Tidbits on September 15, 2009
Bob Jensen
Between Mt. Washington and Mt. Lafayette
we can look out at a sunrise over Mt. Garfield.
I say "we" but Erika is still in bed when the sun rises
What thrills she sleeps through most mornings.
A winter sunrise on Mt. Lafayette
Between Mt. Lafayette and Mt. Garfield is a
rise on the ridge
known as Baby's Cradle. Can you make it out?
The sunrise warms our front porch on cold
mornings.
The bright sunlight makes me wear a billed cap while I type out computer
messages to you.
Sunset on Mt. Lafayette
I don't have to wear my cap in the afternoons at my computer.
Sometimes we look east for these sunsets,
And sometimes we watch spectacular sunsets in the west.
Mt. Lafayette with more snow cap.
To the northeast we we can see Mt. Washington
capped with snow beginning about November
Set up for one of Erika's dinner parties
Alysum and Snap Dragons
Before and after planting.
Yellow Biden and Verbena (red and white)
Hard work is a good thing
Especially when creating something beautiful.
Life is good thus far!
The average June-August 2009 summer temperature for the
contiguous United States was below average – the 34th coolest on record,
according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in
Asheville, N.C.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, September 10, 2009 ---
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090910_summerstats.html
Jensen Comment
News reports claim that, in New Hampshire, it was the fourth coldest (and
wettest) summer on record. We believe it. We also loved every minute of it! We
moved up here to get away from the droughts and heat and the congestion of city living. Seems
to have worked beyond our wildest dreams this summer.
But as I wheel my snow
thrower from the barn to the garage, it gives me pause to think why I'm doing
this so soon once again.
The following pictures were sent to me.
Tweetie Bird at 60 (really, the bird is now
60 years old).
The good news is that Sylvester is locked in place with arthritis.
A photograph that will never be shown at the
KFC Website
Slide Show of Dear Days in Our Memories
---
Click Here
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations Between September 4 and September
15, 2009
To Accompany the September 15, 2009 edition of Tidbits
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2009/tidbits090915Quotations.htm
Featured this week in Keynesian economics hopes and controversies.
Bob Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
U.S. Debt/Deficit Clock ---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Tidbits on September 15, 2009
Bob Jensen
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/.
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
CPA
Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
World Clock and World Facts ---
http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf
U.S. Debt/Deficit Clock ---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Free Residential and Business Telephone Directory (you must listen to an
opening advertisement) --- dial 800-FREE411 or 800-373-3411
Free Online Telephone Directory ---
http://snipurl.com/411directory [www_public-records-now_com]
Free online 800 telephone numbers ---
http://www.tollfree.att.net/tf.html
Google Free Business Phone Directory --- 800-goog411
To find names addresses from listed phone numbers, go to
www.google.com and read in the phone number without spaces, dashes, or
parens
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Education Technology Search ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Distance Education Search ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Search for Listservs, Blogs, and Social Networks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
Bob Jensen's essay on the financial crisis bailout's aftermath and an alphabet soup of
appendices can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
The Master List of Free
Online College Courses ---
http://universitiesandcolleges.org/
On May 14, 2006 I retired from Trinity University after a long
and wonderful career as an accounting professor in four universities. I was
generously granted "Emeritus" status by the Trustees of Trinity University. My
wife and I now live in a cottage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm
Bob Jensen's blogs and various threads on many topics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
(Also scroll down to the table at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ )
Global Incident Map ---
http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php
If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops ---
http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
The Lie: The insurance
industry abides by state laws by not rescinding insurance coverage even when
there is no fraud on the part of the patient in information provided to the
insurance company and the patient has fully paid the premiums for coverage.
This is actually a blatant lie that Bill Moyers documented quite well ---
Video:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/watch.html
Bob Jensen's threads on Obamacare are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Video: Jon Stewart reveals Glenn Beck speaking about health
care from both ends of his digestive tract ---
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/462437/breaking_rush_newt_and_sarah_supported_death_panels_too
Classic Video: The Million-Dollar Outhouse ---
http://blogs.abcnews.com/johnstossel/2009/09/classic-video-the-million-dollar-outhouse.html
Video: Rebecca Saxe presents a scholarly talk about
reading minds ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-how-we-read-each-others-minds/
CNN Video About Outsourcing Homework (after an introductory
commercial) ---
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/09/04/costello.outsourcing.homework.cnn
Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm
Video: Eugene F. Fama: Economist ---
http://www.dimensional.com/famafrench/2009/09/post.html
Fama/French Blog ---
http://www.dimensional.com/famafrench/2009/09/post.html
Jacob Hacker: Fixing America's Healthcare System (not humor)
---
http://fora.tv/2008/07/21/Jacob_Hacker_Fixing_America_s_Healthcare_System
Jack Webb on Health Care and America (Humor) ---
http://pubsecrets.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/just-the-facts-barack/
BBC4: Great Lives [iTunes]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qxsb
Iconic Hotel Provides Hope for New Orleans [Real Player] ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112350502
We're All Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely (21 minutes) ---
Click Here
Hope for America (Comedy) ---
http://www.thehopeforamerica.com/play.php?id=1880
Dog House Puzzle (click on each piece) ---
http://www.riversongs.com/Flas/today.swf
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
When Imogene Heap composes a song, you never know
what she might decide is an instrument. Heap is constantly building her audience
through the Internet. She's closing in on a million followers on Twitter (@imogenheap).
Her songs have 44 million plays on MySpace. She used Flickr to get artwork for
the album from her fans. And, as she was working on the new CD, she described
how it was going in dozens of video blogs — including this one — about
completing Ellipse ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112440133
Sondre Lerche In Full Pops Concert ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112516565
Three months ago Kris Kristoferson turned 73 ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kris_Kristoferson
Web outfits like
Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content
that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2
TheRadio (my favorite commercial-free
online music site) ---
http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) ---
http://www.slacker.com/
Gerald Trites likes this
international radio site ---
http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:
Search for a song or band and play the selection ---
http://songza.com/
Also try Jango ---
http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let it play through) ---
http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live ---
http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note U.S. Army Band recordings
---
http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp
Bob Jensen listens to music free online (and no commercials)
---
http://www.slacker.com/
Photographs and Art
Crystal Cave of Giants in Naica, Mexico ---
http://www.stormchaser.ca/Caves/Naica/Naica.html
National Endowment for the Arts: Research Notes
---
http://www.nea.gov/research/ResearchNotes_chrono.html
Darwin 200 ---
http://www.darwin200.org/
The Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens ---
http://www.morikami.org
Japanese Fine Prints, Pre-1915 ---
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/jpdhtml/jpdabt.html
The Art and Technology Program, 1967-1971 ---
http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/mweb/archives/artandtechnology/at_home.asp
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various
types electronic literature available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Digital History ---
http://digitalhistory.unl.edu/
Core Historical Literature of Agriculture ---
http://chla.mannlib.cornell.edu/
John Johnson Collection: Trades and Professions ---
http://www.vads.ac.uk/collections/JJTP.html
Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Jr. Digital Collection ---
http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/special/exhibits/digital/owh-digital-col.html
U.S. Supreme Court Scotus Blog ---
http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/
The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa ---
http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/uipress/bdi/
BBC4: Great Lives [iTunes]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qxsb
Henry VIII: Man and Monarch
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/henryviii/index.html
Edinburgh World Heritage --- http://www.ewht.org.uk/Home.aspx
Taking Liberties (U.K. history) ---
http://www.bl.uk/takingliberties
Author Leigh Hunt Online: The Letters
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/leighhunt/
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations Between September 4 and September
15, 2009
To Accompany the September 15, 2009 edition of Tidbits
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2009/tidbits090915Quotations.htm
Featured this week in Keynesian economics hopes and controversies.
Bob Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
However, I had to keep the Grechen Morgenson's quotation in Tidbits itself.
The Largest Earnings Management
Accounting Fraud in History
PJ O’Rourke’s Parliament of
Whores ---
http://snipurl.com/parliamentwhores
"They Left Fannie Mae, but We Got the Legal Bills," by Grechen
Morgenson, The New York Times, September 5, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/business/economy/06gret.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=gretchen
morgensen&st=cse
PRECISELY one year ago, we lucky taxpayers
took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants that
contributed mightily to the wild and crazy home-loan-boom-turned-bust. In
that rescue operation, the Treasury agreed to pony up as much as $200
billion to keep Fannie in the black, coughing up cash whenever its
liabilities exceed its assets. According to the company’s most recent
quarterly financial statement, the Treasury will, by Sept. 30, have handed
over $45 billion to shore up the company’s net worth.
It is still unclear what the ultimate cost
of this bailout will be. But thanks to inquiries by Representative Alan
Grayson, a Florida Democrat, we do know of another, simply outrageous cost.
As a result of the Fannie takeover, taxpayers are paying millions of dollars
in legal defense bills for three top former executives, including Franklin
D. Raines, who left the company in late 2004 under accusations of accounting
improprieties. From Sept. 6, 2008, to July 21, these legal payments totaled
$6.3 million.
With all the turmoil of the financial
crisis, you may have forgotten about the book-cooking that went on at Fannie
Mae. Government inquiries found that between 1998 and 2004, senior
executives at Fannie manipulated its results to hit earnings targets and
generate $115 million in bonus compensation. Fannie had to restate its
financial results by $6.3 billion.
Almost two years later, in 2006, Fannie’s
regulator concluded an investigation of the accounting with a scathing
report. “The conduct of Mr. Raines, chief financial officer J. Timothy
Howard, and other members of the inner circle of senior executives at Fannie
Mae was inconsistent with the values of responsibility, accountability, and
integrity,” it said.
That year, the government sued Mr. Raines,
Mr. Howard and Leanne Spencer, Fannie’s former controller, seeking $100
million in fines and $115 million in restitution from bonuses the government
contended were not earned. Without admitting wrongdoing, Mr. Raines, Mr.
Howard and Ms. Spencer paid $31.4 million in 2008 to settle the litigation.
When these top executives left Fannie, the
company was obligated to cover the legal costs associated with shareholder
suits brought against them in the wake of the accounting scandal.
Now those costs are ours. Between Sept. 6,
2008, and July 21, we taxpayers spent $2.43 million to defend Mr. Raines,
$1.35 million for Mr. Howard, and $2.52 million to defend Ms. Spencer.
“I cannot see the justification of people
who led these organizations into insolvency getting a free ride,” Mr.
Grayson said. “It goes right to the heart of what people find most
disturbing in this situation — the absolute lack of justice.”
Lawyers for the three executives did not
returns calls seeking comment.
An additional $16.8 million was paid in
the period to cover legal expenses of workers at the Office of Federal
Housing Enterprise Oversight, Fannie’s former regulator. These costs are
associated with defending the regulator in litigation against former Fannie
executives.
This tally of taxpayer legal costs took
several months for Mr. Grayson to extract. On June 4, after Congressional
hearings on the current and future status of Fannie and Freddie, he
requested the information from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, now their
regulator. He got its response on Aug. 26.
A spokeswoman for the agency said it would
not comment for this article.
THE lawyers’ billable hours, meanwhile,
keep piling up. As the F.H.F.A. explained to Mr. Grayson, the $6.3 million
in costs generated by 10 months of legal defense work for Mr. Raines, Mr.
Howard and Ms. Spencer includes not a single deposition for any of them.
Instead, those bills covered 33 depositions of “other parties” relating to
the shareholder suits and requiring the presence of the three executives’
counsel.
One of Mr. Grayson’s questions about these
payments remains unanswered — whether placing Fannie Mae into receivership,
rather than conservatorship, would have negated the agreement to cover the
former executives’ legal costs. Choosing conservatorship allowed Fannie to
stabilize and meant that it was going to continue to operate, not wind down
immediately.
But, Mr. Grayson pointed out: “If these
companies had gone into receivership instead of conservatorship, the trustee
in bankruptcy or the receiver would have been free, legally, to reject these
contracts that called for indemnification. Raines, Howard and Spencer would
have had to pay their own fees.”
When asked about this, Fannie’s regulator,
the F.H.F.A., waffled. “Whether these costs could have been avoided would
depend on the facts and circumstances surrounding any receivership,” it
said. “It is possible that receiverships could have reduced the costs of the
litigation, but by no means certain.”
Mr. Grayson said he intended to find out
whether there are any legal options under the conservatorship to stop paying
for the defense of the Fannie Mae three. “When did Uncle Sam become Uncle
Sap?” he said. “In a situation where billions of losses have already
occurred, is it really asking too much that people pay their own legal
fees?”
