Winter roared in like a lion
Mt. Washington Summit Conditions at 5:56 AM, Dec. 17
Temp = -20.3°F
Steady Wind = 77.3 mph
Wind Gust = 85.2 mph
Wind Chill = -66.0°F
World Record 231 mph Wind ---
http://www.mountwashington.org/about/visitor/recordwind.php
Current Conditions ---
http://www.mountwashington.org/weather/
Now all the leaves are gone from this big
maple tree behind our cottage,
but before it was covered in snow it looked like this
Now it looks naked and cold
Dreaming of a white Christmas
16 years ago in our San Antonio house
These were the beautiful walnut and oak
trees behind the home of my parents in Algona, Iowa
The squirrels loved the walnuts and acorns
Bob in Iowa the year my father died.
At one time in Iowa, Cousin Don Jenson and
his wife LaDonna had a llama in the same pasture with their big horses
Below is a picture of LaDonna, Cousin Don, and our daughter Lisl
These are Don's two buggy horses plus his team of big beautiful Percherons
Don and LaDonna also have a useless and
loveable
Newfoundland named Tiny
Here's Lisl with Tiny
The pictures below were sent by Auntie Bev.
They're completely self explanatory.
It's now been proven that
Frosty the Snowman was a victim of global
warming.
Santa Wishing You a White Christmas ---
http://www.aroundmd.com/whitechristmas/
The Annual Ashland University Christmas ---
http://ecard.ashland.edu/
Ashland's Interactive Silent Night (follow the instructions) ---
http://ecard.ashland.edu/index.php?ecardYear=2004adm
Christmas Blessings Slide Show ---
Click Here
Christmas in Arlington Cemetery ---
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/
Video: Awaken, Oh America ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fzKY0hS_Pw
Tidbits on December 17, 2009
Bob Jensen
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/.
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
CPA
Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
World Clock and World Facts ---
http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf
U.S. Debt/Deficit Clock ---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Free Residential and Business Telephone Directory (you must listen to an
opening advertisement) --- dial 800-FREE411 or 800-373-3411
Free Online Telephone Directory ---
http://snipurl.com/411directory [www_public-records-now_com]
Free online 800 telephone numbers ---
http://www.tollfree.att.net/tf.html
Google Free Business Phone Directory --- 800-goog411
To find names addresses from listed phone numbers, go to
www.google.com and read in the phone number without spaces, dashes, or
parens
Daily News Sites for Accountancy, Tax, Fraud, IFRS, XBRL, Accounting
History, and More ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Education Technology Search ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Distance Education Search ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Search for Listservs, Blogs, and Social Networks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
Bob Jensen's essay on the financial crisis bailout's aftermath and an alphabet soup of
appendices can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
The Master List of Free
Online College Courses ---
http://universitiesandcolleges.org/
-
- I see from my house by the side of the road
- By the side of the highway of life,
- The men who press with the ardor of hope,
- The men who are faint with the strife,
- But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,
- Both parts of an infinite plan-
- Let me live in a house by the side of the road
- And be a friend to man.
Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911)
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbitsdirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New
Bookmarks go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
On May 14, 2006 I retired from Trinity University after a long
and wonderful career as an accounting professor in four universities. I was
generously granted "Emeritus" status by the Trustees of Trinity University. My
wife and I now live in a cottage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm
Bob Jensen's blogs and various threads on many topics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
(Also scroll down to the table at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ )
Global Incident Map ---
http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php
If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops ---
http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
The Rat Pack Plus Johnny Carson ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=VPH0-g25Vl8
Thank you Paula
Video: Amazing portable computer ----
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=7H0K1k54t6A
Thank you Glen Gray
Swiss Army (PomeGranate) Phone ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e4X10hOh9o
Video: Awaken, Oh America ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fzKY0hS_Pw
The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning
---
Click Here
Sarah Palin on The Tonight Show w/Conan O'Brien & William
Shatner 12/11/09 ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zKtR2aSj-0
Santa Wishing You a White Christmas ---
http://www.aroundmd.com/whitechristmas/
20 Years After: Life Beyond Communism in Central & Eastern
Europe [Flash Player] ---
http://20years.tol.org/
The Annual Ashland University Christmas ---
http://ecard.ashland.edu/
Ashland's Interactive Silent Night (follow the instructions) ---
http://ecard.ashland.edu/index.php?ecardYear=2004adm
Thank you Eileen
Video: Medieval Tech Support ---
http://www.flixxy.com/medieval-tech-support.htm
Tech support helpers must've pulled their hair out in days of old as well as
today. Adult parents cannot always do things that their young children just do
intuitively.
Actual Tech Support Diaries (from the New York Journal) ---
http://www.quit-smoking.net/life-support/humor-computer.html
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Dogged by Christmas Video
A doggy Christmas surprise - Karácsonyi kutyás meglepetés ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUtPKbMwnRo
Auntie Bev forwarded this music video ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KhSMKfU8HE
Those Old Westerns ---
http://oldfortyfives.com/thoseoldwesterns.htm
Inflation or Deflation (country music humor) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fq2ga4HkGY&NR=1
Video: Awaken, Oh America ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fzKY0hS_Pw
NPR's Choices for the Best Recordings of the
Decade ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=37&agg=1
Boston Symphony Orchestra Podcasts [iTunes] ---
http://www.bso.org/bso/mods/toc_01_gen_noSubCat.jsp?id=bcat12650019
Schubert's Desolate 'Winter Journey' ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120965770
The Rat Pack Plus Johnny Carson ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=VPH0-g25Vl8
Dance Magazine ---
http://www.dancemagazine.com/
Web outfits like
Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content
that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2
TheRadio (my favorite commercial-free
online music site) ---
http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) ---
http://www.slacker.com/
Gerald Trites likes this
international radio site ---
http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:
Search for a song or band and play the selection ---
http://songza.com/
Also try Jango ---
http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let it play through) ---
http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live ---
http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note U.S. Army Band recordings
---
http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp
Bob Jensen listens to music free online (and no commercials)
---
http://www.slacker.com/
Photographs and Art
Banned Political Photographs (Slide Show) ---
Click Here
Sitters, artists and photographers talking
(portrait painters) ---
http://www.npg.org.uk/learning/digital/Sitters-artists-and-photographers-talking.php
Australian Antarctic Magazine ---
http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=2006
Zeppelin Eureka ---
http://home.comcast.net/~bzee1b/Zeppelin/Zeppelin.html
Dance Magazine ---
http://www.dancemagazine.com/
Chinese Anti-Malaria Posters ---
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/chineseantimalaria/
Photographs of Frank B. Snyder ---
http://digital.lib.muohio.edu/snyder/
Banned Political Photographs (Slide Show) ---
Click Here
Art for whose sake? ---
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/613045c0-da21-11de-b2d5-00144feabdc0.html
Artnet: The Art World Online ---
http://www.artnet.com/
ArtTactic [iTunes] ---
http://www.arttactic.com/
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various
types electronic literature available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
The Digital Locke Project (John Locke) ---
http://www.digitallockeproject.nl/
The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning
---
Click Here
John Donne (metaphysics, poetry, philosophy) ---
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers'
Project, 1936-1940 ---
http://memory.loc.gov/wpaintro/wpahome.html
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain Digital Archive at Bowdoin College
(Longfellow) ---
http://learn.bowdoin.edu/joshua-lawrence-chamberlain/
Message from my good neighbors who have lived in France,
Germany, and Thailand among other parts of the world
Hi All,
I just read this very thoughtful presentation of the cultural and economic
changes in France. Our friend, Duke, spoke often of these issues, and now
Michael Steinberger has written a coherent, well-researched, and clearly
written discussion of the changes in France over the past twenty-five years.
When Steinberger was interviewed on the Diane Rehm show, I was very
impressed with his ideas - - even though many saddened me greatly! The book
begins with a brief, but detailed history of French cuisine. Following
chapters include the pros and cons of the Michelin Guide, changes in the
wine and cheese industries (thanks, in part to government intervention), and
competition among chefs in France as well as the rising popularity of other
countries who now present good food beautifully and imaginatively, use local
ingredients, and serve local as well as international tastes. Another
intriguing chapter deals with the difficult beginning and then meteoric rise
of the popularity of McDonald’s. Steinberger spent many hours of his
research interviewing chefs and others involved with his topics. An
extensive bibliography and index are included. I highly recommend this book.
Let me know what you think …
Eileen
Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine, and the End of
France, Michael Steinberger. New York: Bloomsbury,
2009.
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations Between December7-17,
2009
To Accompany the November 10, 2009 edition of Tidbits
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2009/tidbits091217Quotations.htm
You might want to disable JavaScript in your Adobe Acrobat
Reader until Adobe figures out a security patch ---
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/12/hackers_target_unpatched_adobe.html?wprss=securityfix
The New York Times Magazine publishes once a year the
“years in ideas,” by Dan Ariely, MIT's Technology Review, December
15, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/post.aspx?bid=355&bpid=24531&nlid=2605
I found the "Drunken Ultimatum" to be particularly interesting.
Comeback America: Turning The Country Around and Restoring
Fiscal Responsibility
On January 12th, 2010, Random House will publish a new book by David M. Walker,
President & CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and former Comptroller
General of the United States.
Comeback America: Turning The Country Around and
Restoring Fiscal Responsibility discusses a range of illustrative
policy, operational and political reforms, including budget controls, health
care, entitlement, tax, and defense changes.
David M. Walker (my hero) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Walker_(U.S._Comptroller_General)
The book is available for pre-order through a variety of online sources. Mr.
Walker has donated the proceeds from this book to the
Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
Bob Jensen's threads on pending collapse of the United States ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/entitlements.htm
The "Burning Platform" of the United States Empire
Former Chief Accountant of the United States, David Walker, is spreading the
word as widely as possible in the United States about the looming threat of our
unbooked entitlements. Two videos that feature David Walker's warnings are as
follows:
David Walker claims the U.S. economy is on a "burning platform" but does not
go into specifics as to what will be left in the ashes.
The US government
is on a “burning platform” of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal
deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military
commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon.
David M. Walker,
Former Chief Accountant of the United States ---
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/quinn/2009/0218.html
David Walker was appointed by President Clinton as Comptroller
General of the United States and served in that position for a decade before
taking his campaign to save America on the road.
"Obama Addresses Growing National Debt," SmartPros,
December 9, 2009 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x68358.xml
Call it the fatal arithmetic of imperial
decline. Without radical fiscal reform, it could apply to America next.
Niall Ferguson,
"An Empire at Risk: How Great Powers Fail," Newsweek Magazine
Cover Story, November 26, 2009 ---
http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/page/1
Please note that this is NBC’s liberal Newsweek Magazine and not Fox News
or The Wall Street Journal.
.
. .
In other words, there
is no end in sight to the borrowing binge. Unless entitlements are cut or taxes
are raised, there will never be another balanced budget. Let's assume I live
another 30 years and follow my grandfathers to the grave at about 75. By 2039,
when I shuffle off this mortal coil, the federal debt held by the public will
have reached 91 percent of GDP, according to the CBO's extended baseline
projections. Nothing to worry about, retort -deficit-loving economists like Paul
Krugman.
.
. .
Another way of doing
this kind of exercise is to calculate the net present value of the unfunded
liabilities of the Social Security and Medicare systems. One recent estimate
puts them at about $104 trillion,
10 times the stated federal debt.
Continued in article ---
http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/page/1
Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch
professor of history at Harvard University and the author of The Ascent of
Money. In late 2009 he puts forth an unbooked discounted present
value liability of $104 trillion for Social Security plus Medicare. In late
2008, the former Chief Accountant of the United States Government, placed this
estimate at$43 trillion. We can hardly attribute the $104-$43=$61 trillion
difference to President Obama's first year in office. We must accordingly
attribute the $61 trillion to margin of error and most economists would
probably put a present value of unbooked (off-balance-sheet) present value of
Social Security and Medicare debt to be somewhere between $43 trillion and $107
trillion To this we must add other unbooked present value of entitlement debt
estimates which range from $13 trillion to $40 trillion. If Obamacare passes it
will add untold trillions to trillions more because our legislators are not
looking at entitlements beyond 2019.
A couple of 2007 email comments on December 11, 2009 by Townhall Spotlight
[townhallmessage@TownHallmail.com]
"Overlooking Biscayne Bay in Miami Beach, I was
looking at the strippers by the pool, having a beer with some old friends...
"One friend told me: "I'm making a killing in the
mortgage business. There's this firm in New York called Bear Stearns. These
guys are f***ing stupid. They will buy any mortgage I sell them..."
Jensen Comment
It's impossible for me to believe that Bear Stearns and the other investment
banks like Merrill Lynch were "f***ing stupid."
Wall Street knew it was buying poisoned mortgages (the poison was added
on Main Street where mortgages were being handed to borrows with no hopes of
making the payments). Bare Sterns, Merrill Lynch and the other buyers (smart as
foxes) just hoped to pass the poison on by slicing up the poisoned mortgages by
reassembling diversified pieces (the Gaussian Copula formula) in tainted CDO
tranches before passing along the deadly mortgage investments in small pieces to
their customers. In turn, Moody's sold AAA ratings on those poisoned tranches
knowing full well that the tranches were deadly. And the CPA auditors simply
"overlooked" substantive testing tranches and internal controls.
