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It’s been just over six months since we began reporting on what became the Laura K. Krishna Saga, and we’re happy to say it’s been pretty calm for about 4 of those months. I dare say that things have finally normalized to a level where we’re getting more recognition for our shows than for our website, which is how we like it.
But I did promise back then that I’d report on any Krishna-related news if it was brought to my attention. So here’s something I got in my e-mail that should serve as a little appendix. A writer named Dougie Child has seen fit to mention me in passing in a nonfction book she just released, entitled Product Versus Process: The Term Paper Industry and the New Face of Cheating in American Education. It looks like a really interesting book, based on some parts she let me read, and I recommend you check it out.
Here’s the bit I’m in, from the neighborhood of page 50 of the book:*
Others taking the high road are far more good-natured in their efforts. If there is any question why students would rather pay the premium and get their papers through a company as opposed to hiring the Average Joe off the Internet, Nate Kushner’s story is a good example. Kushner, a comedy writer, keeps a web log (blog) called A Week of Kindness. A student saw an old Internet profile of Kushner’s in which he described himself as “eating Hindu sculpture.” Apparently, devouring religious artwork is enough by way of credentials for some students seeking to hire term paper writers, and this undergraduate student contacted him and asked him to write her a five-page paper for the tidy sum of seventy-five dollars. On a whim, Kushner threw together a fast essay consisting mainly of passages taken from online web sources and made-up words (the paper includes choice lines such as “Your actions in each lifetime affect your karma, and if a Shudra watches dharma and greg [Sic], it will have a positive effect on his karma”), used an online search engine to find the name of the student, and recorded the entire process in his blog. As a finishing touch, he implied that he would email the link of his blog entry to the president of the student’s school. Several prominent news and opinion web sites picked up on the story and Kushner’s experiment with the psyche of a plagiarist quickly became a touchstone for a debate over academic dishonesty. Kushner, unlike Parkinson, did not intend to bring the wrath of academia or the Internet down on the plagiarist’s head: all he wanted was for the plagiarist to learn a lesson and he was astonished at the wide-ranging positive and negative responses to his impromptu social experiment.
Anyway, check out that book. I’ll totally sign it for you if you bring one to any of the performances of Barnyard Jamboree!
*And here’s the citation for that excerpt, cause I like things to be cited.
Child, Dougie. Product Versus Process: The Term Paper Industry and the New Face of Cheating in American Education. Booklocker.com: Bangor, Maine, 2005.
Posted by Nate Kushner at October 7, 2005 07:21 PM
What does this have to do with Laura Krishna?!
Posted by: Mike Still at October 8, 2005 06:06 PM
At long last, to be immortalized in print!
Posted by: Chris Coleman at October 13, 2005 07:22 PM
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