While the $6.3 million paid to defend Mr.
Raines, Mr. Howard and Ms. Spencer is a pittance compared with other bills
coming due in the bailout binge, it is still disturbing for these costs to
be covered by those who had nothing to do with the problems and certainly
did not benefit from them. The money may be small, but the episode’s message
looms large: those who presided over this debacle aren’t being held
accountable.
“It is wrong in a very deep sense,” Mr.
Grayson said. “The essence of our society is that people who do good things
are rewarded and people who do bad things are punished.
Where is the punishment for Raines,
Howard and Spencer? There is none.”
Continued in article
Video
I Saw Maxine Kissing Franklin Raines ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbZnLxdCWkA
Before Franklin Raines resigned as CEO of Fannie Mae and paid over a million
dollar fine for accounting fraud to pad his bonus, he was the darling of the
liberal members of Congress. Frank Raines was creatively managing earnings to
the penny just enough to get his enormous bonus. The auditing firm of KPMG was
accordingly fired from its biggest corporate client in history ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#Manipulation
Video
Video on the efforts of some members of Congress seeking to cover up accounting
fraud at Fannie Mae ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZVw3no2A4
The Largest Earnings Management Fraud in History and Congressional Efforts to
Cover it Up ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm
Without trying to
place the blame on Democrats or Republicans,
here are some of the facts that led to the
eventual fining of Fannie Mae executives for
accounting fraud and the firing of KPMG as the
auditor on one of the largest and most lucrative
audit clients in the history of KPMG. The
restated earnings purportedly took upwards of a
million journal entries, many of which were
re-valuations of derivatives being manipulated
by Fannie Mae accountants and auditors (PwC was
charged with overseeing the financial statement
revisions.
Fannie Mae may have
conducted the largest earnings management scheme
in the history of accounting.
.
. . flexibility also gave Fannie the ability
to manipulate earnings to hit -- within
pennies -- target numbers for executive
bonuses. Ofheo details an example from 1998,
the year the Russian financial crisis sent
interest rates tumbling. Lower rates caused
a lot of mortgage holders to prepay their
existing home mortgages. And Fannie was
suddenly facing an estimated expense of $400
million.
Well, in its wisdom, Fannie decided to
recognize only $200 million, deferring the
other half. That allowed Fannie's executives
-- whose bonus plan is linked to
earnings-per-share -- to meet the target for
maximum bonus payouts. The target EPS for
maximum payout was $3.23 and Fannie reported
exactly . . . $3.2309. This bull's-eye was
worth $1.932 million to then-CEO James
Johnson, $1.19 million to then-CEO-designate
Franklin Raines, and $779,625 to then-Vice
Chairman Jamie Gorelick.
That same year Fannie installed software
that allowed management to produce multiple
scenarios under different assumptions that,
according to a Fannie executive,
"strengthens the earnings management that is
necessary when dealing with a volatile book
of business." Over the years, Fannie
designed and added software that allowed it
to assess the impact of recognizing income
or expense on securities and loans. This
practice fits with a Fannie corporate
culture that the report says considered
volatility "artificial" and measures of
precision "spurious."
This disturbing culture was apparent in
Fannie's manipulation of its derivative
accounting. Fannie runs a giant derivative
book in an attempt to hedge its massive
exposure to interest-rate risk. Derivatives
must be marked-to-market, carried on the
balance sheet at fair value. The problem is
that changes in fair-value can cause some
nasty volatility in earnings.
So, Fannie decided to classify a huge amount
of its derivatives as hedging transactions,
thereby avoiding any impact on earnings.
(And we mean huge: In December 2003, Fan's
derivatives had a notional value of $1.04
trillion of which only a notional $43
million was not classified in hedging
relationships.) This misapplication
continued when Fannie closed out positions.
The company did not record the fair-value
changes in earnings, but only in Accumulated
Other Comprehensive Income (AOCI) where
losses can be amortized over a long period.
Fannie had some $12.2 billion in deferred
losses in the AOCI balance at year-end 2003.
If this amount must be reclassified into
retained earnings, it might punish Fannie's
earnings for various periods over the past
three years, leaving its capital well below
what is required by regulators.
In all, the Ofheo report notes, "The
misapplications of GAAP are not limited
occurrences, but appear to be pervasive . .
. [and] raise serious doubts as to the
validity of previously reported financial
results, as well as adequacy of regulatory
capital, management supervision and overall
safety and soundness. . . ." In an agreement
reached with Ofheo last week, Fannie
promised to change the methods involved in
both the cookie-jar and derivative
accounting and to change its compensation
"to avoid any inappropriate incentives."
But we don't think this goes nearly far
enough for a company whose executives have
for years derided anyone who raised a doubt
about either its accounting or its growing
risk profile. At a minimum these executives
are not the sort anyone would want running
the U.S. Treasury under John Kerry. With the
Justice Department already starting a
criminal probe, we find it hard to
comprehend that the Fannie board still
believes that investors can trust its
management team.
Fannie Mae isn't an ordinary company and
this isn't a run-of-the-mill accounting
scandal. The U.S. government had no
financial stake in the failure of Enron or
WorldCom. But because of Fannie's implicit
subsidy from the federal government,
taxpayers are on the hook if its capital
cushion is insufficient to absorb big
losses. Private profit, public risk. That's
quite a confidence game -- and it's time to
call it.
|
|
Barney's Rubble ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Rubble
Bob Jensen's Rotten to the Core threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
Big Four Firm Get Top Spots in Business Week's “2009 Best Places To
Launch A Career, The Big Four Alumni Blog, September 10, 2009 ---
http://www.bigfouralumni.blogspot.com/
BusinessWeek just released its 2009 rankings of its
much-anticipated “2009 Best Places To Launch A Career” list and for a second
year, Big Four firms completely dominate the list, capturing the top four
spots in the rankings. This year, only 69 companies made the list compared
to 119 in 2008 due to more stringent criteria, making the 2009 list “both
more exclusive and more competitive.” Thus, this year, there was more
relative competition to make the list and this year’s rankings are at least
40% tougher than the previous year.
Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and
KPMG are respectively ranked 1st to 4th on the list, beating out such
leading contenders as Google (not even ranked), Goldman Sachs (2009 rank 6,
2008 rank 4), General Electric (2009 rank 16), Booz Allen Hamilton (2009
rank 63) and Microsoft (2009 rank 18).
Other notables associated with the Big Four firms
are Accenture (2009 rank 11, up an astonishing 36 ranks from 2008 rank 47),
Protiviti (2009 rank 49, remarkably up 46 ranks from 2008 rank 95).
Two of the Big Six Accounting firms also make the
list. Grant Thornton (2009 rank 51, 2008 rank 76) and RSM McGladrey Pullen
(2009 rank 66, 2008 rank 104).
Continued in article
Last year's rankings were similar ---
Click Here
http://bigfouralumni.blogspot.com/search/label/Best Places to Launch a Career
And where are the wannabe investment bankers graduating from elite MBA
programs looking?
Would you believe . . . government?
- "With Finance Disgraced, Which Career Will Be King?" by
Steve Lohr, The New York Times, April 11, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/weekinreview/12lohr.html?pagewanted=1&hpw
In the Depression, smart college students
flocked into civil engineering to design the highway, bridge and
dam-building projects of those days. In the Sputnik era, students poured
into the sciences as America bet on technology to combat the cold war
Communist challenge. Yes, the jobs beckoned and the pay was good. But
those careers, in their day, had other perks: respect and self-esteem.
Big shifts in the flow of talent can ripple
through the nation and the economy for decades with lasting effect. The
engineers of the Depression built everything from inter-city roads to
the Hoover Dam, while the Sputnik-inspired scientists would go on, often
with research funding from the Pentagon, to create the building-block
innovations behind modern computing and the Internet.
Today, the financial crisis and the economic
downturn are likely to alter drastically the career paths of future
years. The contours of the shift are still in flux, in part because
there is so much uncertainty about the shape of the economic landscape
and the job market ahead.
But choosing a career is a guess about the
future in which economics is only part of the calculation. Prestige,
peer expectations and the climate of public opinion also matter. And
early indications suggest new career directions that are tethered less
to the dream of an immediate six-figure paycheck on Wall Street than to
the demands of a new public agenda to solve the nation’s problems.
The deep recession has clearly battered
industries — and professions — whose economics were at risk before the
downturn. Law firms are laying off lawyers as never before and
questioning the industry’s traditional unit of payment, the billable
hour. Journalism is reeling from the falloff in advertising and the
inability of newspapers and magazines to make a living on the Web.
Still, the industry whose troubles are having
the greatest impact on the rethinking of careers, especially at the
nation’s elite universities, is the one at the center of the country’s
economic downturn — finance. For years, the hefty paychecks and social
status on Wall Street proved irresistible to many of America’s brightest
young people, but the jobs, money and social respect there are much
diminished today.
“In choosing careers, young people look for
signals from society, and Wall Street will no longer pull the talent
that it did for so many years,” said Richard Freeman, director of the
labor studies program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. “We
have a great experiment before us.”
What will the new map of talent flow look like?
It’s early, but based on graduate school applications this spring,
enrollment in undergraduate courses, preliminary job-placement results
at schools, and the anecdotal accounts of students and professors, a new
pattern of occupational choice seems to be emerging. Public service,
government, the sciences and even teaching look to be winners, while
fewer shiny, young minds are embarking on careers in finance and
business consulting.
For the highest-paid business fields, the
outlook is for a tempering correction instead of an all-out exodus. At
Harvard, for example, about 40 percent of undergraduates in recent years
went into the most lucrative corporate arenas like finance and
consulting, based on surveys at the school year’s end. “That certainly
won’t be the case this year,” observed Lawrence Katz, a professor and
labor economist who has studied undergraduate career choices at Harvard
going back to the 1960s. “We’re seeing students who would have been part
of the Ivy League pipeline to Wall Street in the past considering very
different career paths.”
Kedamai Fisseha, a 21-year-old senior, is one
of them. An economics major, Mr. Fisseha says he always assumed he would
go into finance, and his summer internship last year was at the
investment bank Morgan Stanley. Yet after Wall Street’s meltdown, job
prospects there have withered. Instead, he is interviewing with Teach
for America, a nonprofit group that recruits college graduates to teach
in hard-to-staff schools for two-year stints. (After that, only
one-third stay in the classrooms, though two-thirds remain in
education.)
Mr. Fisseha regards the turn of events as an
opportunity to broaden his horizons. “It’s been liberating, and lucky
for me,” he said. “But your situation does dictate your preferences.”
Graduate schools of government and public
policy are seeing a surge of applications. In a survey of its members
released last week, the National Association of Schools of Public
Affairs and Administration found that 82 percent reported an increase in
applications this year, and many saw the largest percentage jumps in
several years, or ever. The most-cited reason was the expectation by
students that government will be hiring.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
In spite of continued strong career opportunities, with some of the best
opportunities for women, the above article ignores accountancy careers. I
think much of this is due to Lohr's focus on high ranked MBA programs. These
MBA Programs have not been major sources of public accountants in the past
three decades. One reason is that to take the CPA examination most states
requires more pre-requisite accounting course coverage than top MBA programs
make available in the curriculum. This makes it more difficult for graduates
of top MBA programs to sit for the CPA examination unless they were
undergraduate accounting majors. Top ranked MBA programs like Harvard,
Wharton, Stanford, and Darden generally prefer to admit students who were
not undergraduate business and/or accounting majors.
Following the conflicts of interest charges and/or the Sarbanes-Oxley
legislation, most CPA firms sold off their consulting divisions like
Andersen Consulting, Cap Gemini, PwC Consulting, and KPMG Consulting. Those
divisions were more apt to hire MBA graduates who had no intention of ever
taking the CPA examination. Also consulting firms have cut way back on their
entry-level hiring in favor of hiring persons with technical expertise and
experience.
Although faculty in state-supported universities are somewhat different
from what we view as workers in the federal, state, and local bureaucracies,
there will be increased hiring opportunities for faculty careers as the
government pours upwards of a trillion dollars, over several years, into
education opportunities for lower-income students. But with declining career
opportunities as the private sector cuts back, the outlook is not
particularly strong for academic careers in schools of business and
accounting. It's even bleaker for undergraduate finance programs. The
outlook is much better for science and medical/nursing/pharmacy faculty
openings.
What I find somewhat sad in Lohr's article is the prediction that
government careers are the long-term wave of the future. I've never been a
fan of big public sector relative to the private sector. It's so sad that
Wall Street shot itself in the head rather than the foot!
Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
"Science Creativity and Serendipity," Morton A. Myers, Scribd,
September 2009 ---
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19559312/Science-Creativity-and-Serendipity
"Google-Powered Monopoly (Game) Still Under Construction," by Gus
Mastrapa, Wired News, September 11, 2009 ---
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/09/monopoly-city-streets/
Bob Jensen's threads on Parker Bros. Monopoly applications in
education (particularly in economics and accounting) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
"New E-Textbooks Do More Than Inform: They'll Even Grade You," by
Jeffrey R. Young. Chronicle of Higher Education, June 8, 2009 ---
Click Here
The earliest electronic textbooks simply offered
the text of the printed book on a computer. Today's newest models, though,
come with an array of features, including software tools that automatically
grade homework for professors or let students share their margin notes with
friends online.
A new line of e-textbooks scheduled to be unveiled
on Tuesday by McGraw-Hill Higher Education, for instance, comes bundled with
"lecture capture" software, so professors can use the built-in microphone
and camera on a laptop computer to record their lectures for students, as
well as with other features that are new for textbook publishers.
At the core of the new products are still the
electronic versions of the traditional textbooks, but they are designed to
let students quickly jump between specific chapters, say, and the portion of
a professor's recorded lecture that covers that subject matter.
The company calls its new set of electronic
textbooks "McGraw-Hill
Connect," and the program includes about 100
titles in 18 disciplines, company officials said in interviews last week.
In some ways, the latest e-textbooks from
McGraw-Hill and others compete with course-management software offered by
Blackboard and other companies, though publishers say they are working in
partnership with those companies rather than as rivals.
Adoption of electronic textbooks has been slow, and
McGraw-Hill Connect is just the latest attempt by a major textbook publisher
to
nudge the format forward. Publishers could benefit
if students take to electronic versions because most online books cannot be
resold by students. The reuse of print textbooks cuts into sales of new
titles, and brings no revenue to publishers.
Edward H. Stanford, president of McGraw-Hill Higher
Education, said in an interview that the new e-textbooks were developed
based on an ethnographic investigation of student study habits done by the
company. He said the company learned that students often do not study in a
linear fashion, but instead jump around in the text, whether in print or
electronic textbooks. "One kid in a biology class said, 'I don't read the
chapter. I just look at the art. If I understand the art, I go on to the
next art. If I don't understand the art, I read,'" said Mr. Stanford. "When
he said that, it made perfect sense to me, but until he said it, I had never
thought about it that way."
Instant-Grading
Feature
In response, the company added more ways for
students to jump around in their e-textbooks. From any homework problem, for
instance, students can click to the relevant part of the text, or can jump
to a part of their professor's recorded lecture that touched on that concept
(if the professor makes use of that feature).
But the selling point to professors will most
likely be the software's ability to grade student homework automatically. At
a professor's request, the new e-textbooks can present a student with
homework problems online, which are graded, with the scored work sent to
both the student and the professor.
Jay Chakrapani, vice president for product
development for McGraw-Hill Higher Education's digital group, said the
system is designed to adapt to each student's progress, skipping to harder
questions if the student aces the easy ones. "It's almost like a personal
trainer or personal coach, constantly steering you to assessment items that
probe you on the areas you're weak."
The company is urging professors to require the
electronic textbooks for their courses, rather than leave it up to students
whether they buy a printed book or an e-textbook. The company also sells a
bundle that includes both the printed book and the e-book, because the
company's research found that some students prefer print books to do their
initial reading but electronic versions to review later. Of course, if
students buy both, that also means even more revenue for the publishers.
(For a Principals of Management textbook, the e-book and online
tools cost $80, while a bundle that also includes the printed book costs
$178.)
McGraw-Hill did not design its own lecture-capture
software but instead has incorporated existing software made by Tegrity.
Other textbook publishers are offering new features
in their digital products as well. E-textbooks sold through CourseSmart, a
company started in 2007 by a group of textbook publishers, allow students to
e-mail parts of the book to their friends (with their notes attached), or to
read the complete text on their iPhone. E-textbooks published by Flat World
Knowledge, meanwhile, let professors customize the textbook by adding their
own chapters or making changes to the text for the edition offered to their
students.
Is it possible that publishers could start selling
textbooks that replace the need for going to class altogether? Mr. Stanford
said no, that a professor will always be a core part of the learning
process. But as textbook companies continue to add multimedia and assessment
tools, such a scenario does not seem as far-fetched.
Jensen Comment
What's most encouraging in the above article is that a major publishing company
will all textbooks to be sold in electronic format. So often these days, the top
publishers have not yet allowed their top sellers to be sold in anything but
traditional hardcopy (except in some instances for handicapped learners).
Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
Does the Fed Control Academic Economics?
The economic collapse of the last year has left many
wondering why more economists didn't warn of the looming disaster. An article in
The Huffington Post suggests that the problem is
the increasingly close relationship between academic economists and the Federal
Reserve, which is alleged to have made the professors reluctant to question what
the Fed was saying. The article notes the many research contracts the Fed awards
to professors and the dominance of the Fed on certain editorial boards. "One
critical way the Fed exerts control on academic economists is through its
relationships with the field's gatekeepers. For instance, at the Journal of
Monetary Economics, a must-publish venue for rising economists, more than half
of the editorial board members are currently on the Fed payroll -- and the rest
have been in the past," the article says. The editor of the journal is quoted
calling the idea of control "a silly one" and saying that it had published work
critical of the Fed.
Inside Higher Ed, September 10, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/10/qt#207906
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
This is an excellent paper that I somehow missed until now!
"How Unusual Was the Stock Market of 2008?" by Eugene F. Fama and Kenneth R.
French, Fama/French Forum, May 4, 2009 ---
http://www.dimensional.com/famafrench/2009/05/how-unusual-was-the-stock-market-of-2008.html
Returns
Figure 1 shows that the market return of 2008 is unusual - but not
unprecedented. (The numbers used to create the figure are in Table 1.) The
only year of the 1927-2008 period that produces a market return below
-38.31% is 1931 (-44.36%). Three additional years have returns close to or
below -30%: 1930 (-28.83%), 1937 (-34.61%) and 1974 (-27.95%). If one
considers successive years of negative market returns, the cumulative return
for the three-year period 1929-1931 is -66.35%, the return for 1973-1974 is
-41.47%, and the return for 2000-2002 is -37.54%. On the plus side, the
annual market return is greater than 30% for 15 individual calendar years of
1927-2008. In short, extreme stock returns are common. Fortunately, extreme
positives outnumber extreme negatives.
Financial economists often focus on the equity
premium - the extra return one gets for investing in stocks, rather than in
short-term Treasury bills. The cumulative return from rolling over one month
bills in 2008 is 1.64%, so the equity premium for 2008 is -39.95 = (-38.31%
- 1.64%). How unusual is a premium of -39.95%? For 1927-2008 (82 years) the
average annual difference between the market return and the return from
rolling over one-month bills every month is 7.64% and the standard deviation
(a statistical measure of volatility) of the annual differences is 21.04%.
(See Table 2.) If we pretend that the annual premiums follow a normal
distribution (in fact, they are somewhat fat-tailed and right skewed), and
that the estimates for 1927-2008 are the true long-term mean and standard
deviation of the distribution, the probability of a premium of -39.95 or
smaller is 1.18%. (The details of this and other calculations are in the
appendix.) In other words, the odds of a premium this extreme in any given
year are about one in 85. Thus, the large loss for 2008 is unusual, but not
out of bounds.
It is apparent from these calculations that
investing in the stock market is risky. On average, stocks substantially
beat bills. This is, of course, the attraction of stock market investing.
But the year-by-year equity premium is quite volatile, and there are many
years when the premium is negative. (See Figure 2.) For investment purposes,
the important implication of this high volatility is that the holding period
for stocks must be quite long if one wants to be relatively sure of
realizing a positive average equity premium.
. . .
Volatility
The volatility of stock returns increased substantially during 2008. Is the
resulting level of volatility unusual? Figure 3 shows the year-by-year
standard deviations of the monthly market returns of 1927-2008. The standard
deviation of the monthly returns for 2008, 6.67% per month, is high relative
to the average for 1927-2008, 4.66% per month. The standard deviation for
2008 is especially high relative to the standard deviations for the
preceding five years, which are all well below the historical mean and among
the lowest of the 1927-2008 period. In other words, we are struck by the
high volatility of returns during 2008 in part because they follow a
five-year period when volatility was quite low.
Figure 3 suggests, however, that though the
standard deviation of 2008 monthly returns is above the sample mean, it is
not unusual. Even if one discards the 1930s, there are many years when the
volatility of monthly market returns is close to or above the 2008 value,
most recently, 1998, and the three-year period from 2000 to 2002. What leaps
out of Figure 3 is not the volatility of 2008 returns but the extreme
volatility of market returns from 1929 to 1939, with only a brief respite
during 1935 and 1936.
Looking at the standard deviation of monthly
returns for 2008 gives a coarse picture of the increase in volatility during
the year. If instead of monthly returns we examine monthly estimates of the
standard deviation of daily returns, we get a finer-tuned and somewhat
different picture of the evolution of volatility. Figure 4 show
month-by-month values of the standard deviation of daily returns for
1926-2008. (To fit all months on the figure, the values of the 12 monthly
standard deviations of daily returns for a given year are plotted above the
point for that year in Figure 4.)
The mean of the month-by-month standard deviation
of daily returns for 1926-2008 is 0.0085% per day. It is difficult to see in
Figure 4, but from the middle of 2003 to the end of 2006 the volatility of
daily returns is almost always below the long-term mean. The volatility of
daily returns increases during 2007, and from July onward the month-by-month
standard deviations of daily returns are pretty consistently above 1%,
somewhat but not dramatically above the long-term mean, but (as in Figure 3)
a lot below the general level of volatility from 1998 to 2002. The big jump
in volatility occurs in September 2008. For the last four months of 2008,
the monthly standard deviations of daily returns, are 3.38%, 4.97%, 4.53%,
and 3.14%. These are the four outliers plotted above 2008 in Figure 4.
Figure 4 shows that volatility this high was common during the Great
Depression. But after 1939, only the crash month October 1987 produces
similarly high volatility (4.93%) of daily returns, and in this case the
high volatility was short-lived. For perspective, a standard deviation of 4%
for daily returns translates to a standard deviation of annual returns of
about 56%!
Continued in article
50 Most Common Mistakes Made by Traders and Investors ---
http://www.ratiotrading.com/2009/09/50-common-mistakes-most-traders-make/
Alpha Return on Investment ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_(investment)
The Small-Cap Alpha Myth -
http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0210.asp?ID=0609
What the professional investors don't tell you ---
I downloaded this video ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/FinancialRounds.flv
From the Financial Rounds Blog on September 4, 2009 ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
When I teach investments, there's always a section
on market efficiency. A key point I try to make is that any test of market
efficiency suffers from the "joint hypothesis" problem - that the test is
not tests market efficiency, but also assumes that you have the correct
model for measuring the benchmark risk-adjusted return.
In other words, you can't say that you have "alpha" (an abnormal return)
without correcting for risk.
Falkenblog makes exactly this point:
In my book
Finding Alpha I describe these strategies, as
they are built on the fact that alpha is a residual return, a
risk-adjusted return, and as 'risk' is not definable, this gives people
a lot of degrees of freedom. Further, it has long been the case that
successful people are good at doing one thing while saying they are
doing another.
Even better, he's got a pretty good video on the topic
(it also touches on other topics). Enjoy.
You can watch the video under September 4, 2009 at
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
I downloaded this video ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/FinancialRounds.flv
Bob Jensen's threads on Return on Investment (ROI) are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on market efficiency (EMH) are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#EMH
Bob Jensen's investment helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
Rotten to the Core ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
The problem with accounting course titles is that they're really dull
sounding
Instead of "Accounting Information Systems," why not a more exciting title like
"Drill Down to Where the Bodies are Laid"
Or maybe "Intermediate Accounting" should be labeled
"How to Pick the Pockets of Unsuspecting Investors"
Or David Albrecht's course title could be
"How to Afford Hotels on Park Place and Boardwalk"
A financial strategy class could be titled
“Creeping Shorts Will Plume Your Portfolio”
Other title changes?
