Convicted of Plagiarism

An email arrived on my phone the other day. It was from a colleague whose job it is to be the advocate of Chinese exchange students who are studying abroad. A student had submitted a research paper that the plagiarism-sniffing software at the school had alerted to a 75% copy rate. The student was being asked to respond and defend his actions. Obviously, the copying had happened, and it was wrong, but the student had an excuse; she was hospitalized with an acute case of appendicitis just before the submittal date. A doctor’s note substantiated this claim. She had no choice but to take the shortcut of copying substantial portions of a friend’s work and adding her own insights where appropriate.

How was my colleague to advocate for this student? A difficult question considering that the response could determine the student’s future direction at the school. 

As I pondered the right response, another question, from another of my Chinese friends came to mind. He had asked whether I thought Trump was doing the right things for America or for the world? The question arose out of his concern about the disastrous consequences of the recent tariffs imposed on China. That question led my divergent mind to turn to yet another incidence of copying to which I had a personal connection.

In one of my previous jobs as a design engineer for anesthesia machines, I had designed a system that was quite avant-garde; in fact, it was so unique that the FDA refused to allow us to use it on our machines because it violated the world standards for the proper design of anesthesia machines. Our lawyers had to battle with the FDA for a long time before they finally agreed and allowed us to use it. So, one can imagine my chagrin when I took a job working as an engineering support to a Chinese anesthesia company and found that an exact copy of my hard-fought design was being used in their machines. My anger was somewhat mitigated because the design had been on the market for several years. Besides, the original firm had taken the design and moved its production back to the company's home country, causing people in America to lose their jobs. So turn around was fair play! But it left me with unassailable proof that the Chinese were not at all shy about copying other people's products verbatim. It was just as unassailable as the proof that this poor student, plagued with appendicitis, had copied another girl's work and submitted it as her own.

Both the student and the Chinese could have made the ethically correct decision. The girl could have cited her sources and the Chinese could have paid a royalty for the design. But both took the easier and more lucrative path. The school administrators were not being remiss in calling out the obvious plagiarism. And Trump is not remiss for calling out the Chinese violation of property rights. It is not a pleasant task for either party to level the ethical playing field. And it takes someone with a lot of guts to step in and call people to account. It may mean the student might not graduate and it may curtail economic growth if they enforce reasonable standards of ethical behavior. But in fairness, someone needs to do it. And for my friend, who is to be an advocate for this girl, and for myself, with deep ties to people in China who are being impacted by the economic downturn, it can be quite a gut-wrenching situation to endure.

This all suggests yet another connection which was the central theme of the book, “The Righteous Mind.” The author, Jonathan Haidt, stated that he wrote the book to answer the question, “Why can’t we all just get along?” The book is a classic in ethical understanding but still leaves one with the unavoidable conclusion that walking in another person’s shoes will always be a difficult task. Adjudicating fairness will never be easy. Just ask Solomon, who once advocated the slicing of a newborn child in two to be fair to the quarreling mothers. See 1st Kings 3:16–28. But until we find another accommodating planet or at least a deserted island to which we can take our petty grievances, we will have to learn to somehow get along. So in this, let’s all do some plagiarism of Jesus whose example tells us to relate to one another with “love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” 1st Timothy 1:5. Allow yourself to be convicted of sincerely plagiarizing Jesus!   

Drink Ye All of It

Taking communion in church today drew my mind back to what I think was my most meaningful communion service. More precisely, it reminded me of what had happened with the grape juice in that service. No, it had not miraculously transubstantiated into wine, but it did take on a new meaning for me that day. 

It all began with a mistake. Our church was on its annual church retreat at a local camp called The Variety Club. We were going to have communion during the Sunday service, but someone forgot to bring along the grape juice and the cups. I'm not even sure that they are any longer available, but some resourceful person went to a local market and found these tiny cans of Welches grape juice. They must have only been about a 3 oz. size. They bought enough so that all the people taking communion could have one. At the appropriate time in the service, each person was given their own can and we were going to all "drink it together."

It was at that point, with the little, unopened can poised in my fingertips, that a sudden realization came to me. There was juice in that can -- good juice, life-giving juice -- but it was unavailable until the can was pierced. Jesus' blood, the covering for our sins, was also unavailable until His body was hung on the cross. He needed to have His body pierced so that we could access that cleansing blood.

And then when the time came to drink the cups, one could hear the pops around the congregation as each person opened their can. Another realization came to me as I started to drink from that pieced can. Unlike the draught from the typical communion cup that barely is enough for one swallow, these cans contained abundance; way too much to swallow in one gulp. It took time to drink it all. There was enough in that can satisfy the thirst and refresh the body. 

There was special significance that lay in those realizations that day. I was glad to be reminded of them as I lifted the little cup to my lips today in church. 

