After the principal dialogue's section yesterday, I feel obliged to write about the topic of plagiarism.
So what exactly is plagiarism? The word itself derived from a Latin word which means "to-kidnap". As it suggest, plagiarism is "The action or practice of plagiarizing; the wrongful appropriation or purloining, and publication as one's own, of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas (literary, artistic, musical, mechanical, etc.) of another." according to the Oxford English Dictionary Online ( I quoted my sources so this is not plagiarism). Basically, stealing.

So, if stealing is immoral, why do so many people still plagiarise? As mentioned yesterday at the Dialogue session, time constraints and laziness are primary factors-Why bother to think of your own ideas when you have it readily available on the Internet? Furthermore, the dawn of the Information Age and the mass production of computers have also encouraged plagiarism. Computer functions such as copy and paste and the huge variety of content on the Internet, it is difficult to avoid plagiarism, even when unintentional.

But if we are not supposed to copy ideas from the Internet, what is the bibliography section at the end of the research assignment for? True, it is to cite sources but not of sources which you simply copy and paste to your Microsoft Word document, but sources that you have read thoroughly and understood completely, along with what you have deduced from studying these sources. Yes, it is difficult and time-consuming and all of us have been tempted to plagiarise many times but it is better to spend 6 mundane hours studying 10 articles than spending much more time behind bars for being caught plagiarising.

So, what could we do to avoid plagiarism? Firstly, we could refer to hard copy sources such as books for research materials instead of information on the Internet. This would slightly discourage us from plagiarising material. Furthermore, hard copy sources are usually more reliable than those on the Internet as the latter might be written by people who might not have even read about the subject before and has been up on the web for such a short period of time that it might not even have been accurately assessed. Secondly, we could develop our critical thinking skills more so we would rely less on external sources but think of equally good ideas ourselves.

Above all, it comes down to one's moral integrity-everyone has the choice to plagiarise or not to do so.

Bibliography:
http://www.lib.ed.ac.uk/howto/infoskills_plagiarism.shtml
http://ezproxy.lib.ed.ac.uk/login?url=http://dictionary.oed.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
Principal's dialogue session, 29/ 6/10
See, I cited my sources I'm not plagiarising.:D





Well, so I have been to Shanghai and have visited the World Expo. How was it? I only have 1 word to describe it:

PEOPLE



Yes, fortunately or unfortunately. Need I say more? The Expo grounds were filled to the brim, or maybe even more, with people and where did those people go? Yes, to the pavilions, so now you have virtually all the queues to the pavilions completely taken up. It is no wonder that a Chinese politician made a joke saying that the World Expo is nothing but for bored people to kill time by queuing. Due to the overwhelming crowd, I regret to say that I have only visited a mere 8 pavilions, a drop in the ocean and I did not even visit the Singapore pavilion. However, I did visit the "untouchable" China pavilion. As its name suggests, people have to queue or even camp for hours before even granted mere entry to the pavilion. However, I feel that it was worth it (not just because of the fact that our tour group was granted instant access to the secondary queue). The pavilion did indeed exhibit China's superior technology and economy through the bombardment of cutting-edge modern facilities and exhibits, the manifestation of the country's prosperity, and needless to say, the pavilion alone was enough to make my day through its interactive and fun features.

I also visited the less well known corporate pavilions situated at the other bank of the river and wanted to visit the Coca-Cola pavilion, partly in order to get a bottle of free coke, but my spirits were dampened by the relentless queue. However, I did enter an aerospace pavilion which was still quite entertaining despite its small size.

Overall, I feel that the 2010 Shanghai World Expo has been a successful event so far and I would have thoroughly enjoyed it....

....If not for the overwhelming number of people.