Gettin' Figgy With It

Today, while driving through Mount Crawford on the way to the Green Valley Book Fair, I passed Figgins Auto Sales. It had never occurred to me that fig would be a part of someone's name! 

Principal Figgins from Glee. 

 Figgins is a Saxon name and has been spelled many ways, Fig, Figg, Fygg, Figgess, and Figgins. Many notable Figgins include a type designer, an archaeologist, a winemaker, baseball, and most recently the comedic actor on Glee, Principal Figgins played by the actor, Pakistan-born Iqbal Theba.

No where does anything have anything to do with figs!  

1st day of research - History of Figs

Today the research for my essential question starts in earnest: How can figs be produced and promoted for  local farm market sales?

First, the basic question is How long have figs been in existence?  Science Magazine, June 2006, has an article providing proof that figs (although thought to be 6,500 years in existence) may have been around for 11,000+ years -- that's about 1,000 "before cereals", which I take to mean grains. The evidence is found in the Lower Jordan Valley.  This inspires the next question which is Where is the LJV and what is its significance to figs?

The Lower Jordan Valley is the stretch of land between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea called the Rift Valley....about 25 miles. This leads me to ask, "Are figs considered a biblical fruit?"

Figgy Fair Use Laws

The skin of this fig is Fair Use Laws
that separates the interior 'protected' pulp
from the outside world.

Using someone else's work is plagiarism. Copyright protection happens upon creation.  However, there are instances when copyrighted information can be use without purchase or permission. These are instances are covered by Fair Use Laws. Fair Use Laws are the legal line between the public domain, copyright-free works and protected copyrighted works.

Much like the skin of a fig where the thin skin separates the interior, protected pulp from the outside, wild-and-free world.

Fair Use of copyrighted material include times when it is used for
1) educational purposes,
2) a limited amount of time,
3) critical review or comment,
4) as parody, or
5) oh drat...what's that other one? NEWS, right!...used as a news report.

Plagiarism

Global Plagiarism -- taking it all!

Plagiarism is from the Latin word plagiarus which means kidnapping -- taking someone else's property. There are three types of plagiarism: global, patchwork, and incremental. Global plagiarism is kidnapping the whole piece of work, lock-stock-and barrel. This would be if I gave a fig research paper done by a botanist to my students and told them it was my work.

Patchwork plagiarism is kidnapping done in pieces -- a little bit here, a little bit there, much like a patchwork quilt. It would be akin to me using pieces of the botanist's paper and weaving them with my own thoughts.

Oops, I forgot!

Turned upside-down, this heart would look like a patchwork fig. When working on a big project, it IS tempting to take short cuts to get done faster but other people's work needs to be sourced, even if it takes extra time to do so.

Incremental plagiarism is the one most students do, even innocently. It is using work without citing. This is done through forgetfulness or in thinking Fair Use Laws are in place. In any event, citing anything someone else has generated saves a figgy person from going blue in the face from embarrassment.

Common knowledge information? That is information so well known in the general population that it does not need to be cited.


Practical tips to avoid plagiarism:

 1) Create a distinct sentence structure,  

2) Check the paraphrase against the original text 

and 3) Acknowledge the source.

Boolean Online Searching

Boolean is a mathematical way of using words to search for online information. First, keywords are vital - they are synonyms and/or related terms. Since search engines and databases give you what they have based on what they think I want, changing a search words can open up new areas of information not previously recognized.

Boolean operators (and, or, but, and not) expand and narrow my figgy search. Since there bands with 'fig' in their titles [The Fig Band and Fig Dish], I need to include not in my search to exclude those bands from the results I get. However, it I wanted to include as several fig foodie items such as pudding, cakes, and cookies, I would add and between the keywords.

Using a Venn diagram illustrates how operators
include or exclude keywords.

As in algebra, parenthesis group words together so they are searched as a unit first, before the rest of the keywords are sought.

Truncating uses a wildcard to help retrieve variations of the same word. For instance: fig* could result in figs, figgy, figging.