Chapter seven of Why white Rice? Covered the important issue of plagiarism and kept reiterating the words and concept of “don’t steal other people’s idea.” In society today, it is so easy to get caught up in conversations and using other people’s ideas without giving the proper citation when deserved. We have heard and seen so many things in our lives that it is hard to truly know what is original and what has been said/done before, where we therefore plagiarize if we use it again. I understand that when formally writing or speaking about matter we need to cite our sources to give credit from the original source that we speak from, but then taking it to social networking that we are all so caught up in, we often lose the concept of ownership and citation. I know my recent obsession is pinterest. Some “pins” are originally cited from the direct source, but when pinning becomes obsessive the original post is lost and a viewer may think it is one person’s original work, but when in reality it is not. Citation is lost and credit is not given to the proper source. How do we know what are original thoughts/ideas and what has been taken from someone else? Also, another topic that caught my interest was the information about President Obama’s speech. For someone like me who does not follow politics the slightest and is not knowledgeable of other people’s political work, because Obama did not cite governor Deval Partick, I would have never known that a leader we all (or are supposed to) look up to took the words of another person and made the general public believe that was his own work. It is important to always give credit when due so we don’t get lost in a world of plagiarism where everything becomes mashed up and we don’t know who found what or who said what.

Swanson, Troy. “Mash It Up … Gracefully Using Sources.” Why White Rice?: Thinking Through Writing. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, 2010. 163-173. Print