I knew I'd missed stuff yesterday when writing about bicolage and intellectual property rights and plagarism.
And it bugged me all the way home on the bus and it bugged me at the meeting I was at last night and it bugged me as I brushed my teeth. And it bugged me till 2am this morning when I finally cracked it in my head.
There were a number of people I'd missed out.
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky. (Which takes my brain to the West Wing as there's a character with the same name played by Ian McShane)
(Shamelessly taken from wikipedia- that source of dodgy knowledge)
In the 1950s, humorist, satirist, and mathematician Tom Lehrer wrote a song, inspired by a Danny Kaye routine about Stanislavski, in which he credited Lobachevsky with teaching him the secret of success as a mathematician: plagiarism ("Plagiarize! Let no one else's work evade your eyes! Remember why the Good Lord made your eyes, don't shade your eyes, but plagiarize! Plagiarize! Plagiarize! Only be sure always to call it, please, 'research'!")
Lehrer is a genius and was listening to his songs on Sunday afternoon whilst doing the washing up. (Which may explain why I'm in this weird quandry)
And in talking about the limits of imagination I missed out Paul Poitier from Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare. He plagarizes a speech about the limits of imagination and says that it's part of a paper he's written. There is no paper as the whole story is a lie. He reveals towards the end that he used these concocted stories as he wanted to lever himself into a better position.
I also missed out Randy Cohen. Mr Ethics from the NY Times newspaper. In the podcast of the column Cohen talks about a bricolage piece of theatre that doesn't reference sources. It's all about intent. If the sources were left off on purpose- unethical. If sources accidently left off- not unethical. Before attributing motive, Cohen says, find out from the author.
So those were the things rattling around in my head. Does any of it make any kind of sense at all?