While we are on the subject of Welch's grape juice, I would recommend that you look into the amazing story of how this brand of grape juice came to be. It is fascinating to discover that it grew out of the confluence of the temperance movement, the discovery of pasteurization and the right people in the right places. Charles Welch summed up his dad and his life's work in his will:

Unfermented grape juice was born in 1869 out of a passion to serve God by helping His Church to give its communion “the fruit of the vine,” instead of the “cup of devils.”

You can find more at the link: http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/methodist-history-controversy-communion-and-welchs-grape-juice

Unusual Footprints on the Sand

We all are familiar with the "Footprints in the Sand" poem. Here is a variation -- a rather insightful variation -- on that theme. I thought it would be a wonderful addition to my blog which have the footprints theme.

Footprints Revisited-Transcribed from Vertical Hold video 5/19/04

One night I had a wondrous dream

A set of prints on the sand was seen

The footprints of my precious Lord

Yet mine were not along the shore

But then a stranger print appeared

I asked the Lord 

What have we here?

This print it large and round and neat

But Lord it’s just too big for feet

My child, he said in somber tones

For miles, I carried you alone 

I challenged you to seek my face

Take up your cross and walk in grace

You disobeyed, you would not grow

You would not stand against the flow

Your neck was stiff your ears were shut

So there I dropped you on your butt!

Because in life there comes a time 

When one must fight, when one must climb

When one must rise and take a stand

Or leave one's butt prints in the sand.

People Do Not Do Stupid Stuff

Ok! I admit that the title was click-bait! But I also believe that it is true in this sense: yes, people do a lot of stuff that we might think is "stupid." But they have always justified what they are doing in their own minds. If they truly felt that what they were doing would make them look stupid, they would not be doing it. Looking at people's actions from this point of view, asking how they are justifying the apparent "stupidity," opens a new avenue of understanding about their actions and how to address them. It is really the old "walk a mile in their shoes" philosophy, but it needs to be reinforced in today's partisan ugliness that usually has people talking past each other in the self-serving drive to advance one's own point of view.
Attempting to follow this philosophy led me on a rather interesting adventure several Sundays ago. My starting point for this inquiry was the apparent disregard by the Left for the benefits of the currently booming economy, which at least for me, was creating the demand for many new office spaces served by vast expanses of windows through which the natural lighting would flow to illuminate otherwise dismal cubicles. New construction is happening everywhere, and unemployment is at historic lows. Who could be so "stupid" as to feel that this is a bad thing? In casting about in my mind for a reason for how the left could be feeling like this, I happened to remember a view that had assaulted my eyes upon emerging from the north end of the Lehigh Tunnel on the turnpike years ago. Fifteen years ago, this had been a devastated landscape, more akin to Nevada than to the Poconos. Lately, this view has been softened considerably by the return of vegetation. But how had this desolation been caused?  I had known that there had been some mining companies in this area that were somehow responsible for the devastation. Breaking out of the tendency to follow confirmation bias, the fine art of only looking for ideas that confirm ones already held opinions and actively suppressing other ideas, often requires active measures. Since the weather was perfect for a motorcycle ride on that Sunday afternoon, it seemed like a good day for some activity. I determined that I would ride over Blue Mountain and explore the valley beyond for better information onto what had caused the destruction. My rather nebulous plan was to seek out some talkative native sole at a local café and ask them over a cup of coffee what had happened to the valley.
So, with the glorious sunlight bathing the landscape, I headed north on Kings Highway and up and over the stately Blue Mountain with the Appalachian Trail running along its spine. I arrived in the valley and proceeded east toward the industrial town of Palmerton, PA which sits just north of the point where the Lehigh River bores its stately way through the imposing mountain. This brought me along the base of one of those devastated-looking hillocks with a factory town clinging to its southern flank. I turned up the hill into this little village and rode past row after row of little bungalows, nicely maintained but obviously built with one goal in mind; providing cheap housing for a large group of factory workers. There, standing on the sidewalk absorbed in conversation, were two of the elderly residents of this little town. I pulled to a stop beside them. "Can either of you answer a few questions about what happened in this valley?" I asked. The one gentleman rolled his eyes and said, "I'm out of here!" and walked off toward the rear of his house." The other man said, "Do you have a couple of minutes?"
I assured him that indeed I did, and with that, he directed me to have a seat on his front porch while he ducked inside and returned with an armful of newspaper clippings and a photo album. As the next hour or so would prove, I could not have happened upon a better representative to tell me about the disastrous history of the valley. His name was John Colberta, and he had lived in the valley for 74 years. For 41 of those years, he had worked as a machinist for the New Jersey Zinc Company. This company ran the dual zinc ore smelters that lined the north side of Lehigh River that ran through the valley. Pictures from his photo album documented what the valley looked like back in 1954 when the huge, industrial complex spewed billowing clouds of noxious waste products into the skies. At that time, there were still some trees evident on the northern slopes of the valley that lay just across the Lehigh River from this burgeoning complex. This was when John had started his career in the factory, making tooling fixtures for the smelters. He showed me the roller kilns and the huge vacuum tubes that sucked the Zinc oxide dust from the smelters and deposited it into the bag cars. These cars would then transport this important industrial product to the factories across the country that used it in a plethora of industrial products such as paint, and alloys for copper that turned it into bronze that was used for countless cannon muzzles. He showed me that little doors that would be opened to dump the lead oxide into the mix to create the now-banned leaded paints. He talked about the blood testing that was conducted monthly to check that toxic levels were not affecting the workers. From the looks of his body -- clearly visible since he was not wearing a shirt -- he had come through this exposure unharmed. There was a groove across his right shoulder, but that he said was from a bullet that had managed to pass through his jacket and a bit of his skin, causing what he said was a rather "uncomfortable burning sensation!" He was thankful that God had prevented him from leaning a bit farther around the corner as he was investigating where the shooting was taking place. But otherwise his body, and obviously his mind was not worse for the wear of living in this valley which had been listed on the priority list of the USA superfund sites in 1983. His album contained pictures from 2010 of the final demolition of the plant's extensive buildings and the subsequent covering of the entire site with 10 feet of dirt and meandering walking paths. 

