My mailbox today had a rather alluring invitation to a conference: Dear Dr.%{CURRENT_RCPTNAME} On behalf of the organizing committee, I am delighted to invite you to attend the [name removed] Summit, to be held in [place removed] from January 21st to 22nd, 2011. We would like to welcome you to our Conference as our valuable [...]

A considerably updated version of the opinion piece by Gautam Menon and myself, that I previously posted here, has been published in Current Science. As far as the professionalism (or lack of it) of the report goes, I have nothing to add. The disappointing thing is that there has been no further reaction from the [...]

The movie credits for “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” included irrelevant lines in pidgin-Swedish and moose references, followed by lines such as “We apologise for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked” and “We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just [...]

[UPDATE 21/10/2010: Aroon Purie wrote personally to Grady Hendrix, to non-apologise. And sent a longer explanatory letter to Slate's editor, which Hendrix -- generously, in my opinion -- accepts as a "satisfactory close to the matter". However, I am a bit alarmed about the "serious action taken against those concerned". Asked for inputs, apparently some [...]

As if on cue, shortly after I write on plagiarism, the editor of one of India’s top weekly newsmagazines contributes his own example. A few days ago this Slate profile of Rajinikanth, by Grady Hendrix, was floating around and attracting much interest, especially for the line “If a tiger had sex with a tornado and [...]

Some “Content creators” have, for a while now, been running in panic of the “internet age” — where content is available, freely, both legally and illegally, for everyone in the world to use. But for many of us, this is not so much of a problem as an opportunity — as long as we play [...]