Now the credit rating firms and CPA auditors are now being sued by
shareholders that lost everything in the Wall Street and other banks like
Washington Mutual and Wachovia. Bank of America purportedly did not play this
game but purportedly was "forced" by Hank Paulson to buy the poisoned Merrill
Lynch that did not get all its tranches unloaded. And there are no investment
banks left on Wall Street.
Bob Jensen's threads on all the sub-prime mortgage sleaze of Main Street
poisons and Wall Street con games are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Sleaze
This link was forwarded to me by David Albrecht
Visualizing Spatial and Social Attributes on Distorted World Maps
Beerkens' Blog, Januiary 16, 2007 ---
http://blog.beerkens.info/index.php/2007/01/the-world-according-to-maps/
The
Spatial and
Social Inequalities Research Group of the
Geography Department at the
University of Sheffield
have created an interesting website.
Worldmapper: the world
as you’ve never seen it before. It is a collection
of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the
subject of interest. I played around a bit, creating maps reflecting the
participation in higher education, the amount
higher education spending and the
scientific research in terms of the number of
scientific articles. Unsurprisingly, this creates maps where the US, Europe
and East Asia is dominating. However, if you compare it with a
population map, it’s clear that the dominance is
especially in North America, Europe and Japan.
However, if we look at the maps (click for
enlargements) that show the growth in higher education spending and the
growth in scientific research over the period 1990-2001, we see some
interesting things.
-
Australia has basically vanished from the face
of the earth, in terms of the growth in spending on higher ed. It
looks like it has to illustrate a negative value. Some other
countries where growth is not keeping up are the Netherlands and the
UK.
-
The map on
higher education spending already shows
that Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore already spent relatively much
on higher education. The map on the growth of spending shows that
these countries’ increasingly see higher education as a priority.
-
Singapore’s fixation with the emerging
knowledge economy seems to bear fruit. Singapore had the greatest
per person increase in scientific publications.
-
In terms of scientific growth, nearly the
whole continent of Africa seems to be swept of the map. But also a
populous country like Indonesia has turned from a string of islands
into a nearly invisible line.
Bob Jensen's threads on multivariate data visualization are at
Visualization of Multivariate Data (including faces) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm
Dartmouth College Fraternity Toast to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Lying, Stealing, Cheating, and Drinking
If you're going to lie, lie to a pretty girl.
If you're going to steal, steal from bad company.
If you're going to cheat, cheat death.
If you're going to drink, drink with me.
"What's right about fraternities," Chronicle of Higher Education, Back
Cover, December 11, 2009, Page A76
By Ben O'Donnell, 2008 graduate of Dartmouth College
http://chronicle.com/article/Whats-Right-With-Fraternities/49331/
Attitudes toward women, class, and exclusion are
more entrenched in fraternity culture at some universities and must be dealt
with in a nuanced way from house to house. Student-aid policies within
houses would deal with the latter two issues, as membership dues are often
prohibitively expensive for students on financial aid, especially at
national fraternities whose corporate headquarters take a cut of the money.
Colleges must also match their fraternity spaces with equally robust
sorority and coeducational ones so that women have an alternative to
frequenting frat parties on frat terms.
Ultimately, however, universities should accept
that there is value in what a fraternity essentially is: a place where, yes,
guys can be guys; where rituals, power games, performances, competitions,
friendships, and self-regulation can be played out; a community in which
identities are cultivated. Here, in rooms of their own, young men may
sometimes thumb their noses at the dictates of grown-ups, but they also grow
up themselves.
On the surface, the cheers, the chants, and the
frat lore can seem like silly stuff, and, indeed, some frat boys do just end
up fat, drunk, and stupid. But most brothers graduate with valuable
experiences in the burdens and bonds of tradition, responsibility, and
especially camaraderie. Not such bad things to take away from an
undergraduate education and into society.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
One thing I learned while living in a fraternity house my second year of college
was that "fraternity men" and "sorority women" never said "frat" instead of
"fraternity." It's a little like when I lived eight years near San Francisco and
discovered that it was not gosh to say "Frisco."
My experience in a fraternity was that there was just too much Mickey Mouse
stuff that was only partly balanced by the great lessons in manners at dining
tables (we had to wear suits and ties for every dinner except on Friday nights),
manners with women (you always stood tall when one entered a room and never left
one standing alone without a conversation partner), and lessons in bridge (only
farmers double or redouble).
I resigned from the fraternity when the President of our fraternity asked me
to share my answers with him on an examination. He was a cool and handsome and
sincere friend who was dumb as a fence post. I also found the fraternity too
time consuming and too stressful for a guy like me who had to study day and
night for top grades. Most of the time it didn't come real easy for me.
You can read about my first year of college at the following link:
Short story entitled
Mrs. Applegate's Boarding House (with Navy pictures)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2007/tidbits070723.htm
December 13, 2009 reply from Will Yancey
Bob,
It is even more complicated. When I was at
Dartmouth in 1974-1978, I was in a coed house. The male and female members
were all “ bro’ “. The women did not want to be differentiated. Every year
we had marriages between male and female bro’ --- and most of them are still
married to each other. At that time, it was cheaper to live in a frat house
than in college housing.
Best wishes,
Will
Dr. Will Yancey, CPA
Email will@willyancey.com
Bravo Syracuse University
"To Get This Grant, Students Have to Take 'Personal Finances 101," by
Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 6, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/To-Get-This-Grant-Students/49325/
Excel's New Power Pivot
December 9, 2009 message from
AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU
This is a free add-in from Microsoft for Excel 2010
Below are some videos discussing this powerful
tool.
http://www.powerpivot.com/videos.aspx
Richard J. Campbell School of Business 218 N.
College Ave. University of Rio Grande Rio Grande, OH 45674
Voice:740-245-7288
http://faculty.rio.edu/campbell
Bob Jensen's video helpers for Excel and MS Access ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/
Chile: The "Chicago Boys" Experiment in Real Life
It is widely known that the Chicago School (in economics, finance, accounting,
and business in general) was profoundly influenced by the free market/low
taxation scholarship of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman (along with some
other offshoots such as the University of Virginia and George Mason University)
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman
Last night on December 9, 2009
ABC News
did a feature on the amazing successes of Chile vis-a-vis the rest of the
Western Hemisphere. Chile became a laboratory study for the Chicago School
theory of free markets. Unfortunately in some respects, the experiment was
based, for a short but crucial period, on the brutal and vicious dictatorship of
Augusto Pinochet
But now Dictator Pinochet is history and the current economic Chilean success
in economic growth coupled with reducing unemployment and poverty has made the
"Chicago Boys" more credible ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys
December 10, 2009 reply from Leonardo
[ltorresh@FEN.UCHILE.CL]
It's interesting to look at our local experience,
because around the world we appear as a capitalist and succesfull country,
as Chicago Boys changed our economic system. But I think that it is just a
part of the tale. If we study the chilean's wealth distribution it's clear
that the growth is concentrated in the 20% of the population. But it's
better to show the good face of the model. Chile is the first Southamerican
country adopting integrally the International Financial Reporting
Standard(IFRS). USA hasn't adopted it yet. Are we a more developed country?
Or is it another experiment for the neoliberal model?
Leonardo Torres
Universidad de Chile
December 10, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen
Thank you for the prompt and interesting reply Leonardo,
I'm curious about the "20%" comment. Clearly, in any capitalist system
there will be a variations in wealth, because the entire basis of capitalism
is to provide differential rewards for financial risk taking and returns
from inventions and innovations. One would expect the top 20% to thrive
better on average because they have more to invest.
One would hope that the Chilean Dream becomes the American Dream where
the poorest people in society have an opportunity to become the wealthiest
citizens.
One worry is that eventually wealthy capitalists become
robber barons destroying all competition in the capitalist system that
allowed them to become immensely wealthy, thereby destroying the competitive
system from within. Another drawback is that capitalism cannot seem to avoid ups and downs of
the economic cycle with its booms and bust periods. There are going to be
downturns that become painful.
The strong argument of the Chicago School that "greed is good"
in the context of how well off everybody becomes with higher economic
growth. Chile has "poor people," but we would hope that Chile’s "poor
people" on average are better off than most other developing nations.
The ABC News clip stresses how both poverty and unemployment have been
greatly reduced in Chile relative to other South and Latin American
countries. Are Chile’s poor doing relatively better as a result of the
Chicago Boys?
What nation south of the United States is doing more for its poor and
unemployed than Chile under the Chicago Boys in the past ten years?
It seems to me that the Chicago Boys experiment in Chile seems to be
working better to help the poor than all other Marxist experiments (that
never truly were able to eliminate that top 20% and offered less of a dream
to be lifted from poverty into the top 20%).
Chile is a most interesting study for the future, because it will put
democracy and capitalism to the test of sustainability. It is possible that
capitalism and socialism can only be sustained by dictatorship.
The problem with democracy is that special interest groups keep voting
themselves grabs at the public treasury.
The budget should be balanced, the Treasury
should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom
should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be
curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of
living on public assistance.
Taylor Caldwell, A Pillar of
Iron (wrongly attributed to
Cicero in 55 B.C.)
Bob Jensen
Chile’s youngest citizens have developed a serious case of political
apathy
When Gen. Augusto Pinochet held a referendum on his
rule in 1988, a surge of young voters was the decisive difference in
emphatically turning the country toward democracy. But as Chileans head to the
polls on Sunday, with the fate of the 20-year old governing coalition in the
balance, young voters are not likely to play a major role. Even as its democracy
has matured and its steady economic management has become the envy of Latin
America, Chile’s youngest citizens have developed a serious case of political
apathy. Just 9.2 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds are registered to vote on Sunday,
the lowest number for a presidential election since democracy was restored in
1990, and slightly lower than the percentage registered in 2005 when Chileans
elected Michelle Bachelet, the first woman to become president. She is not
allowed to seek a second consecutive term under the Constitution. “I hope that 9
percent becomes zero percent,” said Gonzalo Castillo, an 18-year-old history
major at the University of Chile, who said he refused to register. “All the
candidates represent the interests of the oligarchy, of big business interests.”
Alexei Barrionuevo, "Chile’s ‘Children of Democracy’ Sitting Out
Presidential Election," The New York Times, December 12, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/world/americas/13chile.html?hpw
American Economist and Nobel Prize Winning Paul Samuelson died on December
13, 2009 ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Samuelson
Among many other things, his textbook was perhaps the all-time best selling
economics textbooks. Students in my generation were weaned on Samuelson who, in
my viewpoint, was a fence sitter, albeit a scholarly fence sitter, with respect
to economic theory. He was a mathematician with hundreds of scholarly papers in
his craft.
Stanislaw Ulam once challenged Samuelson to name
one theory in all of the social sciences which is both true and nontrivial.
Several years later, Samuelson responded with
David Ricardo's theory of
comparative advantage: That it is logically true
need not be argued before a mathematician; that is not trivial is attested
by the thousands of important and intelligent men who have never been able
to grasp the doctrine for themselves or to believe it after it was explained
to them.
"Why Everyone Read Samuelson: The late Nobel laureate's mathematical
approach to economics has been a mixed blessing," by Professor David R.
Henderson, The Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704869304574595823818190240.html
Three years after World War II drew to a close, a
young professor at MIT published "Foundations of Economic Analysis." Its
mathematical approach to economics would revolutionize the profession. And
its author, Paul Samuelson, would go on to earn many awards and honors,
culminating in 1970, when he won the Nobel Prize in economics—the second
year it was awarded. Samuelson died on Sunday at the age of 94.
His influence has been profound, but the
mathematization of economics has been a mixed blessing. The downside is that
the math hurdle in leading U.S. economics programs is now so high that
people who grasp the power of economic concepts to explain human behavior
are losing out in the competition to mathematicians.
The upside is that Samuelson sometimes used math to
resolve issues that had not been resolved at a theoretical level for
decades. As fellow Nobel laureate Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago
said in a 1982 interview, "He'll take these incomprehensible verbal debates
that go on and on and just end them; formulate the issue in such a way that
the question is answerable, and then get the answer."
For instance, Swedish economist Bertil Ohlin had
argued that international trade would tend to equalize the prices of factors
of production. Trade between, say, India and the United States would narrow
wage-rate differentials between the two countries. Samuelson, using
mathematical tools, showed the conditions under which the differentials
would be driven to zero: It's called the Factor Price Equalization Theorem.
He contributed fundamental insights in consumer
theory and welfare economics, international trade, finance theory, capital
theory, general equilibrium and macroeconomics. In finance theory, which he
took up at age 50, Samuelson did some of the initial work that showed that
properly anticipated futures prices should fluctuate randomly.
Economists had long believed that there were goods
that would be hard for the private sector to provide because of the
difficulty of charging those who benefit from them. National defense is one
of the best examples of such a good. In the 1954 Review of Economics and
Statistics, Samuelson gave a rigorous definition of a public good that is
still standard in the literature.
