Opinion: You can't honestly celebrate plagiarism

The truth in hypocrisy

The use of moral equivalences to deflect justified criticism and possibly shut the critic up is a well-used attack strategy as much as is the use of argumentum ad-homimen to take ground from someone who posits or comments.

In some ways, hypocrisy is a good thing if we cut to the truth of the issues. Like the example in the bible whether a man had a speck in his eye and the other had a beam in his eye is beside the point, fundamentally, the truth is, both the speck and beam do not belong in the eye and they both need to be taken out.

Ethics and rules

Which brings me to an issue that came up on my Twitter timeline this weekend about the fight by a media analyst to have material lifted off his forum properly acknowledged and attributed when used by others.

The other being a very popular Nigerian gossip columnist whose penchant for plagiarism with impunity is without parallel.

Whilst the media analyst had none of the following or popularity of the gossip blogger, he knew the rules and had a number of times warned the gossip of infringements before following Google’s rules to have copyrighted material taken down from the gossip’s website.

Criminal lack of foresight

The looming danger was that the gossip could easily be proven to be a repeat offender and consequently have her popular money-spinning blog taken down by Google and that would be the death of the golden goose.

Sadly, there are too many narratives to this matter and the least of them is the influence or the commercial opportunity the gossip blog offered the owner. Success measured by how much you make by gossip and abusing copyrighted material might count for much in Nigeria, but beyond those borders, it is disreputable and reprehensible, nothing to be celebrated at all.

Beyond this, it is unfortunate that the gossip never developed her business model beyond the rudimentary once she began to make money that what she now has is put at great risk for what one might uncharitably term, foolishness.

Portability is security

For instance, I used to have my blog hosted by a small company and it was referenced by their own URL to which I prepended the name of my blog. 7 years into my running the blog on that site, I was given 18 months to take my material elsewhere because they were we no longer interested in the business of hosting blogs.

Probably by prescience, I had started an alternative blog elsewhere, some years before, but had not published much apart from an introduction. I then painstakingly moved each of over 1,500 blogs to this new location over the next few months.

At the same time, I published simultaneously on both blogs to keep the old going and introduce people to the new. One mistake I decided not to commit again was to leave the name of my blog dependent on the URL provided by my host.

I registered my own domain name and that is now the identity of my blog. If at any time the content collateral of my blog is threatened, I simply have to move the content to another hosting service and transfer my domain name to that location.

Foolish to a fault

It then really beggars belief that such a successful gossip blog never considered polishing their act and adding a touch of professionalism to their product. Something that non-commercial blogs like mine have done for years.

However, making your blog portable by being able to move the content and retain your domain name regardless of where the content is hosted does not excuse the fact that both clout and reach has been used to ignore ethical practice in commercial dealings.

Check your values

Being a blog does not exculpate the blogger from charges of plagiarism, if the content you are publishing is not originally yours, you must reference, attribute and acknowledge and the indictment of plagiarism is even worse if the blog has commercial value.

There are things to comment the gossip blogger for, but this particularly is not one of them and the lack of foresight to protect the blog from being yanked off the Internet for being an abuser and infringer of copyrighted material is damning to the point of being just plain stupid.

For those who find the gossip a role model of sorts, the only thing to caution is check your values and check your value system.

Thought Picnic: Knowing your cards

What to give and what to hold

A friend as he was thriving in his mid-level executive role once said to me, “I always go into meetings with three points in mind. The things I ready to negotiate, the things that are non-negotiable and the things that are open for discussion.” In essence, he knew what to give, what to hold and what he could afford to lose.

There is a discipline that goes into preparing for meetings if at the end of that meeting you intend to come away better informed and better prepared to tackle the issues discussed.

Degrees of tolerance

This discipline however does not just pertain to meetings, it pervades all spheres of life and can be recast as what one is willing to accept, what things are just unacceptable and the things in view of the situation or circumstance one is willing to tolerate, endure or even excuse.

It takes a good sense of self, self-worth and self-esteem to project in those ways and generally that is what is viewed as character and or principle in makeup of that person.

Chaotic is not living

Yet, I wonder about the distractions of life and of technology in some cases that makes many things negotiable and very little constant. That some people thrive on upheaval rather than stability is not only strange, but it could well be that the life is more chaotic than engineered.

The inability to commit, when stability is in the horizon because we are presented with more choices yet no choice. The quest for better over the good in anticipation for the best and ending up worse is an unnecessary precursor to stress and depression.

Where we think we are making decisions, we are sometimes running away from our reality and engaged in pursuit of Utopia in life, in relationships, in our work life and many more areas of endeavour.

Stand somewhere to run anywhere

It is unhealthy. We need to find a platform of stability to launch ourselves from, a steady boat on stormy waters, something that is part of routine so that we can work better on our creativity and creativeness to be better people to ourselves and our communities.

