* * * * *
                                        
                             … but her Mom is nice
                                        
About the principle of Varnasrama Vindaloo Dharma [1], my friend Steve Crane
[2] (on a mailing list we're both on) send a link to BoingBo ing, saying it's
a hoax [3], an April Fools hoax, but yet, according to the original site,
it's not [4]:

> So it became Monday, and instead of finishing off my nice prank I was going
> to share with two or three dozen real-life friends, I was faced with all of
> you people looking for blood. I didn't want blood. What I wanted was irony.
> Perhaps to facilitate the founding of a scholarship at her school, or get
> her to donate Hinduism books to the library, or even just to get her to
> actually write the damn paper. But it was all happening way too fast, and I
> knew at that point that the site would come around to her way faster than
> my timeline had projected.
> 
> So the e-mail revealing the link went out Tuesday afternoon instead of
> Wednesday morning, while I still thought there was a slim chance of warning
> her. Hours later, she found me on im. There was lots I wanted to ask her,
> and lots I wanted to shame her about. At this point, I figured that the
> internet had punished her, and she's already an example even if she doesn't
> get expelled.
> 

“Laura K. Krishna is Just a Dumb Kid With a Nice Mom [5]”

So, is it a hoax? Is the BoingBoing [6] notice a hoax? Hard to say about this
one (and if either is an April Fools hoax, they're still a few days early).

But, reguardless, it has brought up a nice debate about plagiarism and
whether the punishment (of public ridicule on the Internet) fits the crime
(of paying someone to write a college paper). I'm siding with the “not a
hoax” theory myself and that Laura K. Krishna (not her real name) is learning
a hard hard lesson.

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2005/03/29.1
[2] http://craniac.antville.org/
[3] http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/29/plagiarismseeking_im.html
[4] http://www.aweekofkindness.com/blog/archives/2005/03/laura_k_krishna_1.
[5] http://www.aweekofkindness.com/blog/archives/2005/03/laura_k_krishna_1.
[6] http://www.boingboing.net/

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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