Yesterday’s plagiarism post has broken the visitor record for this blog, largely due to a link from the VroniPlag press review.
The VroniPlag press review also offers a link to this Spiegel Online article about the Althusmann case. Turns out that Althusmann misquoted his own thesis adviser. Ouch.
The plagalanche was a pleasant surprise, considering that the readers of this blog usually care more about Game of Thrones and Tarzan sex than about plagiarising German politicians. Talking of Game of Thrones, I also found a link from the Westeros forum which – based on a quick skim of the thread in question – seems to be as toxic and sexist a place as I remembered.
As for other hot topics, in her real life identity as Louise Mensch, Louise Bagshawe offers a rebuttal to the latest round of “romance hurts women” nonsense at the Telegraph.
Kate Elliott explains why she writes about rape. Good post.
I’ve had a few posts about class and pop culture before, mainly referring to Britain. Now the sociology blog Society Pages offers this very insightful post from the US perspective on the problems of coming from a lower class background and feeling that you have to hide who and what you are.
Viewed from the distance of a continent away, I find that “redneck bashing” in the US is not just shockingly common, even among otherwise tolerant and liberal people who should really know better, but also very rarely questioned.
As a young child, I spent almost a year of my life in the Deep South on the Mississippi Gulf coast. That’s where I first learned English. I even had the accent, though years of hostile English teachers (when I was at school, only British English with an RP accent was proper English) have washed it out of me. I wish I still had it though, along with the ability to code-switch, if necessary. Though I still say “coke” rather than “soda” or “pop”.
When mentioning my time in Mississippi to Americans, I often get remarks like “Oh my god, wasn’t it strange among all those crazy rednecks?” or “And you really used to sound like that? Wow” or “Well, we’re not all like those people, you know.” Those remarks bother me a bit, especially since I have really happy memories of Mississippi*, and I only lived there for a year. Now imagine actually being from Mississippi, having the accent and getting hit with that sort of thing…
Finally, from the department of unnecessary and unwanted remakes comes the news that apparently there will be a Dallas remake. Why, for goodness’ sake, why?
This is about as unnecessary as the revamped Battlestar Galactica (yes, I know I’m in the minority on this one, but I hate the new version) and the Americanized Torchwood (the Welshness and the presence of actually interesting characters was the whole appeal).
And if there will be a Dallas remake, can a Dynasty remake be far behind?
*Even my five year old self was able to notice, if not articulate, that there was a lot of racism in Mississippi and that the locals seemed more interested in praying and going to church than most Germans I knew.
sending...