"Let those who will write the nation's laws if I
can write its textbooks," Samuelson said during a speech at Trinity
University in San Antonio, Texas. He revised his own widely read textbook,
"Economics," about every three years since 1948. One of the best and
punchiest statements in the 1970 edition was his comment about a proposal to
raise the minimum wage from its existing level of $1.45 an hour to $2.00 an
hour: "What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay
him $2.00 an hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps
him from getting a job?"
This is the kind of comment that causes many on the
left to grit their teeth; and yet Samuelson was a liberal Keynesian and the
best-known rival of the late libertarian monetarist, Milton Friedman. The
two men respected each other highly, but the intellectual influence was
mainly one way. Over time, Samuelson came more to Friedman's views,
especially on monetary policy.
In the 1948 edition of his textbook, Samuelson
wrote dismissively, "few economists regard Federal Reserve monetary policy
as a panacea for controlling the business cycle.'' But in the 1967 edition,
he wrote that monetary policy had "an important influence'' on total
spending. In the 1985 edition, Samuelson and co-author William Nordaus (of
Yale) would write, "Money is the most powerful and useful tool that
macroeconomic policymakers have,'' and the Fed "is the most important
factor'' in making policy.
Paul Samuelson began teaching at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in 1940 at the age of 26 and remained there,
publishing on average almost one technical paper a month for over 50 years.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, he also earned the John Bates Clark Award in
1947, awarded for the most outstanding work by an economist under age 40. He
was president of the American Economic Association in 1961.
Samuelson, like Milton Friedman, had a regular
column in Newsweek (from 1966 to 1981). Unlike Friedman, he did not have a
passionate belief in free markets—or, for that matter, in government
intervention in markets. His pleasure seemed to come from providing new
proofs, demonstrating technical finesse, turning a clever phrase, and
understanding the world better.
But not always. Samuelson had an amazingly tin ear
about communism. As early as the 1960s, economist G. Warren Nutter at the
University of Virginia had done empirical work showing that the much-vaunted
economic growth in the Soviet Union was a myth. Samuelson did not pay
attention. In the 1989 edition of his textbook, Samuelson and William
Nordhaus wrote, "the Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many
skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy can function and
even thrive."
Although I was never a fan of Samuelson's textbook,
an appendix on futures markets in a late 1960s edition laid out beautifully
how the profit motive in futures markets causes reallocation from times of
relative plenty to future times of relative scarcity. In 1990 I asked him to
do an article on futures markets for "The Fortune (now "Concise")
Encyclopedia of Economics." He replied quickly that he did not have time and
ended graciously, "My loss."
Professor Henderson is a research fellow with Stanford University's
Hoover Institution and an economics professor at the Naval Postgraduate
School in Monterey, Calif. He is editor of "The Concise Encyclopedia of
Economics" (Liberty Fund, 2008.)
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting and economic theory are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Women Hedge Fund Managers Outperform Men
Women also, apparently, make better money managers
according to another study by two professors at UC Davis [3]. That study found
that overconfidence caused men to trade stocks 45 percent more often than women,
thus lowering their net portfolio returns by 2.65 percent per year (compared
with 1.72 percent lower returns for women traders). Moreover, several studies
show a link between profit and gender. Companies with several high-ranking women
at either officer or director levels tend to have higher earnings per share,
return on equity and stock prices than competitors with few or no senior women.
"Women Hedge Fund Managers Outperform Men," by Cathy Arnst, Business Week,
December 2009 ---
http://compliancex.typepad.com/hedge_fund_exchange/2009/12/women-hedge-fund-managers-outperform-men.html
This link was forwarded by Jim Mahar
Jensen Comment
I also discovered, during the few years I played a bit of duplicate bridge, is
to watch out for the old women. But, contrary to the above article, I
discovered, from some of the women I played with and against in duplicate
bridge, was that they often were more aggressive in playing, biding, doubling,
and redoubling.
Greece admits it is riddled with corruption
George Papandreou, Greece’s prime minister, acknowledge
to his fellow European Union leaders that the Greek public sector was riddled
with corruption. At an EU summit on Thursday night, The bloc’s 26 other national
leaders sat in silence as Mr Papandreou delivered a short, blunt speech on
Thursday night that said everything the rest of Europe had long known, or
suspected, about Greek bureaucracy. Greece is in the throes of the most serious
fiscal emergency to strike the eurozone since the single currency’s launch in
1999. Mr Papandreou’s baring of the national soul capped a tumultuous week in
which Greece’s creditworthiness was downgraded, its stock market plunged, the
interest rate on its debt soared and even its survival in the eurozone was
questioned.
Tony Barber, "Greece admits it is riddled with corruption," Financial Times,
December 11, 2009 ---
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/54f4983e-e637-11de-bcbe-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
Mexico's Big Oil Price Hedge
Mexico spent $1.172 billion to buy oil hedges for 2010,
covering a possible revenue shortfall if production falls for the sixth straight
year and prices don’t recover from about a five-year low. Mexico purchased put
options that give it the option, not the obligation, to sell its oil for $57 a
barrel next year, the Finance Ministry said in an e-mail statement today.
"Mexico Has Hedged Oil for 2010 at $57 a Barrel," by Andres R. Martinez and Jens
Erik Gould, Bloomberg, December 8, 2009 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=a7oJHlhlUxXg
Jensen Comment
Unlike hedging with forward or futures contracts or swaps (that are portfolios
of forward contracts), the downside risk of purchased options is limited to the
price (premium) paid for the options. In the above case that would be a mere
$1.172 billion. There is enormous risk for the option writers (sellers) of these
hedges, but the sellers probably have hedged their own possible losses with
other derivatives contracts. Writing naked options is scary beyond imagination
in this type of huge transaction,
The biggest problem of accounting for purchased options as hedges is that
they almost never satisfy the 80-125 Effectiveness Criterion of IAS 39 (and also
FAS 133) such that changes in time value are seldom eligible for hedge
accounting relief (and hence contribute toward earnings volatility for
unrealized price movements). Most firms only take hedge accounting on changes in
intrinsic value. These terms are all defined and illustrated at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133glosf.htm
History of oil spot prices in Mexico ---
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/PET_PRI_WCO_K_W.htm
Bob Jensen's free tutorials and videos on accounting for derivative
financial instruments and hedging activities are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm
Teaching Cases: Hedge Accounting Scenario 1 versus Scenario 2
Two Teaching Cases Involving Southwest Airlines, Hedging, and Hedge
Accounting Controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/SouthwestAirlinesQuestions.htm
"Critical Thinking: Why It's So Hard to Teach," by Daniel T.
Willingham ---
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/summer07/Crit_Thinking.pdf
Also see Simorleon Sense ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/critical-thinking-why-is-it-so-hard-to-teach/
“Critical thinking is not a set of
skills that can be deployed at any time, in any context. It is a type of
thought that even 3-year-olds can engage in—and even trained scientists
can fail in.”
“Knowing that one should think
critically is not the same as being able to do so. That requires domain
knowledge and practice.”
So, Why Is Thinking Critically So
Hard?
Educators have long noted that school attendance and even academic
success are no guarantee that a student will graduate an effective
thinker in all situations. There is an odd tendency for rigorous
thinking to cling to particular examples or types of problems. Thus, a
student may have learned to estimate the answer to a math problem before
beginning calculations as a way of checking the accuracy of his answer,
but in the chemistry lab, the same student calculates the components of
a compound without noticing that his estimates sum to more than 100
percent. And a student who has learned to thoughtfully discuss the
causes of the American Revolution from both the British and American
perspectives doesn’t even think to question how the Germans viewed World
War II. Why are students able to think critically in one situation, but
not in another? The brief answer is: Thought processes are intertwined
with what is being thought about. Let’s explore this in depth by looking
at a particular kind of critical thinking that has been studied
extensively: problem solving.
Imagine a seventh-grade math class immersed in
word problems. How is it that students will be able to answer one
problem, but not the next, even though mathematically both word problems
are the same, that is, they rely on the same mathematical knowledge?
Typically, the students are focusing on the scenario that the word
problem describes (its surface structure) instead of on the mathematics
required to solve it (its deep structure). So even though students have
been taught how to solve a particular type of word problem, when the
teacher or textbook changes the scenario, students still struggle to
apply the solution because they don’t recognize that the problems are
mathematically the same.
Thinking Tends to Focus on a Problem’s
“Surface Structure”
To understand why the surface structure of a problem is so distracting
and, as a result, why it’s so hard to apply familiar solutions to
problems that appear new, let’s first consider how you understand what’s
being asked when you are given a problem. Anything you hear or read is
automatically interpreted in light of what you already know about
similar subjects. For example, suppose you read these two sentences:
“After years of pressure from the film and television industry, the
President has filed a formal complaint with China over what U.S. firms
say is copyright infringement. These firms assert that the Chinese
government sets stringent trade restrictions for U.S. entertainment
products, even as it turns a blind eye to Chinese companies that copy
American movies and television shows and sell them on the black market.”
With Deep Knowledge, Thinking Can
Penetrate Beyond Surface Structure
If knowledge of how to solve a problem never transferred to problems
with new surface structures, schooling would be inefficient or even
futile—but of course, such transfer does occur. When and why is
complex,5 but two factors are especially relevant for educators:
familiarity with a problem’s deep structure and the knowledge that one
should look for a deep structure. I’ll address each in turn. When one is
very familiar with a problem’s deep-structure, knowledge about how to
solve it transfers well. That familiarity can come from long-term,
repeated experience with one problem, or with various manifestations of
one type of problem (i.e., many problems that have different surface
structures, but the same deep structure). After repeated exposure to
either or both, the subject simply perceives the deep structure as part
of the problem description.
"Critical Thinking: Distinguishing Between Inferences and Assumptions," The
Critical Thinking Community ---
http://www.criticalthinking.org/articles/ct-distinguishing-inferencs.cfm
To
be skilled in critical thinking is to be able to take one’s thinking
apart systematically, to analyze each part, assess it for quality
and then improve it. The first step in this process is understanding
the parts of thinking, or elements of reasoning.
These elements are:
purpose, question, information, inference, assumption, point of
view, concepts, and implications. They are present in the mind
whenever we reason. To take command of our thinking, we need to
formulate both our purpose and the question at issue clearly. We
need to use information in our thinking that is both relevant to the
question we are dealing with, and accurate. We need to make logical
inferences based on sound assumptions. We need to understand our own
point of view and fully consider other relevant viewpoints. We need
to use concepts justifiably and follow out the implications of
decisions we are considering. (For an elaboration of the Elements of
Reasoning, see a Miniature Guide to the Foundations of Analytic
Thinking.)
In this article we
focus on two of the elements of reasoning: inferences and
assumptions. Learning to distinguish inferences from assumptions is
an important intellectual skill. Many confuse the two elements. Let
us begin with a review of the basic meanings:
-
Inference: An inference is a step of the mind, an
intellectual act by which one concludes that something is true
in light of something else’s being true, or seeming to be true.
If you come at me with a knife in your hand, I probably would
infer that you mean to do me harm. Inferences can be accurate or
inaccurate, logical or illogical, justified or unjustified.
-
Assumption: An assumption is something we take for
granted or presuppose. Usually it is something we previously
learned and do not question. It is part of our system of
beliefs. We assume our beliefs to be true and use them to
interpret the world about us. If we believe that it is dangerous
to walk late at night in big cities and we are staying in
Chicago, we will infer that it is dangerous to go for a walk
late at night. We take for granted our belief that it is
dangerous to walk late at night in big cities. If our belief is
a sound one, our assumption is sound. If our belief is not
sound, our assumption is not sound. Beliefs, and hence
assumptions, can be unjustified or justified, depending upon
whether we do or do not have good reasons for them. Consider
this example: “I heard a scratch at the door. I got up to let
the cat in.” My inference was based on the assumption (my prior
belief) that only the cat makes that noise, and that he makes it
only when he wants to be let in.
We humans naturally
and regularly use our beliefs as assumptions and make inferences
based on those assumptions. We must do so to make sense of where we
are, what we are about, and what is happening. Assumptions and
inferences permeate our lives precisely because we cannot act
without them. We make judgments, form interpretations, and come to
conclusions based on the beliefs we have formed.
If you put humans in
any situation, they start to give it some meaning or other. People
automatically make inferences to gain a basis for understanding and
action. So quickly and automatically do we make inferences that we
do not, without training, notice them as inferences. We see dark
clouds and infer rain. We hear the door slam and infer that someone
has arrived. We see a frowning face and infer that the person is
upset. If our friend is late, we infer that she is being
inconsiderate. We meet a tall guy and infer that he is good at
basketball, an Asian and infer that she will be good at math. We
read a book, and interpret what the various sentences and
paragraphs — indeed what the whole book — is saying. We listen to
what people say and make a series of inferences as to what they
mean.
As we write, we make
inferences as to what readers will make of what we are writing. We
make inferences as to the clarity of what we are saying, what
requires further explanation, what has to be exemplified or
illustrated, and what does not. Many of our inferences are justified
and reasonable, but some are not.