"Colleges find juicy titles swell enrollment: Many opt for
courses like 'Economics of Sin'," by Peter Schworm, Boston Globe,
September 8, 2009 ---
Click Here
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/09/08/colleges_find_juicy_course_titles_swell_enrollment/
Boston College German studies professor Michael
Resler went searching for a way to boost flagging interest in his “German
Literature of the High Middle Ages’’ class a few years ago, and settled on
the idea of simply giving the course a sexier name. The resulting “Knights,
Castles, and Dragons’’ nearly tripled enrollment.
Resler then replaced his class on “The Songs of
Walter von der Vogelweide,’’ a great German lyric poet, with “Passion,
Politics, and Poetry in the Middle Ages.’’ Again, enrollment swelled.
“I suppose the moral of the story is that we live
in an age where everything has to be marketed in order to find a willing
audience,’’ Resler mused.
As schools compete for students and faculty come
under pressure to boost enrollment in their classes, colleges from the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst to Wellesley are jazzing up course
catalogs to entice a generation of students drawn to the dramatic. This
year’s offerings include crowd-pleasing topics like massacres, superheroes,
and sin.
“The titles are much more playful than before, no
doubt about it,’’ said Bob Cluss, a biochemistry professor and dean of
curriculum at Middlebury College. “I think it has to do with a younger
generation of faculty who understand it’s an opportunity to catch students’
eyes.’’
Jessica Holmes, a 38-year-old economics professor
at Middlebury, is part of the younger wave. This fall, she will teach
Economics of Sin, a titillating title that has sparked sharp interest, with
even faculty, staff, and community members looking to audit the class.
“In what other economics class will they have the
opportunity to explore pornography, prostitution, crime and punishment,
drugs and drug legalization, the sale of human organs, and gambling?’’
Holmes asked.
The trend toward more inventive, provocative course
names reflects a broader movement of professors using more creative teaching
methods to capture students’ interest, Holmes and other academics say.
“As you can imagine, it is a lot easier to get
students to debate the economic arguments for and against the legalization
of prostitution than to discuss the latest employment estimates,’’ Holmes
said.
In that way, the catchy titles go beyond savvy
marketing, a shorthand way to show students raised on text messaging and
Facebook that the course has a contemporary edge. They also signal a shift
away from stuffy lectures and abstruse textbooks to discussion-based,
multimedia classes, and winkingly suggest the class might be entertaining.
“The title is just to be fun because the course is
supposed to be,’’ Alice Cheung, a biochemistry professor at UMass-Amherst,
said of her forthcoming course, The Light Fantastic: Wonders of Biology
Under the Microscope.
As a freshman seminar, the class is designed to be
general, and Cheung said an overly scientific name might scare students off.
Cheung isn’t the only UMass-Amherst professor to
indulge in a bit of whimsy. Future economists, along with poets and
paleontologists, are invited to the freshman seminar Dinosaur Tracks,
Communes, Massacres & Poets, and a classics course is dubbed Achilles to
Batman: Where are the Heroes?
Not to be outdone, Suffolk University offers
freshmen an array of tantalizingly titled seminars, including the sprawling
Sacred Hoops, Sneaker Pimps, and Hoop Dreams: Race, Gender, and Consumerism
in 20th Century American Basketball.
The professor, Rich Miller, said the course has
filled up quickly, and that several students told him it was the intriguing
title that grabbed their attention.
“It creates a buzz,’’ he said. “It gives it some
street cred.’’
Miller, 40, said that while teaching English 101 is
his “bread and butter,’’ the seminar gives him a chance to experiment a bit.
Students pick up on that, he said.
While the class takes a serious look at
basketball’s cultural influence, Miller said the trendy title has drawn a
bit of good-natured derision from his scholarly colleagues.
“You definitely get a little razzing in the
hallways,’’ he said.
Yet many professors are following Miller’s lead in
hopes of coaxing more students into their classrooms. Students have a lot of
options, faculty members say, and a little sparkle doesn’t hurt.
“The dean’s office monitors enrollment, and
humanities tend to suffer,’’ said Nicolas de Warren, philosophy professor at
Wellesley College who is coteaching The Stars and the Sages: Philosophy and
the Cosmos. “With such a rich offering of courses, there’s a kind of
competition, and titles that speak immediately to students can make a
difference.’’
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
"Moral Machines? New Approach To Decision Making Based On Computational
Logic," Science Daily, August 26, 2009 ---
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090825103229.htm
Researchers from Portugal and Indonesia describe an
approach to decision making based on computational logic in the current
issue of the International Journal of Reasoning-based Intelligent Systems,
which might one day give machines a sense of morality.
Science fiction authors often use the concept of
"evil" machines that attempt to take control of their world and to dominate
humanity. Skynet in the "Terminator" stories and Arthur C Clarke's Hal from
"2001: A Space Odyssey" are two of the most often cited examples. However,
for malicious intent to emerge in artificial intelligence systems requires
that such systems have an understanding of how people make moral decisions.
Luís Moniz Pereira of the Universidade Nova de
Lisboa, in Portugal and Ari Saptawijaya of the Universitas Indonesia, in
Depok, are both interested in artificial intelligence and the application of
computational logic.
"Morality no longer belongs only to the realm of
philosophers. Recently, there has been a growing interest in understanding
morality from the scientific point of view," the researchers say.
They have turned to a system known as prospective
logic to help them begin the process of programming morality into a
computer. Put simply, prospective logic can model a moral dilemma and then
determine the logical outcomes of the possible decisions. The approach could
herald the emergence of machine ethics.
The development of machine ethics will allow us to
develop fully autonomous machines that can be programmed to make judgements
based on a human moral foundation. "Equipping agents with the capability to
compute moral decisions is an indispensable requirement," the researchers
say, "This is particularly true when the agents are operating in domains
where moral dilemmas occur, e.g., in healthcare or medical fields."
The researchers also point out that machine ethics
could also help psychologists and cognitive scientists find a new way to
understand moral reasoning in people and perhaps extract fundamental moral
principles from complex situations that help people decide what is right and
what is wrong. Such understanding might then help in the development of
intelligent tutoring systems for teaching children morality.
The team has developed their program to help solve
the so-called "trolley problem". This is an ethical thought experiment first
introduced by British philosopher Philippa Foot in the 1960s. The problem
involves a trolley running out of control down a track. Five people are tied
to the track in its path. Fortunately, you can flip a switch, which will
send the trolley down a different track to safety. But, there is a single
person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch?
The prospective logic program can consider each
possible outcome based on different versions of the trolley problem and
demonstrate logically, what the consequences of the decisions made in each
might be. The next step would be to endow each outcome with a moral weight,
so that the prototype might be further developed to make the best judgement
as to whether to flip the switch.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Journal reference:
Luís Moniz Pereira, Ari Saptawijaya. Modelling Morality with Prospective
Logic. Progress in Artificial Intelligence, 2007;
487499 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-77002-2_9
Adapted from materials provided by
Inderscience, via
AlphaGalileo..
50 Most Common Mistakes Made by Traders and Investors ---
http://www.ratiotrading.com/2009/09/50-common-mistakes-most-traders-make/
Alpha Return on Investment ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_(investment)
The Small-Cap Alpha Myth - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0210.asp?ID=0609
What the professional investors don't tell you ---
I downloaded this video ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/FinancialRounds.flv
From the Financial Rounds Blog on September 4, 2009 ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
When I teach investments, there's always a section
on market efficiency. A key point I try to make is that any test of market
efficiency suffers from the "joint hypothesis" problem - that the test is
not tests market efficiency, but also assumes that you have the correct
model for measuring the benchmark risk-adjusted return.
In other words, you can't say that you have "alpha" (an abnormal return)
without correcting for risk.
Falkenblog makes exactly this point:
In my book
Finding Alpha I describe these strategies, as
they are built on the fact that alpha is a residual return, a
risk-adjusted return, and as 'risk' is not definable, this gives people
a lot of degrees of freedom. Further, it has long been the case that
successful people are good at doing one thing while saying they are
doing another.
Even better, he's got a pretty good video on the topic
(it also touches on other topics). Enjoy.
You can watch the video under September 4, 2009 at
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
I downloaded this video ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/FinancialRounds.flv
Bob Jensen's threads on Return on Investment (ROI) are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on market efficiency (EMH) are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#EMH
Bob Jensen's investment helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
Rotten to the Core ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
Two Videos Damning Capitalism: One Stupid, One Smart
Michael Moore cheered the bankruptcy of General Motors and absolutely
despises the comeback of General Motors
He has a relatively long list (some lucrative to him) leftist documentaries ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moore
His documentary Sicko got it wrong --- Cuba is not the dream country of
equity and quality in health care for the masses
Now he has a new documentary entitled: Capitalism: A Love Story
The Stupid Video
"Michael Moore Gets It Wrong," by John Stossel, ABC News, July 11,
2009 ---
http://blogs.abcnews.com/johnstossel/2009/07/michael-moore-gets-it-wrong.html
Michael Moore has been
working on
another documentary. This time, he’s taking on
capitalism:
"The wealthy, at some
point, decided they didn't have enough wealth. They wanted more -- a lot more.
So they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their
hard-earned money."
How ridiculous is that?
The wealthy, and everyone else, almost always decide that they don’t have enough
wealth. People ask their bosses for raises. We invest in stocks hoping for
bigger returns than Treasury Bonds bring. “Greed” is a constant. The beauty of
free markets, when government doesn’t meddle in them, is that they turn this
greed into a phenomenal force for good. The way to win big money is to serve
your customers well. Profit-seeking entrepreneurs have given us better
products, shorter work days, extended lives, and more opportunities to write the
script of our own life.
On Thursday, Moore
announced the title of the movie:
Capitalism: A Love Story.
It’s a title I might have
picked to make a point opposite of what I assume Moore has in mind.
Moore also fails to
understand is that it was not “capitalism” run amok that caused today’s
financial problems. In reality, it was a combination of
ill-conceived
government policies and an
overzealous Federal Reserve artificially lowering
interest rates to fuel a bubble in the housing market. Then it was government
that took money from taxpayers and
forced banks to accept it.
Moore ought to understand
that, because he makes a good point when he says his movie will be about "the
biggest robbery in the history of this country - the massive transfer of U.S.
taxpayer money to private financial institutions."
That is indeed robbery.
It sure doesn’t sound like capitalism.
The Smart Video
Better Video Damning "Managerial Capitalism" and It's Free Online ---
Click Here
http://snipurl.com/managerialcapitalism [fora_tv]
The Greatest Swindle in the History of the World
"The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold," by Andy Kroll, The Nation, May 26,
2009 ---
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090608/kroll/print
Being Honest About Being Dishonest
Democrats openly admit that most of the stimulus money is going to counties that
voted for Obama
A new study released by USA Today also finds that
counties that voted for Obama received about twice as much stimulus money per
capita as those that voted for McCain. "The stimulus bill is designed to help
those who have been hurt by the economic downturn.... Do you see disparity out
there in where the money is going? Certainly," a Democratic congressional
staffer knowledgeable about the process told FOXNews.com.
John Lott, "ANALYSIS: States Hit
Hardest by Recession Get Least Stimulus Money," Fox News, July 19,
2009---
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,533841,00.html
I’d been working for the bank for about five weeks
when I woke up on the balcony of a ski resort in the Swiss Alps. It was midnight
and I was drunk. One of my fellow management trainees was urinating onto the
skylight of the lobby below us; another was hurling wine glasses into the
courtyard. Behind us, someone had stolen the hotel’s shoe-polishing machine and
carried it into the room; there were a line of drunken bankers waiting to use
it. Half of them were dripping wet, having gone swimming in all their clothes
and been too drunk to remember to take them off. It took several more weeks of
this before the bank considered us properly trained. . . . By the time I arrived
on Wall Street in 1999, the link between derivatives and the real world had
broken down. Instead of being used to reduce risk, 95 per cent of their use was
speculation - a polite term for gambling. And leveraging - which means taking a
large amount of risk for a small amount of money. So while derivatives, and the
financial industry more broadly, had started out serving industry, by the late
1990s the situation had reversed. The Market had become a near-religious force
in our culture; industry, society, and politicians all bowed down to it. It was
pretty clear what The Market didn’t like. It didn’t like being closely watched.
It didn’t like rules that governed its behaviour. It didn’t like goods produced
in First-World countries or workers who made high wages, with the notable
exception of financial sector employees. This last point bothered me especially.
Philipp Meyer,
American Rust (Simon & Schuster, 2009) ---
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/American-Rust/Philipp-Meyer/e/9780385527514/?itm=1
American excess: A Wall Street trader tells all - Americas, World - The
Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/american-excess--a-wall-street-trader-tells-all-1674614.html
Jensen Comment
This book reads pretty much like an update on the derivatives scandals featured
by Frank Partnoy covering the Roaring 1990s before the dot.com scandals broke.
