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Synapses is a repository for columns, rants and reflections, mostly on secular humanist issues and politics in South Africa. Please take a look around, and leave a comment if so inclined. You can also subscribe by RSS, or follow me on Twitter.

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All the content, unless otherwise specified, is the work of Jacques Rousseau. If you want to get in touch with me, here are some contact details. Please do not reproduce content elsewhere without linking back to the relevant post.

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I'm a firm believer in free speech. However, there are ample opportunities for venting of spleen elsewhere on the internet. I reserve the right to edit or delete comments that exceed the threshold of my tolerance for stupidity or malice.

Academia and teaching

Plagiarism #2

My previous post on Stephen Watson’s allegations of plagiarism, levelled at Antjie Krog, comes down on Watson’s side. Subsequent to that post, Krog, her publishers, and Eve Gray have responded to the allegations. Having read these responses – particularly those of Krog and Gray – it becomes clear that I posted in haste, largely driven [...]

The University, Inc.

On Monday next week, the new academic year at my University will begin – and I’m wondering if it’s too late to find some South American country to take refuge in. Because as every new year arrives, I feel more and more like the store manager at some discount supermarket, attending to queries of the [...]

Plagiarism

If you are a reader of New Contrast, this won’t be news to you. But others who are interested in the topic of plagiarism – and particularly in how much it seems tolerated, or even endorsed – by South African publishers, should be sure to check out the Sunday Times this week. Well, probably this week, but I can’t guarantee that.

Most of them, and I, survive

If I said something like”That was fun”, then I’d be lying. Any of you who have had to mark student essays or exams don’t need to hear this, but people who have never been exposed to these tasks are often strangely naive about the intellectual calibre of the typical student – and the typical human being, for that matter.

Again with the marking

Earlier this week I remarked to a colleague that it feels like we’ve just finished marking exam scripts. This is not true at all, of course, given that we finished marking sometime in early November. But there was so much of it, and so much utter crap to read, that the memory lingers long. And here I sit, knowing that I’ll have to wade into the worst of it all sometime today.