As always, an
important part of critical thinking is the art of bringing what is
subconscious in our thought to the level of conscious realization.
This includes the recognition that our experiences are shaped by the
inferences we make during those experiences. It enables us to
separate our experiences into two categories: the raw data of our
experience in contrast with our interpretations of those data, or
the inferences we are making about them. Eventually we need to
realize that the inferences we make are heavily influenced by our
point of view and the assumptions we have made about people and
situations. This puts us in the position of being able to broaden
the scope of our outlook, to see situations from more than one point
of view, and hence to become more open-minded.
Often different
people make different inferences because they bring to situations
different viewpoints. They see the data differently. To put it
another way, they make different assumptions about what they see.
For example, if two people see a man lying in a gutter, one might
infer, “There’s a drunken bum.” The other might infer, “There’s a
man in need of help.” These inferences are based on different
assumptions about the conditions under which people end up in
gutters. Moreover, these assumptions are connected to each person’s
viewpoint about people. The first person assumes, “Only drunks are
to be found in gutters.” The second person assumes, “People lying in
the gutter are in need of help.”
The first
person may have developed the point of view that people are
fundamentally responsible for what happens to them and ought to be
able to care for themselves. The second may have developed the point
of view that the problems people have are often caused by forces and
events beyond their control. The reasoning of these two people, in
terms of their inferences and assumptions, could be characterized in
the following way:
Person One
|
Person Two
|
Situation: A man is lying in the gutter.
|
Situation: A man
is lying in the gutter. |
Inference: That
man’s a bum. |
Inference: That
man is in need of help. |
Assumption: Only
bums lie in gutters. |
Assumption:
Anyone lying in the gutter is in need of help. |
Critical thinkers notice the inferences they are making, the
assumptions upon which they are basing those inferences, and the
point of view about the world they are developing. To develop these
skills, students need practice in noticing their inferences and then
figuring the assumptions that lead to them.
As students become
aware of the inferences they make and the assumptions that underlie
those inferences, they begin to gain command over their thinking.
Because all human thinking is inferential in nature, command of
thinking depends on command of the inferences embedded in it and
thus of the assumptions that underlie it. Consider the way in which
we plan and think our way through everyday events. We think of
ourselves as preparing for breakfast, eating our breakfast, getting
ready for class, arriving on time, leading class discussions,
grading student papers, making plans for lunch, paying bills,
engaging in an intellectual discussion, and so on. We can do none of
these things without interpreting our actions, giving them meanings,
making inferences about what is happening.
This is to say that
we must choose among a variety of possible meanings. For example, am
I “relaxing” or “wasting time?” Am I being “determined” or
“stubborn?” Am I “joining” a conversation or “butting in?” Is
someone “laughing with me” or “laughing at me?” Am I “helping a
friend” or “being taken advantage of?” Every time we interpret our
actions, every time we give them a meaning, we are making one or
more inferences on the basis of one or more assumptions.
As humans, we
continually make assumptions about ourselves, our jobs, our mates,
our students, our children, the world in general. We take some
things for granted simply because we can’t question everything.
Sometimes we take the wrong things for granted. For example, I run
off to the store (assuming that I have enough money with me) and
arrive to find that I have left my money at home. I assume that I
have enough gas in the car only to find that I have run out of gas.
I assume that an item marked down in price is a good buy only to
find that it was marked up before it was marked down. I assume that
it will not, or that it will, rain. I assume that my car will start
when I turn the key and press the gas pedal. I assume that I mean
well in my dealings with others.
Humans make hundreds
of assumptions without knowing it---without thinking about it. Many
assumptions are sound and justifiable. Many, however, are not. The
question then becomes: “How can students begin to recognize the
inferences they are making, the assumptions on which they are basing
those inferences, and the point of view, the perspective on the
world that they are forming?”
There are many ways
to foster student awareness of inferences and assumptions. For one
thing, all disciplined subject-matter thinking requires that
students learn to make accurate assumptions about the content they
are studying and become practiced in making justifiable inferences
within that content. As examples: In doing math, students make
mathematical inferences based on their mathematical assumptions. In
doing science, they make scientific inferences based on their
scientific assumptions. In constructing historical accounts, they
make historical inferences based on their historical assumptions. In
each case, the assumptions students make depend on their
understanding of fundamental concepts and principles.
As a matter of daily
practice, then, we can help students begin to notice the inferences
they are making within the content we teach. We can help them
identify inferences made by authors of a textbook, or of an article
we give them. Once they have identified these inferences, we can ask
them to figure out the assumptions that led to those inferences.
When we give them routine practice in identifying inferences and
assumptions, they begin to see that inferences will be illogical
when the assumptions that lead to them are not justifiable. They
begin to see that whenever they make an inference, there are other
(perhaps more logical) inferences they could have made. They begin
to see high quality inferences as coming from good reasoning.
We can also help
students think about the inferences they make in daily situations,
and the assumptions that lead to those inferences. As they become
skilled in identifying their inferences and assumptions, they are in
a better position to question the extent to which any of their
assumptions is justified. They can begin to ask questions, for
example, like: Am I justified in assuming that everyone eats lunch
at 12:00 noon? Am I justified in assuming that it usually rains when
there are black clouds in the sky? Am I justified in assuming that
bumps on the head are only caused by blows?
The point is that we
all make many assumptions as we go about our daily life and we ought
to be able to recognize and question them. As students develop these
critical intuitions, they increasingly notice their inferences and
those of others. They increasingly notice what they and others are
taking for granted. They increasingly notice how their point of view
shapes their experiences.
This article was adapted from the
book,
Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your
Life, by Richard Paul and Linda Elder. |
The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning
---
Click Here
The Miniature Guide To Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools ---
Click Here
"Craigslist: In Praise of Primitive," by Andrew McAfee, Harvard
Business School Blog, December 9, 2009 ---
Click Here
Earlier this year,
Gary
Wolf wrote a
great article in Wired magazine about
Craigslist, the world's dominant classified ad
site. Wolf cites astonishing statistics:
It's the most popular site in the US for dating,
jobs, and apartments.
It gets more traffic than the job sites Monster,
CareerBuilder, and HotJobs combined.
It also gets more traffic than either eBay or
Amazon.com despite the fact that eBay employs more than 16,000 people,
Amazon.com more than 20,000, while Craigslist employs — ready? — 30.
One estimate puts Craigslist's 2009 revenue at
about $100 million, yet the site only charges a paltry $25 to $75 for help
wanted posts in select cities, and $10 for apartments listed by real estate
pros in New York, plus some similarly small charges for adult services.
Every month, it attracts 47 million unique
visitors, or about 1/5 of the U.S.'s adult population.
Ask a B-school student how the company has achieved
such astonishing scale and growth, and he's likely to talk about
network effects and
winner-take-all dynamics, two phenomena that
underpin the success of so many Internet companies. But cl (as many users
call it) doesn't really reflect these phenomena on any global scale. All
listings and all searches are local, such that when I use the Boston section
of the site it's irrelevant to me how many users there are in San Francisco
(or anywhere else). In fact, cl has actively worked to thwart programmers
who have tried to build third-party services for global search.
What's more, when the company launched the Boston
site, it did so with no fanfare, publicity, or recognizable marketing.
Instead, as Wolf writes, "Sometimes a new site grows very slowly for a long
time. But eventually listings hit a certain volume, after which the site
becomes so familiar and essential that it is more or less taken for granted
by everybody except the distressed publishers of local newspapers."
And why do users start going to each new cl
city/site? It's sure not because of the slick look, elegant user interface,
or flawless user experience. Wolf writes that craigslist has "... a design
straight from the earliest days of the Web, [where] miscellaneous posts
compete for attention on
page after page of blue links, undifferentiated by
tags or ratings or even usernames...Think of any Web feature that has become
popular in the past 10 years: Chances are craigslist has considered it and
rejected it...it scorns advertising, refuses investment, ignores design, and
does not innovate."
So how on Earth does cl maintain its ridiculous
popularity and growth? Very simply, because it works. It lets users initiate
and advance a transaction with an absolute minimum of time, expense, hassle,
rules, or oversight. And many times, this is exactly what we want.
Consider my behavior in these two scenarios.
Scenario A: I'm having my
motorcycle shipped a fair distance, and wanted to
be sure that the carrier had a good reputation. So I used
uship,
and went through the hassle of setting up an account,
giving myself a username, posting a description and picture of my bike, etc.
I selected the winning bid after reviewing carriers' feedback scores and
comments.
Scenario B: I had a TV I wanted to get out of my
house. I didn't care at all about who came to pick it up, I just wanted it
gone. So I put up a
cl post, emailed the
first guy that responded to it, and was TV-free after an hour. I couldn't
have cared less about whether the site I used had the latest-and-greatest
design elements or social features. I didn't want to participate in a
community, give or receive feedback, or be impressed by any user interface
guru. I just wanted one less piece of equipment in my house, and some guy
wanted one more.
Craigslist gave us both what we wanted. Every time
I use it I'm reminded of wiki inventor
Ward Cunningham's fantastic
question: "What's the simplest thing that could
possibly work?"
CL CEO
Jim Buckmaster understands that this is the right
question to guide his company "I hear this all the time," he says. "You guys
are so primitive, you are like cavemen. Don't you have any sense of
aesthetic? But the people I hear it from are invariably working for firms
that want the job of redoing the site. In all the complaints and requests we
get from users, this is never one of them. Time spent on the site, the
number of people who post — we're the leader. It could be we're doing one or
two things right."
Hear, hear. And in addition to radically simple
site design, one of the other things they're doing right is listening to
their customers. It seems they don't really have an alternative. The
company's managers and technical staff (who are one and the same group)
interact directly and continuously with the site's end users — the people in
a city who have something or want something. And as Wolf writes
"craigslist's users are not asking for such changes" as better search, a
revamped design, or other snazzy features.
What generalizable insights come out of
Craigslist's example? Keep asking Cunningham's question, and keep it simple.
Listen as directly as possible to the people who use your online properties
(Intranets, public web sites, eCommerce sites, etc.) and prioritize their
feedback way above that of opiners and designers. Put in the minimum amount
of structure -- workflow, navigation aids, hurdles, safeguards, etc.--
required for a positive user experience. And until there's evidence that
it's broke, resist the temptation to fix it.
I seriously doubt that this punishment would stand court tests in the
United States (a site visit could be have been innocent based on a vicious tip)
"Crackdown on China GMAT: Cheating Business school applicants who use
Chinese Web sites to get a sneak peek at GMAT questions are having their scores
revoked and being banned from retaking the test," by Alison Damast, Business
Week, December 3, 2009 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/dec2009/bs2009123_558900.htm?link_position=link1
Students who have tried to get a leg up on the
Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) by visiting Web sites carrying
illegally obtained test-preparation material may soon come to regret their
actions. The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) is aggressively
pursuing more and more Web sites that illegally provide copyrighted GMAT
materials to test-takers, as well as using high-tech gadgets to catch
"proxy" test-takers who are hired to take the exam in place of applicants,
the organization says.
A key focus of GMAC's efforts is China. Already in
2009, 32 scores from China have been revoked by GMAC, while 24 Chinese
test-takers have been blocked by GMAC from retaking the GMAT exam for five
years, GMAC says. One of the Chinese cases that ended in disciplinary action
involved a woman who took the GMAT on seven different occasions for seven
different people, says Dave Wilson, president of GMAC.
The crackdown comes on the heels of an important
court victory for GMAC in China, with a Chinese court ruling on Nov. 23 that
a test-preparation Web site,
www.passion.org.cn,
had infringed GMAC's copyright by providing exclusive
GMAT materials to test-takers for a fee, including reconstructed "live"
questions from actual GMAT exams, GMAT prep materials, and PDFs of actual
test books. The legal action by GMAC is just one of a number of steps the
organization is taking to make sure that students can't cheat on the exam,
says Wilson.
These include heightened security measures at
testing centers such as palm vein readers, which use infrared light to
capture each test-taker's unique palm vein pattern, as well as digital
photographs and passport scanners, he says. The organization also has Web
crawling software that scans 15 million Web sites every evening, looking for
sites that illegally compile "live" GMAT questions.
User Names Withheld
"This speaks to every test-taker and I think it
tells them that when you take the GMAT, you are going to be observed, palm
veined, and scanned," Wilson says. "It will be the fairest test and it will
not be corrupted."
With the recent court ruling in China, there do not
appear to be any immediate consequences for students who used the highly
trafficked Web site, run by Beijing Passion Consultancy, one of China's
largest GMAT preparation companies. GMAC was unable to obtain the names of
the students who used the site to study for the exam, so was unable to
pursue any immediate action against them, GMAC says. However, the court
ruled that Beijing Passion must remove any copyrighted material from its Web
site, pay GMAC $76,000 in compensation, and post a notice on its site from
GMAC about the consequences of cheating.
A lawyer representing Beijing Passion, Zhou Junwu,
of the Beijing-based law firm Jingcheng, Tongda & Neal, could not be
reached.