Obviously, my penchant for seeing God's hand in a lot of the coincidences of life, caused me to be astounded by how perfectly my plan for finding that talkative and fair individual who could, with authority and without seeming prejudice, relate the history of the storied valley. He did not seem able to understand my interest in the valley as a means of understanding the politics of today. But for me, it galvanized an understanding in my mind. I had struggled to understand the left's "stupid" stand against industrial progress until I saw and felt first-hand the ravishes that capitalism had had upon this valley. For it was fair to say that is was capitalism and the headlong pursuit for products and industrialization that had given rise to that ugly factory and the denuded hillsides. I could feel the gut-wrenching revulsion to this blatant despoiling of "Mother Earth" by the extraction and conversion of its treasures into our playthings. Such reckless acts of violence against nature must be terminated immediately … at least they must be moved to a remote location where we can't see the pollution. We still would like the products, but we would rather that the extraction processes be done far away from the pastoral hills that we wish to save for our grandchildren. Now China! That would be a great place for this to happen! Give China the scourge of capitalism and let their environment be traumatized. Let their citizens fall plague to the attendant pollution. That would be an acceptable solution to the continued need for these cheap products that leave such nasty environmental footprints.

With that understanding of what the world must look like through the eyes of a dedicated environmentalist, I felt more equipped to understand the reason that the Left, who hold Mother Earth in reverence as their god, could find a booming economy to be such a revolting development. After all, the more people with jobs, the more demand for things and the greater the usage of precious resources. A flat or declining economy saves these treasures for future generations. Suddenly it was possible to understand Obama's gloating, as reported in Reuters on July 14, 2009, that his presidency had presided over 800,000 manufacturing jobs that had gone overseas and were never coming back! Good riddance to these destructive, polluting jobs. Instead, he noted, the kids of the future would need free education to train them in skills that would be needed in computer jobs – jobs that would not send smoke billowing into the atmosphere and toxins spreading into our water tables. And it was in support of these "proper" kind of jobs that my glass installation was working. It was finally clear to me why job-killing regulations and massive expenditure to curb global warming was merited. This was the penance to the god of the environmentalist for the callous use of America's resources. It was thereby fine to spend massive amounts of money to buy first-class tickets on polluting jetliners to attend conferences on curbing pollution.
With this realization in hand, I could fundamentally understand why these elitists do not think their position is "stupid." Anything that saves the earth's resource is good and proper. For this same reason, population control saves resources since abortion saves unwanted mouths from requiring our food. I might not agree, but I can better understand the position after seeing the affront of Palmerton's denuded mountains. And this bridge to understanding seemed to be a better way of addressing the partisan divide than fortifying oneself in one's own little corner and firing broadsides across the cultural chasm. And some of these gut-felt emotions against excessive consumption actually align with my own deeply held desire to avoid waste and to live as efficiently as possible. It is a view that I would refer to as trying to be a good steward of earth's resources. Again, we might not agree on what this looks like in totality. But at least it gives one the basis to disagree respectfully.
Do people do stupid stuff? Given that most people would do anything to avoid embarrassment, it seems that people who are guided by a rational mind would only do stuff that they have been able to justify as non-stupid in some more or less convoluted manner. If the mind is not being rational, as is the case with drugs, alcohol and other physiologically distracted thinking, all bets are off. In that case, stupid is the order of the day. But in the case of rationalized, stupid-looking actions, understanding the justification behind the action seems to be a possible path forward to allowing improved communication.