For more information on the upcoming report “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation” go the dedicated website managed by the IPCC.

Books

Sutherland-Smith, W. Plagiarism, the Internet, and Student Learning: Improving Academic Integrity. Improving Academic Integrity. Routledge, 2008.

Pecorari, D. Academic Writing and Plagiarism: a Linguistic Analysis. A Linguistic Analysis. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010.

Examples of articles addressing plagiarism in the literature

Anderson, Melissa S., and Nicholas H. Steneck. “The Problem of Plagiarism.” Urologic Oncology-Seminars and Original Investigations 29, no. 1 (2011): 90–94.

Berlinck, Roberto G. S. “The Academic Plagiarism and Its Punishments – a Review.” Revista Brasileira De Farmacognosia-Brazilian Journal of Pharmacognosy 21, no. 3 (2011): 365–372.

Chen, Yu-Hui, and Mary K Van Ullen. “Helping International Students Succeed Academically Through Research Process and Plagiarism Workshops.” College & Research Libraries 72, no. 3 (May 1, 2011): 209–235.

Kennedy, David. “Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Plagiarised Paper.” Nurse Education Today 31, no. 5 (2011): 525–530.

Heitman, Elizabeth, and Sergio Litewka. “International Perspectives on Plagiarism and Considerations for Teaching International Trainees.” Urologic Oncology-Seminars and Original Investigations 29, no. 1 (2011): 104–108.

Looking for software solutions

Ochroch, E Andrew. “Review of Plagiarism Detection Freeware.” Anesthesia & Analgesia 112, no. 3 (March 1, 2011): 742–743.

“A Two-Step in-Class Source Code Plagiarism Detection Method Utilizing Improved Cm Algorithm and Sim” 7, no. 8 (2011): 4729–4739.

Kent, Chow Kok, and Naomie Salim. “Web Based Cross Language Plagiarism Detection.” arXiv.org, December 2009.

Click on cartoon for link to source.

I struggle with finding something that needs to be done in this city, most of the infrastructure works, there is a little bit of corruption but the mechanisms to keep it in check also work. So where are the battles worth fighting?

The Swiss heaven is not uncoupled from the global economy. This coupling of our city to the global economy gives the all too prevalent myth and folklore of Swiss society quite a run for its money. Literally. While at the national level the very popular SVP is busy with an anti-migration campaign, the common folk has other problems.

For instance the institution that we visited yesterday serves a group of about 2’000 folks who are all unemployed or receiving social welfare aid. They fall into three categories: (a) qualifying for immediate workforce integration; ((b) needing special assistance for workforce integration; and (c) needing assistance for social reintegration. The city-run social enterprise offers a variety of services that include job placement in social, private, or state enterprises; coaching and remedial training. However you can not just walk-in, you need to be referred to the office by either the unemployment office or the social welfare office. Their reintegration success quota does not seem to ever go above 40% and that is just for those people who are able to compete out there on the hustle of the job market. A large fraction of the folks referred in very precarious social and economic conditions.

Wether we like it or not, what we see happening is a fragmentation of society where the weakest just fall through the cracks and end up in economic, social and culture conditions that have us all think a bit harder about and where do human rights standards play a role in an ever not only more competitive, but much more aggressive economy. That is, the weakest member of societies, that either due to sheer bad luck, poor choices, or unfortunate circumstances find themselves unable to provide for their own subsistence. Now, the SVP can complain all they want about the state providing for these people, but it does not change the fact that it is the state’s responsibility to do so.

Low and behold, this is a global phenomena, society is becoming more and more fragmented. More and more people are not finding access to a means of living in dignity. The statistics and revolts and riots are the evidence. But do not take my word for it. Recently Friedman had a few bits to offer on observing London burn, Arabs revolt, and Israelis taking to the streets and notes that the common denominator for these uprisings  ”can be found in one of the slogans of Israel’s middle-class uprising: “We are fighting for an accessible future.” Across the world, a lot of middle- and lower-middle-class people now feel that the “future” is out of their grasp, and they are letting their leaders know it. “

Although our briefing yesterday was rather down to earth, and down to the provincial troubles of tiny Bern, the observations shared with us echo this very same sentiment that more and more people are falling out of the so-called ‘productive’ workforce.

I am deeply concerned. Some five years ago I noted in this blog that ”[t]he way that I see it, the paradigm shift already happened. We are here and the revolution is taking place. The shift is from capitalism to social humanism. I am not quite sure what to call it, but let’s play around with the term social humanism along the lines that business is art and that it is all about sustainability somehow. How?“

I am deeply concerned because a purely capitalistic and production maximization approach does not serve a global economy towards sustainability. There is nothing sustainable about squeezing more and more out of the workers, factory workers, and middle management. Society is breaking like mayonnaise. Putting all the ingredients for mayonnaise in a blender does not produce mayonnaise. Process is important, and sometimes process is not fast. The blender would be faster, and economists like blender arguments, however blenders produce a fragmented slime instead of the smooth mayonnaise.

Perhaps it is time that I develop that idea of social humanism a bit further. Corporate social responsibility comes to mind, and human rights were already there. I return to the idea of what it is to be a citizen and what the relationship is between the citizen and the government.

How could social humanism open access to the future for all?

