Two chefs of popular seafood restaurants have settled a lawsuit out of court, denying foodies the chance to hear how restaurant plagiarism would be argued. The NY Times reports, "Both sides in the case agreed to keep the terms of the settlement confidential." Last summer, Pearl Oyster Bar chef and owner Rebecca Charles claimed that her former sous chef Ed McFarland took not only her recipes when he set up shop at Ed's Lobster Bar......

Lawyers for Jerry Seinfeld insist the comic was just joking when he described "Sneaky Chef" author Missy Chase Lapine as a "wacko" for accusing his wife of plagiarism. Lapine is currently suing for trademark infringement because she says Jessica Seinfeld’s hit book about sneaking healthy food into kids’ snacks, called "Deceptively Simple," contains too many similarities to "Sneaky Chef" – and it was published by HarperCollins, who twice rejected Lapine’s pitch. While appearing on Letterman’s......

The Columbia University community is currently divided over the controversy involving a professor's possible plagiarism, which has escalated to racial politics. After an investigation, Teachers College administration found plagiarism charges against Madonna Constantine were substantiated and sanctioned the tenured professor of counseling and clinical psychology. Further heightening tensions is last year's still-unsolved incident, where Constantine found a four foot-long noose affixed to her office door. Constantine denies the plagiarism allegations, suggesting she's actually the victim......

The Columbia Teachers College professor who was in the news last year when a noose was found on her office door angrily denied she plagiarized others' work. Madonna Constantine, who the Teachers College sanctioned after a year-and-a-half investigation, will appeal the charges. Constantine, who remains a tenured professor, issued a statement, calling the memo (released to TC faculty) discussing sanctions "premature, vindictive, and mean-spirited," lacking "sensitivity and due process." She wondered "whether a White faculty......

After a year-plus long investigation, Columbia Teachers College has sanctioned a professor for plagiarism. And the professor happens to be Madonna Constantine, the professor who found a noose on her office door last fall. The Columbia Spectator got confirmation that the Teachers' College “found numerous instances in which she [Constantine] used others’ work without attribution in papers she published in academic journals over the past five years: "Prompted by complaints from students and one former......

A juicy theatrical controversy is swirling around Eric Walton's "Esoterica", a solo tour-de-force of sleight-of-hand, card tricks and mentalism. As we duly noted in our review of the show, Walton's performance climaxes with a rendition of the "Knight's Tour", a trick that Ricky Jay brought back from obscurity to conclude his 2002 evening of illusions. (Some might recognize Jay as 'that guy' from the Mamet movies, but he is also widely respected as a walking......

Bad news for Fernando Ferrer: He's trailing Mayor Bloomberg by a whopping 31 points according to a Quinnipiac poll. And this poll, unlike earlier ones where Bloomberg enjoyed a 27 point lead, is after fears about the subway terror threat on October 7, which might mean that New Yorkers, despite their grousing, might really love Mayor Bloomberg! The Mayor introduced a new health plan to insure children, which Ferrer's campaign says is the second instance......

In a story about the Jack Kelley possible-plagiarism-at-USA Today brouhaha (most elegantly summarized here, by Gawker), check out how the New York Times gets to spin the Jayson Blair incident as what is making other newspapers are relook their own reporters' work: It was only after the resignation of Jayson Blair, who was found last May to have fabricated or plagiarized parts of at least three dozen articles in The New York Times, that Mr.......

According to the New York Times today, plagiarism is on the rise on college campuses. Specifically, students seem to think it's okay to "cut and paste" information off websites without attribution. Let's let the article speak for itself: "Thirty-eight percent of the undergraduate students surveyed said that in the last year they had engaged in one or more instances of 'cut-and-paste' plagiarism involving the Internet, paraphrasing or copying anywhere from a few sentences to a......