There were of course other insiders writing about these scandals as well ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
It would seem that bankers and investment bankers do not learn from their own
mistake. The main cause of the scandals is always pay for performance schemes
run amuck.
It's so sad that Wall Street shot itself in the head rather than the
foot!
With Finance Disgraced, Which Career Will Be King?
"With Finance Disgraced, Which Career Will Be King?" by Steve Lohr, The
New York Times, April 11, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/weekinreview/12lohr.html?pagewanted=1&hpw
In the Depression, smart college students flocked
into civil engineering to design the highway, bridge and dam-building
projects of those days. In the Sputnik era, students poured into the
sciences as America bet on technology to combat the cold war Communist
challenge. Yes, the jobs beckoned and the pay was good. But those careers,
in their day, had other perks: respect and self-esteem.
Big shifts in the flow of talent can ripple through
the nation and the economy for decades with lasting effect. The engineers of
the Depression built everything from inter-city roads to the Hoover Dam,
while the Sputnik-inspired scientists would go on, often with research
funding from the Pentagon, to create the building-block innovations behind
modern computing and the Internet.
Today, the financial crisis and the economic
downturn are likely to alter drastically the career paths of future years.
The contours of the shift are still in flux, in part because there is so
much uncertainty about the shape of the economic landscape and the job
market ahead.
But choosing a career is a guess about the future
in which economics is only part of the calculation. Prestige, peer
expectations and the climate of public opinion also matter. And early
indications suggest new career directions that are tethered less to the
dream of an immediate six-figure paycheck on Wall Street than to the demands
of a new public agenda to solve the nation’s problems.
The deep recession has clearly battered industries
— and professions — whose economics were at risk before the downturn. Law
firms are laying off lawyers as never before and questioning the industry’s
traditional unit of payment, the billable hour. Journalism is reeling from
the falloff in advertising and the inability of newspapers and magazines to
make a living on the Web.
Still, the industry whose troubles are having the
greatest impact on the rethinking of careers, especially at the nation’s
elite universities, is the one at the center of the country’s economic
downturn — finance. For years, the hefty paychecks and social status on Wall
Street proved irresistible to many of America’s brightest young people, but
the jobs, money and social respect there are much diminished today.
“In choosing careers, young people look for signals
from society, and Wall Street will no longer pull the talent that it did for
so many years,” said Richard Freeman, director of the labor studies program
at the National Bureau of Economic Research. “We have a great experiment
before us.”
What will the new map of talent flow look like?
It’s early, but based on graduate school applications this spring,
enrollment in undergraduate courses, preliminary job-placement results at
schools, and the anecdotal accounts of students and professors, a new
pattern of occupational choice seems to be emerging. Public service,
government, the sciences and even teaching look to be winners, while fewer
shiny, young minds are embarking on careers in finance and business
consulting.
For the highest-paid business fields, the outlook
is for a tempering correction instead of an all-out exodus. At Harvard, for
example, about 40 percent of undergraduates in recent years went into the
most lucrative corporate arenas like finance and consulting, based on
surveys at the school year’s end. “That certainly won’t be the case this
year,” observed Lawrence Katz, a professor and labor economist who has
studied undergraduate career choices at Harvard going back to the 1960s.
“We’re seeing students who would have been part of the Ivy League pipeline
to Wall Street in the past considering very different career paths.”
Kedamai Fisseha, a 21-year-old senior, is one of
them. An economics major, Mr. Fisseha says he always assumed he would go
into finance, and his summer internship last year was at the investment bank
Morgan Stanley. Yet after Wall Street’s meltdown, job prospects there have
withered. Instead, he is interviewing with Teach for America, a nonprofit
group that recruits college graduates to teach in hard-to-staff schools for
two-year stints. (After that, only one-third stay in the classrooms, though
two-thirds remain in education.)
Mr. Fisseha regards the turn of events as an
opportunity to broaden his horizons. “It’s been liberating, and lucky for
me,” he said. “But your situation does dictate your preferences.”
Graduate schools of government and public policy
are seeing a surge of applications. In a survey of its members released last
week, the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and
Administration found that 82 percent reported an increase in applications
this year, and many saw the largest percentage jumps in several years, or
ever. The most-cited reason was the expectation by students that government
will be hiring.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
In spite of continued strong career opportunities, with some of the best
opportunities for women, the above article ignores accountancy careers. I think
much of this is due to Lohr's focus on high ranked MBA programs. These MBA
Programs have not been major sources of public accountants in the past three
decades. One reason is that to take the CPA examination most states requires
more pre-requisite accounting course coverage than top MBA programs make
available in the curriculum. This makes it more difficult for graduates of top
MBA programs to sit for the CPA examination unless they were undergraduate
accounting majors. Top ranked MBA programs like Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, and
Darden generally prefer to admit students who were not undergraduate business
and/or accounting majors.
Following the conflicts of interest charges and/or the Sarbanes-Oxley
legislation, most CPA firms sold off their consulting divisions like Andersen
Consulting, Cap Gemini, PwC Consulting, and KPMG Consulting. Those divisions
were more apt to hire MBA graduates who had no intention of ever taking the CPA
examination. Also consulting firms have cut way back on their entry-level hiring
in favor of hiring persons with technical expertise and experience.
Although faculty in state-supported universities are somewhat different from
what we view as workers in the federal, state, and local bureaucracies, there
will be increased hiring opportunities for faculty careers as the government
pours upwards of a trillion dollars, over several years, into education
opportunities for lower-income students. But with declining career opportunities
as the private sector cuts back, the outlook is not particularly strong for
academic careers in schools of business and accounting. It's even bleaker for
undergraduate finance programs. The outlook is much better for science and
medical/nursing/pharmacy faculty openings.
What I find somewhat sad in Lohr's article is the prediction that government
careers are the long-term wave of the future. I've never been a fan of big
public sector relative to the private sector. It's so sad that Wall Street shot
itself in the head rather than the foot!
Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
An Oligopoly
To say they have to be is an understatement. The General Accounting Office says
textbook prices have increased at twice the rate of inflation since 1986.
"Textbooks for Tightwads: As classes start, business students are in
for a shock: Textbook prices are higher than ever. A word to the wise: It pays
to shop around," by Rachel Z. Arndt, Business Week, August 26, 2009
---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/aug2009/bs20090826_069900.htm?link_position=link1
Shopping for textbooks can be burdensome at best,
painful at worst. And it's no different for business students. By the time
students get to B-school, they're probably well-versed in the tricks of the
textbook trade. They need to be, with some books required at top B-schools
retailing for well over $200.
Although textbook shopping is as inevitable as
picking classes or group projects, spending tons of money on books doesn't
have to be part of the process. The catch is knowing what you're doing,
which isn't as obvious as it sounds, even for students with top-of-the-line
spreadsheet skills. Of course, you can still look for the least beat-up copy
in the campus bookstore, but that should be just the beginning.
The Web is overflowing with sites claiming to offer
the cheapest textbooks around. So, with book prices rising, the cost of
higher education higher than ever, and a dreary economy to boot, it'll
certainly pay off to spend some time shopping around. Publishers may be
resourceful, but students are, too.
An Oligopoly
To say they have to be is an understatement. The General Accounting Office
says textbook prices have increased at twice the rate of inflation since
1986. And today, students spend on average about $700 per year on required
course materials, according to a 2008 survey by the National Association of
College Stores (NACS).
Part of the problem is rising production costs, but
the textbook market itself plays a role. The industry is an oligopoly, says
James V. Koch, president of Old Dominion University, in a 2006 report by the
U.S. Education Dept. Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance.
According to Koch, five publishers—Thomson, Wiley, Houghton-Mifflin,
Pearson, and The McGraw-Hill Companies (Businessweek's parent)—control the
market, putting out about 80% of all college texts.
What's more, Koch says, the textbook market is
unique. Unlike markets for most consumer products, where demand is generated
by consumers themselves, textbook demand is created by another group: the
faculty choosing texts for their classes. That makes it possible for
publishers to introduce higher prices without much&mdashlif any—loss in
revenue.
Publishers can also introduce "bundled" versions of
books—books sealed with additional CD-ROMs or other materials—for higher
prices. This means, even if just the book itself is required, students are
stuck buying a more expensive version.
Tricks of the Trade
But the situation for students isn't as dire as it sounds. First of all, as
some economists point out, students are smart and know how to consume. Yes,
textbooks are expensive. But they are expensive at list price—usually the
highest price a student can find. The prices charged by most bookstores,
online retailers, and even online trading posts are well under this
publisher-set price.
As BusinessWeek found out, those retail prices can
vary wildly, which is why it pays to shop around. One of the easiest and
fastest ways to find the best prices is to use a site that aggregates prices
from many retailers. Booksprice.com and allbookstores.com are good places to
start. They both list prices from the most popular Web retailers, such as
alibris.com, half.com, bookbyte.com, and even Amazon.com. If aggregated
searches aren't turning up the results you want, you can go to individual
retailers' sites. Make sure to know the edition, author, and publisher of
the book you're looking for—some books, on topics such as microeconomics,
share the same title for completely different products.
Expect some surprises. Sometimes a retailer will
sell the new version of a textbook for much less than a used copy. Abebooks,
for example, charges $69.99 for a new copy of Jonathan Berk's and Peter
DeMarzo's Corporate Finance and $120.54 for a used one. It's unclear why
this happens, but one possibility might be that the owners of the used books
simply overpriced their product.
Continued in article
How to find the cheapest college textbooks ---
http://www.wisebread.com/how-to-find-the-cheapest-college-textbooks
I’m not in college any more, thank goodness, but I
remember every penny-pinching moment. Some days I hardly had enough money
for food, mainly because the materials and textbooks I had to buy ripped a
hole in my pocket the size of the Grand Canyon. And so I’m always on the
lookout for ways to help out college students. Today, I found two.
There are numerous methods available to search for
textbooks, including the ever-popular “shopping” search option in Google.
But if you want to go deeper, a few of my favorite sites in the past have
included:
Abebooks.com
Addall.com
Amazon.com
Alibris.com
Craigslist.org
Bizrate.com
Half.com (which is part
of eBay)
Textbooksnow.com
No doubt you’ve used one or two of these already.
But it’s a pain to search each one and compare results. Usually, you find
the book you want, ponder the price and then pay. Not good enough for me. I
want to help students, who are suffering like the rest of us in this hellish
economy, to get the absolute rock-bottom price on any book they’re looking
for.
So I did a little more hunting around and found
some much more powerful search engines, devoted to scouring multiple books
sources at once. The two I like the most are
CAMPUSBOOKS.COM and
BIGWORDS.COM. And
they really are the ultimate search engines for books, especially textbooks.
All you need to know are a few basics about the
book you’re searching for. The easiest way is to have the ISBN number
readily at hand. If that’s not available, you can search by keyword, author,
title, the usual search engine options. And as you can see, the results from
both sites are impressive. Here are two searches I did for an advertising
book I love called “Hey Whipple, Squeeze This.”
Community
College Open-Textbook Project G
Especially note the open sharing sources being used
The
Community College Open Textbook Project begins this week with a member meeting
in California," by Catherine Rampell, Chronicle of Higher Education,
April 29, 2008 ---
Click Here
At the
meeting, representatives of institutions around the country will start reviewing
open-textbook models for “quality, usability, accessibility, and
sustainability,” according to a news release. They will initially review four
providers of free online educational resources:
Connexions,
run by Rice University;
Flat World Knowledge,
a commercial digital-textbook publisher that will begin
offering free textbooks
online next year;
the University of California’s
UC College Prep Online,
which offers Advanced Placement and other courses online; and the
Community College Consortium for Open Educational
Resources, which was founded by the Foothill-De Anza Community
College District and the League for Innovation in the Community College.
One of the most popular sites for textbooks is Bigwords ---
http://www.bigwords.com/
Be careful, however, when buying cheaper foreign editions such as European
editions of popular textbooks. There are often differences to be aware of such
as different orderings of chapters.
One of the first places to start is to look for used books on Amazon.com and
bn.com
I like buying from Amazon in order to reduce the number of online vendors that
have my credit card numbers. Also Amazon guarantees delivery of used books and
other merchandise from linked vendors.
