This is infuriating.
Years ago, I published an essay on our Web site titled The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed. It’s been getting lots of hits over the years, especially when someone linked to it on Slashdot.
Today, a copy of it showed up on Alternate.org, the online news and opinion publication, with a slightly modified title and with the byline of someone named Jeffrey A. Dvorkin.
Grr.
Update, the next day, 8/2:
I got an e-mail from an Alternet editor apologizing for the mixup (Jeffrey D. was in the database, so someone assumed he was the author) and also apologizing for using the essay without permission. How that last thing happened will be looked into. The attribution has been corrected. I used to think it was always a good thing for an author to have an unusual name, but now I see that it can also be a disadvantage - when there's another writer around with the same unusual name.
I'll also get a payment to soothe my hurt feelings. As Dr. Johnson said: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
2 comments:
Just curious: In reading the linked essay, I found this in the weight lifting section:
"Time, time, there was never enough time! But now at last there is enough time."
And I immediately thought of Burgess Meredith breaking his glasses. Was I supposed to come up with that image, or was that inadvertent?
Wow, I wrote that essay 6 years ago, so I don't remember. I always loved that TZ episode, though.
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