However when you listen to the debate going on in the city’s parliament about yesterday’s clean up action that cleared the anti-nuke demonstrators from the front lawn of the BKW at the Viktoriaplatz, you would think that we are in Syria and that the police has been trained by Al-Qaeda. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Now let me get this clear. Demonstrations are part of our culture. Camping on private property without permission is not kosher. That nuclear power generation is going through an abortion process is nothing that I am opposed to. Sooner or later, this was an inevitable step. Nuclear fusion has the advantage of not producing green house gas emissions, however it is not a form of renewable energy, and the legacy problem of dealing with the byproducts has yet to be solved. We need research and deployment of renewable energies, but we also live in a market society. Deal with it folks, or else turn off the computer, go bathe in the Aare, eat raw vegetables.

Now, what there is to criticize is how the executive of this city dealt with the demonstrators that camped at the Viktoriaplatz. The police did what needed to be done, and they did as professionals. Frankly I really do not understand what these people are whining about!

What I gather is that revolutions are popular these days, and that (political) demonstrations are the new entertainment. Politentrainement?

Get on with it people! Oh, you already have.

(via Harald who ignores all social media, but has a GSM in the car’s navi)

Reading some of H. G. Well’s late-19th century science-fiction classics from a Gaian perspective enables us to see how the science of microbes has shifted since his day. Wells momentarily intuited this change, from microbe as enemy to microbe as ally, almost despite himself and certainly against the bias of late Victorian culture, in The War of the Worlds of 1898. I will preface my discussion of this text and also Wells’s The Time Machine, by glancing at some recent works on related themes, Ronald Wright’s 1997 literary novel A Scientific Romance, and two feature-length animated movies, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) and WALL-E (2008). Relative to the earnest but cartoonish environmentalism of these movies, Wells’s fictions accurately convey how his world understood life on Earth to work.

The Time Machine transmits a telling late-Victorian version of classical notions about the possibility of taming the natural environment. Wells’s fiction imagines that a world from which bacteria and fungi had been expunged could be not just viable but enviable. The War of the Worlds carries forward the notion that microbes are dispensable pests to be exterminated by the hygienic advancement of a scientific civilization. Wells’s text remains strongly imprinted with Pasteur’s germ theory of disease and its pervasive medicalization of the microbial realm. Indeed, Wells’s Martian invasion is an allegory of the germs in Pasteur’s theory. The bacteria represent the naturalization of the diabolical within a larger salvational scheme. Nonetheless, the novel’s denouement gives the role of the microbes an interesting evolutionary twist: when pitted against the Martians, bacteria become our “allies” in the war to defend human dominion over the Earth. In this moment Wells’s imagination leaps a century ahead of his time.

Bruce Clarke is Professor of Literature and Science at Texas Tech University. He is a past president of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (2006-08), and currently co-editor of Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology. He is the author of Allegories of Writing: The Subject of Metamorphosis (1995), Dora Marsden and Early Modernism: Gender, Individualism, Science (1996), Energy Forms: Allegory and Science in the Era of Classical Thermodynamics (2001), Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems (2008), and numerous essays, and the co-editor of The Body and the Text: Comparative Essays in Literature and Medicine (1990), From Energy to Information: Representation in Science and Technology, Art, and Literature (2002), Emergence and Embodiment: New Essays in Second-Order Systems Theory (2009), The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science (2010). He is currently Senior Fellow at the International Research Institute for Cultural Technologies and Media Philosophy, Bauhaus University Weimar.

Homepage: www.faculty.english.ttu.edu/clarke

Raumschifferde was simply a great expedition. I love Hamburg, but more important the coffee was of superior quality. I unwittingly accepted an invitation from Matthias about speaking, and then found out that I had the keynote. It was however a fortunate set of circumstances. It so happened that the week before I was due to be in Athens where I did not have anything else to do than to work on my book, have a look at the Acropolis,  besides drinking coffee and doing a bit of Aikido with Sensei Jenny Flower. And so it was, plus a few more adventures including the preparation of this talk. By the way, most of the pics on the presentation are from Athens, the big exception being the four of the Basisbibliothek of the University of Bern. Even “le monde” of the 11th of february, used to quote Michel Foucault, was bought in Athens.

I will add a few notes to the presentation as soon as I get a few hours to work on those notes.

Comparing the levels of technical competence of my kids with those of my non internet friends and comparing the peaceful majority at the student demonstrations in London to the wistful recollection of more politically engaged times amongst my middle class friends, I find myself wondering if the children are becoming grown ups and the adults are succumbing to voluntary infantilisation.

via - The Obvious? – Parents, children and wikileaks.

More than three years ago I asked another question that somehow seems rather on target:

After all, secrecy is still the currency of power. What are the power gate-keepers to do when secrecy ceases to be a valid currency because what was secret has become common knowledge?

In the face of change, inertia takes you into denial, survival will force you to adapt.

[W]hy should it matter that there are so few Republican scientists? After all, it’s the scientific facts that matter, and facts aren’t blue or red.

Well, that’s not quite right. Consider the case of climate change, of which beliefs are astonishingly polarized according to party affiliation and ideology. A March 2010 Gallup poll showed that 66 percent of Democrats (and 74 percent of liberals) say the effects of global warming are already occurring, as opposed to 31 percent of Republicans. Does that mean that Democrats are more than twice as likely to accept and understand the scientific truth of the matter? And that Republicans are dominated by scientifically illiterate yahoos and corporate shills willing to sacrifice the planet for short-term economic and political gain?

via Most scientists in this country are Democrats. That’s a problem. – By Daniel Sarewitz – Slate Magazine.