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 documentaryThis 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/

     


    "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