We Rent Movies, So Why Not Textbooks?," by Miguel Helft, The New
York Times, July 4, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/business/05ping.html?hpw
Cengage Learning
said Thursday that it would become the first higher
education publisher to let students rent as well as buy print textbooks directly
from the source. Cengage said it would transform its existing online platform,
known as
iChapters, into a broader
site that would allow students to rent print textbooks at 40 to 70 percent off
retail as well as purchase print and digital texts and other materials.
Publishers have been exploring a range of ways to enter the
burgeoning market for renting textbooks.
Inside Higher Ed, August 14, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/14/qt#205700
Jensen Test:
Rent Textbooks from Chegg ---
http://www.chegg.com/
Rental prices are about half the so-called purchase price of a new book.
Buying a used book is probably a better idea since it, in turn, can be sold back
into the used market.
Intermediate Accounting ISBN 0470374942 by Kieso et al.
New (Chegg claims the new price is $209
but the price of hardcover is $177 at Barnes & Noble )
The Amazon Price of a new hardcover is $168 ---
Click Here
Bigwords.com (international edition that differs somewhat in chapter orderings)
lists a price of $53.98
Used prices start at Amazon for about $159 (but watch carefully for the edition
number)
Rent from Chegg ($96.53) ---
http://www.chegg.com/details/intermediate-accounting/0470374942/
Jensen Comment
To get value for my money, I prefer used houses, cars, and books.
Of course, both Amazon and Google are now selling electronic versions of
textbooks. For Amazon you must have a Kindle reader. For Google, all you have to
have is a computer, although to date Amazon has a wider selection of textbooks
available.
American Council of the Blind
filed a lawsuit last month against Arizona State University, saying that its
plan to use the Kindle to distribute books to students is illegal because blind
people cannot use the device as currently configured ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/06/kindle
Free online textbooks, cases, and videos ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Teaching Without Textbooks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#NoTextbooks
Bob Jensen's threads on technologies for aiding handicapped learners ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
"Student Uses Computer to Help Arrest iPhone Robbers," by Simmi Aujla,
Chronicle of Higher Education, September 4, 2009 ---
Click Here
Robbed of his iPhone last week, a student at
Carnegie Mellon University used a tracking program on the phone to help
police officers find and arrest the robbers outside a fast-food restaurant.
Early Saturday morning, Can Duruk, a senior, was walking home when two men
stopped him and asked for his wallet, according to a press release from the
Pittsburgh Bureau of Police. One of the men showed Duruk what looked like a
handgun and demanded his PIN number, while the other took Duruk’s wallet and
iPhone out of his pockets.
After calling the police, Mr. Duruk used the program
MobileMe
to track the movements of the robbers, according to
The Tartan, Carnegie Mellon’s
student newspaper. MobileMe has a feature called Find My iPhone. Users can
log onto a Web site to access a map, which can be updated at the push of a
button, that shows the approximate location of the phone. As they headed
toward an Eat'n Park restaurant, police went after them.
Diane Richard, a spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh police, said she didn’t know
of any instances when a victim had been able to track robbers himself. "I'm
glad that he was able to help us clear the case so quickly and apprehend the
people who took his belongings," she said.
Bob Jensen's threads on computer and networking security are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection
Jensen Comment
I wonder if we should give a free iPhone to every illegal immigrant.
The USDA can now track every cow in the U.S., largely as
part of preventing the spread of Mad Cow Disease. Someone previously suggested
giving a cow to every illegal immigrant. But I think the free iPhone is more
practical.
"Gadget Makers Can Find Thief, but Don’t Ask," by
David Segal, The New York Times, September 6, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/technology/07kindle.html?ref=business
For decades, when an
item was lost or stolen, a consumer went through three stages of grief:
anger, mourning and acceptance. You would be miffed, then sad and then you
would move on, in large part because moving on was the only option.
Then came the Digital Age and with it,
gadgets that manufacturers can keep tabs on — and even profit from — when
they wind up in the hands of someone who has found or poached them. Which,
in turn, has led to a fourth stage of gadget-related grief: rage.
Specifically, rage at the gadget makers,
which often know exactly who has a missing or stolen device, because in many
instances it has been registered to a new user.
But many tech companies will not disclose
information about the new owners of missing devices unless a police officer
calls with a search warrant. Even a request to simply shut down service —
which would deter thieves by rendering their pilfered gadget useless — is
typically refused.
The problem, which nobody had to deal with
before smartphones and satellite radios, has reached new heights with the
Kindle reader from Amazon, with its ability to download books wirelessly and
store hundreds of titles on a single device.
On Web sites devoted to the e-book reader,
including Blog Kindle and Amazon’s own Kindle Community board, many
customers have been in a snit over Amazon’s policy on stolen Kindles.
Samuel Borgese, for instance, is still
irate about the response from Amazon when he recently lost his Kindle. After
leaving it on a plane, he canceled his account so that nobody could charge
books to his credit card. Then he asked Amazon to put the serial number of
his wayward device on a kind of do-not-register list that would render it
inoperable — to “brick it” in tech speak.
Amazon’s policy is that it will help
locate a missing Kindle only if the company is contacted by a police officer
bearing a subpoena. Mr. Borgese, who lives in Manhattan, questions whether
hunting down a $300 e-book reader would rank as a priority for the New York
Police Department.
He began to see ulterior motives when he
twice sent e-mail messages to Amazon seeking an address to send a police
report and got no reply.
“I finally concluded,” Mr. Borgese said,
“that Amazon knew the device was being used and preferred to sell content to
anyone who possessed the device, rather than assist in returning it to its
rightful owner.”
Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, said
only that the company acted in accordance with the law and cooperated with
law enforcement officials. “Beyond that, we aren’t going to speculate on
hypotheticals,” he wrote in an e-mail message.
The complaints have left Amazon with a new
public relations dilemma. In July, when Amazon remotely deleted titles from
Kindles, citing copyright reasons, it was accused of heavy-handedness. If
the company were to shut down a Kindle that had been erroneously reported as
stolen, it might be accused of playing cop, judge and jury. Then again, it
is also possible that Amazon is simply avoiding the financial burden of
adjudicating claims.
Whatever the reasoning, Amazon’s policy is
hardly unique.
Sirius XM Radio also says it needs to see
a subpoena from a police officer before it will deactivate or hand over
information about missing radios. Patrick Reilly, a company spokesman, said
the goal was “to protect the original subscriber who has lost the radio, but
also not to incriminate someone who legitimately comes in possession of a
radio.”
Radios that have been reported stolen, he
added, are reactivated only after someone provides a “proof of purchase,”
like a receipt from eBay.
But former customers who have inquired
about the fate of their stolen radios have been dismayed at how little
company representatives are willing to help.
“I still don’t understand why they
couldn’t just notify the police department and tell them who has my radio,”
said Dolly Richards of Kennewick, Wash., whose Sirius radio was plucked from
a Chevy Blazer one recent Sunday morning. “I mean, there’s a whole police
report about this break-in. They can’t call and say, ‘So and so just
registered that radio’ ”?
IPhone owners have a number of options to
search for their handsets, including features that use GPS technology to
send out virtual semaphores. But if someone can shut down or elude those
systems, and if the phone’s security identity module — a k a the SIM card —
is replaced, it can be used by its new owner to make calls.
“When we address lost or stolen iPhones,”
says Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T, which has exclusive rights to the
iPhone in the United States, “all we’re focused on is preventing any charges
from accruing to that account. We don’t disable the phone.”
The approach of American tech companies is
not shared by some of their counterparts abroad, which seem more willing to
intervene.
In England, for example, the major
cellphone players keep a centralized black list for mobile phone serial
numbers, allowing consumers to flag lost or stolen phones so they cannot be
re-registered.
There is nothing like that in the United
States. John Walls, a spokesman for the CTIA, the wireless industry’s trade
group, says that is because carriers here subsidize the cost of new phones,
and as a result phones are so inexpensive here that theft is not a
significant problem.
In Canada, it is the policy of Sirius
Satellite Radio, an affiliated but separate company from Sirius XM, to
deactivate a radio if a subscriber signs a statement that the radio has been
stolen and asks the company to cease providing service to it. A spokesman
said that was simply how the company had handled the matter since its start
in 2005 and it seemed to work.
Mr. Borgese, who once ran a software
company, says gadget makers in the United States have high-tech solutions to
this high-tech problem. Amazon, he said, simply needs another step in the
registration process for secondhand Kindles.
Before a resold device could function, an
e-mail message would be sent to the original owner, saying, in effect,
“Click here to acknowledge that you’ve sold your Kindle.”
When asked for an opinion on Mr. Borgese’s
idea, Amazon’s spokesman declined to comment.
Bob Jensen's threads on computer and networking security are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection
Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
"Rating agencies lose free-speech claim," by Jonathon Stempel,
Reuters, September 3, 2009 ---
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-CreditCrisis/idUSTRE5824KN20090903
Credit rating agencies may find it harder to argue
that their opinions deserve free speech protection after a judge rejected
efforts by Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's to dismiss a
fraud lawsuit.
In a case alleging that inflated ratings on risky
mortgages led to investment losses, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin
said on Wednesday that ratings on notes sold privately to a group of
investors were not "matters of public concern" deserving broad protection
under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The Manhattan judge said investors may pursue their
lawsuit accusing Moody's, S&P and Morgan Stanley (MS.N), which marketed the
notes, of issuing false and misleading statements about the notes, which
were backed by subprime mortgages and other debt.
Scheindlin's ruling may affect lawsuits by pension
funds -- including the nation's largest, the California Public Employees'
Retirement System, or CalPERS -- and other investors that want to hold banks
and rating agencies responsible for exaggerating the value and safety of
debt in order to win fees.
"This is potentially a very significant opinion,"
said Joseph Mason, a finance professor at Louisiana State University's
business school in Baton Rouge.
"It seems they have found a hole in the First
Amendment defense, the agencies' primary line of defense," he said. "There
is a feeling throughout the investment industry that agencies committed an
egregious breach, but the issue is how to gain traction under the law. This
opinion seems to give hope."
Rating agencies typically get broad free-speech
protection similar to that afforded journalists and plaintiffs must often
show that ratings reflect "actual malice" before they can recover. That
protection, of course, is not absolute.
"The First Amendment doesn't allow anyone to commit
fraud," said George Cohen, a professor at the University of Virginia School
of Law.
Sean Egan, managing director of Egan-Jones Ratings
Co, an independent agency critical of how rivals are compensated, called
Scheindlin's ruling "a watershed event. This is the first major breach in
the First Amendment defense, and makes it substantially easier for other
plaintiffs."
FEES TIED TO RATINGS
The ruling concerned the Cheyne Structured
Investment Vehicle, a package of debt that included subprime mortgages.
Scheindlin said Cheyne issued some notes with
"triple-A" ratings, the same as the U.S. government, and others that won
"the highest credit ratings ever given to capital notes."
Meanwhile, the rating agencies were paid more than
three times their normal rate and their fees were "contingent upon the
receipt of desired ratings," she said.
Desirable ratings did nothing to save the Cheyne
SIV. It went bankrupt in August 2007.
"You can't yell fire in a crowded theater, but here
it seems the agencies were doing the opposite," said Jonathan Macey, a
professor at Yale Law School. "There was a fire, but they were saying there
was nothing to worry about and taking money for saying that."
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Expert Financial Predictions (John Stewart's hindsight video scrapbook) ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/post.aspx?bid=354&bpid=23077&nlid=1840
You have to watch the first third of this video before it gets into the
scrapbook itself
The problem unmentioned here is one faced by auditors and credit rating agencies
of risky clients every day: Predictions are often self fulfilling
If an auditor issues going concern exceptions in audit reports, the
exceptions themselves will probably contribute to the downfall of the clients
The same can be said by financial analysts who elect to trash a company's
financial outlook
Hence we have the age-old conflict between holding back on what you really
secretly predict versus pulling the fire alarm on a troubled company
There are no easy answers here except to conclude that it auditors and credit
rating agencies appeared to not reveal many of their inner secret predictions in
2008
Auditing firms and credit rating agencies lost a lot of credibility in this
economic crisis, but they've survived many such stains on their reputations in
the past
By now we're used to the fact that the public is generally aware of the fire
before the auditors and credit rating agencies pull the alarm lever
On the other hand, financial wizards who pull the alarm lever on nearly every
company all the time lose their credibility in a hurry
Bob Jensen's threads on fraud in the subprime lending scandals ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#CreditRatingAgencies
Bob Jensen's threads on fraud in credit rating agencies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Sleaze
Where were the auditors ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#AuditFirms
Déjà
vu all over again
The Controversial Milgram Experiment at Yale University in the1960s
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
The Milgram experiment was a series of social
psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley
Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an
authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with
their personal conscience. Milgram first described his research in 1963 in
an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, and
later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, Obedience to
Authority: An Experimental View. The experiments began in July 1961, three
months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in
Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the question:
"Was it that Eichmann and his accomplices in the Holocaust had mutual
intent, in at least with regard to the goals of the Holocaust?"
