Is a Google trap one of those things that tells you it can sell you whatever it is you're looking for, even if it's the Holy Grail?

There's probably a real name for that. I just called it a Google trap.

They're "in trouble" because writing term papers on Atlanta Nights could be a losing proposition in many, many ways.

As a test, I googled "Mary Dell 3d," and one of my articles on 3d graphics popped up in the top spot. I didn't pay anyone for that. Likewise, googling "canary3d" brings up my website first. Etc.

That someone willing to facilitate academic fraud for hire should also stoop to filling search engines with crap (google's response to this has traditionally been to smack the entire site with some amazingly negative pagerank) doesn't really surprise me. What I do wonder about is where they get their list of topics.

One possibility is that they're scraping topic headings from Wikipedia. Atlanta Nights has a wikipedia entry, as does one of the other obscure topics I also managed to find on the essaytown.com site.

On second thought, after trying a few other words, maybe they have a different topic source. ("burlington resources inc" has a page a essaytown.com, but no corresponding wikipedia entry).

Of course, what I wonder is why these pages aren't dynamically generated - then they could literally have a page for any topic at all so long as they got google to visit it.

But Atlanta Nights is surely worth a D.Litt

Term Paper #56068 : Grade Inflation . This paper is a research proposal to evaluate if grade inflation, an increase in grade point average without a corresponding increase in achievement, does exist. 1,350 words (approx. 5.4 pages), 18 sources, MLA, $ 46.95

Someone's irony filter was not turned on.

True enough, and some of the comments are highly critical.

Dave Bell,

I did not spatter coffee over my keyboard, because I know better than to drink while reading these threads.

I nearly choked on an M&M.

Incidentally, wondering whether there's an approved citation style for blog comments, I just discovered that indeed there is. Golly! The things I learn here!

I am very happy I was neither eating nor drinking anything to choke on....

You folks ought to put your Tom Friedman hats on, write "Bangalore Nights", and submit it to Harvard Business School press...

That'd show 'em. Their heads would explode.

[fx: Julia laughs so hard she nearly falls off the chair]

I tried typing in Pratchett. They've got one. I think it's been lifted from a "please do my homework" parody site...

Thinks: How much of my $27.99 would I get back for reading Travis Tea's travesty cover-to-cover and writing a report on it within 24 hours? Ten bucks? And if I were prepared to do something so degrading for so little, would I respect myself in the morning?

I feel safer already.

Step one: Shoot your boyfriend's wife in the head.

(Un)fortunately my younger, college age brother discovered said article of "fiction". Younger brother took it home with him after discovering its back-story on the web. Younger brother wrote a term paper for his 300 series composition class at the University of Washington BASED on said piece of "fiction". Paper was titled "The Best Analysis of the Worst Book Ever Written (Grammatical Ambiguity Intended)".

Younger brother received an A grade for his work.

I have just realized that Travis Tea (et all) would probably like a copy of said paper, if only for the mind boggling fact that Atlanta Nights is now the subject of scholarly attention.

The book synopses I saw on that Pratchett site were real. Maybe I didn't read enough of them?

*Very* funny!

Seems to me that a paper on Atlanta Nights ought to be a group effort written in the same spirit.

"Yog" (If I may address him so informally) has already contacted me to ask for a copy "at large".

I personally found the paper to be well written and humorous (but then, I am a bit biased). Section titles such as "No I'm not making this up" and "It hurts to read" used in a serious analysis entertained me more than it probably should have.

I must admit that when I spoke to my brother this morning and explained why I wanted a copy he was more than a little reluctant. But not to worry, if he resists too much I will resort to the methods that worked so well when we were younger: I will sit on him and give him "nuggies" until he gives in.

Yup, that's my plan...

MKK

As far as a collective paper on Atlanta Nights, well I think he thought of that. But frankly, convincing 15 or so English majors to put their collective butts (in the form of GPA) on the line for the sake of symmetry just didn't cut it.

While I, you and perhaps the people involved with Atlanta Nights might find such a paper amusing; one humorless professor could turn the whole thing from classically funny to classically stupid with the stroke of a pen.

The risk vs. glory equation balanced out to a "one person job".

(Not that I disagree with his decision. I'd have done the same; it's only prudent.)

Since this is DC, we must ask 'who is up to what?' with this sort of thing. LaRouche? Humanity's Savior Rev. Moon?

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Send a powerful message to ATLANTA NIGHTS that ATLANTA NIGHTS won't forget: call the 800-number TODAY.

But golly do I want to read it.

--------

Oh -- Atlanta Nights has been spotted on the shelf in Barnes & Noble in Pittsfield, MA, and Tampa, FL.

and these suggestions.