The GMAC warning, already posted on Passion's
test-prep site, states: "GMAC takes cheating very seriously, especially
attempts to obtain access to live questions in advance of an exam." It goes
on to describe the consequences for students who are found to be improperly
"disclosing, accessing, or using" GMAT materials, which include cancellation
of test scores, a ban on retaking the exam, and informing business schools
that received the scores that they have been revoked.
Anti-Cheating Campaign
The case is just the latest in GMAC's campaign to
safeguard the integrity of the exam. The organization has recently filed
about 10 administrative complaints with the Chinese copyright office against
Web sites illegally carrying GMAT preparation material, says Robert
Burgoyne, an attorney representing GMAC from the Washington (D.C.)-based law
firm Fulbright & Jaworski. This is the second time that GMAC has
successfully pursued legal action against a Chinese test-preparation company
for copyright violations, Burgoyne says. Back in 2003, GMAC won a case
against the New Oriental School for illegally distributing GMAT preparation
material in its classes. But the courts have never before made a ruling on a
case exclusively involving test-preparation materials distributed via the
Web, he says.
Continued in article
Here's a 2008 tidbit from
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm
Market for Admissions Test Questions and Essay "Consulting"
This type of cheating raises all sorts of legal issues yet to be resolved
for students who might've thought what they did was perfectly legal
More than 1,000 prospective MBA students who paid
$30 to use a now-defunct Web site to get a sneak peak at live questions from the
Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) before taking the exam may have their
scores canceled in coming weeks. For many, their B-school dreams may be
effectively over. On June 20, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District
of Virginia granted the test's publisher, the Graduate Management Admission
Council (GMAC), a $2.3 million judgment against the operator of the site,
Scoretop.com. GMAC has seized the site's domain name and shut down the site, and
is analyzing a hard drive containing payment information. GMAC said any students
found to have used the Scoretop site will have their test scores canceled, the
schools that received them will be notified, and the student will not be
permitted to take the test again. Since most top B-schools require the GMAT, the
students will have little chance of enrolling. "This is illegal," said Judy
Phair, GMAC's vice-president for communications. "We have a hard drive, and
we're going to be analyzing it. If you used the site and paid your $30 to cheat,
your scores will be canceled. They're in big trouble."
Louis Lavelle, "Shutting Down a GMAT Cheat Sheet: A court order against a Web
site that gave away test questions could land some B-school students in hot
water," Business Week, June 23, 2008 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jun2008/bs20080623_153722.htm
Jensen Comment
A university admissions office that refused to accept applications from the
"cheating" prospective MBA students would probably be sued by one or more
students. GMAC would probably be sued as well. But it's hard to sue a U.S.
District Court.
There are several moral issues here. From above, this is clearly cheating.
But in various parts of society exam questions and answers are made available
for study purposes. For example, preparation manuals for drivers license tests
usually contain all the questions that might be asked on the written test. It is
entirely possible that some MBA applicants fell for a scam that they believed
was entirely legitimate. Now their lives are being messed up.
I guess this is a test of the old saying that "Ignorance is no defense" in
the eyes of the law. Clearly from any standpoint, they were taking advantage of
other students who did not have the cheat sheets. But the cheat sheets were
apparently available to anybody in the world for a rather modest fee, albeit an
illegal fee. Every buyer did not know it was illegal.
Achievement test cheating in K-12 is rampant in the U.S. after school
budgets and even teacher salaries are dependent upon outcomes of these
achievement tests at a local level. Of course in this case the kids themselves
are usually innocent beneficiaries/victims of the cheating.
Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm
One way to become more credible is to openly display your warts as well as
your cute eyelashes
The University of Phoenix
shows it's warts and all in its latest academic report ---
http://cdn-static.phoenix.edu/content/dam/uphx/about_us/publications/academic-annual-report-2009.pdf
According to data aggregated from Diverse Issues in
Higher Education, more minority students earn degrees here than from any other
university in the nation ---
http://www.phoenix.edu/about_us/about_university_of_phoenix/history.html
The train's already left the station -- the
government appears to be looking for more transparency and accountability" from
all colleges, including for-profit institutions, said Silber. "I would assume
you'll be seeing a lot more transparency in the future."
"A For-Profit Accountability System?" by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher
Ed, December 8, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/12/08/phoenix
Tom Selling recently raised some concerns about revenue accounting at the
University of Phoenix (which he might be able to see from his back porch) ---
http://accountingonion.typepad.com/theaccountingonion/2009/12/an-interesting-revenue-recognition-case.html
The University of Phoenix became the largest private university in the world
with a combination of onsite "campuses" and a vast
accredited distance education program. Among other organizations, the
Chronicle of Higher Education has persistently monitored to the best of its
ability the academic standards and admissions scandals (where there have been
some court cases lost regarding incentive compensation to admissions
counselors). One of our sons graduated from the University of Phoenix in
Sacramento (onsite classes) and found it very challenging and professional.
One of the tests of the University of Phoenix online program was the
enrollment of a senior Chronicle of Higher Education Senior Editor
secretly in a University of Phoenix online governmental (not-for-profit)
accounting course. She found the course much more challenging (almost
overwhelming) and filled with communications between her online classmates. She
ended up with great respect for the instructor that had a lot of on-the-job
experience and good teaching materials.
The Chronicle's Goldie Blumenstyk has covered
distance education for more than a decade, and during that time she's written
stories about
the economics of for-profit education,
the ways that online institutions
market themselves, and the demise
of
the 50-percent rule. About the
only thing she hadn't done, it seemed, was to take a course from an online
university. But this spring she finally took the plunge, and now she has
completed a class in government and nonprofit accounting through the University
of Phoenix. She shares tales from the cy ber-classroom -- and her final grade --
in a podcast with Paul Fain, a
Chronicle reporter.
Chronicle of Higher Education, June 11, 2008 (Audio) ---
http://chronicle.com/media/audio/v54/i40/cyber_classroom/
·
All course materials (including textbooks) online; No additional
textbooks to purchase
·
$1,600 fee for the course and materials
·
Woman instructor with respectable academic credentials and
experience in course content
·
Instructor had good communications with students and between
students
·
Total of 14 quite dedicated online students in course, most of
whom were mature with full-time day jobs
·
30% of grade from team projects
·
Many unassigned online helper tutorials that were not fully
utilized by Goldie
·
Goldie earned a 92 (A-)
·
She gave a positive evaluation to the course and would gladly take
other courses if she had the time
·
She considered the course to have a
heavy workload
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
How would you like one or more years in a think tank?
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences Think Tank ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CASBS
Some of you might consider applying for this think-tank
opportunity in a pasture above the Stanford Campus. It’s rare for the CASBS to
admit “business faculty” other than economists. However, I got in for two
separated years by convincing the Selection Board that they had sadly neglected
accounting researchers when accountancy is so vital to the functioning of
literally every society.
In my day you could not even be considered by the Selection
Board unless your university nominated you to be a candidate, and that would
still improve your chances. The CASBS has since changed its policy by allowing a
few wild card self-nominated candidates. Most of the “Fellows” at the CASBS were
in fact asked by the CASBS itself to become candidates. Some years there are
themes such as World Medical Systems where all admitted Fellows have done
noteworthy research and writing on that theme. However, in most years there are
no designated themes and researchers arrive with carte blanche specialties.
The CASBS prefers that you come with your own funding, and
keep in mind that housing in California is expensive. I rented housing nearby
(within walking distance across a cow pasture) in Stanford’s employee (mostly
faculty) housing (where a faculty member can get a 99-year lease and build a
house subject to the constraint that the house can only be sold to a Stanford
employee). Bill Beaver build one of the early houses in this development and
still lives in that same house. Joel Demski also built a house in that
development, but he sold it when he moved on to Yale. Both Bill and Joel,
however, were at Stanford during my two think tank years.
I was fortunate to be fully funded from the CASBS Endowment
for one year. I later returned for a second year with outside funding from a
sabbatical leave from my university plus a Guggenheim Fellowship ---
http://www.gf.org/
There are no duties or benchmarked expectations at the
CASBS. It’s literally a think tank. The “Fellows” (including women) do have an
opportunity to congregate for free lunches and occasionally a Fellow will
volunteer to give a presentation (attendance is not required). Most of the
Fellows have stellar credentials, including the many Nobel Prize winners that
were Fellows. When I was there the first year there were to Nobel Laureates.
You are given an office without a telephone (and encouraged
to turn off your cell phone), a part-time secretary who will type your papers,
access to the vast Stanford system of libraries (even though the CASBS is on
leased land from Stanford and is financially independent), and access to
specialists in computing and data mining. The CASBS was initially funded with a
Ford Foundation Grant.
There is no obligation to even show up at your office,
although Fellows are strongly encouraged not to take trips during their think
tank year. The first year I was there we had a really strange economist (Edward)
who preferred to work in bed and only showed up twice in one year at the CASBS
even though he was officially a Fellow with an assigned office. My wife often
went shopping Edward’s wife who said that Edward just preferred to write while
staying in bed. He did have a best-selling microeconomics textbook and was a
tenured faculty position at an Ivy League University,
Like most of the Fellows who pass through the CASBS doors,
I was disappointed with my productivity while at the Center. I spent most of my
time trying in vain to develop new and computationally-efficient mathematical
models for cluster (actually numerical taxonomy) analysis. However, each year,
on the side, I did write a monograph for the “Studies in Accounting Research”
Series of the American Accounting Association.
These were published as Numbers 14 and 19 at
http://aaahq.org/market/display.cfm?catID=5
The first year I was at the CASBS, the scholar across the
wall from me was the youngest person ever to be awarded tenure by the Harvard
University Department of Philosophy. His name was Robert Nozick ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nozick
He's best known for scholarly advocacy of a minimalist state. He was neither a
Democrat nor a Republican. Republicans are hypocrites. They preach price
competition but promote big government that protects and subsidizes
anti-competitive oligopolies like agribusiness, oil companies, telecoms,
armaments, etc. Democrats want a maximal state with entitlements for health
care, minimum wages, and welfare without any viable means of paying for their
egalitarian dreams. Robert Nozick advocated a minimal state but had a
misunderstood view of caring for the poor. He argued for a better way, in my
viewpoint, of caring for the poor.
My economic philosophy was altered forever because of
my encounters with Professor Nozick.
If you spend a year in the CASBS think tank, I’m certain
that you will encounter your own Professor Nozick.
Robert E. (Bob) Jensen
Trinity
University Accounting Professor (Emeritus)
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Tel. 603-823-8482
www.trinity.edu/rjensen
From:
CASBS Secretary [mailto:secretary@casbs.stanford.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 7:57 PM
To: CASBS Secretary
Subject: CASBS Invites Applications for 2011-2012 Residential
Fellowships
The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences at Stanford University (CASBS) will soon be welcoming applications
for residential fellowships during the 2011-2012 academic year.
We especially value your assistance in identifying and encouraging
colleagues to submit an application. As a past Fellow, you know what
kind of scholars we are seeking, and what a difference a year at CASBS can
make on their career and ability to pursue intellectual pursuits.
Online applications will be accepted at the Center’s website from January
12 – March 3, 2010 for the 2011-2012 residential fellowship program year.
For more information, guidelines, and application requirements, visit
our website at
www.casbs.org.
There are several ways you can help us get the word out:
·
Forward this message to your colleagues,
·
Encourage them to visit our website at
www.casbs.org and add themselves to our announcements mailing list (via
the "Stay Informed and Connected" link) to receive future
announcements like these,
·
Request an announcement be posted on your institution’s
internal website. Announcement text is provided below.
On behalf of CASBS, we send our warmest thanks for your support.
Sincerely,
Iris F. Litt, M.D. Robert A. Scott
CASBS Director Associate Director
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University
75 Alta Road, Stanford CA 94305
tel: 650-321-2052 web:
www.casbs.org
** ** **
ANNOUNCEMENT TEXT:
The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford
University (CASBS) welcomes applications for residential fellowships during
the 2011-2012 academic year. Online applications will be accepted at the
Center’s website from January 12 – March 3, 2010. For more information,
guidelines, and application requirements, visit
www.casbs.org.
A Professor of History at the University of Virginia Weighs in on Ayn Rand
"Ayn Rand and America’s new culture war: From Rush Limbaugh to
President Obama, Ayn Rand and her book 'Atlas Shrugged' are recalibrating
America," by Jennifer Burns, Christian Science Monitor, December 11,
2009 ---
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/1211/Ayn-Rand-and-America-s-new-culture-war
From Fox News to the passenger sitting next to you
reading “Atlas Shrugged” on your commute to work, Ayn Rand seems to be
everywhere.
Since the economic collapse of 2008, the
controversial novelist and philosopher has emerged as a leading intellectual
on the right – and she’s been dead for nearly 30 years.
Rush Limbaugh touts Rand as a prophet of sorts.
“Ayn Rand, she wrote ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ ” he told his listeners. “The sequel,
‘Atlas Puked,’ we’re in the middle of it.” At the tea parties that swept the
nation last spring, protesters waved signs claiming “Ayn Rand was right” and
warning “Read ‘Atlas Shrugged’ before it happens.”
