to do some upgrading on some of my digital devices. I must confess, my old Joranda has served me well over the years. I picked it up for a sweet deal back in the day when I was working at Staples in Saskatoon. I earned credit for product knowledge from the HP website, combined with the free keyboard that Staples was throwing in I got the whole deal for about $80; that was back in 2001.

My primary use for the old Jornada was as an electronic organizer (it had Pocket Outlook, which is great), and as a word processor. The keyboard function was great for taking class notes. Fortunately, I have recently acquired the use of a laptop, so I don't have to worry about being without a word processor in a history class. However, I am missing the most recent use that I had for the old Pocket PC: listening to audiobooks.

For the past few months I have been a subscriber at http://www.audible.com and I have enjoyed listening to audiobooks (especially when I was delivering newspapers), but also when I am waiting for the bus or when I am cooking or doing some of other stuff around the house. I have seriously been missing the audiobooks ever since the Jornada died, so I started looking for a replacement. I found a great buy at Futureshop (which is a terrible thing to say if you have ever been an employee at Staples) on a 1 Gig Sankdisk MP3 Player for less than $125.

Part of what makes this preferable to something like the iPod shuffle is the digital display, and the price of course. I just picked my new toy up today, and I am looking forward to getting my audio locked and loaded.

moving again...

It's not like we're moving away from Lethbridge any time soon, but we need to make another moving within the windy city before too long. At the beginning of September Wesla and I moved into a "shared accommodations" arrangement with a guy from our church. By in large it has been a pretty good deal, but he just got a significant promotion - which means he is moving to the Toronto area. This is a really good deal for him, and we are truly happy for him, but we REALLY don't want to move again. At this point we have our eyes open and Wesla found a lead for one new place that we are going to be checking out on Monday. I can't wait until we are going to be able to settle down a little bit and get a place of our own.

sleep, glorious sleep

No longer am I counted among the ranks of the Lethbridge Herald paper carriers - oh what a shame! Actually, there were some things I really liked about the job: getting some exercise and listening to audiobooks as I delivered the papers were definite perks. The primary reason why I gave up the job boiled down the cumulative effect of all the early mornings. It wasn't so bad at the beginning of the semester, but when it came time to burn the midnight oil in order to complete a paper or to study for a test my obligation to be up at 5:30 am the next morning simply became too much of a burden. I put in 10 weeks of service in all, which isn't too bad, and in the end I earned enough money to pay for my books this past semester. All of the sudden sleeping in until 7:00 am seems to be a luxury.

P.S. What do you think of the new link I whipped up earlier today? Yesterday’s victory makes five wins in a row...

how sweet it is

The Detriot Redwings have had only two losses in their first 14 games, and their second loss came at the hands of the Oilers in OT tonight.

This makes four straight wins for the Oil... and I must say they are looking good!

whose school is cool?

Universities always make a big deal out of rankings in big publications like Mclean's annual university report, this years fourth annual review in the Globe and Mail is no exception.

There is a cool feature on the G & M website that allows you to compare the report cards of all the universities that were a part of the survey. For the most part I was impressed with how the U of L measured up. Some of the lowest marks came in the category of "reputation among employers" and "reputation for Grad Studies". The U of L is basically known for its education program and its management program, so that doesn't surprise me one bit. It was also interesting to note that almost all of the schools received poor ratings for "merit based scholarships". Does this mean schools are not shelling out enough cash, or does this simply reflect the reality that there can never be enough scholarships for starving students?

One thing that did surprise me was the "A" rating for the U of L library. This makes me wonder how many of the 300 U of L students who took the survey actually use the library. The staff in the library is great, the facility is beautiful, however its contents are simply not comparable to the other institutions on the list.

How does your Alma Mater stack up in the G & M report? Is the report a fiction or a reality in your eyes?