We need to limit the distractions so that we can become involved participants rather than spectators and worse still, voyeurs ogling at the experiences of others. This is not to dampen our sense of curiosity, but if curiosity is for titillation rather than the opportunity to learn something new, we would be left with mirages and images of the lives of others and nothing to talk of, of ourselves.

We need to stand somewhere to be able to run anywhere.

Thought Picnic: On why we should all blog

The learning experience

I have just dialled back 5 years on my blog to read of one day in my life where a new reality might have been the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning.

What was significant about that blog was the record of the events of the day before, I was lonely and alone, I could not keep my meals down, I was put on new medication, I was in pain and I conclusively learnt that I had cancer.

In learning I had cancer, I was to go on a regime of chemotherapy having not properly responded to the treatment I had been taking for the first week I was in hospital.

The understanding experience

Even more poignant was the level of consideration that the consultant in charge of my treatment had for me, from reading my moods to giving all the information I needed to understand the kind of treatment that I was have, which commenced 5 days after.

Much as I am thankful for where I am now, the most important thing I would like my readers to take from this piece is why you must blog. For without a blog documenting my days in hospital, my diagnosis, my moods and other trivia of the day, it is unlikely that the minutiae I have so written would have been as vividly committed to memory.

The writing experience

A blog allows you to keep track, keep perspective, keep focus and keep history. In keeping all these things, you have a clear opportunity to count your blessings, review experiences, make reference and maybe even offer encouragement to those who might be experiencing what you have once been through.

I am in my 11^th year of blogging and each opportunity I have had to write, recall, narrate or explain has been like drawing from wells of inspiration, experience, knowledge and observation that never finds utility except when I type away.

Cancer for me is no more shocking news, it has become part of my story, the embodiment of hopes and fears, or carefulness and carelessness, of foolishness and of wisdom, but most of all, it is part of what we call life where some depart and others survive, none the smaller by what they have known, we are all in the fight to stop cancer becoming the story of everyone that lives.

I learnt on that day, now write of that day, five years past. Here’s to life and to blogging our stories better.

The simple fact is, if we don’t write our stories, we are bound to forget some wonderful moments and can become ungrateful for the amazing life journeys we’ve had.

I suggest Spatial-Consideration Intelligence

The rules I break

I believe I have broken a few rules as I remember the words of one of Anita Baker’s songs – She is probably my best musician artiste, “Rules were meant to be broken,” she first says, then you goes on the say, “So many hearts break the same way too, aw baby, I said that you ain't no exception to the rule, yes sir.”

The rules I have broken are mainly the unwritten ones, the ones I have read or can still remember as instruction even if irritating to the point of awakening that streak of rebelliousness in me, I have rarely dared to infringe.

Now, I do not intend to speak about broken hearts, but the taking the exception to the rule or rules does concern me. I love order, I like to see order around, order especially when I leave my home for whatever activity I have purposed to do or just happened to find myself in.

In the way

Starting with stepping out of my front door and not having to ask someone who has inadvertently felt my doorstep is the place to take a standing nap. Then I get on the street and some friends all decide to walk abreast, which is fine but in their chatting excitement become oblivious of others that you either have to alert them or step dangerously onto the street.

That simple element of awareness which should be a rule written on the fleshy tablets of the heart and branded fierily on the jellies of the cranial grey matter, yet so carelessly ignored. People who knowing it is a doorway and take up the space constricting access.

I’ve seen too many instances of the absence of intelligent engagement of the spaces we occupy too, like finding myself in queues when I was in India and having the person behind me pressing against my person for no particular reason that thankfully my towering height helped when I bellowed down at the person, “Hold your space.”

Know your space

I can remember when I touched the man in front of me in a pub and apologised that I could not put my feet in a bag, after he stepped on my toes. A very strange situation where my size 12 feet (European size 46) knows full well not to egress in the pied-à-terre (literally, space for the feet) of others and then to find someone with much shorter feet unaware of where their feet should be.

Space is probably a European concept more than it is for any other place, but I am probably in error when I realise that queues were not the kind of order to find in the Netherlands, it drove me to distraction and brought out the most English of annoyances in me.

You could not get off a train comfortably because everyone wanted to get on, yet, we need to get off for others to get off. That is where my cane sometimes made a violent acquaintance with the shins of others and behold the way opened before me without obstruction.

Consideration and deportment

Public transport does provide a test case for those who are literally spatially ignorant, people who take up more seats than they should or create impediments to others getting access to other seats especially by putting their bags on the seats, worse still is those who put their feet on the seats despite the fact that there are notices clearly saying they should not.