The fresh appeal of 'Atlas Shrugged'
Consider this: “Atlas Shrugged,” Rand’s most famous
novel, is set in a dystopian future America, where a socialist government
has brought the country to the brink of ruin. Fleeing punitive regulations
and crushing taxation, the country’s top industrialists and executives have
gone on strike, virtually shutting down the economy.
For American conservatives, the significance of
Rand’s message is clear. “Atlas Shrugged” is prophetic, they say, and it
warns us all of the coming collapse.
It wasn’t always so. In her day, leading
conservatives denounced Rand for her atheism and immorality, and her
economic ideas were scarcely mentioned.
Conservative author Whittaker Chambers attacked
Rand as a godless authoritarian in his famously brutal review of “Atlas
Shrugged,” printed in an early issue of William F. Buckley’s seminal
conservative magazine, National Review. The book’s message, according to
Chambers, was “to a gas chamber – go!” Anti-ERA crusader Phyllis Schlafly
stopped reading Rand’s other novel, “The Fountainhead,” as soon as she
reached the infamous rape scene, horrified at the immorality and violence of
what Rand once described as “rape by engraved invitation” and condoned.
But Rand did not have much patience for
conservatives, calling herself instead a “radical for capitalism.” She
intended her individualistic philosophy, objectivism, to be a guide to the
future, not the past.
Rand identified four basic components to her
philosophy: objective reality, the supremacy of reason, the virtue of
selfishness, and the importance of laissez faire capitalism. She celebrated
the virtue of selfishness and attacked religion for being irrational.
These aspects of Rand made her alien to an earlier
generation of religious conservatives who gleefully launched a “culture war”
against secular America. In the 1980s and ’90s, the culture war was waged
over issues of gender and sexuality, and religious values were central.
Those religious conservatives cited biblical
authority to attack controversial artists like Andres Serrano and Robert
Mapplethorpe who challenged traditional gender roles. Such a conservative
movement had no room for Rand, with her condemnation of all forms of
“mysticism,” including religious belief, and her open support of abortion
rights.
Today, these passions over culture have cooled and
been replaced by an equally intense struggle over economic policies like the
bailout of the financial sector, the rescue of the auto industry, and reform
of healthcare.
In this current political world, even the
hot-button issue of gay marriage has been sidelined for the new bogeyman of
socialism.
Though she’s not religious, Rand brings a strong
sense of good and evil to the debates over economic policy. Rand’s books
bring the battles over government spending away from wonkdom and back to the
familiar, easy terrain of culture, where there is a virtuous “us” and a
conniving, evil “them.”
Two types of people
In her world, there are two types of people:
producers and looters, or those who work for themselves and those who take
government handouts.
Richard Nixon made a similar division when he
talked about the “silent majority,” as does Sarah Palin when she praises
“real Americans.” It’s a distinction that makes sense to many conservatives,
particularly those who feel they are being punished for their success.
That many of Rand’s fictional heroes were far from
paragons of Christian virtue is beside the point in the current struggle.
What matters is the ammunition she provides and the outrage she stokes
against the dreaded looters.
Does Rand’s popularity mean religion is no longer
paramount to the conservative worldview? Of course not. But her ubiquity
should tell us that tectonic plates are shifting under the surface of
American politics. Even President Obama seems to understand Rand’s newfound
influence, criticizing the “virtue of selfishness” in a recent speech.
Rand’s prominence is a change from the Bush years when paleocons and
libertarians like Ron Paul who stressed the evils of government spending
were ignored.
Today is their moment in the sun, and it is the
religious right that is being swept to the side by the rush of events. The
balance of power between religious fundamentalism and market fundamentalism
is being recalibrated, a development that could have far-reaching
consequences for how we understand the very categories of the political
left, right, and center.
Jennifer Burns, a professor of history at the University of Virginia
is the author of “Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.”
She offers history podcasts and blogs at jenniferburns.org .
What does Amazon claim are the first and second most
influential books in the world?
The book at Rank 2 will probably be a surprise!
AIG Shrugged by Ayn Rand
For Jim Mahar's Finance Professor Blog on March 25, 2009 ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/
Ok, I can't make this stuff up.
Ayn Rand's
Atlas Shrugged is so life like that it is now as
if reading (or in my case ristening) to a script.
Background:
Atlas Shrugged
is a novel written in 1957 by Ayn Rand. In it, in
response to a largely governmental caused "emergency" the top leaders of the
business world give up and just walk away in response to taxes, regulation,
and other confiscatory governmental policies. Indeed, it seems that whoever
is in the hottest spotlight, is the next to go.
So without further comment, a letter from Jake DeSantis announcing his
resignation from AIG.
From
the NY Times
"The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an
executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial
products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G."
"DEAR Mr. Liddy,
It is with deep regret that I submit my notice
of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time
to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my
decision, I want to offer some context:"
later:
"After 12 months of hard work dismantling the
company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be
rewarded in March 2009 — we...have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being
unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will
now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to
those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep
none of the money myself.
.... I can no longer effectively perform my duties
in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like
you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of
a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come
to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify
spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of
those who have let me down."
The only difference now between now and then, is that
DeSantis (unlike Galt, Wyatt, Dannager, et al) left an explanation.
BTW if you have not
read the book, I can not give it a higher
recommendation except to say it is in my Top Ten (maybe top five) of all
time.
Jensen Comment
A lot of scholars, especially liberal scholars, despise Ayn Rand. But Atlas
Shrugged ranks second behind The Bible in terms of influence
according to a U.S. Library of Congress survey.
Library of Congress Survey: Most Influential Books ---
http://www.amazon.com/Library-Congress-Survey-Influential-Books/lm/133GLJVXVIBLN
Link forwarded by Richard Sansing
March 26, 2009 reply from Patricia Walters
[patricia@DISCLOSUREANALYTICS.COM]
Bob:
Thank you for forwarding the link to the Jake
DeSantis' resignation letter. I have been appalled at some of the emotional
diatribes by our elected officials regarding the "bonuses" paid to AIG
employees. As someone who, in what I know refer to as a "previous life", had
"at risk" salary, I know that the word "bonus" is often misinterpreted. "At
risk" salary is the part of one's compensation that will only be paid if the
employee meets certain goals and objectives agreed between the employee and
employer. It is salary withheld and paid in a lump sum at the end of the
fiscal year. It is not a "gift" given to the employee if the employer has a
certain amount of net income and is not dependent (as long as the company
continuesin existence) on the company's performance, only the employee's
performance.
What have I learned from the comments of our
congressional representatives and others from their comments in recent
weeks? Unfortunately, it's a confirmation of what I initially learned having
attended hearings on derivatives disclosures proposed by the SEC in the late
90s. Most of our elected official know little (or nothing) about the issue
on which they opine. They are only interested in making a statement for the
public record that will appeal to their constituents and get them
re-elected. I was in shock at the comments of members of the congressional
subcommittee back then (who made statements generally illustrating their
ignorance of derivatives and simply left the hearing, not even bothering to
listen to the testimony of the people invited or called to testify on the
topic). Although I am no longer shocked, I am still embarrassed and appalled
at what I have seen as callousness based on this ignorance.
Jake DeSantis' letter breaks my heart. How betrayed
by us must the rest of the employees at AIG who have worked diligently and
effectively to try to accomplish the government's objectives feel? It will
serve those who have vilified them right if they all quit on masse. Perhaps
our elected officials can go work at AIG for reduced salaries to get us out
of this mess. I for one think they may do less harm than staying in
Congress.
Regards Pat
March 26, 2009 reply from Bender, Ruth
[r.bender@CRANFIELD.AC.UK]
I fell for John Galt when I was already what you’d
call a ‘mature adult’! I re-read the book every few years, to remind myself
that I need to try harder. (I then generally re-read the Ragged Trousered
Philanthropist, to get the opposite view of life, even though I think that
is quite badly written.)
I think Ayn Rand’s fiction is enjoyable, and Atlas
Shrugged is her best. But I dislike her non-fiction books. And I really
can’t take objectivism seriously. (And only have one acquaintance this side
of the Atlantic who does.)
Ruth Bender
Cranfield, UK.
This is great material for a Harvard Business School Leadership,
Management, and Ethics Case
Harvey Mansfield is the William R. Kenan, Jr.
Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1962
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Mansfield
He's one of my all time academic heroes.
F**k Up That Professor Mansfield!
And to think it was a questionable comment of women that got this President of
Harvard Fired
It seems like conservative men had a better case, at least one man
"White House economist: 'F--- up' conservative prof 'I was astounded that the
president of Harvard would stoop to such tactics'," WorldNetDaily,
December 6, 2009 ---
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=118187
According to a university colleague, former
president of Harvard and current White House economist Larry Summers once
asked for help to "f--- up" one of the school's conservative professors.
Summers' colleague, Cornel West, is a radical race
relations instructor who is now a professor at Princeton after departing
Harvard in the wake of a dispute with Summers. Obama named West, whom he has
called a personal friend, to the Black Advisory Council of his presidential
campaign. West was a key point man between Obama's campaign and the black
community.
In his recently released memoirs, "Brother West:
Living and Loving Out Loud," West claims that Summers invited West into his
office and asked him to help undermine Harvard government professor Harvey
Mansfield, who had professed conservative views.
"Help me f--- him up," Summers reportedly said to
West without explaining further.
West writes, "For my part, I was astounded that the
President of Harvard would stoop to such tactics."
West further related the details of the alleged
encounter in a recent interview with Amy Goodman, host of the far-left
Democracy Now
Internet
television network.
Said West: "And as soon as I walked into the
office, [Summers] starts using profanity about Harvey Mansfield. I said,
'No, Harvey Mansfield is conservative, sometimes reactionary, but he's my
dear brother.' We had just had debates at Harvard. Twelve hundred people
showed up. He was against affirmative action; I was for it. That was fine.
Harvey Mansfield and I go off and have a drink after, because we have a
respect, but deep, deep philosophical and ideological disagreement. He was
using profanity, so I had to defend Harvey Mansfield."
"Wait, so you're saying Lawrence Summers was using
profanity?" Goodman asked.
Continued West: "Larry Summers using profanity
about, you know, 'help me 'F' so and so up.' No, I don't function like that.
Maybe he thought that just as a black man, I like to use profanity. I'm not
a puritan. I don't use it myself. I have partners who do."
In response to West's claimed meeting with Summers,
Mansfield told WND, "Larry Summers was not out to get me."
"I was not present at the famous interview between
him and Cornel West, but in my opinion (Summers) merely used my name in a
clumsy attempt to cajole Cornel West into behaving more like a professor,
less like a celebrity," said Mansfield.
"Larry Summers was doing many good things at
Harvard before his enemies there succeeded in ousting him," Mansfield added.
Neither Summers nor West immediately returned WND
e-mail and
phone requests for comment.
Mansfield is well-known for his opposition to grade
inflation at Harvard, which he has publicly blamed in part on affirmative
action. His views led to student protests and a well-attended debate with
West.
Mansfield also defended President Bush's use of
executive powers and has been
criticized by some leading feminists for his views on gender roles. He has
made statements that men and women have some different societal roles and
wrote a book, "Manliness," in which he bemoaned the loss of the virtue of
"manliness" in a "gender neutral" society.
Summers, meanwhile, continues to teach at Harvard
but lost his position as president in part after a public feud in which West
accused him of racism. Summers serves as director of the White House's
National Economic Council.
West served as an adviser on Louis Farrakhan's
Million Man March and is a personal friend of Farrakhan. He authored two
books on race with Henry Louis Gates Jr., who last summer was at the center
of controversy after Obama remarked on the Harvard professor's arrest.
Continued in article
College campuses display a striking uniformity of thought
Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield once famously advised a conservative
colleague to wait until he had tenure and only then to "hoist the Jolly Roger."
But few professors are getting around to hoisting the Jolly Roger at all. Either
they don't have a viewpoint that is different from their colleagues, or they've
decided that if they are going to remain at one place for several decades,
they'd rather just get along. Is tenure to blame for the unanimity of thinking
in American universities? It's hard to tell. But shouldn't the burden of proof
be on the people who want jobs for life?
Naomi Schafer Riley, "Tenure and Academic Freedom: College campuses display a
striking uniformity of thought," The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2009
---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124571593663539265.html#mod=djemEditorialPage
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Peer Review of Articles versus Peer Review of Underlying Data (Codes),
"Whom Can You Trust on Climate Change?" by Kevin Johnson, Chronicle of
Higher Education, December 8, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/12/08/johnson#Comments
Jensen Comment
Kevin Johnson presents a reasoned commentary on the importance of peer review
and the compounding of research on most any topic, especially climate change
research ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/12/08/johnson#Comments
What he fails to recognize is that if the underlying data is manipulated or
biased or otherwise flawed, a million peer-reviews studies using that data might
be equally flawed from get go. It's important to note that the Climatic Research
Unit ('CRU') at the University of East Anglia, was the United Nations.
designated source for meteorological station data. It's data was widely used by
thousands of scientists and other analysts.
Although there are obviously speculations about raw data was discarded and
the obvious biases of the scientist (Phil Jones) who was in charge of gathering
the meteorological station data, I don't think there is hard evidence
that Jones modified the data used by other meteorological scientists. There is
some evidence of data manipulation by a New Zealand scientist, but that data is
not nearly as important as the CRU data collected for the U.N.
What struck me as more important than Johnson's article cited above is the
following comment accompanying Johnson's article:
Posted by , at
on December 8, 2009 at 5:15am EST
How rigorous can the peer-review process be if the
source code used to analyze the raw data is not also thoroughly reviewed?
From looking at the leaked source code comments it appears that even the
programmers who wrote the code (over a period of years) were unsure how it
actually works. If nothing else, this scandal suggests the ever increasing
importance of code review for all scientific disciplines.
Hence, even though scientists can point to nearly 1,000 respected peer
reviewed studies using the CRU data, the peer reviewers mostly accepted the CRU
underlying data as fact without challenging whether some of the most important
data might have been fictionalized by Jones and his team. In fairness, some of
the raw data was destroyed before Professor Jones took over as Director of the
CRU.
This is consistent with my long-standing suspicion of journal policies (like
those of The Accounting Review) that arm twists author willingness to
make underlying data available to readers. Actually I'm in favor of the policies
and was on the AAA Executive Committee when we asked
my
hero Bill Cooper
(then Publications Director for the AAA) to commence a policy of
trying to make data available to readers of articles. What I'm worried about is
that, instead of gathering confirming data, researchers will simply do further
research on what might be flawed data.
The scientific community would come
down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it
has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn't statistically significant.
Note that the date of this email was
July 5, 2005
Dr. Jones never imagined that his admissions would ever be made public in the
2009 Climategate
Phil Jones, Scientist Suspended in the Climategate Scandal for covering up
evidence of planet cooling ---
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=544&filename=1120593115.txt
The New Zealand Government’s chief climate
advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to
show a global warming trend that wasn’t there. The scandal breaks as fears grow
worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain’s
CRU climate research centre.In New Zealand’s case, the figures published on
NIWA’s [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website
suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century
[go
to the link to see the graphs; the fraud is astonishing]But
analysis of the raw climate data from the same temperature stations has just
turned up a very different result [go
to link above to see graphs]
"New Zealand Climate Scientists Faked Data, Too," Evolution News and Views,
December 3, 2009 ---
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/12/new_zealand_climate_scientists.html
How NASA is Fudging Climate Data
:"Example of Climate Work That Needs to be Checked and Replicated," by Warren
Meyer, Climate Skeptic, December 5, 2009 ---
http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2009/12/example-of-climate-work-that-needs-to-be-checked-and-replicated.html
Let’s say you had two compasses to help you find
north, but the compasses are reading incorrectly. After some investigation,
you find that one of the compasses is located next to a strong magnet, which
you have good reason to believe is strongly biasing that compass’s readings.
In response, would you 1. Average the results of the two compasses and use
this mean to guide you, or 2. Ignore the output of the poorly sited compass
and rely solely on the other unbiased compass?
Most of us would quite rationally choose #2.
However, Steve McIntyre shows us a situation involving two temperature
stations in the USHCN network in which government researchers apparently
have gone with solution #1.
Continued in article
"The Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore "brushes aside" evidence of
scientific misconduct,"
James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal, .December 5, 2009 ---
Click Here
Here is the text of Newsweek’s 1975 story on the trend toward
global cooling. It may look foolish today, but in fact world temperatures had
been falling since about 1940. It was around 1979 that they reversed direction
and resumed the general rise that had begun in the 1880s, bringing us today back
to around 1940 levels. A PDF of the original is available here. A fine short
history of warming and cooling scares has recently been produced. It is
available here.
Newsweek Magazine, April 28, 1975
---
http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm
Video: ClimateGate Makes the Daily Show (Jon Stewart)
---
Click Here
Also see
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/12/02/jon-stewart-climategate-poor-al-gore-global-warming-debunked-internet
See commentary at
http://newsrealblog.com/2009/12/02/shocking-leftist-jon-stewart-talks-about-climategate/
Also see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VRBWLpYCPY
"A Reason To Be Skeptical The lessons of Climategate," by
David Harsanyi, Reason Magazine, December 2, 2009 ---
http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/02/a-reason-to-be-skeptical
Available for audio download
Who knows? In the long run, global warming
skeptics may be wrong, but the importance of healthy skepticism in the face
of conventional thinking is, once again, validated.
What we know now is that someone hacked
into the e-mails of leading climate researchers at the University of East
Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and others, including noted alarmists
Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University and Kevin Trenberth of the
U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
We found out that respected men discussed
the manipulation of science, the blocking of Freedom of Information
requests, the exclusion of dissenting scientists from debate, the removal of
dissent from the peer-reviewed publications, and the discarding of
historical temperature data and e-mail evidence.
You may suppose that those with resilient
faith in end-of-days global warming would be more distraught than anyone
over these actions. You'd be wrong. In the wake of the scandal, we are told
there is nothing to see. The administration, the United Nations, and most of
the left-wing punditry and political establishment have shrugged it off.
What else can they do?
To many of these folks, the science of
global warming is only a tool of ideology. To step back and re-examine their
thinking would also mean—at least temporarily—ceding a foothold on policy
that allows government to control behavior. It would mean putting the brakes
on the billions of dollars allocated to force fundamental economic and
societal manipulations through cap-and-trade schemes and fabricated "new
energy economies," among many other intrusive policies.
We have little choice but to place a
certain level of trust in scientists—even when it comes to the model-driven
speculative discipline of climate change. And, need it be said, most
scientists take great care in being honest, principled and precise.
In the same way, a conscientious citizen
has little choice but to be uneasy when those with financial, ideological,
and political interest in peddling the most over-the-top ecological doomsday
scenarios also become the most zealous evangelizers.
As President Barack Obama heads to
Copenhagen to work on an international deal that surrenders even more of our
unsightly carbon-driven prosperity to the now-somewhat-less-than-irrefutable
science of climate change, shouldn't he offer more than a flippant statement
through a spokesman on the scandal?
The talks, after all, will be based on the
U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report,
which partially was put together by the very same scandal-ridden scientists.
Now, I do not, on any level, possess the
expertise to argue about the science of anthropological global warming. Nor
do you, most likely. This certainly doesn't mean an average citizen has the
duty to do the lock step.
Yes, you apostates will be tagged "denialists"—because
skepticism is synonymous with the Holocaust denial, don't you know—or some
other equally unfriendly moniker.
Don't worry; you won't be alone. Gallup
recently found that 41 percent of Americans now believe global warming news
reports are exaggerated—the highest number in more than a decade despite the
fact that this time frame has coincided with concentrated and highly funded
scaremongering. That number is sure to rise as soon as word of this scandal
spreads.
The uglier the names get, the more anger
you see, the more that science-challenged politicians push invasive
legislation, the more skeptics will join you. True believers will question
your intelligence, your sanity and your intentions.
But as ClimateGate proves, a bit of
skepticism rarely steers you wrong. In fact, it's one of the key elements of
rational thinking.
David Harsanyi is a columnist at The Denver Post and the author of "Nanny
State." Visit his Web site at
www.DavidHarsanyi.com
A better alternative to ABC''s new 20/20
"ABC Fired Stossel?," by John Stossel, Townhall, December 9,
2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2009/12/09/abc_fired_stossel
People keep forwarding me
emails and blog posts
saying ABC fired me. Internet forums claim I was fired
because I aired a story about the downside of government-controlled health
care. This is silly. It's not even logical. No one can broadcast anything on
"20/20" without ABC's approval.
The truth is that
my departure
from ABC was by mutual consent.
I left to go to the Fox News Channel and Fox
Business Network because I want more time to report on free markets and
economic liberty, the kind of reporting I do in this column. With two
24-hour news channels, Fox has more room for that.
Tomorrow, finally, my new Fox Business show begins!
It will air every Thursday at 8 p.m. (and will repeat Fridays at 10 p.m. --
opposite "20/20" -- heh, heh, heh).
My first show will be on the "climate crisis." Or
it might be on Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged." I've prepared both shows
because I can't decide which I should do.
What do you think?
I'm partial to an "Atlas" show because I reread the
novel recently and was stunned. It was as if Rand had seen the future.
Writing half a century ago, she predicted today's explosion of big
government in shockingly accurate detail.
The "Preservation of Livelihood Law." The
"Equalization of Opportunity Law." The "Steel Unification Plan."
Don't these sound like laws passed by the current
Congress?
All were creations of Rand's villain, Wesley Mouch,
the evil bureaucrat who regulates business and eventually drives the
productive people out of business. Who is today's Wesley Mouch? Barney
Frank? Chris Dodd. Tim Geithner? I'll ask my TV audience to vote.
"Atlas" is still a big bestseller today. This year,
it reached as high as NO. 15 on Amazon's bestseller list. Pretty amazing.
Clearly there's some magic in "Atlas Shrugged." The
Library of Congress once asked readers which books made the biggest
difference in their lives. "Atlas" came in second, after the Bible.
Yet elites and the MSM hate Ayn Rand. When "Atlas"
first came out, The New York Times wrote that "the book is written out of
hate."
Maybe that's why no "Atlas" movie has been made.
Angelina Jolie once wanted to play heroine Dagny Taggart, but it never
happened. Rand's books still sell millions of copies, yet college "women's
studies" courses rarely mention her. One professor says her department head
asked, "Why would you study that fascist?"
Continued in article
Credit Rating Agencies: Too Crooked and Too Powerful to Fail
"Debt Raters Avoid Overhaul After Crisis," by David Segal, The New York
Times, December 7, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/business/08ratings.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
It wasn’t just that Moody’s Investors Service,
Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings, played a crucial role in the epochal
housing market collapse, affixing their most laudatory grades to billions of
dollars worth of bonds that went bad in the subprime crisis.
It was the near universal agreement that potential
conflicts were embedded in the ratings model. For years, banks and other
issuers have paid rating agencies to appraise securities — a bit like a
restaurant paying a critic to review its food, and only if the verdict is
highly favorable.
So as Washington rewrites the rules of Wall Street,
how is the overhaul of the Big Three coming? It isn’t, finance experts say.
“What you see in these bills are Botox shots,” says
Joseph A. Grundfest, a professor of securities law at Stanford Law School.
“For a little while, everyone is going to be frozen into a grin, and then
the shots are going to wear off.”
What explains the timidity of Congress’ proposals?
This is not a case of lobbyists beating back ideas that might hurt their
clients, say those close to the discussions. Instead, Congress is worried
that bold measures may backfire. The Big Three, by allowing companies and
public entities to raise money by issuing debt, are an essential engine in
the country’s vast credit factory, and given the still-fragile condition of
the equipment, lawmakers are reluctant to try anything but basic repairs,
patches and a new alarm system.
In addition, legislators say, there is little
consensus about what a top-to-bottom renovation should look like.
Under bills that legislators are currently
considering, the rating agencies will have to contend with greater
oversight, stiffer rules about disclosure and a provision that would make it
easier for plaintiffs to sue the firms. But nothing in the laws tackles the
critic-for-hire problem or threatens the 85 percent market share that
Moody’s, S.& P. and Fitch now enjoy.
“It’s fair to say we knew we were taking on a
problem with no silver bullet,” said Representative Paul Kanjorski of
Pennsylvania, the chairman of the Financial Services subcommittee that has
led reform efforts in the House. “I’m convinced that we’re getting more
control over the rating agencies than ever before but not at all sure we’ve
developed the perfect system.”
Dozens of Lawsuits
While Congress may be happy with cosmetic surgery,
law enforcement officials are getting more aggressive. Dozens of lawsuits
have been filed against the rating agencies, including a case filed on Nov.
20 by the Ohio attorney general on behalf of public pension funds. The Ohio
suit, as well as the earlier suits, seeks billions of dollars in damages
from the rating agencies and accuses the firms of negligence and fraud.
When he filed his suit, Ohio’s attorney general,
Richard Cordray, said that the “rating agencies’ total disregard for the
life’s work of ordinary Ohioans caused the collapse of our housing and
credit markets and is at the heart of what’s wrong with Wall Street today.”
After the suit was filed, Richard Blumenthal,
Connecticut’s attorney general, said he planned to join the suit and thought
that a “coalition of states” would also jump on the legal bandwagon — a
potentially grim development for the rating agencies, which could find
themselves contending with a phalanx of state officials like the one that
aimed at big tobacco in the 1990s.
The Big Three object that the legislation proposed
by Congress could make them more vulnerable to legal action. But they
otherwise do not sound particularly exercised about much else that is likely
to become law.
“Moody’s shares the committees’ goal of increased
transparency for the ratings process,” said Michael Adler, a Moody’s
spokesman.
S.& P. is equally sanguine. “We support globally
consistent, nondiscriminatory regulation that will help restore investor
confidence and bring more transparency to the capital markets,” said
Catherine J. Mathis, a spokeswoman for Standard & Poor’s. A spokesman for
Fitch declined to comment.
Without question, the credit rating system is one
of the capitalism’s strangest hybrids: profit-making companies that perform
what is essentially a regulatory role. The companies serve the public, which
expect them to stamp their imprimatur on safe securities and safe securities
alone. But they also serve their shareholders, who profit whenever that
imprimatur shows up on a security, safe or not.
