citations

citation stealing as plagarism?

(to be fair, I went to Easily Distracted, to read savage minds, and only then went to language log, then jumped back to Easily Distracted’s comments).

commentary on commentary alone tends to distort and deracinate an argument. and the products of this process aren’t always appealing. [think of when ‘scary movie’ spoofed ‘scream’, itself a spoof on halloween et al. if you’re a lover of slasher films it is pretty clear that at each iteration, originallity and artistic value was substantially decreased as an intricate theme was distilled into its basest appreciable components. resulting in vastly too many sperm jokes in the last set of movies.]

where this really hurts is in the reproduction of ‘statistics’ as facts. take the comment in a recent ny times that “in the last 20 years, ‘about half of America’s economic growth has gone to the top 1 percent.’ ” the times is quoting senator edwards. senator edwards made that comment in speeches, but never appears to have attributed it. i don’t doubt the statistic.  or fault edwards for failure to verbally cite in a campaign.  but i do wish that news reporters would investigate these claims, to substantiate or deny them.

the same could probably be said of the history of philosophy, actually.