"People who bought this book also bought:
•Can You Keep a Secret? Sophie Kinsella
•Confessions of a Shopaholic Sophie Kinsella
•Skipping Christmas John Grisham
•Metro Girl Janet Evanovich
•Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination Helen Fielding"

Yikes. (tee hee)

Now it seems that someone else has had the same idea.

Meanwhile, it's Nebula weekend in Chicago. Last night, after the pizza-and-desserts reception, we noticed that we had a nice function space, a live mike, a willing audience, and several copies of Atlanta Nights. I started by reading part of Chapter 2, which went over fairly well (if vengeful-sounding cries of "author!" and "who wrote that thing?!" count). Sean Fodera followed, knocking me out of my chair and onto the floor by reading the "penguins of the Sahara" sequence. Peter Heck went third, reading from his own chapter, and then Jody Lynn Nye (who's not a Travis, just game) cold-read Chapter 7.

Big fun.

Claude Shannon's Channel Capacity in a Noisy Channel: Entropy in Thomas Pynchon and Travis Tea

Where is the Knowledge We Have Lost in Information? T. S. Eliot and the Hollow Men of Atlanta Nights

Lehman, Daniel. "'Split Flee Hide Vanish Disintegrate': Tom Wolfe, Travis Tea, and the Arrest of New Journalism." Prospects 21 (1996): 397-34.

Masters, Joshua. "Race and the Infernal City in Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities and Travis Tea's Atlanta Nights." Journal of Narrative Theory 29.2 (Sprg 1999): 208-27.

The Worm in Peachtree Plaza: Sociodynamics in Tom Wolfe's "A Man in Full" versus Travis Tea's "Atlanta Nights"

Georgia on My Mind: Historicomusical Motifs in Tobacco Road, Robert Coram's Four Police Novels based in Atlanta, and Travis Tea's "Atlanta Nights"

You sayin' I'm Bad? Oh yeah: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know.

My sense of irony encouraged me to get technical degrees after my Mathematics B.S., but not beyond my English Literature B.S. Math and Physics papers can be more-or-less objectively verified; English Lit Criticism is a castle of mirrors built on sand. I'm not even approaching the deliberately bizarre titles of any recent MLA; a sort of academic Con for English Professors to out-baffle each other with chimera of jargon and pop culture.

Thank you! I do keep a mental list Stories of Mine Which Should Have Been Included in Theme-specific Anthologies, as a unifying principle for a collection of rejected stories.

In fairness to editors, although some vaguely remember that I have been widely published, and have appeared in a Nebula Awards Anthology, I haven't published science fiction recently. Hence my name doesn't spring to mind when solicitations go out for original anthologies.

As you like those pseudobibliographic references, you might wonder if I've salted my magicdragon.com web pages with a few such spuriousities among the 20,000 or so authors cited. It's a tricky way to enforce Intellectual Property Rights, as dictionaries each customarily include a few fake words, as used to detect wholesale illegal copying.

"The Multi-Body Problem in Atlanta Nights and The Floating Admiral"

But JVP, I bow to your superior academico-obfuscatory skills. I am a mere amateur, a dilletante, unworthy to shine your socks.

Meanwhile, it's Nebula weekend in Chicago.

So near, and yet so far. Would love to converse with you. I wish I could attend, but we are deeply immersed in my wife's office renovation and move, which will likely soak up all our time this weekend.

I did conduct a tour of the lab for a fun-loving SFWA group today. But that may be as close as I get to the Nebula festivities.

The URL is www.am990.com. The show is broadcast live at noon Central time in Memphis and Atlanta, and over the Net.

Expect about twenty minutes in the show's second hour.

Trav[is]ersal: Beyond Authorial Intent in Atlanta Nights

Anthologies, Round-Robins, Shared-Worlds, Collaborations, and Their End Result: What Atlanta Nights Tells Us About "Authorship"

Do you think your brother is concerned that finding his paper on the net might lead to the school assuming he was not the author and fail him for the assignment?

Count me in as one who would love to read it.

An imaginary “scandal”
by Theodore Dalrymple

"... The personal identity of the author thus came to be all-important just at the very moment when, elsewhere in the literary world, the death of the author was being confidently announced. ..."

What can happen when a small press finds out that the author is not whom he says he is. A cautionary tale with Feminist overtones. Literary Fraud, or a bunch of nonsense?

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff121866.htm

http://www.ripoffreport.com/results.asp?q1=ALL&q5=essay&submit2=Search%21&q4=&q6=&q3=&q2=&q7=&searchtype=0

[posted from 71.32.241.252]

I have often wondered. If you read between the lines, you wind up with sublines. Can you then read between the sublines? Then between the subsublines, all the way to the quantum level beyond which one can read no further?