Some recent events have managed to lodge in my neural driftnet, collecting together in a way that makes me think they’re related. When this happens, I can get preachy, so be forewarned.

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In freshman writing this week, we were discussing the nature of the “;academic conversation,” and at one point I (mostly, but probably not entirely accurately from memory) said, “;In the end, the goal of the academic conversation is an exchange of ideas and viewpoints in order to arrive at the truth.”

Here I paused, looking at the students. For some reason I felt compelled to add: “;That might sound quaint, or naïve, or silly, but it really is the goal.”

I wanted to kick myself in the ass right after I said this last part. It was like I felt compelled to apologize for believing not only that truth mattered, but that it could be achieved through conversation and collaboration. I felt as though I was telling them the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy liked to ride on the Loch Ness Monster’s back while waving at a herd of unicorns on the shore.

Even as the discussion marched on, part of my brain was wondering why I did this.

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You’re thinking I’m about to talk about Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention, but no, first I want to talk about Jonah Lehrer.

Lehrer is the mostly disgraced former New Yorker staff writer, who was first dinged for “;self-plagiarism,” a venial journalistic sin, before dipping into the harder stuff of fabrication, inventing Bob Dylan quotes for his book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, and even engaging in a brief attempt at cover-up before caving and admitting the falsehoods.

In the wake of these revelations, Wired magazine, Lehrer’s original patron, commissioned a neutral third party review of Lehrer’s work for them, focusing on 18 of the 100’s of blog posts that Lehrer produced.

In his investigation, Charles Seife, a journalism professor and science writer, found issues in 17 out of 18 pieces. Following his investigation and an off-the-record conversation with Lehrer, Seife concludes “;that Lehrer's journalistic moral compass is badly broken.”

He goes on to say:

I am convinced that Lehrer has a cavalier attitude about truth and falsehood. This shows not only in his attitude toward quotations but in some of the other details of his writing. And a journalist who repeatedly fails to correct errors when they're pointed out is, in my opinion, exhibiting reckless disregard for the truth.

Seife calls Lehrer’s transgressions “;inexcusable,” but also says, “;the industry he (and I) work for share a some of the blame for his failure.”

Seife describes how the system has changed between his time and Lehrer’s. (Seife, like me, is 10 years Lehrer’s senior.) When Seife was coming up, his work was “;scrutinized by layers upon layers of editors, top editors, copy editors, fact checkers and even (heaven help us!) subeditors before a single word got published.”

Lehrer, on the other hand, was operating “;without a safety net.”

“Nobody noticed that something was amiss until it was too late to save him.”

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Okay, I’m definitely going to discuss Paul Ryan’s claim that he ran a sub three-hour marathon, a claim since admitted by Ryan (following an intense Internet crowdsourced investigation) as not being true (“walked back” in euphemistic politese) and that his one recorded marathon was much closer to four, rather than three hours.

No I’m not, I’m going to talk about the “;Harvard Cheating Scandal” where 125 students are accused of sharing answers on a take-home exam. This is “;nearly half” of the course’s total enrollment.

That barely audible sound you heard was the nation’s college instructors yawning with non-surprise at this news.

According to a Boston Globe report, in addition to the investigation and punishment of the guilty, “;The university also plans to bolster its anti-cheating efforts by better educating students about academic ethics.”

Heh. Heh.

The accused students are pushing back, claiming that a course previously viewed as one of the easiest on campus became suddenly difficult. They say the tests were confusing and unfair, unevenly graded by the 10 teaching assistants assigned to the course.

The core of their defense, as summarized by The New York Times: “;The students said they do not doubt that some people in the class did things that were obviously prohibited, like working together in writing test answers. But they said that some of the conduct now being condemned was taken for granted in the course, on previous tests and in previous years.”

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Just a brief mention here about the Romney campaign ad that claims the Obama administration “;gutted” welfare reform. The ad is so misleading that even in a “;post-truth” campaign the normal false equivalence practices of our major media is breaking down and calling lies lies, rather than falling back on tortured euphemisms like politicians being “;on the edge of truth.”