In other words, "Was there a mutual sense of
morality among those involved?" Milgram's testing revealed that it could
have been that the millions of accomplices were merely following orders,
despite violating their deepest moral beliefs. Milgram summarized the
experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:
The legal and philosophic aspects of
obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about
how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple
experiment at Yale University to test how much
pain an
ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he
was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was
pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral
imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects'
[participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims,
authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults
to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority
constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most
urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs,
and without any particular hostility on their part, can become
agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the
destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they
are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental
standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources
needed to resist authority.
Among other things ABC examined gender differences
"Video: Milgram’s Obedience Experiment Remake," Simoleon Sense, September 3,
2009 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-milgrams-obedience-experiment-remake/
Introduction (Via Situationist)
“The video below describes a remake of Milgram’s
famous study originally done in the ’60’s. Until recently, no one was
authorized to replicate it due to ethical considerations. However, in 2007,
ABC News was granted such permission and did so with many of the original
researchers and some of the actual partipants. New data was also added.”
Our Main Financial Regulating Agency: The SEC Screw
Everybody Commission
One of the biggest regulation failures in history is the way the SEC failed to
seriously investigate Bernie Madoff's fund even after being warned by Wall
Street experts across six years before Bernie himself disclosed that he was
running a $65 billion Ponzi fund.
"Statement by SEC Chairman: Statement on the Inspector
General's Report Regarding the Bernard Madoff Fraud," by SEC Chairman Mary
Shapiro, SEC Speech, September 4, 2009 ---
http://sec.gov/news/speech/2009/spch090409mls.htm
I’m deeply suspicious that there was possibly too much
“experience” of a different type as well as “inexperience” cited as the main
cause of the SEC’s negligence. The Inspector General’s Report leaves a lot to be
desired.
Inspector General's Report ---
http://sec.gov/news/speech/2009/spch090409mls.htm
Swanson Acknowledged in
Testimony that If He Had Carefully Reviewed the Complaint, He Would Have
Investigated
Additional Red Flags That Were
Raised Swanson stated the Hedge Fund Manager’s complaint and the 2001
articles mean something different to him today than they did at the time of
the examination in 20032004, noting, “I didn’t know anything, very little
anyway, about hedge funds and mutual funds and how they operated.” Id. at p.
39. Swanson admitted that to someone who understood the hedge fund world,
Madoff’s failure to charge money management fees “would probably be a little
surprising.” Id. at p. 37. Swanson now reads the Hedge Fund Manager’s
complaint to “indicate to me … [BMIS] may be not trading as much in options
as they’re saying they’re doing,” and the red flag about the auditor to
“signal some level of a lack of independence with respect to the auditor.”
Id. at pgs. 37-38. Swanson testified that if he had reviewed the complaint,
he would have wanted to look into the auditor issue. Swanson Testimony Tr.
at p. 50. McCarthy and Donohue also thought that the allegation that the
auditor was a related party to the principal was noteworthy and something
that should have been followed up upon. Donohue Testimony Tr. at p. 42;
McCarthy Testimony Tr. at p. 58. As Donohue explained, “His statement that
the auditor of the firm is a related party to the principal would indicate
that there are potential conflicts with the firm and the auditor.” Donohue
Testimony Tr. at p. 42. However, during the course of the examination, the
exam team did not examine whether the auditor of the firm was a related
party to the principal.
. . .
ALLEGATIONS OF CONFLICT OF
INTEREST OR IMPROPER INFLUENCE ARISING FROM THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ERIC
SWANSON AND SHANA MADOFF (Pages 389-404)
After his sworn testimony
on June 19, 2009, Swanson provided supplemental information to the
Office of the Inspector General, stating that he had a vague
recollection that, “prior to 2005, he and Mr. McCarthy discussed the
appropriateness of working on matters involving Madoff in light of their
participation in the compliance breakfasts, and that neither he nor
McCarthy determined that they should be recused.” Letter dated June 19,
2009 from Michael Wolk, Counsel to Swanson, to IG Kotz, at p. 2, at
Exhibit 183. Swanson also stated that he “took comfort in the fact that
Lori Richards, Director, Office of Compliance Inspections and
Examinations, was aware that the breakfasts were sponsored by the
Securities Industry Association (SIA).” Id.
Jensen Comment
This part of the Inspector General's report relies a lot upon Eric Swanson's
claims of not being able to remember much about his early-on relationships
with Shana Madoff. About this part of the Report I am very suspicious.
However, early news accounts are also somewhat inconsistent.
"Ponzi Schemer's Label-Whoring Niece Married SEC
Lawyer," by Owen Thomas, December 16, 2008 ---
http://gawker.com/5111942/ponzi-schemers-label+whoring-niece-married-sec-lawyer
Shana Madoff, whose uncle Bernie Madoff stands
accused of defrauding investors of $50 billion (later raised to over
$65 billion), is the wife of Eric Swanson, a former
top lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission. A goy, but
well-placed!
So well-placed that SEC chairman Christopher Cox is
now elaborately raising his eyebrows about the relationship — especially
since Shana Madoff worked as the compliance lawyer at Bernard L. Madoff
Investment Securities, and met Swanson at a trade association event. . . .
Swanson resigned from the SEC in 2006, and the
couple married in 2007. But they clearly dated for a while before that.
Some have suggested that Shana Madoff is a
"shopaholic." So not technically true! Why, she married the manager of a
men's clothing store in 1997, but that didn't work out. A 2004 New York
profile detailed her simultaneous affection for Narciso Rodriguez and
aversion to actually going out and shopping. Instead of trying on clothes at
the store, she had salespeople messenger the entire collection to her
office, and charge her only for what she didn't return. The article mentions
her having a boyfriend. Was that Swanson, whom one SEC colleague said
conducted a review of Madoff's firm in 1999 and 2004?
A spokesman for Swanson — they get flacks quickly
these days, don't they — told ABC News that he "did not participate in any
inquiry of Bernard Madoff Securities or its affiliates while involved"
(it was later shown that he was very involved in the Madoff
"investigation" while at the SEC) with Shana Madoff.
How convenient!
But that could be said about pretty much all of his
coworkers. The SEC first fielded complaints about the Madoff firm in 1999,
but never opened a formal investigation that would have allowed it to
subpoena records. In 2006, Bernard Madoff registered as an investment
advisor with the SEC, but the agency never conducted a standard review. Are
you beginning to get a picture of why Shana Madoff, who was charged with
keeping the company out of trouble with regulators, was so busy she couldn't
even go shopping?
Swanson was at the commission in 2003 when the
agency was examining the Madoff firm. More
importantly, he was also part (leader) of the SEC
team that was conducting the actual inquiry into the firm . . .
What does all this mean? Nothing, according to Shana
Madoff or her husband, whom she married in 2007. A spokesman for Shana Madoff
and one for Swanson confirm that both knew each other professionally during the
time of the examination.
"Madoff Victims Claim Conflict of Interest at SEC," CNBC, December 15,
2008 ---
http://www.cnbc.com/id/28242487
Madoff Timeline ---
http://www.madoff-help.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/timeline.pdf
Bob Jensen's threads on the Madoff fraud and the current economic crisis are
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
Creative Commons
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons
Creative Commons Home Page ---
http://creativecommons.org/
Creative Commons Directory of Resources ---
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Content_Curators
From the Creative Commons
"Back to School: What’s new at Vital Signs?" by Jane Park, Creative
Commons, September 4, 2009 ---
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17513
September 4, 2009 message from Carolyn Kotlas
[kotlas@email.unc.edu]
REPORT ON ONLINE EDUCATION
STUDY
"More than one-third of public
university faculty have taught an online course while more than one-half
have recommended an online course to students . . . . In addition, nearly 64
percent of faculty said it takes 'somewhat more' or 'a lot more' effort to
teach online compared to a face-to-face course. However, a large majority of
faculty cited student needs as a primary motivator for teaching online, most
commonly citing 'meet student needs for flexible access' or the 'best way to
reach particular students' as the reason they choose to teach online
courses."
The two-part report, "Online
Learning as a Strategic Asset," published by the Association of Public and
Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,
summarizes the results of the APLU-Sloan National Commission on Online
Learning Benchmarking Study conducted in
2008 and 2009 that surveyed 45
public institutions across the U.S. The study was "designed to illuminate
how public institutions develop and implement the key organizational
strategies, processes, and procedures that contribute to successful and
robust online learning initiatives."
Volume I:
"A Resource for Campus Leaders" reports the results of
231 interviews conducted with administrators,
faculty, and students on online learning programs and initiatives.
http://www.aplu.org/NetCommunity/Document.Doc?id=1877
Volume II:
"The Paradox of Faculty Voices: Views and Experiences with Online Learning"
reports on the results of a survey of over
10,700 faculty respondents which included a
mix of tenure and non-tenure track, full- and part-time, and those who have
and those who have not taught online.
http://www.aplu.org/NetCommunity/Document.Doc?id=1879
The Association of Public and
Land-Grant Universities (APLU), formerly the National Association of State
Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), was founded in 1887 and
represents 186 public research universities in the United States. For more
information, contact: APLU,
1307 New York Avenue, NW,
Suite 400, Washington, DC 20005-4722 USA;
tel: 202-478-6040; fax:
202-478-6046; Web:
http://www.aplu.org/
Articles providing an overview
and summary of the study:
"Strong Faculty Engagement in
Online Learning APLU Reports"
A PUBLIC VOICE: APLU'S ONLINE
NEWSLETTER, August 31, 2009
http://www.aplu.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1347
"Going For Distance"
INSIDE HIGHER ED, August 31,
2009
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/31/survey
"Professors Embrace Online
Courses Despite Qualms About Quality"
THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER
EDUCATION, August 31, 2009
http://chronicle.com/article/Professors-Embrace-Online/48235/
......................................................................
STUDY FINDS THAT ONLINE
EDUCATION BEATS THE CLASSROOM
"Earlier studies of distance
learning concluded that these technologies were not significantly different
from regular classroom learning in terms of effectiveness. Policy-makers
reasoned that if online instruction is no worse than traditional instruction
in terms of student outcomes, then online education initiatives could be
justified on the basis of cost efficiency or need to provide access to
learners in settings where face-to-face instruction is not feasible. The
question of the relative efficacy of online and face-to-face instruction
needs to be revisited, however, in light of today’s online learning
applications, which can take advantage of a wide range of Web resources,
including not only multimedia but also Web-based applications and new
collaboration technologies."
The U.S. Department of
Education's report, "Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online
Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies" (2009),
provides a summary of a literature search of more than a thousand empirical
studies of online learning published from 1996 through July 2008. Analysis
of these studies found that "on average, students in online learning
conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction."
The report is available at
http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf
As a publication of the U.S.
government, the report is in the public domain; authorization to reproduce
this report in whole or in part is granted.
Jensen Comment
I added the above to my archives of studies of online learning ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Introduction
My threads on the dark side are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
From the Scout Report on September 4, 2009
VLC Media Player 1.0.1
---
http://www.videolan.org/
There are a number of
open-source media players out there, and VLC Media Player is definitely one
of the better options. With this application, users can advance files
frame-by-frame and also customize the toolbars so that the user interface is
free of any other non-essential items. As one might expect, the application
can play a wide variety of formats, and it can also be used to record. This
version is compatible with computers running Windows 2000 and newer and Mac
10.5 and newer.
SmarterFox 2.1.2
---
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9825
If you could have a Smart Fox,
why not just get a SmarterFox and be done with it? This nice add-on for the
Firefox browser certainly makes web- surfing a bit more appealing and
visually stimulating. SmarterFox displays a sharp looking "bubble" complete
with customizable search engine shortcuts when highlighting a word or
phrase. SmarterFox will also offer various suggestions when users are typing
and it can also be used to download various links and Flash video content.
This version is compatible with computers running Windows 2000 and newer in
tandem with the Firefox browser.