People who bring their caterwauling music unto public spaces who in their enjoyment create the greatest irritation to others, a total lack of consideration, I say. Then, being a cane user, you can imagine when I get on the London Underground and find that able-bodied people have made a beeline for the priority seats and completely ignore the aged, the infirm, the pregnant or the mobility assisted. Those seats are not for them, that is why the signs are put there.

Other views of space

Space is a matter of dimensions and different dimensions of occupancy, manner, appearance and attitude which demands awareness and consideration. The consideration that if everyone else did what I was doing, what would the world be like.

Literally no public seat is safe from the halitosis-ridden oral excrements of chewing gum that you never venture the underneath of a wooden armrest or under the seat, forget the number of pavements with gum and cigarette butts. The former should be banned as they have so done in Singapore.

It manner of dressing is the being assault in public with the sight of cack-ridden undergarments that should be covered up in this rotten fashion trend of sagging trousers. Beyond that, it is those forget to dress for the body they have and end up dressing for what they want their bodies to be – uncouth and unsightly, you almost think you should wear a sick bag like a colostomy bag at the things that things that invade the sanctity of the senses.

Public decorum

Forget those who do not take a seat to make a call or sent a text message on their mobile phones, so unaware that what they think is walking in a straight line is anything but, some have met great mishap as a result when they divorce themselves from the personal responsibility of knowing that each person being aware of the other and acting accordingly is part of the order we all crave in society and community.

Use the bins, press the button if you are first at the pedestrian crossing lights, stand out of the way, give way to others less able to manoeuvre, be courteous, polite and considerate, the list goes on about how I love things to be and what really piques me.

Defining this intelligence

As I thought about this, I was about to give this sense of awareness and consideration on the matter of space, Spatial Quotient as an additional form of measuring intelligence along with Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Intelligence (EQ) only to find that Spatial Intelligence is quite a broad field of study amongst other types of intelligence, in what is known as the theory of multiple intelligences, so I back to square one.

Having looked at the nine intelligences listed and the descriptions that follow, for musical–rhythmic, visual–spatial, verbal–linguistic, logical–mathematical, bodily–kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and existential. I am not convinced this one or a combination of some of these properly address the element of spatial awareness and intuitiveness that I have raised in this blog.

Giving well, taking little

And back to the lyrics I introduced at the beginning of this blog, there is an element of the absence of this intelligence that is expressed in, “So many times we don't give, we take…” whereas, society works on various levels of giving and taking to different degrees that are usually never equal.

I am tempted to suggest, Spatial-consideration intelligence, however, it probably requires more academic rigour from behavioural experts to properly define this or extend the meanings of the previously defined categories.

Space matters, the giving of it, the giving up of it, the taking of it and taking it with clear consideration of others too.

Thought Picnic: The missing black guy from Old Trafford is not me

Out in a cab

This afternoon, I went to visit a friend in the Manchester suburb of Urmston and since I was not very aware of where to go, I decided to take a taxi for the just about 7 mile journey.

Annoyingly, the cab driver being aware that it was a Manchester United match day at Old Trafford, he took no diversions and simply drove into the traffic, that added about 15 more minutes to the trip. The whole reason for calling a cab is for these drivers to use their knowledge to get you to your destination in the shortest possible time.

If for any reason the shortest route would present problems, it is only right to intimate their customer with the possible alternatives. I was quite piqued when I asked why he decided to drive into the traffic when he had other alternatives – that was his tip gone.

Walking for health

After leaving my friend’s place, I decided it was a good opportunity to walk back home, the estimated distance being just about 6.8 miles. However, I also decided to take a detour to the Trafford Centre, an out-of-town shopping precinct with a misplaced SeaWorld centre within the shopping mall.

Whilst, I am not averse to visiting zoos, to site an artificial sea environment well away from the sea to house exotic creatures is just beyond the pale and despite my fascination about sea life, I would not give custom to such places. I probably should extend that sentiment to zoos too.

At the same time, I expected to find a honey drizzler in one of the shops, considering I had been into so many shops in Manchester looking for the thing which I eventually found in a Marks and Spencer shop.

We are not the same

Then I continued my walk back home, the detour having added another mile to my journey, I began in earnest.

Just about a mile before Old Trafford, a police car drove by and stopped me for what turned out to be a missing person’s questioning. Apparently, a 24-year old had gone to the Manchester United match that afternoon and was now missing.

Whether by coincidence or crass myopia of some Caucasians who think all black people look the same, I give the policeman some benefit of the doubt. He asked for some identification which I did not have before asking for my name, date of birth and address even though it was obvious I was not the person they were looking for.

I am walking home for exercise, I was not at the Manchester United match, I do not own a club scarf and it is not in my bag, I was not on the grounds – those were some of the answers I had to give, as he needed more to convince him that he should be looking for someone else.

I made the point of recording the car registration number of the policeman and tweeting it with the location information as part of the tweet.