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Not long ago Lance Armstrong gave up his fight against allegations of systematic doping without admitting guilt. It’s true, Armstrong never failed a drug test, but numerous former teammates have testified to the pervasive use of performance enhancers during the era. In the words of sportswriter Bonnie Ford, summarizing the soon-to-be published account of former Armstrong lieutenant Tyler Hamilton, “;Cheating occurred on such a massive scale, in such mundane packaging, that it receded into the landscape and became almost invisible.”

Again, according to Ford, “;Hamilton — likely joined by most of the top riders of his time — viewed Armstrong's morality as no different than that of other riders. In Hamilton's telling, Armstrong just executed better, on the bike, in the pharmaceutical realm, and in securing protected status from the governing body of his sport: He trained hard, stayed on the leading edge of the curve of doping expertise, succeeded in having a positive test covered up. He profited hugely where others went broke.”

If Armstrong wasn’t doping, he was the only top flight cyclist not doing so, and somehow also beat everyone else who was doping at the same time.

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The New York Times recently reported on a man named Todd Rutherford who saw a marketplace opportunity in providing five star customer reviews for books he hadn’t read. According to the Times, “;Before he knew it, he was taking in $ 28,000 a month.”

In the words of the article’s author, David Streitfeld, “;Consumer reviews are powerful because, unlike old-style advertising and marketing, they offer the illusion of truth.”

The article quotes an email from a self-published author named Roland Hughes, who “;spent about $ 20,000 on review services.”

His goal: To go from, " 'being an author' to ‘being a recognized author.’ “;

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If I were trying to lure you in with a hook, I would call this epidemic of dishonesty a crisis, except it’s the longest lasting, slowest developing crisis in the history of crises.

It’s only a crisis if human nature is a crisis. The temptation towards shortcuts to success dates back to a certain guy who had an interesting encounter with an apple and a serpent.

While much hay will probably be made of Paul Ryan’s imaginary marathon prowess, he’s guilty of something all of us have done in an effort to impress an audience. He was bragging. His audience just happens to be bigger and paying much closer attention.

Far more troublesome is the laundry list of lies contained in his convention speech, lies so egregious and obvious that they speak to something beyond the ways we fall short of truth, in that they suggest that the truth doesn’t really matter. The moral compass is not faulty, it is non-existent.

It was postmodern theorists who posited there was no such thing as truth, certainly not of the objective variety. We seem to be putting this notion to the test by daring to speak falsehoods that everyone knows are lies, even as they’re being spoken. Most of Ryan’s lies in his speech had already been discussed and debunked and yet he spoke them anyway.

Politicians seem immune from punishment for lying because lying is what politicians do. After Ryan’s speech, Wolf Blitzer of CNN said to his co-host Erin Burnett: “;He (Ryan) delivered a powerful speech. Erin, a powerful speech. Although I marked at least seven or eight points I’m sure the fact checkers will have some opportunities to dispute if they want to go forward, I’m sure they will. As far as Mitt Romney’s campaign is concerned, Paul Ryan on this night delivered.”

Is Wolf Blitzer, a journalist at a national news network he wasn’t qualified to report on the truth?

His co-anchor, Burnett replied: “;That’s right. Certainly so. We were jotting down points. There will be issues with some of the facts. But it motivated people. He’s a man who says I care deeply about every single word. I want to do a good job. And he delivered on that. Precise, clear, and passionate.”

Can we really be that mad at Jonah Lehrer?

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What further interests me are the causes and justifications for these acts. The obvious rationale for lying about your political opponent is that the stakes are so high, everything must be done in pursuit of victory.

For Lance Armstrong, it appears to be a literal case of “;everyone else is doing it.” He just managed to do it a little better, besting the competition on all fronts.

I imagine something similar is at work in the Harvard scandal. The fear of being disadvantaged on the exam would become so great, that even the normally moral would succumb to the temptations of the dark side. Sure, they say, we probably stepped over a line or two, but they were lines everyone knew we were stepping over, so what’s the big deal?

