Plagerize, Plagerize, Plagerize

What to write about today?  I’m sick of hearing about the Obamacare rollout mess.  So it was not done correctly.  So millions of people are frustrated that it is taking more time than they wanted.  They should have been around when the only means of communication we had were party lines for the telephones, mail, telegrams, or walking or driving to the person you wanted to communicate with.   

As for telephones, that didn’t mean we all partied on them.  It meant that up to 20 people would share one line, and when the phone rang everyone in hearing would listen for the ring tones, which in those days were a combination of long and short rings.  When your ascribed combination, two longs and a short in our case, rang, it was answered by someone in your house.  The sound coming through depended on how many people were listening in.  The more listening in, the softer the sound.  

Mail was the usual method of communication.  That was pretty reliable in the old days before Congress started messing around with requiring the Postal Service to fund retirement benefits for 75 years out.  We are supposed to run government like a business?  What business would fund its employee retirement benefits 75 years into the future.  This is a mechanism to bankrupt the Postal Service to privatize it with Fed Ex and UPS. 

No one wanted to get a telegram, since it was considered to be bad news.  And to drive to a business a long way away was not always convenient.   

 But I digress. 

I couldn’t think of what to write, so I asked one of my daughters to give me a hint, and she said Rand Paul and his plagiarism problem.  Well that seemed like a good idea, so I finished up what else I was doing, which was not much.  At that point I realized a melody from days past was flitting about in my head.  After I identified the melody, I had to find the song book it was in because that melody and the lyrics to it were perfect.  The name of the song is “Lobachevsky”, by Tom Lehrer.  It is in a song book entitled, “Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer with not enough drawings by Ronald Searle”, published by Pantheon Books in April, 1981.  “The author states that although Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky (1793-1856) was a genuine, and indeed eminent, mathematician, the peccadillos attributed to him herein are not substantiated by history.”  As you read the lyrics, in your mind please substitute the word ‘politician’ for ‘mathematician’.              

  Who made me the genius I am today,

        The mathematician that others all quote,

        Who’s the professor that made me that way?

        The greatest that ever got chalk on his coat.

 

               One man deserves the credit,

               One man deserves the blame,

               And Nicolai Ivanovich Lobashevsky is his name.

               Hi!

               Nicolai Ivanovich Lobach… 

I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.  In one word he told me secret of success in Mathematics:  Plagiarize! 

        Plagiarize,

        Let no one’s work evade your eyes,

        Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,

        So don’t shade your eyes,

        But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize …

        Only be sure always to call it please ‘research’. 

The final refrain:

                              And who deserves the credit?

               And who deserves the blame?

               Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name.

               Hi! 

The song goes on for some time and is truly one of my very favorites.  It accurately depicts the person who commits a wrong, then blames it on someone else with lots of words smearing reality.

Whenever I think of Rand Paul from here on out, I won’t think ‘thief’, for that is what a plagiarist is, a person who steals someone else’s work to aggrandize his or her own, but I will sing, “… plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize ...”, and will have nothing but contempt for Rand Paul.