The aspect of identification is interesting because when I lived in the Netherlands there was a requirement to carry some identification with you and if you could not produce it when asked by the police, you were liable to a fine. Thankfully, we have not reached the stage of needing that in the UK.

The new missing is black

Probably another mile down the road as I passed by the Lancashire County Cricket Ground, also known as Old Trafford, a name shared with the Manchester United Football Club Stadium, though they are almost a mile apart, a lady drove into my pathway and immediately asked for my name. I cottoned on the fact that it was related to the missing person and remonstrated about being accosted twice in less than 30 minutes.

She gave a compliment to assuage my discomfiture by suggesting I do not by any stretch of the imagination look my age, but that did not lessen the annoyance that welled up in me. I was at the point where I was going to abandon my walk if anyone drove a third time to check if I was missing.

Maybe, just maybe

I cannot stop being black, it is who I am, but one wonders how much information they had to go on and if it was a distinguishing as to have drawn me into the purvey of being a person of interest. Was he bald too, wearing glasses, and did he had blue trainers on too? You can only wonder.

Yet, one must consider, if a 24-year old black guy in track apparel was declared missing in the space of 2 hours after a match, one can only assume the said person is not of an adult mental age. That is appeared to coincide with when I decide to walk in the Old Trafford area is both uncanny and somewhat unfortunate. C’est la vie.

I eventually got home having walked almost 17,000 steps and 11.61 kilometres. I wonder if I should choose where I walk carefully next time.

Essential Snobbery 101: Courtesy is respect

Respectfully concerned

Sometimes, I wonder if I should have lived in my parents’ generation because some of the things I find myself within makes me feel I am not in my time.

Basically, manner, attitude and expression would have some pigeon-hole me as old-fashioned, yet many of these old-fashioned things matter a lot. At least to me.

As I step into the station every morning, the newspaper vendor sees me approaching and readies a newspaper for me. I collect the newspaper first with a greeting and then leave with gratitude. I thank him, always, just because it is the right thing to do.

I wear a hat, but would never keep my hat on when speaking to a lady, and I would most likely take it off when speaking to strangers as a sign of respect, even if it appears our apparent upbringing is quite obviously different.

Not like the banks of yore

Yet, I work in an environment where many of these vicissitudes of comportment and decorum are dispensed with as if they do not matter; this is supposed to be a bank.

Electronic mails, poorly composed without proper greetings and with bad endings, the language is coarse and lacking in any refinement, as if language is no more in need of nuance and the understated, it shocks, and it appals.

Worse still is the absence of courtesy, the courtesy of being informed, the courtesy of being engaged, and the courtesy of being respected. Nothing shows this up as much as when someone should have let you know of something that you suddenly learn of because it dropped into a chance conversation that you should have been fully involved in from the onset.

Together but separate

This could sometimes be forgiven as forgetfulness, but when it involves many more who should have known better, it is treacherous and too odious for words. It belies an utter lack of regard, and dare I say, it is disrespectful.

Something my old-fashioned parents would never have allowed to happen, but in our world of egalitarianism, equality in the workplace does not necessarily mean we all have access to the schooling and the breeding that ensures that we have the best manners in all we do.

It is at that point that you wonder if you are living in a different world or that circumstances and situations have brought you into experiences you would rather not entertain if you had more choices and options about the company you keep or the ones you find yourself unfortunate and blessed to be associated with.

Thought Picnic: And more graffiti with punctuation

Not bothering much

The blog lies fallow for nothing has been written for a week. For some, they blog daily to meet a target, fulfil a duty or a calling. Mine is done for leisure even if one desires a bit more discipline to the activity.

It is not that there isn’t much to write about, there is some much going on that tweets on Twitter do not have encapsulate thoughts and thinking about the issues that concern and bother.

Yet, between writer’s block and lethargy you decide you cannot be bothered and yet as each day goes without letter or writing, you wonder if you are not relapsing into apathy and disinterest.

Things to do

The holiday snaps still need to be completed and I’ve been back two weeks already, my walking experiences have taken me places I never knew existed around Manchester, then the plague of megalomania men of God who act with impunity being answerable to God alone in Nigeria – there is enough to make one so justifiably a humanist and be done with every similitude of religion or faith – it rankles.

However, a blog starts with a thought and with fingers tapping at the keyboard the network of cranial interactions in the mind seems to generate a piece that could never have been intended at the time the first paragraph was completed.

All this rubbished

That in itself is the beauty of blogging, though after almost eleven years of this, you could understand how dejected I felt when I read a posting on a friend’s Facebook page, ‘“Blogging is not writing, it's just graffiti with punctuation." Dr Ian Sussman in the movie, Contagion.’ I wept for myself and returned to the self-same graffiti with this blog.

So there, one done, and many more to come.