The fledgling authors look at a landscape where it seems nearly impossible to draw attention to one’s work. Why not a shortcut? It’s just another form of marketing. The “;illusion of truth.”

Jonah Lehrer either never knew or didn’t care if there was a line. If he was operating without a safety net, it’s because he didn’t think he needed one, and he didn’t until he realized what was heading towards him was a snare, not a net.

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I’m pleased to see that Jonah Lehrer has been caught and discredited, that his own magazine believed in the truth enough to investigate further, even as I'm certain he will return to prominence as a journalist in the not-too-distant future.

Likewise for Lance Armstrong. I don’t know that it’s pleasure I feel at these revelations, but it feels like justice. We can look at his career with clearer eyes, and still marvel at the accomplishments, but also know more fully where they are rooted.

If Harvard thinks that educating students about academic ethics is going to impact cheating at their university, they are kidding themselves. They’re also nuts to think they can give a take-home exam to hundreds of students. As with fact checkers at magazines who save sloppy or dishonest journalists from themselves, it’s silly to design a course in a way that encourages and incentivizes cheating. Did they think it wouldn’t happen because they’re Harvard?

I think it’s more likely to happen because they’re Harvard. If Harvard is it all like any other university, I can guarantee that where cheating is made possible, cheating is done, and there is very little guilt over it.

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At the heart of all of these things, I think, is good, old-fashioned greed.

Maybe if we start naming things for what they are, we can get back to a place where truth is valued and recognizable and believed in.

These are all stories of greed: for attention, or grades, or money, or power, or some combination of all of them. Even as economic security becomes tougher to achieve for more and more people, we find ourselves in a kind of “;wealth worship,” where being a good journalist isn’t good enough if you can be a famous one, where we decide that we can run three-hour marathons instead of four, where we feel we deserve our A’s, or our good reviews or the Presidency of the United States.

I sometimes read about how the current generation has been ruined by the self-esteem movement, but they can hardly be blamed with their role models, champions who cheat, politicians who lie, journalists who don't believe there is such a thing as truth.

Or a teacher who is worried about looking like a square when he says he believes in truth. All of us are signaling that there’s nothing much worthy of belief aside from our own “;success,” our image, and how we’re perceived on some imaginary scoreboard.

These are all forms of cowardice, a lack of trust in ourselves and others, that we will not be judged of value unless we are perfect, if we are anything short of outstanding.

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Twitter is neither better nor worse than any other medium for conveying truths: @biblioracle

In some of our classes that fulfill the math requirement for the core curriculum, we occasionally teach sections involving logic, asking questions such as, “;if we say ‘if A, then B’, does that mean that ‘if B, then A’?” I found myself thinking of these questions as I was delighted at the signs that sprung up on campus this week directing new students to various events on campus.

This is the week of fall orientation on our campus, and the folks running the programming came up with a great theme for this year. They noted that “;Ursuline Fall Orientation” could be abbreviated as “;U.F.O.”, and this led to the arrival of a large number of signs across campus with cute drawings of flying saucers with adorable Martian-like creatures in them. I laughed at them, and then found myself back to the problem of asking if something that is identified as a UFO is still able to be classified as “;unidentified.” I suppose it does not matter, as long as students follow the signs to get to the next meeting or lecture they need to find. In the mean time, those of us on the faculty are scrambling to finish the preparation for classes that started when the summer seemed to end incredibly abruptly, leaving us teaching classes in lecture rooms that were still uncomfortably hot.

But it is not just Ursuline’s school that seemed to start very early this year. My daughter’s school started early, too, leading to a dilemma as I needed to figure out how to handle attending orientation for her school and teach my already running classes. Her school scheduled her orientation day on a day when I teach all day, bringing me back to the paradox of teaching in a college.