Four years after Hurricane Katrina, current and
former residents of New Orleans and the Gulf coast think about the future
Some ache for New Orleans but not ready to return
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-08-31-homesick_N.htm
Iconic Hotel Provides Hope for New Orleans [Real
Player] ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112350502
Study Probes Racial Tension Between Hurricane
Katrina Evacuees and Houston Community
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-08-31-voa41.cfm
New post-Katrina construction shows that a
sustainable industry may have come out of the storm
http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2009/08/new_postkatrina_construction_s.html
Four years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans
still needs us ---
Click Here
Hurricane Digital Memory Bank: Collecting and
Preserving the Stories of Katrina and Rita
http://hurricanearchive.org/
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
"Science Creativity and Serendipity," Morton A. Myers, Scribd,
September 2009 ---
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19559312/Science-Creativity-and-Serendipity
NOAA: Ocean, Great Lakes and Coastal Research ---
http://www.research.noaa.gov/oceans/
American Society of Limnology and Oceanography ---
http://aslo.org/index.html
Core Historical Literature of Agriculture ---
http://chla.mannlib.cornell.edu/
e-Agriculture ---
http://www.e-agriculture.org/
.USDA: The Census of Agriculture ---
http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/
Agriculture, Climate Change, and Carbon Sequestration ---
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/carbonsequestration.pdf
World Food Situation ---
http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation
Food Policy Institute at Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural
Experiment Station ---
http://www.foodpolicyinstitute.org/default.asp
Public Health Preparedness and Response to Chemical and Radiological
Incidents: Functions, Practices, and Areas for Future Work ---
http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2009/RAND_TR719.pdf
Mind: The Science, Art, and Experience of our Inner Lives ---
http://www.exploratorium.edu/mind/
The Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens ---
http://www.morikami.org
The Art and Technology Program, 1967-1971 ---
http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/mweb/archives/artandtechnology/at_home.asp
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Crystal Cave of Giants in Naica, Mexico ---
http://www.stormchaser.ca/Caves/Naica/Naica.html
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
GovZine (news) ---
http://www.govzine.com/
Making Civics Real: A Workshop for Teachers ---
http://www.learner.org/resources/series177.html
Video: We're All Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely (21 minutes) ---
Click Here
Video: Eugene F. Fama: Economist ---
http://www.dimensional.com/famafrench/2009/09/post.html
Fama/French Blog ---
http://www.dimensional.com/famafrench/2009/09/post.html
Video: Rebecca Saxe presents a scholarly talk about reading minds ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-how-we-read-each-others-minds/
UCLA: The Globalization Research Center-Africa ---
http://www.globalization-africa.org/index.php
John Johnson Collection: Trades and Professions ---
http://www.vads.ac.uk/collections/JJTP.html
Federal Eye ---
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/
Citizen Journalist's Guide to Open Government ---
http://www.kcnn.org/open_government/
Open Secrets (follow the money in politics)
http://www.opensecrets.org/
Public Health Preparedness and Response to Chemical and
Radiological Incidents: Functions, Practices, and Areas for Future
Work ---
http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2009/RAND_TR719.pdf
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Law and Legal Studies
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Digital
Collection ---
http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/special/exhibits/digital/owh-digital-col.html
U.S. Supreme Court Scotus Blog ---
http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
Core Historical Literature of Agriculture ---
http://chla.mannlib.cornell.edu/
John Johnson Collection: Trades and Professions ---
http://www.vads.ac.uk/collections/JJTP.html
BBC4: Great Lives [iTunes]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qxsb
Henry VIII: Man and Monarch
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/henryviii/index.html
Edinburgh World Heritage --- http://www.ewht.org.uk/Home.aspx
Taking Liberties (U.K. history) ---
http://www.bl.uk/takingliberties
National Endowment for the Arts: Research Notes ---
http://www.nea.gov/research/ResearchNotes_chrono.html
Digital History ---
http://digitalhistory.unl.edu/
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Digital
Collection ---
http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/special/exhibits/digital/owh-digital-col.html
U.S. Supreme Court Scotus Blog ---
http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/
The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa ---
http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/uipress/bdi/
Minnesota Reflections ---
http://reflections.mndigital.org/
Author Leigh Hunt Online: The Letters
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/leighhunt/
The Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens ---
http://www.morikami.org
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music
Writing Tutorials
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
September 3,
2009
September 4,
2009
September 7,
2009
September 9,
2009
September
10, 2009
September
11, 2009
September
14, 2009
"Two soft drinks a day may lead to long term liver damage," Chris
Irvine, London Telegraph, August 12, 2009 ---
Click Here
Two cans of fizzy drink a day could cause long term
liver damage, resulting in the need for a transplant, according to new
research.
Researchers are now urging parents to cut back on
their children’s consumption of fizzy drinks as well as reducing fresh fruit
juices substituting them for water.
Liver damage is normally associated with alcohol
abuse but the new study has found that non-alcoholic drinks with a high
sugar content can cause a condition called fatty liver disease.
Scientists from Israel found that people who drank
a litre of fizzy drinks and fresh fruit juices were five times more likely
to develop fatty liver disease.
Even drinking a couple of cans of fizzy drinks a
day raised the risk of liver damage in addition to causing diabetes and
heart damage.
Doctors at the Ziv Liver unit in Haifa, Israel
compared two groups of volunteers – neither of whom had a risk for
developing fatty liver disease.
The group of 90 people, 45 men and 45 women aged
40-50, were asked about their level of physical activity, caloric intake and
the amount of soft drinks they consume.
When they finished the study they found that 80 per
cent of those who had consumed fizzy drinks and fruit juices had fatty liver
changes. But only 17 per cent of the control group who had not drunk fizzy
drinks developed fatty livers.
Dr Nimer Assy, who led the study, said his research
- published in the Journal of Hepatology - showed long term consumption
could result in liver failure and the potential need for a transplant
“We found people who drink more than two cans of
Coke a day have increased their chances for a fatty liver, and if left
untreated their chances for heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver also
increase,” he said.
The ingredient in fizzy drinks causing the damage
is fructose, which is highly absorbable in the liver. It does not affect
insulin production and goes straight to the liver where it is converted to
fat.
Although there is inconclusive evidence on diet
drinks, he believes those containing artificial sweetener may have a similar
effect.
“While diet drinks do not contain fructose, they do
have aspartame and caramel colourants: Both these can increase insulin
resistance and may induce fatty liver.”
He said parents would be better replacing the juice
in their children’s lunch boxes with a bottle of water or limiting their
children’s fizzy drink intake to no more than one can a day.
A spokesman for the British Soft Drinks Association
said: “Moderate consumption of soft drinks is safe and people can continue
to enjoy such drinks as part of a balanced diet and active lifestyle.
Continued in article
"3 Genetic Variants Are Found to Be Linked to Alzheimer’s," by
Nicholas Wade, The New York Times, September 6, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/health/07alzheimers.html?_r=1&hpw
Two teams of European scientists say they have
discovered new genetic variants associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The
variants account for about 20 percent of the genetic risk of the disease,
and may lead to a better understanding of its biology, the scientists say.
One of the teams, led by Julie Williams of Cardiff
University in Wales, scanned the genomes of about 19,000 patients, the
largest study so far conducted on Alzheimer’s, and turned up two variants
that have a statistically significant association with the disease. A second
study, led by Philippe Amouyel of the University of Lille in France, also
found two variants, one of which is the same as detected by the Cardiff
team.
The fact that two studies could agree on at least
one gene is an advance. More than 550 genes have been proposed in various
small-scale studies as the cause of Alzheimer’s, but all have failed the
test of replication by others, Dr. Amouyel said.
The three new variants have been detected by using
much larger numbers of patients and by employing the new technique known as
a genome-wide association study, in which patients’ DNA is scanned with
devices programmed to recognize half a million sites of variation along the
genome. The new studies were published Sunday in the journal Nature
Genetics.
One of the new variants is in a gene active at
synapses, the junctions between brain cells, and the two others help damp
down inflammation in the brain. Inflammation is a known feature of
Alzheimer’s, but it is often regarded as a consequence of the disease. Dr.
Williams said that the detection of the new variants, which undercut the
brain’s efforts to restrain inflammation, suggested inflammation might play
a primary role.
The gene that has the largest effect in Alzheimer’s
is a variant called ApoE4, discovered in 1993 in the laboratory of Allen
Roses of Duke University. Dr. Roses said that the three new genes had minor
effects compared with the variant site near ApoE4, and that their biological
role in the disease was unclear, despite the statistical data pointing to
their involvement.
"20 most bizarre Craigslist adverts of all time: Craigslist, the
anarchic classifieds website, has developed a reputation for hosting some of the
oddest adverts on the internet," London Telegraph, September 8, 2009 ---
Click Here
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6157363/20-most-bizarre-Craigslist-adverts-of-all-time.html
The last one is a hoot supposed testimonial from a recent graduate in
philosophy.
Forwarded by Auntie Bev
I've often been asked, 'What do you old folks do now that you're retired'?
Well. I'm fortunate to have a chemical engineering background, and one of the
things I enjoy most is turning beer, wine, Scotch, and margaritas into urine.
And I'm pretty damn good at it, too!!
Harold should be an inspiration to all of us.
This is not humor, but it is strange
"Suspected meat thief charged after being shot by bystander," by
Robert A. Kronkleton, Kansas City Star, September 2, 2009 ---
http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_news/story/1420576.html
Here’s the score from an Independence shoplifting
case that involved a bag of meat, a wild ride atop a car’s hood and a
gunshot wound:
• The alleged shoplifter, Loucinda M. Carroll,
41, of Independence, has been charged with second-degree robbery.
• The store’s manager, who was struck by
Carroll’s car, landed on its hood and held on during an attempted
getaway, was unharmed.
• And the bystander who shot Carroll will not
be charged because he felt he and the manager were being threatened,
authorities say. Carroll suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
A guy in a bar leans over to the guy next to him and says, "Want to hear an
accountant joke?"
The guy next to him replies, "Well, before you tell that joke, you should
know that I'm 6 feet tall, 200 pounds, and I'm an accountant. And the guy
sitting next to me is 6'2" tall, 225 pounds, and he's an accountant. Now, do you
still want to tell that joke?"
The first guy says, "No, I don't want to have to explain it two times."
Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Three Finance Blogs
Jim Mahar's FinanceProfessor Blog ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/
FinancialRounds Blog ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
Karen Alpert's FinancialMusings (Australia) ---
http://financemusings.blogspot.com/
Some Accounting Blogs
Paul Pacter's IAS Plus (International
Accounting) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm
International Association of Accountants News ---
http://www.aia.org.uk/
AccountingEducation.com and Double Entries ---
http://www.accountingeducation.com/
Gerald Trites'eBusiness and
XBRL Blogs ---
http://www.zorba.ca/
AccountingWeb ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/
SmartPros ---
http://www.smartpros.com/
Management and Accounting Blog ---
http://maaw.info/
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
The Master List of Free
Online College Courses ---
http://universitiesandcolleges.org/
Shared Open Courseware
(OCW) from Around the World: OKI, MIT, Rice, Berkeley, Yale, and Other Sharing
Universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Free Textbooks and Cases ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Mathematics and Statistics Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
Free Science and Medicine Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Free Social Science and Philosophy Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Free Education Discipline Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Teaching Materials (especially
video) from PBS
Teacher Source: Arts and
Literature ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/arts_lit.htm
Teacher Source: Health & Fitness
---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/health.htm
Teacher Source: Math ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/math.htm
Teacher Source: Science ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/sci_tech.htm
Teacher Source: PreK2 ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/prek2.htm
Teacher Source: Library Media ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/library.htm
Free Education and
Research Videos from Harvard University ---
http://athome.harvard.edu/archive/archive.asp
VYOM eBooks Directory ---
http://www.vyomebooks.com/
From Princeton Online
The Incredible Art Department ---
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/
Online Mathematics Textbooks ---
http://www.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html
National Library of Virtual Manipulatives ---
http://enlvm.usu.edu/ma/nav/doc/intro.jsp
Moodle ---
http://moodle.org/
The word moodle is an acronym for "modular
object-oriented dynamic learning environment", which is quite a mouthful.
The Scout Report stated the following about Moodle 1.7. It is a
tremendously helpful opens-source e-learning platform. With Moodle,
educators can create a wide range of online courses with features that
include forums, quizzes, blogs, wikis, chat rooms, and surveys. On the
Moodle website, visitors can also learn about other features and read about
recent updates to the program. This application is compatible with computers
running Windows 98 and newer or Mac OS X and newer.
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accountancy Discussion ListServs:
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a
ListServ (usually for free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc
Roles of a ListServ ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
|
CPAS-L (Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo
(Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation
Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu