But 250 years later, it's clearly worked out well. The brewery at St. James's Gate has helped make Guinness stout one of the most successful beer brands worldwide.

To celebrate what the company has dubbed "Arthur's Day," stout-lovers around the world lifted a glass of the foamy black brew to Arthur Thursday at 17:59 Greenwich Mean Time, or 1:59 ET. (See correction, below.)

Guinness parent Diageo PLC expects thousands to attend an invitation-only party tonight at the Dublin brewery, where musical acts Tom Jones, Kasabian and Estelle will play. Additionally, other artists will perform at events being held at four major music venues and 28 smaller pubs across the city.

Guinness may be distinctly Irish, but the celebration of its birth is happening all over the world; parties are being hosted in more than 150 different countries, according to the beermaker's website.

To mark the occasion, Diageo PLC has pledged to give €2.5 million this year from the Arthur Guinness Fund to entrepreneurs.

The company says its founder was one of the first employers in Ireland to provide pensions and health care for workers, and the foundation aims to preserve that legacy.

David Noble's Last Fight?  I doubt it!
David Noble, a historian at York University in Canada, is well known as a critic of online education and of higher education leaders. Now The Toronto Star reported that he is appearing before an Ontario Human Rights Commission arguing that his stances against discrimination have led the university to retaliate against him by scheduling his lectures at unpopular times and failing to protect him from disruptions, such as a student angry with his views interrupting his class. Among Noble's recent controversial campaigns have been complaints that the university was discriminating against non-Jews by calling off classes on Jewish holidays (a practice that the university has since ended). The Star also reported that university officials deny Noble has been the target of any retaliatory acts by the institution.
"David Noble's Last Fight," Inside Higher Ed, September 25, 2009 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/25/qt#209163

Jensen Comment 1
My tidbits on David Noble go back for years
Note especially my Tidbit at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

I notice that David Noble does not devote much attention to successful (and highly profitable) online programs such as Stanford's ADEPT and Duke's online Global MBA programs.  That plus Noble's bad spelling and sloppy grammar make me wonder how carefully crafted his "research" stands up to rigorous standards for due care and freedom from bias.  He does, however, raise some points worth noting.  Links to his defiance of distance education at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#DavidNoble 

Bob Jensen

Onsite Versus Online Learning and Teaching --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnsiteVersusOnline

Jensen Comment 2
I'm reminded of an accounting professor at the University of Illinois who once distributed a memo suspecting that his supervisor was a liar. Shortly thereafter his office was moved closer to the hog/cattle barns on a remote part of the campus, or so the rumor circulated at an AAA meeting years ago.

How to author books and other materials for online delivery
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
How Web Pages Work --- http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-page.htm

Toolbook, unlike Authorware, Still Lives

ToolBook --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ToolBook

September 25, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the update. At one time ToolBook was my main man, but those days are long gone. ToolBook has morphed through many changes in ownership and codes, but it does somehow manage a Darwinian evolution. It evolved from early versions that required authors to be techies in coding in OpenScript to later versions that feature over a dozen templates for relatively simple course authoring --- almost plug and play.

It seems to have caught on with training programs in some deep pockets corporations, including Big Four accounting firms. Some of the sample courses look great --- http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/resources/toolbook/learn_showcase.html?src=tbhome
However, there are no samples from universities as far as I can tell.
Is there a reason?

I do not see signs that the latest ToolBook upgrades have cracked into the academic market.

Are there any universities that have ToolBooks to demo?

Are there any college online education or training programs built on ToolBook?

Is there special academic pricing for Version 10?

ToolBook's Homepage --- http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/products/content-creation/tb_index.html

ToolBook 10:
Revolutionize the way you create e-Learning content ToolBook empowers subject matter experts and learning professionals to rapidly create interactive learning content, quizzes, assessments, and software simulations. With the convenience of on-demand and mobile access, your employees will learn more, faster—and deliver better business results.

Learning content that you create in ToolBook is distributed as HTML and delivered through almost any Learning Management System (LMS) available, including the SumTotal LMS, other SCORM/AICC-compliant LMS, or standalone systems.

Thousands of corporations use ToolBook today to deliver high-value learning. ToolBook users span multiple industries—including healthcare, manufacturing, finance, retail, government, education and more—and easily deploy across major operating systems, Web browsers, and mobile devices.

September 25, 2009 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Bob:
I'll be developing in Toolbook, and will share some of my output, but I am very busy until the end of the year at least.

They have become more aggressive in pricing - A single license is now in the $2,800 range, and I am not aware of any academic pricing. I usually shy away from academic licenses, since I sell my output in the commercial market, and most academic licenses prohibit that. Most content authoring tools like Toolbook do not have royalty sharing arrangements. You are paying big bucks for the product, why pay more?

Jeff Rhodes at www.plattecanyon.com  is the smartest, most productive multimedia programmer in the world (IMHO) created a very profitable private corporation around Toolbook and multimedia development.

Richard

Statistics Lesson for the Week:  Spanking is a cause of lower IQ?
U.S. children who were spanked had lower IQs four years later than those not spanked, researchers found. University of New Hampshire Professor Murray Straus, who is presenting the findings Friday at the 14th International Conference on Violence, Abuse and Trauma, in San Diego, called the study "groundbreaking." "The results of this research have major implications for the well being of children across the globe," Straus said in a statement. "It is time for psychologists to recognize the need to help parents end the use of corporal punishment and incorporate that objective into their teaching and clinical practice." "How often parents spanked made a difference. The more spanking the, the slower the development of the child's mental ability," Straus said. "But even small amounts of spanking made a difference."
"Study: Spanking linked to lower IQ," Breitbart, September 25, 2009 ---
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=upiUPI-20090925-121520-9596&show_article=1&catnum=0
Jensen Comment
I think Straus was frequently spanked as a child. Could it be that lower IQ students get more frustrated and are inclined toward greater degrees of misbehavior?

"Unmuzzling Diploma Mills: Dog Earns M.B.A. Online," by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education (with a picture of Chester Ludlow), September 23, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Unmuzzling-Diploma-Mills-Dog/8175/

How's this for "hounding" diploma mills?

GetEducated.com, an online-learning consumer group, managed to purchase an online M.B.A. for its mascot, a dog named Chester Ludlow.

The Vermont pug earned his tassles by pawing over $499 to Rochville University, which offers "distance learning degrees based on life and career experience," according to a news release from GetEducated. He got back a package from a post-office box in Dubai that contained a diploma and transcripts, plus a certificate of distinction in finance and another purporting to show membership in the student council.

GetEducated.com belives Chester is the first dog to get a diploma for life experience. But his bow-wow M.B.A. isn't the first canine college degree: Witness this 2007 story about a police-department dog's diploma.

Here's GetEducated.com's video about the stunt: "Dog Earns Online MBA: A Cautionary Tail."

Bob Jensen's threads on diploma mills and gray zones ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#DiplomaMill

Jensen Comment
Why not a diploma? Thanks to ACORN, Chester Ludlow was registered to vote in the 2008 election. In all seriousness, proper identification of students is a problem for legitimate colleges whether the students are onsite or online. My daughter's first chemistry course at the University of Texas was given in a lecture hall of 600 students. It would've been very easy for he to have hired a surrogate to take the entire course in her name or examinations in her name.

I know of an outsourcing case like this from years ago when I was an undergraduate student, because I got the initial offer to take the course for $500. Fake IDs are easy to fabricate today on a computer. Just change the name and student number on your own ID or change the picture and put the fake ID in laminated plastic.

Online there are ways authenticate honesty online. One way is to have a respected person sign an attestation form. In 19th Century England the Village Vicar signed off on submissions of correspondence course takers. There are also a lot of Sylvan Centers throughout the U.S. that will administer examinations.

"Is That Online Student Who He Says He Is?" by Sara Lipka, Chronicle of Higher Education,
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3455&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

To comply with the newly reauthorized Higher Education Act, colleges have to verify the identity of each of their online students. Several tools can help them do that, including the Securexam Remote Proctor, which scans fingerprints and captures a 360-degree view around students, and Kryterion’s Webassessor, which lets human proctors watch students on Web cameras and listen to their keystrokes.

Now colleges have a new option to show the government that they’ll catch cheating in distance education. Acxiom Corporation and Moodlerooms announced this month that they have integrated the former’s identity-verification system, called FactCheck-X, into the latter’s free, open-source course-management system, known as Moodle.

“The need to know that the student taking a test online is in fact the actual one enrolled in the class continues to be a concern for all distance-education programs,” Martin Knott, chief executive of Moodlerooms, said in a written statement.

FactCheck-X, which authenticates many online-banking transactions, requires test takers to answer detailed, personal “challenge” questions. The information comes from a variety of databases, and the company uses it to ask for old addresses, for example, or previous employers.

The new tool requires no hardware and operates within the Moodle environment. Colleges themselves control how frequently students are asked to verify their identities, Acxiom says, and because institutions don’t have to release information about students, the system fully complies with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

Comments

1. Where’s the concern about whether that student in the large course on campus is who he says he is? How many schools really card students before exams are given in those courses?

   — Steve Foerster    Nov 11, 05:52 PM   

2. My sentiments exactly, Steve! I am surprised at the shift in thinking that somehow online students are more likely to cheat than those who appear for exams onsite!

   — Born to teach    Nov 11, 06:03 PM   

3. I’ve been teaching online for five years, and I have found cheating to be much more prevalent in the online environment. Most institutions use proctors for high stakes testing, and student identification is presented. For purely online initiatives, however, it simply doesn’t make sense to ask these students to come to campus for assessments. No LMS currently addresses this legislation to my knowledge, so it is interesting to consider the options for compliance.

Linebacker's Wife Says She Wrote His Papers (and took two online courses for him)
The wife of a star University of South Florida linebacker says she wrote his academic papers and took two online classes for him. The accusations against Ben Moffitt, who had been promoted by the university to the news media as a family man, were made in e-mail messages to The Tampa Tribune, and followed Mr. Moffitt’s filing for divorce. Mr. Moffitt called the accusations “hearsay,” and a university spokesman said the matter was a “domestic issue.” If it is found that Mr. Moffitt committed academic fraud, the newspaper reported, the university could be subject to an NCAA investigation.
"Linebacker's Wife Says She Wrote His Papers," Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog, January 5, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/news/article/3707/linebackers-wife-says-she-wrote-his-papers?at
Jensen Comment
If Florida investigates this and discovers it was true, I wonder if Moffitt's diploma will be revoked. Somehow I doubt it.

Ideas for online testing and other types of assessment are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus
Also see the helpers for assessment in general at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

What should be done about credit rating companies?

"Ratings Downgrade,"  by James Surowiecki, The New Yorker, September 28, 2009 ---
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2009/09/28/090928ta_talk_surowiecki

When Barack Obama went to Wall Street last week to make the case for meaningful financial regulation, he took well-deserved shots at some of the villains of the financial crisis: greedy bankers, reckless investors, and captive regulators. But to that list he could have added credit-rating agencies like Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s. By giving dubious mortgage-backed securities top ratings, and by dramatically underestimating the risk of default and foreclosure, the agencies played a key role in inflating the housing bubble. If we’re going to reform the system, fixing them should be high on the list.

Unfortunately, that’s not an easy task, since over the years the government has made the agencies an increasingly important part of the financial system. Rating agencies have been around for a century, and their ratings have been used by regulators since the thirties. But in the seventies the S.E.C. dubbed the three biggest agencies—S. & P., Moody’s, and Fitch—Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations, effectively making them official arbiters of financial soundness. The decision had a certain logic: it was supposed to make it easier for investors to know that the money in their pension or money-market funds was going into safe and secure investments. But the new regulations also turned the agencies from opinion-givers into indispensable gatekeepers. If you want to sell a corporate bond, or package a bunch of mortgages together into a security, you pretty much need a rating from one of the agencies. And though the agencies are private companies, their opinions can effectively have the force of law. The ratings often dictate what institutions like banks, insurance companies, and money-market funds can and can’t do: money-market funds can’t have more than five per cent of their assets in low-rated commercial paper, there are limits on the percentage of non-investment-grade assets that banks can own, and so on.

The conventional explanation of what’s wrong with the rating agencies focusses on the fact that most of them are paid by the very people whose financial products they rate. That problem needs to be fixed, and last week the S.E.C. proposed new rules to address conflicts of interest. But there’s a much bigger problem, which is that, even though nearly everyone knows that the agencies are compromised and exert too much influence, the system makes it impossible not to rely on them. In theory, of course, the mere fact that a rating agency says a particular bond is AAA (close to risk-free) doesn’t mean that investors have to buy it; the agencies’ opinions should be just one ingredient in any decision. In practice, the government’s seal of approval, coupled with those regulatory requirements, encourages investors to put far too much weight on the ratings. According to a recent paper on the subject by the academics Darren Kisgen and Philip Strahan, that’s true even when the agency doing the rating doesn’t have a long track record. During the housing bubble, investors put a huge amount of money into AAA-rated mortgage-backed securities—which would have been fine had the rating agencies’ judgments been sound. Needless to say, they weren’t. Despite subprime borrowers’ notoriously shaky finances, the agencies failed to allow for the possibility that housing prices might fall sharply.

The rating agencies’ role in inflating the bubble is well known. Less obvious is their role in accelerating the crash. Agencies have typically resisted changing their ratings on a frequent basis, so changes, when they occur, tend to be belated, widespread, and big. In the space of just a few months between late 2007 and mid-2008 (after the housing bubble burst), the agencies collectively downgraded an astonishing $1.9 trillion in mortgage-backed securities: some securities that had carried a AAA rating one day were downgraded to CCC the next. Because many institutional investors are prohibited from owning too many low-rated securities, these downgrades necessarily led to forced selling, magnifying the panic, and prevented other investors from swooping in and buying the distressed debt cheaply. In effect, the current system pushes many big investors to buy high and sell low.

Rating agencies existed long before they carried a government imprimatur, and, their recent dismal performance notwithstanding, they’ll exist in the future, if only because few investors have the patience to sort through all the bond offerings and structured-finance deals out there. But we need a divorce: the rating agencies shouldn’t be government-sanctioned and government-protected institutions and their judgments shouldn’t be part of the rules that govern how investors can act.

Given how rarely real reform happens in Washington, that may sound like a hopeless goal. But last summer the S.E.C. seriously considered enacting a series of proposals that would have gone some way toward uncoupling the rating agencies from the regulatory system. The plan fizzled, however, thanks in part to pressure from a surprising source: big investors. Oddly, the ratings system, broken as it is, remains attractive to many investors who have been burned by it. For one thing, it provides an easily comprehensible standard: without it, we’d need to come up with new ways of measuring risk. More insidiously, the ratings system provides a ready-made excuse for failure: as long as you’re buying AAA-rated assets, you can say you’re being responsible. After the housing crash, though, we know how illusory those AAA ratings can be. It’s time for investors to face reality: working with a fake safety net is more dangerous than working without any net at all.

Bob Jensen's threads on credit rating agencies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#CreditRatingAgencies

I assume ABC News double checked the authenticity of this one.
"Get Out of Jail Free: Monopoly's Hidden Maps Silk Escape Maps Concealed in Game Boards Helped WWII Prisoners," by Ki Mae Heussner, ABC News, September 18, 2009 --- http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=8605905 

It's a story that will forever change the way you think of the phrase, "Get Out of Jail Free."

During World War II, as the number of British airmen held hostage behind enemy lines escalated, the country's secret service enlisted an unlikely partner in the ongoing war effort: The board game Monopoly.

It was the perfect accomplice.

Included in the items the German army allowed humanitarian groups to distribute in care packages to imprisoned soldiers, the game was too innocent to raise suspicion. But it was the ideal size for a top-secret escape kit that could help spring British POWs from German war camps.

The British secret service conspired with the U.K. manufacturer to stuff a compass, small metal tools, such as files, and, most importantly, a map, into cut-out compartments in the Monopoly board itself.

"It was ingenious," said Philip Orbanes, author of several books on Monopoly, including "The World's Most Famous Game and How it Got That Way." "The Monopoly box was big enough to not only hold the game but hide everything else they needed to get to POWs."

British historians say it could have helped thousands of captured soldiers escape.

So how did a simple board game end up in a position to help out one of the most powerful military forces on the planet? Silk and serendipity.

Silk Maps Were Key Escape Kit Elements Of all the tools in a military-grade escape kit, the most critical item was the map. But paper maps proved too fragile and cumbersome, said Debbie Hall, a cataloguer in the map room at the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England.

For hundreds of years, even before World War II, silk was the material of choice for military maps, Hall said, because it wouldn't tear or dissolve in water as easily as paper and was light enough to stuff into a boot or cigarette packet. Unlike maps printed on paper, silk maps also wouldn't rustle and attract the attention of enemy guards, she said.

"Initially, they had some problems printing on silk," Hall said. "It's quite technically challenging."

But then MI9, the British secret service unit responsible for escape and evasion, found the one British company that had mastered printing on silk: John Waddington Ltd., a printer and board game manufacturer that also happened to be the U.K. licensee for the Parker Bros. game Monopoly.

"Waddingtons in the pre-war era was printing on silk for theater programs. For celebration events for royalty and that kind of thing," said Victor Watson, 80, who retired as chairman of the company in 1993. "It made a name for itself for being able to print on silk."

He was just a child during the war but said his father Norman Watson, president of the company at the time, worked with British secret service to embed the maps in Monopoly games.

He said a secret service officer named E.D. Alston (known around Waddington as "Mr. A.") used to come by to place the orders in person.

"Because he was in the secret service, I never knew who he was," Watson said.

Jensen Comment
Parker Bros. Monopoly or variations thereof are very important props for many educators in accounting and economics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Monopoly

Escape Maps in WW II --- http://www.mapforum.com/04/escape.htm#3

2009 Ig Nobel Award Winners --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/02/qt#209682

The Ig Nobel Prizes, the annual spoof of the Nobel Prizes, were announced Thursday night. The honors include the following:

• Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, in Britain, won in veterinary medicine for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.
• Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, in Switzerland, won the honor for peace for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.
• Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga, and Victor M. Castaño of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, won in chemistry for creating diamonds from ltequila.
• Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard University, and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, won in physics for determining why pregnant women don't tip over.

The complete list of winners may be found here. --- http://improbable.com/ig/  
The other Nobels kick off Monday with the prize in medicine.

"Pointless research: top 10 Ig Nobel award winners for silly science," by Tom Chivers, London Telegraph, September 24, 2009 --- Click Here

Farts of the penguins: if you've ever wondered how far a penguin can poo, here is your enlightenment Photo: POLAR BIOLOGY The government has unveiled plans to allocate research funding according to how much “impact” the research has.

The plans have come under fire from academics, who say that curiosity-driven, speculative research has led to some of the most important breakthroughs in scientific history, including penicillin, relativity theory and the theory of evolution.

More than that, though, it might bring an end to the quirky, sometimes daft, sometimes weirdly inspired research that brings harmless entertainment and occasional enlightenment to armchair boffins and science nerds everywhere.

Below, we take a look at a few of the best. We have selected our favourites from the winners of the splendid Ig Nobel Awards – take a look yourselves. The next award ceremony is in October.
http://improbable.com/ig/

Digital rectal massage is a cure for hiccups, winner, Medicine, 2006
"Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage", Annals of Emergency Medicine, August 1988

In our day we used to be told to drink a glass of water backwards. But research now suggests that, for intractable hiccups, a simple finger up the bottom can work wonders. As it can for so many things.

It is not made clear whether or not the treatment should be administered unannounced for greatest effect.

(We mock, but intractable hiccups can be a genuine problem for sufferers, and this treatment may be preferable to the powerful anti-spasmodics and other drugs that are often used.)

Chinstrap penguins can squirt poo up to 40cm, winner, Fluid Dynamics, 2005
"Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh -- Calculations on Avian Defaecation", Polar Biology, 2003

Rather sweetly, the researchers end their conclusions by saying: “Whether the bird deliberately chooses the direction into which it decides to expel its faeces or whether this depends on the direction from which the wind blows at the time of evacuation are questions that need to be addressed on another expedition to Antarctica.” No doubt governments will be falling over themselves to fund that trip.

Ducks can be homosexual necrophiliacs too (winner, Biology, 2003)
"The First Case of Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae)", Deinsea: Annual of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, 2001.

One of the greatest sentences in modern science writing: “Next to the obviously dead duck, another male mallard… mounted the corpse and started to copulate, with great force.” Take that, March Of The Penguins.

Suicide rates are linked to the amount of country music played on the radio, winner, Medicine, 2004
"The Effect of Country Music on Suicide", Social Forces, 1992

If you knew there was something profoundly unacceptable about Billy Ray Cyrus, but you could never quite put your finger on what it was, here is your answer. The man makes people kill themselves.

Dog fleas can jump higher than cat fleas, winner, Biology, 2008
"A Comparison of Jump Performances of the Dog Flea, Ctenocephalides canis (Curtis, 1826) and the Cat Flea, Ctenocephalides felis felis (Bouche, 1835)," Veterinary Parasitology, 2000

Presumably the research team set up some sort of tiny high-jump bar for the fleas to Fosbury-flop over. It’s not entirely pointless; knowing which that dog fleas jump higher tells you that buying a dog is more likely to lead to getting bitten yourself.

Lap dancers get higher tips when they are ovulating, winner, Economics, 2008
"Ovulatory Cycle Effects on Tip Earnings by Lap Dancers: Economic Evidence for Human Estrus?" Evolution and Human Behavior, 2007

This research might be hard to put into practical use – unless you’re a lap dancer – but you imagine the (all male) research team put in an awful lot of field work.

Rats can’t always tell the difference between Japanese spoken backwards and Dutch spoken backwards, winner, Linguistics, 2007
"Effects of Backward Speech and Speaker Variability in Language Discrimination by Rats," Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, vol. 31, no. 1, January 2005

The Linguistics Ig Nobel winner in 2007. In fairness to the researchers, they were trying to find similarities between human infants and other mammals, in order to better determine the evolutionary origins of speech. But what they actually did was show the world that rats don’t speak backwards Japanese. A miss, really.

You can extract vanilla flavouring from cow dung, winner, Chemistry, 2006
"Novel Production Method for Plant Polyphenol from Livestock Excrement Using Subcritical Water Reaction," International Journal of Chemical Engineering, 2008

Maybe you can, but would you eat it?

(Note: a Massachusetts ice cream parlour introduced a new flavour in honour of this research, which was presented alongside the award. The ice cream was called "Yum-a-Moto Vanilla Twist", after the lead researcher Mayu Yamamoto)

Why woodpeckers don’t get headaches – winner, Ornithology, 2006
"Woodpeckers and Head Injury,", Lancet, 1976; "Cure for a Headache," Ivan R Schwab, British Journal of Ophthalmology, 2002

It is pretty baffling, when you think about it. Woodpeckers headbutt trees for a living, experiencing impact deceleration of more than 1000 times the force of gravity. So how do they prevent catastrophic brain injury? The difference between ordinary people and good scientists is that where we just wonder, the scientist finds out.

(The answer, if you were wondering, is: brain more tightly packed into the skull; a smooth brain surface to maximise impact surface area; and minimal side-to-side movement. So there you go.)

Malaria mosquitoes are as attracted to limburger cheese as they are to human foot odour – winner, Biology, 2006
"On Human Odour, Malaria Mosquitoes, and Limburger Cheese," The Lancet, 1996 (paper requires log-in)

Next time you go to Africa, don’t bother with insect repellent or mosquito nets – just take a nice ripe limburger, leave it outside your tent, and presto! A bite-free night. (Note to readers: please do bother with insect repellent and mosquito nets.)

 

Spanish scientists develop the first intelligent financial search engine ---
http://www.uc3m.es/portal/page/portal/actualidad_cientifica/noticias/financial_search_engine
Link forwarded by Glen Gray

Researchers from the Carlos III University of Madrid (UCM3) have completed the development of the first search engine designed to search for information from the financial and stock market sector based on semantic technology, which enables one to make more accurate thematic searches adapted to the needs of each user.

Unlike conventional search engines, SONAR -so named by its creators- enables the user to perform structured searches which are not based solely on concordance with a series of key words. This corporate financial search engine based on semantic technology, as described on the project website (www.proyecto-sonar.org), was developed by researchers from the UC3M in partnership with the University of Murcia, el Instituto de Empresa (the Business Institute) and the company Indra. According to its creators, it has two main advantages. First, its effectiveness in a concrete domain- that of finance- which is closely defined and has very precise vocabulary. According to Juan Miguel Gómez Berbís, from the Computer Department of the UC3M “This verticality distinguishes SONAR from other more generic search engines, such as Google or Bing” Second, its capacity to establish relations between news, share valuations and prices via logical reasoning.

The first prototype works by making use of semantic web elements. Basically, the system collects data from both public information sources (Internet) and private, corporate ones (Intranet), adds them to a repository of semantically recorded data (labelled and structured) and allows intelligent access to this data. To achieve this, the platform incorporates an inference engine, a mechanism capable of performing reasoning tasks on the recorded information, as well as a natural language processor, which helps the user to perform the search in the simplest way possible. In this way the results obtained are matched to requests, eliminating ambiguities in polysemic terms, for example in searches carried out by users on stored data. “SONAR enables us to establish relations between different sources of information and discover and expand our knowledge, while at the same time it allows us to classify them so that users can get much more benefit from the experience”

Potential users

This search tool is designed for both private investors and large financial concerns. Its creators anticipate that it will be a very useful tool for analysts and stockbrokers. “It will be especially useful to the finance departments of banks and saving banks or to add to an existing search engine added value over its competitors” Gómez Berbís points out. And the search for accurate, reliable, relevant information in this business area has become a key factor in a domain where speed and quality of data are critical factors with an exceptional impact on business processes.

According to the researchers, this project aims to respond to a need from the financial sector, that is, the analysis of a large volume of information in order to take decisions. In this way, the execution of this project will allow the financial community to have access to a set of intelligent systems for the aggregated search of information in the financial domain and enable them to improve procedures for integrating company information and processes. Researchers are currently incorporating new functions into the search tool and also receiving requests to adapt it to other domains, such as transport and biotechnology. In any case, the project is constantly evolving in order to enhance accuracy and reliability. “In SONAR2 we are working on two Intelligent Decision Support Systems for Financial Investments, one based on Fundamental Analysis and the other on Technical Chartist Analysis, which assists the work of the trader and average investor”, reveals professor Gómez Berbis.

SONAR is a research project carried out by the UC3m’s SoftLab group, directed by professors Juan Miguel Gómez Berbís and Ángel García Crespo. It is an intelligent, financial search engine and is part of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade’s AVANZA I+D Program. The University of Murcia and the Instituto de Empresa (Business Institute) have also collaborated in this project, together with Indra.

Semantic Web Searching --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#Xerox

October 1, 2009 reply from McCarthy, William [mccarthy@BUS.MSU.EDU]

This was a very good pointer to an interesting project, and I clearly need to look at the primary research papers and descriptions for more elaboration.

 

However, this most certainly was not the first “intelligent financial search engine.”  Accounting design science researchers and computer scientists have been using semantic technologies for many years to attack the problems of embedding semantics in both primary knowledge structures and the procedures that act on those structures.  Because that research was not acceptable to the academic accounting mainstream (AOS, JAR, JAE) does not mean it does not exist.  I suspect that that we will see many “re-inventions” as semantic web enthusiasts attack “interactive accounting data” (Mr. Cox’s term) subjects with an AI mindset.

 

Bill McCarthy

Michigan State

 

"Dirty Secrets:  Companies may be burying billions more in environmental liabilities than their financial statements show," by Marie Leone and Tim Reason, CFO.com, September 1, 2009 ---
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/14292477/c_14292723?f=magazine_featured

Today the financial world is up in arms over "toxic assets," the bad loans and securities that have wreaked so much havoc on bank balance sheets. But few investors understand the true magnitude of the threat that toxic liabilities — environmental liabilities, that is — pose to the financial health of some U.S. businesses. In large part that's because accounting rules enable companies to conceal the full extent of these costs, encouraging minimal disclosure — even when management knows the total bill will be far higher.

It's no secret that many companies have expensive toxic liabilities — asbestos, heavy-metal pollution, oil and gas leaks, contaminated groundwater, and more. Since the 1970s, Superfund and other laws have required companies to clean up their environmental liabilities and undo the damage they caused. Nor is the primary accounting guidance for toxic liabilities new. FAS 5, the accounting standard governing so-called contingent liabilities, such as pending litigation and environmental hazards, went into effect in 1975; Statement of Position 96-1, which tells firms how to apply FAS 5 to mandated environmental remediation, was issued in 1996. In brief, companies with toxic liabilities must take a one-time charge to earnings and create a reserve of funds devoted to environmental remediation. As a cleanup progresses, the reserve should shrink.

Yet companies are regularly topping up their environmental reserves with new accruals. Some reserves are even growing. In a recent study of 24 oil, gas, and chemical companies, the vast majority reduced their reserves less than 50 cents for each dollar spent on cleanup, says environmental attorney Greg Rogers, a CPA and president of consulting firm Advanced Environmental Dimensions. (See "The Truth about Reserves" at the end of this article.)

As a result, investors are left in the dark about the full extent of toxic liabilities. Rogers compares environmental reserves to a bathtub full of water: once the environmental problems are resolved, the tub should be drained. But by adding new accruals each year, companies are effectively leaving the faucet on. "What we don't know is the true capacity of the tub, the cost to fully resolve these liabilities," says Rogers, whose study attempts to estimate those costs using publicly available data.

Whatever a never-ending cleanup bill implies about actual damage done to the environment, such recurring drains on cash flow certainly hurt investors. "Unlike nearly every other income-statement line item, there is very little if any visibility into the annual charge for 'probable and reasonably estimable environmental liabilities,'" complained JPMorgan analyst Stephen Tusa, who downgraded Honeywell for this reason in 2006.

"It's Scandalous." Companies typically cite three reasons why their legacy cleanup reserves never drain: the difficulty of estimating cleanup costs, new discoveries of contamination, or new costs acquired through mergers. At some companies, however, those claims are belied by the steady rate at which they funnel money into environmental reserves, suggesting, critics say, that managerial discretion plays a large part in reserve calculations. (One company, ConAgra, paid $45 million in 2007 to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it used environmental reserves as a "cookie jar.") At best, the explanations mean that companies are themselves blind to a major internal drain on cash.

Despite what companies say, it isn't difficult to accurately estimate the future cost of environmental liabilities, asserts Gayle Koch, a principal with The Brattle Group in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Koch says her firm regularly does so for both corporate and government clients. "Companies estimate liabilities all the time for insurance recovery, to get insurance, for mergers and acquisitions, and in divestitures," she says. "Transactions go forward based on those estimates." The problem isn't the estimates, she says, but the disclosure.

"I've been in court cases where I've seen detailed cost recovery with very detailed distributions of costs," says Koch. "And those same companies will disclose in their annual reports [only] the known minimum cost."

Sanford Lewis, an attorney with the Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN), an advocacy group, agrees that companies can and do produce accurate estimates of environmental costs — for internal use. A company that tells investors that it expects liabilities of $200 million during the next 5 years may advise its insurer to expect liability claims of $2 billion over a 50-year period, wrote Lewis in a recent report. "It is happening, it's scandalous, and investors should be outraged," Lewis told CFO.

Increasingly, lawsuits, bankruptcy proceedings, regulatory investigations, and independent research are revealing that companies often know far more about the cost of their environmental liabilities than they tell investors. For example, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is currently investigating whether Chevron misled investors — including New York State's pension plan — about the extent of its liability in a $27 billion lawsuit tied to "massive oil seepage" in Ecuador. Chevron is widely expected to lose the case in Ecuador but fight payment in the United States, and Cuomo has demanded that the company disclose estimates of potential damages and its cash reserves.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Bob Jensen's threads about audit professionalism --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Professionalism

"How to Spot the Next Enron," by George Anders, Fast Company, December 19, 2007 ---
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/58/ganders.html
As cited by Smoleon Sense, on September 23, 2009 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/investors-beware-how-to-spot-the-next-enron/

Want to know how to avoid being fooled by the next too-good-to-be-true stock-market darling? Just remember these six tips from the cynics of Wall Street, the short sellers.

If only we could have spotted the rascals ahead of time. That's the lament of anyone who bought Enron stock a year ago, or who worked at a now-collapsed company like Global Crossing or who trusted any corporate forecast that proved way too upbeat. How could we have let ourselves be fooled? And how do we make sure that we don't get fooled again?

It's time to visit with some serious cynics. Some of the shrewdest advice comes from Wall Street's short sellers, who make money by betting that certain stocks will fall in price. They had a tough time in the 1990s, when it paid to be optimistic. But it has been their kind of year. Almost every day, new accounting jitters rock the stock market. And if you aren't asking about hidden partnerships and earnings manipulation -- the sort of outrages that short sellers love to expose -- you risk being blindsided by yet another business wipeout.

Think of short sellers as being akin to veteran cops who walk the streets year after year. They pick up subtle warning signs that most of us miss. They see through alibis. And they know how to quiz accomplices and witnesses to put together the whole story, detail by detail. It's nice to live in a world where we can trust everything we're told because everyone behaves perfectly. But if the glitzy addresses of Wall Street have given way to the tough sidewalks of Mean Street these days, we might as well get smart about the neighborhood.

The first rule of these streets, says David Rocker, a top New York money manager who has been an active short seller for more than two decades, is not to get mesmerized by a charismatic chief executive. "Most CEOs are ultimately salesmen," Rocker says. "If they showed up on your doorstep and said, 'I've got a great vacuum cleaner,' you wouldn't buy it right away. You'd want to see if it works. It's the same thing with a company."

A legendary case in point involves John Sculley, former CEO of Apple Computer. In 1993, he briefly became chief executive of a little wireless data company called Spectrum Information Technologies and spoke glowingly of its prospects. Spectrum's stock promptly tripled. But those who had looked closely at Spectrum's technology weren't nearly as impressed.

Just four months later, Sculley quit, saying that Spectrum's founders had misled him. The company restated its earnings, backing away from some aggressive treatment of licensing revenue that had inflated profits. The stock crashed. The only ones who came out looking smart were the short sellers who disregarded the momentary excitement of having a big-name CEO join the company. Instead, those short sellers focused on the one question that mattered: Are Spectrum's products any good?

So in the wake of Enron, you want to know what to look for in other companies. Or, more to the point, you need to know what to look for in your own company, so you're not stuck explaining what happened to your missing 401(k) fund. Here are six basic pointers from the short-selling community.

1. Watch cash flow, not reported net income. During Enron's heyday from 1999 to 2000, the company reported very strong net income -- aided, we now know, by dubious accounting exercises. But the actual amount of cash that Enron's businesses generated wasn't nearly as impressive. That's no coincidence.

Companies can create all sorts of adjustments to make net income look artificially strong -- witness what we've seen so far with Enron and Global Crossing. But there's only one way to show strong cash flow from operations: Run the business well.

2. Take a wary look at acquisition binges. Some of the most spectacular financial meltdowns of recent years have involved companies that bought too much, too fast. Cendant, for example, grew fast in the mid-1990s by snapping up the likes of Days Inn, Century 21, and Avis but overreached when it bought CUC International Inc., a direct-marketing firm. Accounting irregularities at CUC led to massive write-downs in 1997, which sent the combined company's stock plummeting.

3. Be mindful of income-accelerating tricks. Conservative accounting says that long-term contracts should not be treated as immediate windfalls that shower all of their benefits on today's financial statements. Sell a three-year magazine subscription, and you've got predictable obligations until 2005. Those expenses will slowly flow onto your financial statements -- and it's prudent to book the income gradually as well.

But in some industries, aggressive practitioners like to put jumbo profits on the books all at once. Left for later are worries about how to deal with the eventual costs of those long-term deals. In a recent Barron's interview, longtime short seller Jim Chanos identified such "gain on sale" accounting tricks as a sure sign that the management is being too aggressive for its own good.

Jensen Comment
Cash flow statements are useful, but they are no panacea replacement of accrual accounting and earnings analysis. One huge problem is that unscrupulous executives can more easily manipulate/manage cash flows --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#CashVsAccrualAcctg

Question
What do the department store chains WT Grant and Target possibly have in common?

Answer
WT Grant had a huge chain of departments stores across the United States. It declared bankruptcy in the sharp 1973 recession largely because of a build up of accounts receivable losses. Now in 2008 Target Corporation is in a somewhat similar bind.

In 1980 Largay and Stickney (Financial Analysts Journal) published a great comparison of WT Grant's cash flow statements versus income statements. I used this study for years in some of my accounting courses. It's a classic for giving students an appreciation of cash flow statements! The study is discussed and cited (with exhibits) at http://www.sap-hefte.de/download/dateien/1239/070_leseprobe.pdf
It also shows the limitations of the current ratio in financial analysis and the problem of inventory buildup when analyzing the reported bottom line net income.

 

IIs Target Corp.'s Credit Too Generous? by Peter Eavis The Wall Street Journal Mar 11, 2008 Page: C1 Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120519491886425757.html?mod=djem_jiewr_AC   TOPICS: Allowance For Doubtful Accounts, Financial Accounting, Financial Statement Analysis, Loan Loss Allowance SUMMARY: "'Target appears to have pursued very aggressive credit growth at the wrong time," says William Ryan, consumer-credit analyst at Portales Partners, a New York-based research firm. "Not so." says Target's chief financial officer, Douglas Scovanner, "The growth in the credit-card portfolio is absolutely not a function of a loosening of credit standards or a lowering of credit quality in our portfolio." CLASSROOM APPLICATION: This article covers details of financial statement ratios used to analyze Target Corp.'s credit card business. It can be used in a financial statement analysis course or while covering accounting for receivables in a financial accounting course QUESTIONS:  1. (Introductory) What types of credit cards has Target Corp. issued? Why do companies such as Target issue these cards? 2. (Introductory) In general, what concerns analysts about Target Corp.'s portfolio of receivables on credit cards? 3. (Introductory) How can a sufficient allowance for uncollectible accounts alleviate concerns about potential problems in a portfolio of loans or receivables? What evidence is given in the article about the status of Target's allowance for uncollectible accounts? 4. (Advanced) "...High growth may make it [hard] to see credit deterioration that already is happening..." What calculation by analyst William Ryan is described in the article to better "see" this issue? From where does he obtain the data used in the calculation? Be specific in your answer. 5. (Advanced) Refer again to the calculation done by the analyst Mr. Ryan. How does that calculation resemble the analysis done for an aging of accounts receivable? 6. (Advanced) What other financial analysis ratio is used to assess the status of a credit-card loan portfolio such as Target Corp.'s? 7. (Advanced) If analysts prove correct in their concern about Target Corp.'s credit-card receivable balance, what does that say about the profitability reported in this year? How will it impact next year's results?   Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island

Early 1995 Warning Signs That Bad Guys Were Running Enron and That Political Whores Were Helping

There were some warning signs, but nobody seemed care much as long as Enron was releasing audited accounting reports showing solid increases in net earnings. 

Enron's Political Profit Pipeline

In early 1995, the world's biggest natural gas company began clearing ground 100 miles south of Bombay, India for a $2.8 billion, gas-fired power plant -- the largest single foreign investment in India.

Villagers claimed that the power plant was overpriced and that its effluent would destroy their fisheries and coconut and mango trees. One villager opposing Enron put it succinctly, "Why not remove them before they remove us?"

As Pratap Chatterjee reported ["Enron Deal Blows a Fuse," Multinational Monitor, July/August 1995], hundreds of villagers stormed the site that was being prepared for Enron's 2,015-megawatt plant in May 1995, injuring numerous construction workers and three foreign advisers.

After winning Maharashtra state elections, the conservative nationalistic Bharatiya Janata Party canceled the deal, sending shock waves through Western businesses with investments in India.

Maharashtra officials said they acted to prevent the Houston, Texas-based company from making huge profits off "the backs of India's poor." New Delhi's Hindustan Times editorialized in June 1995, "It is time the West realized that India is not a banana republic which has to dance to the tune of multinationals."

Enron officials are not so sure. Hoping to convert the cancellation into a temporary setback, the company launched an all-out campaign to get the deal back on track. In late November 1995, the campaign was showing signs of success, although progress was taking a toll on the handsome rate of return that Enron landed in the first deal. In India, Enron is now being scrutinized by the public, which is demanding contracts reflecting market rates. But it's a big world.

In November 1995, the company announced that it has signed a $700 million deal to build a gas pipeline from Mozambique to South Africa. The pipeline will service Mozambique's Pande gas field, which will produce an estimated two trillion cubic feet of gas.

The deal, in which Enron beat out South Africa's state petroleum company Sasol, sparked controversy in Africa following reports that the Clinton administration, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Embassy and even National Security adviser Anthony Lake, lobbied Mozambique on behalf of Enron.

"There were outright threats to withhold development funds if we didn't sign, and sign soon," John Kachamila, Mozambique's natural resources minister, told the Houston Chronicle. Enron spokesperson Diane Bazelides declined to comment on the these allegations, but said that the U.S. government had been "helpful as it always is with American companies." Spokesperson Carol Hensley declined to respond to a hypothetical question about whether or not Enron would approve of U.S. government threats to cut off aid to a developing nation if the country did not sign an Enron deal.

Enron has been repeatedly criticized for relying on political clout rather than low bids to win contracts. Political heavyweights that Enron has engaged on its behalf include former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, former U.S. Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher and retired General Thomas Kelly, U.S. chief of operations in the 1990 Gulf War. Enron's Board includes former Commodities Futures Trading Commission Chair Wendy Gramm (wife of presidential hopeful Senator Phil Gramm, R-Texas), former U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Charles Walker and John Wakeham, leader of the House of Lords and former U.K. Energy Secretary.

To this I have added the following :  

From the Free Wall Street Journal Educators' Reviews for November 1, 2001 

TITLE: Enron Did Business With a Second Entity Operated by Another Company Official; No Public Disclosure Was Made of Deals
REPORTER: John R. Emshwiller and Rebecca Smith
DATE: Oct 26, 2001
PAGE: C1
LINK: Print Only in the WSJ on October 26, 2001

TOPICS: Disclosure Requirements, Financial Accounting, Financial Statement Analysis

SUMMARY: Enron's financial statement disclosures have been less than transparent. Information is arising as the SEC makes an inquiry into the Company's accounting and reporting practices with respect to its transactions with entities managed by high-level Enron managers. Yet, as discussed in a related article, analysts remain confident in the stock.

QUESTIONS:

1.) Why must companies disclose related party transactions? What is the significance of the difference between the wording of SEC rule S-K and FASB Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 57, Related Party Transactions that is cited at the end of the article?

2.) Explain the logic of why a drop in investor confidence in Enron's business transactions and reporting practices could affect the company's credit rating.

3.) Explain how an analyst could argue, as did one analyst cited in the related article, that he or she is confident in Enron's ability to "deliver" earnings even if he or she cannot estimate "where revenues are going to come from" nor where the company will make profits.

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island

Reviewed By: Benson Wier, Virginia Commonwealth University

Reviewed By: Kimberly Dunn, Florida Atlantic University

--- RELATED ARTICLES ---

TITLE: Heard on the Street: Most Analysts Remain Plugged In to Enron
REPORTER: Susanne Craig and Jonathan Weil
PAGE: C1
ISSUE: Oct 26, 2001
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1004043182760447600.djm 

TITLE: Enron Officials Sell Shares Amid Stock-Price Slump
REPORTER: Theo Francis and Cassell Bryan-Low
PAGE: C14
ISSUE: Oct 26, 2001
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1004043341423453040.djm

From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Educators' Review on November 8, 2001
Subscribers to the Electronic Edition of the WSJ can obtain reviews in various disciplines by contacting wsjeducatorsreviews@dowjones.com 
See http://info.wsj.com/professor/ 

TITLE: Arthur Andersen Could Face Scrutiny On Clarity of Enron Financial Reports 
REPORTER: Jonathan Weil 
DATE: Nov 05, 2001 
PAGE: C1 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1004919947649536880.djm  
TOPICS: Accounting, Auditing, Creative Accounting, Disclosure Requirements

SUMMARY: Critics argue that Arthur Andersen LLP has failed to ensure that Enron Corp.'s financial disclosures are understandable. Enron is currently undergoing SEC investigation and is being sued by shareholders. Questions relate to disclosure quality and auditor responsibility.

QUESTIONS: 

1.) The article suggests that the auditor has the job of making sure that financial statements are understandable and accurate and complete in all material respects. Does the auditor bear this responsibility? Discuss the role of the auditor in financial reporting.

2.) One allegation is that Enron's financial statements are not understandable. Should users be required to have specialized training to be able to understand financial statements? Should the financial statements be prepared so that only a minimal level of business knowledge is required? What are the implications of the target audience on financial statement preparation?

3.) Enron is facing several shareholder lawsuits ; however, Arthur Anderson LLP is not a defendant. What liability does the auditor have to shareholders of client firms? What are possible reasons that Arthur Anderson is not a defendant in the Enron cases?

4.) What is the role of the SEC in the investigation? What power does the SEC have to penalize Enron Corp. and Arthur Anderson LLP?

SMALL GROUP ASSIGNMENT: Should financial statements be understandable to users with only general business knowledge? Prepare an argument to support your position.

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island 
Reviewed By: Benson Wier, Virginia Commonwealth University 
Reviewed By: Kimberly Dunn, Florida Atlantic University

From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Educators' Review on November 6, 2001
Subscribers to the Electronic Edition of the WSJ can obtain reviews in various disciplines by contacting wsjeducatorsreviews@dowjones.com 
See http://info.wsj.com/professor/ 

TITLE: Behind Shrinking Deficits: Derivatives? 
REPORTER: Silvia Ascarelli and Deborah Ball 
DATE: Nov 06, 2001 PAGE: A22 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1004996045480162960.djm  
TOPICS: Derivatives 

SUMMARY: An Italian university professor and public-debt management expert issued a report this week explaining how a European country used a swap contract to effectively receive more cash in 1997. That country is believed to be Italy although top officials deny such "window dressing" practices. 1997 was a critical year for Italy if it was to be included in the EMU (European Monetary Union) and become a part of the euro-zone. To qualify for entry, a country's deficit could not exceed 3% of gross domestic product. In 1996 Italy's deficit was 6.7% of GDP, however, the country succeeded in "slashing its budget deficit to 2.7%" in 1997. The question now is whether Italy accomplished this reduction by clamping down on waste and raising revenues or engaging in deceptive swaps usage.

QUESTIONS: 

1.) Why was the level of Italy's budget deficit so critical in 1997? How did Italy's 1997 budget deficit compare with its 1996 level?

2.) What is an interest rate swap? How can the use of swap markets decrease borrowing costs? What is a currency swap? When would firms tend to use these derivative instruments?

3.) Does the European Union condone the use of interest rate swaps by its euro-zone members as a way to manage their public debt? According to the related article, who are the biggest users of swaps in Europe? Do the U.S. and Japan use them to manage their public debt?

4.) According to the related article, interest-rate swaps now account for what proportion of the over-the-counter derivatives market? Go to the web page for the Bank of International Settlement at www.bis.org . Select Publications & Statistics then go to International Financial Statistics. Go to the Central Bank Survey for Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Market Activity. Look at the pdf version of the report, specifically Table 6. What was average daily turnover, in billions of dollars, of interest-rate swaps in April 1995? 1998? and 2001? By what percentage did interest-rate swap usage increase from 1995-1998? 1998-2001?

5.) According to the related article, how did the swaps contract allegedly used by Italy differ from a standard swaps contract? What was the "bottom line" result of this arrangement?

6.) Assume Italy did indeed use such measures to "window dress" their financial situation and gain entry into the euro-zone. What actions should be taken to prevent such loopholes in the future?

Reviewed By: 
Jacqueline Garner, Georgia State University and Univ. of Rhode Island 
Beverly Marshall, Auburn University
Peter Dadalt, Georgia State University

--- RELATED ARTICLE in the WSJ --- 

TITLE: Italy Used Complicated Swaps Contract To Deflate Budget in Bid for Euro Zone 
REPORTER: Silvia Ascarelli and Deborah Ball
ISSUE: Nov 05, 2001 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1004908712922656320.djm 

From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Educators' Review on November 8, 2001
Subscribers to the Electronic Edition of the WSJ can obtain reviews in various disciplines by contacting wsjeducatorsreviews@dowjones.com 
See http://info.wsj.com/professor/ 

TITLE: Basic Principle of Accounting Tripped Enron 
REPORTER: Jonathan Weil 
DATE: Nov 12, 2001 
PAGE: C1 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB100551383153378600.djm 
TOPICS: Accounting, Auditing, Auditing Services, Auditor Independence

SUMMARY: 
Enron's financial statements have long been charged with being undecipherable; however, they are now considered to contain violations of GAAP. Enron filed documents with the SEC indicating that financial statements going back to 1997 "should not be relied upon." Questions deal with materiality and auditor independence.

QUESTIONS: 
1.) What accounting errors are reported to have been included in Enron's financial statements? Why didn't Enron's auditors require correction of these errors before the financial statements were issued?

2.) What is materiality? In hindsight, were the errors in Enron's financial statements material? Why or why not? Should the auditors have known that the errors in Enron's financial statements were material prior to their release? What defense can the auditors offer?

3.) Does Arthur Andersen provide any services to Enron in addition to the audit services? How might providing additional services to Enron affect Andersen's decision to release financial statements containing GAAP violations?

4.) The article states that Enron is one of Arthur Andersen's biggest clients. How might Enron's size have contributed to Arthur Andersen's decision to release financial statements containing GAAP violations? Discuss differences in audit risk between small and large clients. Discuss the potential affect of client firm size on auditor independence.

5.) How long has Arthur Andersen been Enron's auditor? How could their tenure as auditor contributed to Andersen's decision to release financial statements containing GAAP violations?

6.) The related article discusses how Enron's consolidation policy with respect to the JEDI and Chewco entities impacted the company's financial statements. What is meant by the phrase consolidation policy? How could a policy not to consolidate these entities help to make Enron's financial statements look better? Why would consolidating an entity result in a $396 million reduction in net income over a 4 year period? How must Enron have been accounting for investments in these entities? How could Enron support its accounting policies for these investments?

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island 
Reviewed By: Benson Wier, Virginia Commonwealth University 
Reviewed By: Kimberly Dunn, Florida Atlantic University

From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Educators' Review on November 8, 2001
Subscribers to the Electronic Edition of the WSJ can obtain reviews in various disciplines by contacting wsjeducatorsreviews@dowjones.com 
See http://info.wsj.com/professor/ 

TITLE: Arthur Andersen Could Face Scrutiny On Clarity of Enron Financial Reports 
REPORTER: Jonathan Weil 
DATE: Nov 05, 2001 
PAGE: C1 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1004919947649536880.djm  
TOPICS: Accounting, Auditing, Creative Accounting, Disclosure Requirements

SUMMARY: Critics argue that Arthur Andersen LLP has failed to ensure that Enron Corp.'s financial disclosures are understandable. Enron is currently undergoing SEC investigation and is being sued by shareholders. Questions relate to disclosure quality and auditor responsibility.

QUESTIONS: 

1.) The article suggests that the auditor has the job of making sure that financial statements are understandable and accurate and complete in all material respects. Does the auditor bear this responsibility? Discuss the role of the auditor in financial reporting.

2.) One allegation is that Enron's financial statements are not understandable. Should users be required to have specialized training to be able to understand financial statements? Should the financial statements be prepared so that only a minimal level of business knowledge is required? What are the implications of the target audience on financial statement preparation?

3.) Enron is facing several shareholder lawsuits ; however, Arthur Anderson LLP is not a defendant. What liability does the auditor have to shareholders of client firms? What are possible reasons that Arthur Anderson is not a defendant in the Enron cases?

4.) What is the role of the SEC in the investigation? What power does the SEC have to penalize Enron Corp. and Arthur Anderson LLP?

SMALL GROUP ASSIGNMENT: Should financial statements be understandable to users with only general business knowledge? Prepare an argument to support your position.

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island 
Reviewed By: Benson Wier, Virginia Commonwealth University 
Reviewed By: Kimberly Dunn, Florida Atlantic University

From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Educators' Review on November 6, 2001
Subscribers to the Electronic Edition of the WSJ can obtain reviews in various disciplines by contacting wsjeducatorsreviews@dowjones.com 
See http://info.wsj.com/professor/ 

TITLE: Behind Shrinking Deficits: Derivatives? 
REPORTER: Silvia Ascarelli and Deborah Ball 
DATE: Nov 06, 2001 PAGE: A22 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1004996045480162960.djm  
TOPICS: Derivatives 

SUMMARY: An Italian university professor and public-debt management expert issued a report this week explaining how a European country used a swap contract to effectively receive more cash in 1997. That country is believed to be Italy although top officials deny such "window dressing" practices. 1997 was a critical year for Italy if it was to be included in the EMU (European Monetary Union) and become a part of the euro-zone. To qualify for entry, a country's deficit could not exceed 3% of gross domestic product. In 1996 Italy's deficit was 6.7% of GDP, however, the country succeeded in "slashing its budget deficit to 2.7%" in 1997. The question now is whether Italy accomplished this reduction by clamping down on waste and raising revenues or engaging in deceptive swaps usage.

QUESTIONS: 

1.) Why was the level of Italy's budget deficit so critical in 1997? How did Italy's 1997 budget deficit compare with its 1996 level?

2.) What is an interest rate swap? How can the use of swap markets decrease borrowing costs? What is a currency swap? When would firms tend to use these derivative instruments?

3.) Does the European Union condone the use of interest rate swaps by its euro-zone members as a way to manage their public debt? According to the related article, who are the biggest users of swaps in Europe? Do the U.S. and Japan use them to manage their public debt?

4.) According to the related article, interest-rate swaps now account for what proportion of the over-the-counter derivatives market? Go to the web page for the Bank of International Settlement at www.bis.org . Select Publications & Statistics then go to International Financial Statistics. Go to the Central Bank Survey for Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Market Activity. Look at the pdf version of the report, specifically Table 6. What was average daily turnover, in billions of dollars, of interest-rate swaps in April 1995? 1998? and 2001? By what percentage did interest-rate swap usage increase from 1995-1998? 1998-2001?

5.) According to the related article, how did the swaps contract allegedly used by Italy differ from a standard swaps contract? What was the "bottom line" result of this arrangement?

6.) Assume Italy did indeed use such measures to "window dress" their financial situation and gain entry into the euro-zone. What actions should be taken to prevent such loopholes in the future?

Reviewed By: 
Jacqueline Garner, Georgia State University and Univ. of Rhode Island 
Beverly Marshall, Auburn University
Peter Dadalt, Georgia State University

--- RELATED ARTICLE in the WSJ --- 

TITLE: Italy Used Complicated Swaps Contract To Deflate Budget in Bid for Euro Zone 
REPORTER: Silvia Ascarelli and Deborah Ball
ISSUE: Nov 05, 2001 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1004908712922656320.djm 

From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Educators' Review on November 8, 2001
Subscribers to the Electronic Edition of the WSJ can obtain reviews in various disciplines by contacting wsjeducatorsreviews@dowjones.com 
See http://info.wsj.com/professor/ 

TITLE: Basic Principle of Accounting Tripped Enron 
REPORTER: Jonathan Weil 
DATE: Nov 12, 2001 
PAGE: C1 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB100551383153378600.djm 
TOPICS: Accounting, Auditing, Auditing Services, Auditor Independence

SUMMARY: 
Enron's financial statements have long been charged with being undecipherable; however, they are now considered to contain violations of GAAP. Enron filed documents with the SEC indicating that financial statements going back to 1997 "should not be relied upon." Questions deal with materiality and auditor independence.

QUESTIONS: 
1.) What accounting errors are reported to have been included in Enron's financial statements? Why didn't Enron's auditors require correction of these errors before the financial statements were issued?

2.) What is materiality? In hindsight, were the errors in Enron's financial statements material? Why or why not? Should the auditors have known that the errors in Enron's financial statements were material prior to their release? What defense can the auditors offer?

3.) Does Arthur Andersen provide any services to Enron in addition to the audit services? How might providing additional services to Enron affect Andersen's decision to release financial statements containing GAAP violations?

4.) The article states that Enron is one of Arthur Andersen's biggest clients. How might Enron's size have contributed to Arthur Andersen's decision to release financial statements containing GAAP violations? Discuss differences in audit risk between small and large clients. Discuss the potential affect of client firm size on auditor independence.

5.) How long has Arthur Andersen been Enron's auditor? How could their tenure as auditor contributed to Andersen's decision to release financial statements containing GAAP violations?

6.) The related article discusses how Enron's consolidation policy with respect to the JEDI and Chewco entities impacted the company's financial statements. What is meant by the phrase consolidation policy? How could a policy not to consolidate these entities help to make Enron's financial statements look better? Why would consolidating an entity result in a $396 million reduction in net income over a 4 year period? How must Enron have been accounting for investments in these entities? How could Enron support its accounting policies for these investments?

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island 
Reviewed By: Benson Wier, Virginia Commonwealth University 
Reviewed By: Kimberly Dunn, Florida Atlantic University

RELATED WSJ ARTICLES
TITLE: Enron Cuts Profit Data of 4 Years by 20% 
REPORTER: John R. Emshwiller, Rebecca Smith, Robin Sidel, and Jonathan Weil 
PAGE: A1,A3 
ISSUE: Nov 09, 2001 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1005235413422093560.djm 

TITLE: Arthur Andersen Could Face Scrutiny On Clarity of Enron Financial Reports 
REPORTER: Jonathan Weil 
DATE: Nov 05, 2001 
PAGE: C1 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1004919947649536880.djm  
TOPICS: Accounting, Auditing, Creative Accounting, Disclosure Requirements

Bob Jensen's threads on the Enron/Worldcom/Andersen frauds ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm

"13 Academics Are Among 24 Winners of 2009 MacArthur Fellowships," Chronicle of Higher Education, September 22, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/article/13-Academics-Are-Among-24/48558/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Following are the 2009 fellows and their achievements, as summarized by the foundation:

Lynsey Addario, 35, photojournalist, in Istanbul. She is creating a powerful visual record of the most pressing conflicts and humanitarian crises of the 21st century.
Linsey Addario --- http://www.lynseyaddario.com/
Life and Death in Darfur --- Click Here

Maneesh Agrawala, 37, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, University of California at Berkeley. He designs visual interfaces that enhance users' ability to synthesize and comprehend large quantities of complex digital information.

Timothy Barrett, 59, research scientist and adjunct professor, University of Iowa. He is reinvigorating the art of hand-papermaking and leading the preservation of traditional Western and Japanese techniques and practices.

Mark Bradford, 47, mixed-media artist, in Los Angeles. He incorporates ephemera from urban environments into richly textured abstract compositions that evoke a multitude of metaphors.

Edwidge Danticat, 40, novelist, in Miami. She chronicles the power of human resistance and endurance through moving and insightful depictions of Haitian immigrants' experience.

Rackstraw Downes, 69, painter, in New York. He renders minutely detailed landscapes of unexpected vistas that reconsider the interaction between the built and natural world.

Esther Duflo, 36, professor of poverty alleviation and development economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She analyzes the forces perpetuating cycles of poverty in South Asia and Africa.

Deborah Eisenberg, 63, short-story writer, in New York. She crafts distinctive portraits of contemporary American life in tales of precision, fluency, and moral depth.

Lin He, 35, assistant professor of cell and developmental biology, University of California at Berkeley. She advances understanding of the role of microRNA in the development of cancer and is laying the groundwork for future cancer treatments.

Peter Huybers, 35, assistant professor of climate, Harvard University. He mines a wealth of often conflicting experimental observations to develop compelling theories that explain global climate change over time.

James Longley, 37, filmmaker, Daylight Factory, in Seattle. He deepens understanding of conflicts in the Middle East through intimate portraits of communities living under extremely challenging conditions.

L. Mahadevan, 44, professor of applied mathematics, Harvard University. He investigates principles underlying the behavior of complex systems to address such questions as how flags flutter, how skin wrinkles, and how Venus flytraps snap closed.

Heather McHugh, 61, professor of English, University of Washington. She is a poet who composes richly layered verse that unabashedly embraces such wordplay as puns, rhymes, and syntactical twists to explore the human condition.

Jerry Mitchell, 50, investigative reporter, The Clarion-Ledger, in Jackson, Miss. He ensures that unsolved murders from the civil-rights era are finally prosecuted by uncovering largely unknown details of decades-old stories of thwarted justice.

Rebecca Onie, 32, founder and executive director of Project Health, in Boston. She is building a low-cost, replicable program that joins the aspirations of college students to the needs of health-care institutions to address the link between poverty and poor health.

Richard O. Prum, 48, professor of ornithology, ecology, and evolutionary biology, Yale University. He draws from developmental biology, optical physics, and paleontology to address central questions about avian development, evolution, and behavior.

John A. Rogers, 42, professor of materials science and engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He invents flexible electronic devices that lay the foundation for a revolution in manufacture of industrial, consumer, and biocompatible technologies.

Elyn Saks, 53, professor of law, psychology, and psychiatry and the behavioral sciences, University of Southern California. She expands the options for those suffering from severe mental illness, by working through scholarship, practice, and policy informed by a life story that offers uncommon depth and insight.

Jill Seaman, 57, infectious-disease physician, in Old Fangak, Sudan. She adapts the tools of 21st-century medicine to treat infectious diseases endemic to southern Sudan and other remote, war-torn regions of the world.

Beth Shapiro, 33, assistant professor of biology, Pennsylvania State University. She uses molecular phylogenetics and biostatistics to reconstruct the influences on population dynamics of extinct or severely challenged species.

Daniel Sigman, 40, professor of geological and geophysical sciences, Princeton University. He examines the interrelated physical, chemical, geological, and biological forces that have shaped the oceans' fertility and the earth's climate over the past two million years.

Mary E. Tinetti, 58, professor of medicine and epidemiology and public health, and geriatric physician, Yale School of Medicine. She challenges prevailing notions of falls as unavoidable accidents associated with advanced age and identifies risk factors that contribute to morbidity as a result of falls.

Camille Utterback, 39, digital artist, in San Francisco. She redefines how viewers experience and interact with art, through vibrant, pictorial compositions that are activated by human presence and movement.

Theodore P. Zoli, 43, bridge engineer, HNTB Corporation, in New York. He makes major technological advances to protect transportation infrastructure in the event of natural and man-made disasters.

No Cheers for Pornography and Gambling Sites and Addictive Social Networking

This may seem a bit off topic, but it may be one of the most valuable links you can forward to students and others. Besides being a social disgrace, pornography sites are one of the most dangerous sources of malware that infects computers along with gambling sites and sites offering malware protection just after they've infected your computer. In the case of pornography and gambling users are being infected in multiple ways.

These sites want your money, your I.D., and your mind.

"Pornography and You," by Rebecca Hagelin, Townhall, September 22, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/RebeccaHagelin/2009/09/22/pornography_and_you 

According to Dr. Manning, the type of porn viewed today, by both adults and children, is "deviant, vile and graphic. Young people are witnessing rape, torture, and all kinds of degrading material." Why would anyone gravitate to such horrible inhumane depictions? Dr. Reisman has carefully studied and documented the effects that exposure to pornography has on the brain – it acts like a drug and can easily capture the “casual observer” and result in serious addiction, causing the user to crave greater quantities of ever more perverse images.

If you suspect someone in your family has a porn problem, arm yourself with truth. This column is much to short to delve into all you need to know in order to protect your family. Visit www.SalvoMag.com where you can order the "Silent Bondage" issue and equip yourself to combat pornography's stranglehold head-on.

If you have a pornography addiction, please get help. At www.VictimsofPornography.org you can connect with counseling resources and hear the victory stories of others who have overcome their bondage. It’s critical to understand that consuming porn is never just “harmless entertainment.” Your use warps your view of women and of common decency. It breeds selfishness and unfaithfulness. You might as well be having an affair with every woman you gawk at in the glow of the computer or while privately viewing that hotel room porn flick.

Your wife may be silent about your usage, but she’s probably dying a little each day inside. I’ll never forget the heart-wrenching words of a wife whose husband regularly viewed porn: “It was like my husband had a mistress in our home.”

If you use pornography, you use people. You have a problem. Get help.

September 22, 2009 reply from Richard.Sansing [Richard.C.Sansing@TUCK.DARTMOUTH.EDU]

Dr. Judith Reisman's doctorate is in communications. See
http://www.alternet.org/election04/20744/her_kinsey_obsession/
for more on "Dr." Reisman.

 Richard Sansing

"QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT THE PROBLEM OF COMPULSIVE GAMBLING AND THE G.A. RECOVERY PROGRAM," Gamblers Anonymous --- http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/qna.html

Facebook Anthem --- http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=Facebook&aq=f

Bob Jensen's threads on social networking are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

Bob Jensen's bookmarks on social science tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social

Metacognitive Learning, “pedagogy of ironic minimalism,” and Accounting Education's BAM

Often when I teach less, I find that I actually teach more
"Resist the Pedagagogical Far Right," by Robert J. Nash,  Inside Higher Ed, September 22, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/09/22/nash

So much of what I’ve learned about teaching in the academy for over four decades can be summarized in this way: often when I teach less, I find that I actually teach more. I call this a “pedagogy of ironic minimalism.” Whenever I take the time to call forth what it is my students actually know, and whenever I intentionally minimize the “endless breadth and depth” of my own “vast wisdom and knowledge,” then my students learn the most. This, dear readers, is why I keep coming back to the classroom — for lo these many years.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
The title of the above document is misleading. He never really defines "Pedagagogical Far Right" except by associating it with being less student-centered and less teaching-centered as opposed to being research-centered. I do not view this article as being so political as the title makes it sound, although Professor Nash makes it clear that he is left-leaning in terms of politics and what he conveys to students about liberal thinking.

What I found interesting is that his 41 years of classroom teaching lead him in the direction of what, in accounting education, has become known as the BAM Model or metacognitive learning. But he does not take his  “pedagogy of ironic minimalism.” to the stressful extremes of BAM in accounting education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm 

Political Correctness in Academe
Professor Stanley Fish is often credited with coining the phrase "political correctness" in academe while on the faculty at Duke University. However, the term itself has a much longer and broader history --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Correctness

"Fish to Profs: Stick to Teaching," by Andy Guess, Inside Higher Ed, July 1, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/01/fish

Stanley Fish is very clear about what college professors should do in the classroom.

They "can (legitimately) do two things: (1) introduce students to bodies of knowledge and traditions of inquiry that had not previously been part of their experience; and (2) equip those same students with the analytical skills -- of argument, statistical modeling, laboratory procedure -- that will enable them to move confidently within those traditions and to engage in independent research after a course is over."

And what should they not do? Everything else.

In a new book to be published this month by Oxford University Press, Fish, the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University, argues that instructors need to approach their jobs narrowly -- and to, as the title implies, Save the World on Your Own Time.

That doesn't mean they can't have opinions, espouse views outside of the classroom or make partisan pronouncements in public. But the argument -- that professors should do their jobs, and nothing else -- does establish a framework through which the book tackles every major academic controversy, from Ward Churchill (a professor who erred in melding politics and his academic work, Fish says, not in expressing those views per se) to the intelligent design movement (a relativistic attempt to sneak a nonscientific idea into the classroom) to Larry Summers (a man who went beyond the bounds of his job description).

The book itself developed from Fish's own experiences, both as a teacher of literature and law and as an administrator. After chairing the theory-laden English department at Duke University and serving as executive director of Duke University Press, he surprised many by accepting a post as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, from which he stepped down in 2004. Now he's been enjoying his perch as a weekly online columnist at The New York Times, where he first articulated some of the book's themes.

As someone who's been both derided from the right as a postmodernist and recently described by his editor as a "curmudgeonly semiconservative guy," Fish's own positions have evolved over time and can sometimes be hard to pin down -- and maybe that's the point. But he's perfectly clear about his views on higher education, and the book delves beyond classroom controversies into more familiar territory for many academics: how to run a university (and should it be democratic?), the life of a dean, the teaching of writing and, of course, the best way to shake down state leaders for more funds.

Fish spoke over the phone with Inside Higher Ed last week from upstate New York, where he lives for about half the year. Below are excerpts from that conversation.

Q: How does the general public view academe, and how does that view differ from reality?

A: I think the perception is that college campuses these days are populated by liberal/radical faculty who are always imposing their loyalties on the students in an attempt ... to recruit students into a political agenda.

The reality is that the percentage ... who do something like that is perhaps small, I would say, at the most, 10 percent, probably more like 5 or 6 percent. But the success of the neoconservative public relations machine has implanted in the public mind this idea of a university simply permeated by political ideologues masking as pedagogues....

[T]he word then begins to be sounded as if you couldn't walk into a classroom in this country without being subjected to liberal propaganda. In my experience, this is not the norm. But even if it were only a small percentage of what happens in the classroom, it's still, I think, the cause for concern if not alarm because certainly in my view [it's] what should not be happening in the classroom.

Q: But even aside from political implications, you argue, especially in the teaching of writing, that such agendas can actually have a negative effect on learning.

A: Whether anyone notices it or not or comments on it or not, the teaching of writing in universities is a disaster. [There is] the conviction on the part of many composition teachers that what they are really teaching is some form of social justice, and that the teaching of writing ... takes a back seat. And in fact in many classrooms the teaching of writing as a craft as something that has rules with appropriate decorums ... is in fact demonized as an indication of the hegemony of the powers that be. This happens over and over again in classrooms and it's an absolute disaster.

Q: Are you mostly talking about "quips" -- say, an aside about Dick Cheney in the middle of a lecture?

A: It signals something to the students about what the views of the professor are.... It's my conviction that teachers should not have posters ... on the doors of their office that indicate some political, partisan or ideological affiliation. The office ... is an extension of the scene of teaching, and no student should enter an office [believing that] some ideas are going to be preferred and others are better not uttered. The larger part are those professors who are sincerely convinced that it is their job to take their students and mold both their characters and their ideological views....

I'm holding in my hand right now ... a book called Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, which is a popular book published by a very reputable press [Routledge, 2007], and its thesis is that teaching social justice, preparing students to operate in the world in a particular way is what we should be doing.

[Quoting from the book:]

"The goal of social justice education is full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs. Social justice includes a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure. We envision a society in which individuals are both self-determining (able to develop their full capacities), and interdependent (capable of interacting democratically with others)...."

I think there is a significant number of persons espousing or being persuaded by that view, some self-consciously and some less than self-consciously.... [At The New York Times, a]ny number of readers will testify, and I think that is the word, that they went to college and university never knowing what the political and ideological affiliations of their professors might have been, and several have written in to say when they later discovered by accident ... they were surprised, they never would have guessed.

I still like to believe that most people go into classrooms attempting to do justice to the materials that are taught in the course as described in the syllabus and listed in the college catalog, and that ... is the core of my position.

This is a daunting enough task, and it doesn't seem to me to be necessary or possible to perform other tasks....

Q: Are you concerned that your book will be brandished by those with an agenda to enforce "intellectual diversity"?

A: Well, yes, I think that there is a danger that this will be welcomed ... by some of those conservative critics of the academy. But on the other hand there's plenty in the book which criticizes the conservative efforts, for example, to enforce proportional hiring in college and university faculty.... I over and over again attack that argument, so even though the conservative critics of the academy might find some comfort in parts of the book, they'll find other parts of the book directly criticizing them.

One of the arguments that conservative critics make is that there are very few or relatively few conservative members of the faculty, especially in humanities and social science departments. But when I came into the profession ... in 1962, the statistics were the reverse. There were very few progressive members of the faculty and there were of course determined efforts to exclude, for example, people who self-identified as Marxists. [I don't think there are parallel efforts of exclusion today,] although that is a charge that's been made.

Q: Do you believe the current movement against perceived bias in academe is a recent trend, or part of longstanding cultural currents?

A: The anti-intellectualism that's always been a part of the disdain for the academy doesn't, I think, operate in the current scene of the culture wars at least as I describe them.... This is not a repetition of the old anti-intellectualism which has been around forever; I think this is much more specifically political and ideological.

Q: If all professors "academicized" the topics they covered in class and avoided melding their material with outside political views, as you advocate, would that leave room for institutions with specific missions, such as "progressive" colleges, colleges that identify as conservative-oriented or those with a Great Books focus?

A: A Great Books college or a progressive college is a college that is organized around a certain view of the way higher education should be implemented. In other words, these are colleges which are attached to an account of the best way to perform higher education. But I have no quarrel at all with colleges like that, because if one can think of them as having a point of view, it's an educational point of view, not a political point of view. That would be quite different if a college were self-consciously dedicated to the conservation or promulgation of conservative principles or religious principles.... [They would not be] operating according to the traditional ideals of liberal education, which doesn't mean that they shouldn't be allowed to exist ... they are simply not attaching themselves to the ideal of liberal education....

Q: You've worked at both private and public institutions. Do you see any difference in their missions?

A: Well, there certainly is a difference in terms of the funding and the way in which funding is dispensed....

The interesting thing, or actually distressing thing ... is that at the same time that the legislature of many states takes the money away from universities, the legislatures seek to impose more and more curricular and faculty control over the universities, so it's a very unhappy situation in which colleges are being told we're going to take your money away and we're going to increasingly monitor every single thing you do.

Q: You describe a novel approach to handling state lawmakers who control the purse strings, a tactic you used during your time as a dean: criticizing, even belittling them, in public. Did it work?

A: It worked in a limited sense. My response was, look, higher education administrators go hat in hand ... they're always in a begging or petitionary posture, and that just doesn't work. People don't in fact respond well to that, and I found what they did respond well to was confrontation of an aggressive kind.... If you say to state legislators, "You guys don't know what you're talking about! What if I came to your offices and told you within five minutes and without having any experience ... what it is you should be doing, you'd throw me out, laughing me out of the room." Well that's what we should be doing.... "What do you know about 18th-century French poetry? ..."

If you embarrass people ... if you make them afraid of you, you are in a better position than you are if you go to them on your knees. [S]econd, which might seem contradictory ... is that most people who are not in or of the academy are fascinated by it. On the one hand they disdain it in part because they believe the academy disdains them. But on the other hand they would like to be initiated into [its] pleasures.

Q: From your chapter on administration, it seems that in many ways the perspectives of both a faculty member and an administrator can be at odds.

A: There's a great deal of faculty bashing in my book, especially on that point. But I think that university administration is a wonderful, wonderful activity and in fact when I used to go to conferences of administrators ... the word that was most used by those fellow deans or provosts or chancellors or presidents to describe what it is we did ... "it's fun." That might surprise a lot of faculty members, I suspect it would.

Q: As a veteran of the canon battles between proponents of French "theory" and the traditionalists, do you think the outcome has had an impact on the public debate about politics in academe?

A: I think academia is very fundamentally different.... I'm old enough to remember when there were three TV networks, NBC, ABC and CBS. That meant that everybody watched the same thing.... But of course now there are all kinds of television networks and semi-networks and so forth, and everything is diffused. The same thing has happened in the curriculum, at least in the social sciences and the humanities, so that whereas it used to be the case that the same set of texts in relation to relatively the same set of questions was taught everywhere in more or less the same way, now there's an explosion, a tremendous variety. Much less of a mechanism of exclusion.... That's a huge and important change.

And I think in the end, or actually the middle, the theorists won. They won partly because of the statistics of age and death, that is, the new people who were coming into the departments had all been trained in and excited by [theory] and they trained another generation of students.

I believe that to be a beneficial change even though I also believe ... that a lot of people made a mistake when they politicized theory and thought that the lessons of theory could be immediately translated into an agenda that could be actively pursued in the classroom. [T]heory's rise has contributed to the politicization of some classrooms in higher education today. So it's a mixed blessing.

Q: Any parting thoughts on the book as a whole?

A: [I'd like to] rehearse for your readers the three-part mantra which organizes the book: Do your job, don't try to do someone else's job and don't let anyone else do your job. And I think that if we as instructors ... would adhere to that mantra, we would be more responsible in the prosecution of our task and less vulnerable to the criticisms of those who would want to either undermine or control us.

You can read more about political correctness in academe and AAUP policy on the matter at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#PoliticalCorrectness

From the Scout Report on October 2, 2009

VLC Media Player 1.0.2 --- http://www.videolan.org/ 

VLC Media Player just came out of its beta release, and users looking for an open source media player will want to give the program a try. Visitors can use the program to play just about any media file, and they can use the frame-by-frame advancement feature or the live-recording feature as they see fit. The player is fairly simple to use, and it works with a wide range of video and audio formats. This version is compatible with computers running Mac OS 10.5 and newer.

---

Feed Demon 3.0 --- http://www.newsgator.com/ 

So you want to stay up to date with news from the Boston Globe and the New Orleans Times-Picayune and 75 other news outlets as well? Feed Demon 3.0 can make it happen. This recently released edition of the popular RSS news aggregator syncs effectively with Google Reader, and it makes it easy to update your subscriptions and share items with others. Visitors should also note the application's compatibility with Twitter feed reading and tagging features. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 95 and newer.

---

Some policy groups believe that using mobile phones as an economic development tool may be a viable idea A special report on telecoms in emerging markets: Mobile marvels http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14483896 

Communication and Human Development: The Freedom Connection [Quick Time] http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2009/09/idrc 

Mobile Phones for Microfinance [pdf] http://www.cgap.org/p/site/c/template.rc/1.9.2737/

Developing Telecoms: Development Agenda
http://www.developingtelecoms.com/development-agenda/ 

Microcredit from Grameen Bank in Bangladesh: Phone Ladies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VZ9i8NrcsY 

The Role of NSF's Support of Engineering in Enabling Technological Innovation: Chapter 4: The Cellular Telephone http://www.sri.com/policy/csted/reports/sandt/techin2/chp4.html 

When cell phones were first introduced on the mass market, they were considered a luxury item. At first, it was captains of industry and their ilk that responded to the call of constant communication, and later it was concerned parents, hip teenagers, and just about everyone else. In recent years, a number of policy experts have expressed optimism about the role that mobile phones can play in the developing world. This week, The Economist released a special report on mobile phones in emerging markets, and other media outlets, including the New York Times popular "Freakanomics" weblog, have commented on this work. One of the first practical uses of mobile phones as an economic development tool emerged in places like Uganda and Bangladesh. Five years ago, a number of women were set up as "village phone" operators. Essentially, they were selling phone calls to other persons in their village. In some cases, ancillary businesses started up around these tiny call centers. Today, the hope is that farmers can use the phones to get updates on crop conditions and relevant weather matters, and others can use the phones to transfer monies to needy relatives, and so on.

The first link will take readers to the series of special reports on mobile phones from this past week's Economist. Here they will also find an interview with Tom Standage (who composed the reports), along with a videographic illustrating the benefits of mobile phones in the developing world. The second link leads to a video of a panel discussion from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. The panel members include Amartya Sen, Michael Spence, Yochai Benkler, and Clotilde Fonseca. In their discussion they touch on the "explosion of mobile phone use in the developing world", among other topics. The third link will take users to a paper written by Gautam Ivatury and Mark Pickens of the Consulting Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) on the ways in which mobile phones can be used for financial services and microfinance. Moving along, the fourth link leads to the Developing Telecoms' page on the "Development Agenda". Here visitors can read news items related to this subject, and also look through their white papers. The fifth link leads to a video clip about the "phone ladies" in Bangladesh, courtesy of the International Telecommunications Union. Finally, the last link leads to a fascinating report on the history of the development of the cellular telephone from the Center for Science, Technology, and Economic Development.