May people who are not professors view us as having very flexible schedules, which we do, to a degree. While our schedules are very flexible in some ways, as we can take work home and do it on the weekends, they are incredible inflexible in other ways, as we cannot take a “;day off” once classes have started, as those in many in jobs outside of academia can do. Indeed, if we absolutely cannot make it to class one day, we need to find a substitute for that class. As you can guess, for those of us teaching subjects like Calculus and Statistics, or worse yet, the major-level mathematical theory classes, finding a substitute at the last minute is often impossible, and so we need to find other options.

As it worked out this year, my daughter’s fall orientation left me in the position of having a Calculus class to teach at a time when there was no one who could substitute for me that day. As my husband was not available at that time to handle orientation, I had to do some creative work in trying to be in two places at one time.

I created a worksheet for my students to do during the start of the class, and had a proctor come in to give it to them during that time. I planned to make it to class as quickly as possible, as soon as I met my daughter’s teachers and helped my daughter set up her locker. It worked out fine, but it once again left me with the question of how one juggles the demands of a job in the marketplace in the midst of society’s common expectations that such demands do not exist, or at least not for both parents.  Such expectations are common in this part of the country, where it is common for one of the parents to parent full time.

Of course, I realize that such a commitment to my daughter’s education could have been just as difficult even if I did not work in the marketplace, as it could have been possible that I had duties to care for another child or a parent during that time. However, as I do work as a professor (a fact that I am thankful for each day), I would like thoughts from my readers about how to handle matters when our jobs conflict with our duties as a parent. And I am also curious as to how, when necessary, to talk to her school about perhaps revising their expectations of when I am available.

I hope to figure this out soon, but for now, I stumble along. Someday, I realized, will look back on this struggle with nostalgia. For, I realized, as I helped my daughter find places for everything in her locker, that the days are numbered when she will even want me involved in such aspects of her life.

Wishing everyone a wonderful and productive new school year!

I underline and highlight as I read and scribble copious notes in the margins of books (or sometimes, particularly in a book that I used for teaching, on a color-coded series of sticky notes that serve a dual purpose of bookmarking particular passages). But as I found myself reading more and more digital texts in recent years, I’ve struggled to adjust my note-taking habits to the new format. Sometimes it just wasn’t that easy technologically to take notes (I had to ditch my old-school Kindle for this very reason); sometimes it wasn’t that easy to find the notes I’d digitally jotted down; I worried that, much like ownership of digital texts is in question, my notes might just disappear if a platform owner decided to yank them (See: Amazon’s infamous 1984 incident).

But while The New York Times and others have worried that e-books spell the doom for marginalia, I’ve long felt like they offer an interesting opportunity, too. What if we can more easily share our notes? What if we could see the authors’ commentaries on their own works? What if we could easily read experts’ highlights? What if a class could work together on the pages of an assigned reading -; asking and answering questions, and in turn giving the professor a sense of what’s being read and what’s being understood?

Many of these things are problems that the education startup Highlighter has been tackling, initially offering a JavaScript plug-in enabling “;comments in the margins” on blogs and websites. (I chose Highlighter as one of my favorite startups of 2011). Since then, the startup has shifted its focus slightly to become an education publishing platform that lets textbooks be published for the Web (as well as in PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and ePUB) -; all with built-in social marginalia features.

Today Highlighter announced that it’s partnering with the 20 Million Minds Foundation, a non-profit committed to finding ways to lower the cost of textbooks, to product a book for the upcoming Fall term -; Introduction to Sociology. The textbook, created by OpenStax College and Rice University is free and openly licensed.

Highlighter and 20MM describe it as “;the first student-faculty interactive textbook” insofar as it will offer these social highlighting, annotating, commenting and sharing features. The Highligher version of the textbook will also let professors place students into smaller study groups for easier social interaction and enables them to track students’ reading and note-taking progress within a topic or chapter.

The app is built in HTML5, meaning it’s accessible across devices and platforms and via modern browsers.

Highlighter has also landed contracts with a handful of universities that will utilize the startup’s publishing platform for course material.

I recently wrote that the latest round of textbook-related news was banal at best. But the social components, along with the OER materials and the flexibility therein, do offer something a lot more interesting here, I think.