What the plagiarist and his/her host institution should do

Here is how the editor of respectable The Journal Economic Perspective dealt with the issue of cross-publishing by Bruno Frey: they sent a letter to him (in pdf), explaining the case carefully, and demand an apology from him to the related parties (the Journals).

And Bruno Frey humbly replied the letter, acknowledged and apologized for his fault, and did not let the responsibility pass beyond him.

As we all can see, the letter is also open to public, presumably because they believe that public deserve to know it as well as to show how they take it very seriously.

Now we have a plagiarism case here. It remains to be seen if the involved parties will take the same measure.

Nevertheless, the Cafe shares the strong opinion that plagiarism is not only deeply unethical but also a gross academic violation.

They are smart, help them!

I don't get this Jakarta Post headline: Olympiad winning needs gov't support. And a quote: "I have written to the President and the education minister, calling on them to grant gold medal winners full scholarships at the world's best universities, such as Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Princeton"

Hello?

If the government needs to help after all, they should do it for the unfortunate less smart students who struggle with math, physics, liberal arts, economics, whatever. Not for those world calibre students, because the Ivy League surely would love to accept and grant them scholarship (They are genius, aren't they?).

Unless those top universities don't recognize such award contests.

Our right? OUR right?

I am looking -- no, staring, at this reader's letter to Tempo magazine. It is about cheap laptop supply for developing countries. He basically, literally, says, "As citizens of developing countries, we have the right to enjoy such services... Developed countries are obliged to provide easy facilities to global citizens, especially those in the third world".

D'oh!

Update: Oh, it's going to be Linux-based. I guess the letter writer will send another this-is-my-right-that-is-your-obligation letter saying that it should come with a free training in Linux.