For starters, the e-mails posted on the same Staff Board you yourself had access to? The one where there was a whole forum devoted to the absolutely insane ones? I can only guess what even more insane ones get thrown out. Since I can’t re-post them over here, I guess you just have to believe me or not.
And I didn’t claim I had insight into his thinking. I said that the presence of the known insanity alone means a prudent person wouldn’t go out of their way to divulge any more information than they have to.
So your “awareness” is that Author A is forbidden legally from using Author B’s work without written attribution, even if Author B gives full explicit, legal, written permission for Author A to do exactly that? For a second time, can your awareness be backed by a cite to the US CFR? And I’m not snarking on you Michael, I honestly want to know, as I’ve read my copyright-related law guidelines and I’m not finding that instance. My publisher and their legal folks had no problem with it at all, and I want to simply know what the facts are. If they were supposed to be attributing anyhow, then I want to ask them what their rationale was for not doing so.
This legal discussion is sort of aside the fact that original thing I responded to was this:
to which I said:
What I’m saying is whether or not anyone is a “plagiarist” of anyone else by a dictionary definition, the reason for Cecil not “calling” Ed on it could simply be Ed asked Cecil, and Cecil said “sure, I don’t care.” I can see why RealityChuck thought I was addressing the plagiarism aspect directly, and I freely confess that I did for a couple of posts muddle the issue of plagiarism versus copyright violation - my bad. But my original point and intent still stands - the reason that Cecil may not have got after Ed is that they may have had a professional understanding. I was thinking about it from my standpoint, where quite frequently I get asked if as a favor I can write up a few paragraphs to go into a technical paper or conference presentation - and I remain uncredited for it. Contemporaries with friendly relationships do this sort of thing all the time in my field, and all I did was throw out the possibility that Ed and Cecil did the same.
Please cite some examples where “entire sections” from the column, or even individual sentences, appear in Know it All!. In my copy of the book, there are some topics which also appeared in The Straight Dope, but in all cases that I am aware of they have been rewritten to address a more general and younger audience.
http://www.straightdope.com/index.html#askcecil
I can’t believe so many long-time posters and people who have actually been involved with this board in the past are so hung up on this. The truth of who writes the columns is pretty obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a few minutes. Why do you need some kind of official verification of this?
And the subject matter of the column has clearly changed since 1973. All the easy questions were answered long ago, and there is a wealth of information available online to answer many of the types of questions that were often featured in the column pre-Internet. That the tone of the column has changed over the course of 35 years doesn’t surprise me at all.
Because the people who run this board insist that Cecil Adams is a real person and is not an pseudonym for Ed or for anyone else. Despite evidence to the contrary.
It doesn’t make you feel very comfortable when you’re looking for the truth when you’re apparently lied to about this.
What is this “high end” of what you speak? What does it involve? I’ve been onboard for a few years, as a moderator and a SDSAB member, but haven’t been allowed into the inner sanctum. What put the idea into your head that “others” are “now doing much of the work?”
Not to speak for Exapno–he’s more than proven his ability to effectively do so for himself–but he didn’t put it forth as a theory of his own but was suggesting a possible “out” for making the claim that Ed was once Cecil but now is not.
And, Una, my awareness (why the snarky quotes quotes around that word if you weren’t trying to be snarky–genuinely curious) is based upon my observation of the use of that language in every published work I’ve read which I’ve been aware of large portions of copyrighted material being reprinted. Since I can’t find anything in the CFR which explicity or implicitly states this language is a requirement, I withdraw my comment. However, I will note that researching has demonstrated to my own satisfaction that the verbiage is apparently a requirement of many publications for reprinting work with permission.
But who cares? It’s fun. Cecil isn’t a real person, it’s a collection of writers writing under a collective pseudonym. Probably always has been…Dear Abby didn’t write all “her” own responses, did “she”?
Why would mods, admin and SDSAB dispel this myth? It would detract from subscribers/readers.
Again, why even care? This is a fun and informative website, it’s core being the exchange of ideas amongst the (mostly) literate membership.
I love this place, especially now that the “timed out” issue hasn’t been happening (knocks wood).
People have asked me that before, and even Pitted me over it. I use quotes in odd ways sometimes; the explanation is long and boring but suffice to say I’m not an English major and someone a long time ago taught me poorly. I said I wasn’t trying to be snarky because, well, it was the truth, and for some reason my post read in a negative tone, and I wanted you to know that I was searching for a fact, not searching for a fight.
Meh, I gave up the “Who Is Cecil” quest a long time ago. I figure, based on other related threads and little clues in the articles, that Cecil graduated from Northwestern in the very late 60’s and started this column pretty quickly afterwards (either as the original author or, as posutlated, the third). My guess is that made him, say, 23 when the series started (possibly a little younger if he started while at NWU). This would make him roughly 58 now. From a realistic standpoint there is probably only 20 - 30 more years before there can be no more “Original Cecil” so I’m content to wait until then and enjoy those columns week after week.
Why are longterm members debating this at all? The illusion is part of the fun, to me.
But I’m new, what do I know, I just need to wait until I’m cynical and jaded with 20,000 posts (a number I will reach within a year and a half at my rate!)
Pseudonym, certainly. But I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that it’s a collectively-used pseudonym, and in my time as a member of the SDSAB, I would have been in a position to know. Cecil (whoever that may be) does, at time, ask for help from us, but whenever he does so, he acknowledges us (individually or collectively) in the column. In fact, there was one occasion (which, amusingly, is the first Google hit for “turtle butts”) where almost all of the body of the article was written by a staff member (Colibri, in this case), but Cecil (who wrote the framing text) made no effort to hide this fact. If the “Cecil Adams” pseudonym were indeed used collectively by the staff (or by some “inner circle” of the staff), why wouldn’t they have just run Colibri’s response entirely under the Adams by-line?
Furthermore, if the “Cecil” columns really were written by staff members, why maintain the distinction between Cecil’s columns and the Staff Reports? Surely, it’d be easier to just call them all “Cecil’s columns”.
I’m in no position to touch the question of who Cecil is, but I can confidently state that he’s just one person.