if it was packaged wisdom.

A few tidbits were frightening and edifying at the same time last week. The Wall Street Journal reported on the growing problem of rampant plagiarism by pastors. Across denominations, sermons are retrieved and recycled online to be fed to unsuspecting parishioners. Quoth one unrepentant pastor: "We need to get over the idea that we have to be completely original with our message." As long as you stay on-message. While the full-length Borat movie was uploaded in ten-minute increments on the "Goog-Tube," only to be taken down post-haste, the Chinese Wikipedia became mysteriously accessible again and logged in a record 1200 new-user registrations per day. The genocide in Darfur has its own MySpace page now, but the "I am African" campaign hit a snag with the appearance of Gwynneth "Mbgwuini" Paltrow. In related colonialist news, it will please you, no doubt, though, to find that the first edition of Ian Fleming's 1957 From Russia with Love is being offered at $ 4,500.-, which is a cool two grand more than a first-edition copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged from the same year. All this while Kramer went nuts.

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