 

Sharing Professor of the Year
Susan V. Crosson at Santa Fe College is one of the most sharing professors in all of accounting education.
Her extensive free videos are tremendous.

She’s operating out an expanded server at http://dept.sfcollege.edu/business/susan.crosson/

 Other free online videos and textbooks in various disciplines (including accounting, economics, finance, and statistics) ---  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

Education Tutorials

Video:  Learn the new (RSS) way to view the news you are most interested in from your favorite news sites ---  www.commoncraft.com  has a “RSS in Plain English” video
This great link was forwarded by Mary Jo Sanz [MSANZ@BENTLEY.EDU]
Also see Nanoscale --- http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/NR/

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

National Science Foundation: Current Newsletter ---  http://www.nsf.gov/news/newsletter/

Irish Architecture Foundation --- http://www.architecturefoundation.ie/

"Mystery of fish mercury levels solved," by Helen Altonn, Star Bulletin, September 22, 2009 ---
http://www.starbulletin.com/news/20090922_Mystery_of_fish_mercury_levels_solved.html 

Hawaii researchers have solved the puzzle of why different species of fish in the ocean have different levels of mercury, even though they are the same size.

"It has to do with where they are feeding in the water column and what they're eating," said Anela Choy, University of Hawaii-Manoa oceanography graduate student who does consulting work with the seafood industry.

Choy led the study with Brian Popp, a UH Department of Geology and Geophysics professor; Jeff Drazen, Department of Oceanography associate professor; and John Kaneko, project director at Pacific Management Resources, known as PacMar Inc.

Mercury is a natural trace element in the environment that has never been associated with toxicity in Hawaii's ocean fish, said Kaneko, whose research focuses on public health.

But methylmercury, an organic form of the mineral converted by bacteria, can be toxic if eaten at high levels by animals or people.

Kaneko said the new research supports evidence that mercury in open-ocean fish is naturally occurring from deep-ocean processes.

The researchers suspected from other work that deeper-ocean animals and predatory fishes might have more mercury, and studies of almost 200 fish collected from longline and recreational fishermen confirmed that, Choy said.

Their findings were published in the Aug. 18 edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Choy said they looked at mercury levels in tissues of the fish and what was in their stomach when they were caught.

Large fish such as bigeye tuna and swordfish that feed deeper in the ocean have higher mercury levels than yellowfin tuna and mahimahi, which live in shallower water, the team found. That is because they are feeding on fish, squid and shrimp with higher mercury levels, Choy said.

Popp said what was surprising was the difference between yellowfin and bigeye tuna. "The significance (of the study) is there is more to it than simply the size and age of the fish," he said. "There's an ecological cause to mercury content and the depth at which they're feeding."

Kaneko said there is an assumption that mercury in open-ocean fish is directly related to atmospheric mercury emissions and pollution, but there is no evidence of that.

Studies done in 1971 and again in 1998 on the amount of mercury in Hawaii yellowfin tuna showed no differences despite a 26 percent increase in atmospheric mercury emissions, he said.

The researchers are not sure where mercury enters the food web, Drazen said. "It makes sense that it enters down in deep waters, but we haven't actually looked at mercury in plankton, for instance, consumed by little fish and shrimp. We have to look at lower levels of the food web."

Kaneko said there is substantial scientific evidence that high levels of selenium in ocean fish counteract toxic levels of mercury. Selenium, also a natural element, has antioxidant functions and is known to bind to mercury, he said. "When those two elements bind together, they're biologically inert.

"What we're finding, in some research we're just finishing now, is it's the ratios of mercury to selenium that is more important than the amount of mercury in fish," Kaneko added.

Choy said the research will be expanded and include chemical techniques to see "who's eating who in the open ocean. The fish that end up on our dinner table we don't really know too much about now. It's important to understand their ecology and how they're connected."

Bob Jensen's threads on free online science, engineering, and medicine tutorials are at --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science

Social Science and Economics Tutorials

Governing Sourcebook --- http://sourcebook.governing.com/ 

Video:  Learn the new (RSS) way to view the news you are most interested in from your favorite news sites ---  www.commoncraft.com  has a “RSS in Plain English” video
This great link was forwarded by Mary Jo Sanz [MSANZ@BENTLEY.EDU]
Also see Nanoscale --- http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/NR/

A Course in Game Theory ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/a-course-in-game-theory-martin-j-osborne/

African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts --- http://www.masshist.org/endofslavery/?queryID=61

Images of the Antislavery Movement in Massachusetts --- http://www.masshist.org/online/abolition.cfm

"Pornography and You," by Rebecca Hagelin, Townhall, September 22, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/RebeccaHagelin/2009/09/22/pornography_and_you 

Doom and Gloom
Video From CNN: Julian Robertson Discusses The US Debt And Upcoming Inflation Expectations ---
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/julian-robertson-discusses-us-debt-and-upcoming-inflation-expectations

Video:  David Dreman Warns About 10-12% Inflation, Simoleon Sense, August 5, 2009 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/videodavid-dreman-warns-about-10-12-inflation/

History & Policy --- http://www.historyandpolicy.org/index.html 

The Torture Archive --- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torture_archive/index.htm

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

The Torture Archive --- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torture_archive/index.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law

Math Tutorials

A Course in Game Theory ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/a-course-in-game-theory-martin-j-osborne/

The Mathematical Association of America: Podcast Center ---
http://www.maa.org/audio clips/podcast/podcast.html

Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics

History Tutorials

LIFE (photos) in Israel in 1948 – Part 1 --- http://benatlas.com/2009/07/life-in-israel-in-1948-part-1/

Make History: National September 11 Memorial & Museum --- http://makehistory.national911memorial.org/ 

Irish Architecture Foundation --- http://www.architecturefoundation.ie/

Amazing Facts About Israel (video) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxK6OwIpK5o

Escape Maps in WW II --- http://www.mapforum.com/04/escape.htm#3

History & Policy --- http://www.historyandpolicy.org/index.html 

African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts --- http://www.masshist.org/endofslavery/?queryID=61

Images of the Antislavery Movement in Massachusetts --- http://www.masshist.org/online/abolition.cfm

Blueprint America --- http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/

The Torture Archive --- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torture_archive/index.htm

Food Timeline --- http://www.foodtimeline.org/index.html

University of Washington Digital Collections: Menus Collection
http://content.lib.washington.edu/menusweb/index.html

University of Wisconsin Digital Collections: Marinette County Local History http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/WI/subcollections/MarinetteLocHistAbout.html

Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm  

Language Tutorials

Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages

Music Tutorials

Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music

Writing Tutorials

Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries

Updates from WebMD --- http://www.webmd.com/

September 24, 2009

• New Drug May Treat Pancreatic Cancer
• AIDS Vaccine Success Is 'Modest'
• Does Vitamin D Protect Against High BP?
• Nexavar May Treat Advanced Breast Cancer
• Spider Venom for Erectile Dysfunction?
• Erbitux Helps Treat Advanced Lung Cancer
• Some Children's, Infants' Tylenol Recalled
• Flu Shot Beats Flu Spray for Young Adults
• Half of Americans Want Swine Flu Shots
• Can Early Treatment With Azilect Slow Parkinson's?

September 26, 2009

• Xenical and Alli: Liver Risk?
• FDA OKs Sabril to Treat Infantile Spasms
• FDA OKs New Schizophrenia, Bipolar Drug
• Livalo, a New Statin, Gets FDA Nod
• New Type 2 Diabetes Drug Onglyza Approved
• Salmonella Risk Spurs Romaine Lettuce Recall
• 4 Weight Loss Products Recalled
• FDA Checking Heart Risk of Xolair
• Medtronic Recalls Insulin Infusion Sets
• Salmonella Risk Spurs Nature Valley Recall

September 28, 2009

• U.S. Swine Flu Vaccinations Start Oct. 6
• Tamiflu for Kids: Confusing Dosage Can Harm
• Secrets to Microwaving a Healthy Hot Dog
• Januvia, Janumet to Note Pancreatitis Cases
• Pregnant Woman Pregnant Again? Maybe Not
• FDA OKs New Psoriasis Drug Stelara
• Limited Willpower Can Affect Your Workout
• Spider Venom for Erectile Dysfunction?
• Some Children's, Infants' Tylenol Recalled
• New Drug May Treat Pancreatic Cancer

September 29, 2009

• High Heels Today, Foot Pain Tomorrow
• More Women Choose to Remove Noncancerous Breasts
• Growth Charts Stump Parents
• Gene Variant Raises Crohn's Disease Risk
• Unpopular in School, Unhealthy Later?
• Weight Loss Helps Sleep Apnea
• Diabetes May Affect Women's Heart Rhythm
• Tamiflu for Kids: Confusing Dosage Can Harm
• Secrets to Microwaving a Healthy Hot Dog
• Januvia, Janumet to Note Pancreatitis Cases

September 30, 2009

• Estrogen May Improve Colon Cancer Survival
• Women's Weight Tied to Healthy Aging
• High Heels Today, Foot Pain Tomorrow
• Few Eating Enough Fruits, Veggies
• Gene Variant Raises Crohn's Disease Risk
• More Women Choose to Remove Noncancerous Breasts
• Diabetes May Affect Women's Heart Rhythm
• Weight Loss Helps Sleep Apnea
• Growth Charts Stump Parents
• Unpopular in School, Unhealthy Later?

October 1, 2009

• Only 1/3 in U.S. Plan to Get Swine Flu Vaccine
• Breast Cancer Deaths Drop Again
• CDC: Alarming Increase in Methadone Deaths
• Strep Throat: No Tourette's Link Seen
• Bacteria Have Role in Swine Flu Deaths
• Treat Gestational Diabetes for Baby's Sake
• Estrogen May Improve Colon Cancer Survival
• High Heels Today, Foot Pain Tomorrow
• Few Eating Enough Fruits, Veggies
• Women's Weight Tied to Healthy Aging

October 2, 2009

• 100 Worst Cities for Fall Allergies
• Low-Cost Drugs Prevent Heart Attack, Stroke
• IUD Mirena OK'd to Treat Heavy Menstrual Bleeding
• Gene Linked to Longer, Skinnier Life
• Living to 100 to Become Common?
• Heart Defects, Mom's Weight May Be Linked
• Study: Chantix Has Little or No Suicide Risk
• 28 Pregnant Women Dead From H1N1 Swine Flu in U.S.
• Strep Throat: No Tourette's Link Seen
• Only 1/3 in U.S. Plan to Get Swine Flu Vaccine

A Dubious Honor:  San Antonio ranks number 12 out of the top 100
"McAllen, Texas, Tops the Asthma and Allergy Foundation's 2009 List of Fall Allergy Capitals," by Miranda Hitti, WebMD, October 2, 2009 --- http://www.webmd.com/allergies/news/20091002/100-worst-cities-for-fall-allergies

1.             McAllen, Texas
2.             Wichita, Kan.
3.             Louisville, Ky.
4.             Oklahoma City
5.             Jackson, Miss.
6.             Dayton, Ohio
7.             Augusta, Ga.
8.             Tulsa, Okla.
9.             Knoxville, Tenn.
10.             Little Rock, Ark.
11.             Madison, Wis.
12.             San Antonio, TX
13.             Dallas
14.             New Orleans
15.             Baton Rouge, La.
16.             Charlotte, N.C.
17.             St. Louis
18.             Birmingham, Ala.
19.             El Paso, Texas
20.             Virginia Beach, Va.
21.             Memphis, Tenn.
22.             Chattanooga, Tenn.
23.             Des Moines, Iowa
24.             Austin, Texas
25.             Greensboro, N.C.