To make matters more complicated, rating agencies
are deeply entrenched in millions of transactions. Statutes and rules
require that mutual fund and money managers of almost every stripe buy only
those bonds that have been given high grades by a Nationally Recognized
Statistical Rating Organization, as the agencies are officially known.
But even if there is no foolproof way to reform the
rating agencies, the measures that Congress is now backing are strikingly
weak, a number of critics say. There is no talk, for instance, about
creating a fee-financed, independent credit rating agency, one modeled along
the lines of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which was
established to oversee auditors after the Enron debacle — an idea floated by
Christopher J. Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman as recently as
August.
That approach would attack the conflict of interest
problem head on.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Be that as it may, the credit agencies still stand to lose billions in court
from shareholder lawsuits, especially lawsuits driven by huge pension funds that
lost billions due to alleged credit rating agency conflicts of interest and even
such detestable acts as selling AAA ratings of poisonous tranches ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Sleaze
Bob Jensen's threads on credit rating agencies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#CreditRatingAgencies
"Cisco's FlipShare TV Lets You Watch Your Videos on TV: Streaming box
aims to make viewing video on your television a simple affair, but the price is
a bit steep," by Yardena Arar, PC World via The Washingon Post, December
7, 2009 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/02/AR2009120200163.html?wpisrc=newsletter
FlipShare TV streams all of its video from your PC
through a peer-to-peer 802.11n Wi-Fi connection using an included, oversize
USB dongle--and Internet video must first stream to the PC. This two-step
process can easily introduce artifacts, especially if your PC's network
connection is also wireless.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
To date Erika and I rely on DVD mailings from NetFlix, which is one of the ways
we survive long winters up here in the mountains. With FlipShare we might now
consider NetFlix streaming videos (although I'd like to here more about the
supposed variable quality of FlipShare). Maybe it needs a bigger dongle.
Thank you Paula
Video: Amazing ROLLTOP portable computer ----
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=7H0K1k54t6A
Do you recall
that floor game “Twister” in which a person twisted about with both
hands and both feet on marked places ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twister_(game)
I was
thinking that the new amazing computer could come out in a giant model
that combined the Twister and the computer. Us computer nerds would no
longer have to lead a sedentary life. We could exercise and compute at
the same time.
And the
screen could be large enough for the whole class to see without a LCD
projector.
Video: Amazing
portable computer ----
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=7H0K1k54t6A
Made in Israel:
Future Designer laptop - ROLLTOP. Amazing things are created in Israel
and here's one of the next marvels. The flexible display allows a new
concept in notebook design growing out of the traditional bookformed
laptop into unfurling and convolving portable computer. By virtue of the
OLED-Display technology and a multi touch screen the utility of a laptop
computer with its weight of a mini-notebook and screen size of 13 inch
easily transforms into the graphics tablet, which with its 17-inch flat
screen can be also used as a primary monitor. On top of everything else
all computer utilities from power supply through the holding belt to an
interactive pen are integrated in Rolltop. This is really an all-in-one
gadget.
http://wejew.com/media/6870/Israel_Future_Laptop_Designer_Rolltop/
I think versions are
or will soon be marketed in Germany or so I’ve been told by a German
friend.
December 7, 2009 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
The "rolltop", if it really exists, is not just a
revolutionary design for a mobile computer. Far more revolutionary is the
change in manufacturing technique required to make the flexible
LCD/LED/plasma screen that can suffer such a sharp bend at its fold points,
and maintain the touch-sensitivity.
If this thing is real, then there have been some
major revolutions in design and manufacturing of the screen film technology.
Current-generation LCD/LED/plasma screen technology is based on
sub-sub-miniature (microscopic) electronics and wiring which are, by the
very nature of their materials, extremely fragile and delicate in the sizes
deployed in the screens. Plus, in addition to the display, the nature of
touch-screen sensors themselves also does not lend well to flexibility.
Creating a decent-resolution color touch-screen that can withstand the
thousands of "foldings" and unfoldings at the creases (even assuming that
the fold will only transit 33-degrees or so within the span of the half-inch
or so crease as depicted in the video) is an almost-unbelievable achievement
in materials science and electronic engineering.
In addition to the acknowledgement of an innovative
design, someone somewhere deserves some major kudos for being able to build
the thing.
David Fordham
James Madison University
Thank you Glen Gray
Swiss Army (PomeGranate) Phone ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e4X10hOh9o
Blu-Ray versus DVD
Blui-ray Disc ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc
How Blu-ray Discs Work ---
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/blu-ray.htm
"At last, Blu-ray poised to change the big picture," by Tom Shales,
The Washington Post, December 8, 2009 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/07/AR2009120703811.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter
What, then, is this
year's big must-have electronic toy -- the
Zhu Zhu hamster of the home entertainment system
and the has-been of tomorrow? Maybe, just possibly, after considerable
delay, it's the Blu-Ray video disc and the supposedly eye-popping high-def
pictures and ear-popping stereophonic sounds it can bring into the American
home.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, replete with its
"Black Friday" buying day, Blu-ray discs doubled their previous sales for a
total of $69 million in titles sold. Blu-ray sales were up even though
overall DVD sales were down nearly 8 percent -- one sign that Blu-ray may be
fulfilling its assigned role as "savior" of the DVD format.
To some of us, the DVD still seems new, its
strikingly sharp and detailed picture quality a quantum leap up from even
digital television as delivered by satellite (DirecTV, etc.) and fiber-optic
cable (Verizon's FIOS system, which seems to be giving the cable industry
fits). How can this new format already be old-hat, and in trouble? Maybe
because such things simply move much more quickly than they used to, and
people become accustomed to miraculous wonders overnight. Then they're ready
for the next one.
Blu-ray, developed by Sony, was one of two high-def
DVD formats slugging it out for a small part of the DVD market until 2008,
when Sony mysteriously got Blu-ray approved as the format of choice by all
DVD manufacturers. Thus was averted the kind of money- and time-wasting
format war that Sony's Betamax fought valiantly but lost to VHS tape in the
1980s.
Although Blu-ray has since its introduction
promised radically improved picture and sound quality, supposedly making
regular DVDs look pale and puny, the difference has never seemed dramatic
enough to justify the considerable increase in price. But now the players,
made by Sony and others, have fallen below the $100 line in some quarters,
and Sony's PlayStation 3, which plays Blu-ray discs as well as video games,
also came down in price to $299 before any retailer discounting.
(Just plan on taking a graduate-level course in
advanced electronics before attempting to operate the PlayStation as a Blu-ray
device -- or have a 15-year-old standing by to help you through the
inscrutable mess.)
The retail price of individual Blu-ray DVDs remains
generally higher than the price of the old-fashioned kind, but the cost
difference is now proportional to the quality difference; you'll get your
money's worth if the pursuit of sharper and higher-contrast and more
lustrously colorful images has been an all-consuming obsession.
Blu-ray titles, once a feeble trickle, now pour out
of manufacturing plants. Not just the latest animated and action pictures
but older titles, including big-time epics and splashy musicals, are also
being released in the format. This is good news for movie buffs who can
imagine owning a copy of "An American in Paris" or the Warner Bros. classic
of classics "Casablanca" in superior Blu-ray.
Collectors' hearts, mine included, flipped when
Warner Home Video, which has always been the most bountiful of DVD
releasers, announced Blu-ray versions of such lustrous MGM color classics as
"Gigi," the Lerner and Loewe musical set in Paris; "Quo Vadis," last of the
pre-CinemaScope Biblical epics; and, recently, a 50th-anniversary edition of
"North by Northwest," arguably the most sublimely entertaining film ever
directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
It's a pleasure to report that the films do have
added depth, shimmer and oomph when viewed via Blu-ray and its 1080p maximum
high-def standard (via HDMI cable connection, of course, on an HDTV
receiver, thus complicating things somewhat).
At the same time, it's clear that revisiting and
restoring older films in an attempt to make them equal to today's costliest
blockbusters is not, so far, 100 percent successful. Something happens to
the color in the older films -- even when it's "glorious Technicolor" --
that seems to flatten it out, reducing depth of field and contrast, and
lacking the glossy "snap" you get from a high-tech adventure film like "The
Dark Knight" "The Day After Tomorrow" or "The Fantastic Four."
If you wander through any of the many fussbudget
techie-nerd sites on the Web, you'll run into passionate and vituperative
condemnation of the Blu-ray format, seeing it as not only insufficient but
sinister for its invasive anti-piracy technology. It's also being speculated
that eventually, downloaded movies on your computer will be as sharp and
near-flawless as Blu-ray movies are now -- but don't hold your breath
waiting for that to happen.
And in fact, the prospect of being offered a
venerable movie title via its fifth or sixth video format is less than
thrilling. It's quite possible to own "The Wizard of Oz" in Beta, VHS,
laserdisc, several DVD iterations and now Blu-ray editions, each subsequent
format supposedly superior to the previous one. (Sadly, I have the dwindling
shelf space to prove it.)
And who knows but that some other hi-def format,
one that will make Blu-ray images look like faded old Polaroids, won't
surface in the next decade, or even before. Wait any longer to buy a Blu-ray
player and the trend may be gone, the moment over, and wouldn't that just be
too bad?
Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm
College Rankings as to Accounting, Business, Executive Programs, Partying,
Beautiful Campuses, and Sexual Health
December 11, 2009 message from Saeed Roohani
[sroohani@COX.NET]
I wonder if anyone know more about this new ranking
by BusinessWeek. Obviously, we are very pleased with Bryant University
ranking 17th in the nation, but it was a pleasant surprise to us.
http://bwnt.businessweek.com/bschools/undergraduate/09rankings/specialty.asp?rankcatid=1
Saeed
December 11, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Saeed,
Firstly let me congratulate your college on its ranking. You have
to be doing something correctly. Some have a knee jerk reaction that “rankings
don’t matter,” but rankings obviously matter in terms of student and faculty
recruitment. They may also matter among departments in a college competing for
budget cuts. A highly ranked department almost always argues that its high
ranking is in jeopardy if it does not get a lion’s share of the budgets being
doled out to all departments.
Be that as it may, there are many types of rankings, and Bryant
College came out relatively well in a “specialty ranking.” In general specialty
rankings can vary by geographic sector and many other specialties ---
http://bwnt.businessweek.com/bschools/undergraduate/09rankings/specialty.asp
Rankings vary greatly by specialties. But they also vary by media
sources of those rankings, especially those rankings of overall business
programs.
The media rankings of business (and accountancy) programs vary
among the top media rankers (US News, WSJ, Business Week, etc.). The
reason for the variation, aside for specialty rankings, is largely due to the
inputs chosen upon which the rankings are based. US News uses AACSB deans
for business school rankings. Deans are heavily influenced by university-wide
prestige (Harvard just has to be good at everything) and tradition (that Ivy
League bias that arises often by knowing zero about some of the “unknown
college” programs being rated). The deans are also influenced by AACSB faculty
salary rankings on the theory that the programs having the highest-paid faculty
must be better, especially when the university itself has a long standing
reputation such as the Big Ten Midwestern universities and the University of
Texas.
Deans are also influenced by research and publication records of
faculty, which often leans toward schools having “big name” faculty researchers
and higher volume journal hits in top academic research journals. This does not
always work well, however. Because it often does poorly in the US News rankings,
the University of Texas at Dallas does its own college of business rankings
based upon a selected number of top journal hits by school UT Dallas comes out
in the Top 10 in those publication-based rankings. Of course, the journals are
self-selected. But they are highly respected journals, usually very
mathematically-based journals.
The WSJ uses recruiters who visit the campuses to hire students.
Recruiters are often looking for those “best buy” programs where the graduates
are top flight but not quite as expensive. For example, the WSJ generally ranks
Dartmouth College’s Tuck School above the Harvard Business School --- not
because the top graduates of Tuck are necessarily better than the top graduates
of Harvard, but because the top graduates of Harvard (before the latest
recession) were all going out at unbelievable salaries that recruiters
considered not “best buys.”
Business Week has
various categories of rankings, including full-time versus part-time MBA
programs as well as undergraduate business programs. Business Week surveys
alumni lists which has huge problems in having alumni favor their alma maters
when ranking a large number of alternatives. This also, in my viewpoint, favors
larger programs for which I think Business Week makes some adjustments
that I do not fully understand and some of which I understand like having
internship programs. I also think Business Week raters peek over at US News
rankings by AACSB deans before publishing their own finished rankings.
I try to back up my conclusions ad nauseam at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
"The Best Undergraduate B-Schools," Business Week, May 8, 2006 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_19/b3983401.htm
Measuring Merit It's the kind of personal attention that landed
Wharton at the top of Business Week's inaugural ranking of the nation's best
undergraduate business programs. But the school's merits go well beyond that. To
succeed in the ranking, which incorporates five measures -- of student
engagement, postgraduation outcomes, and academic quality -- schools must be
firing on all cylinders. Clearly, Wharton is, landing in the Top 10 on four of
the five ranking measures. Small classes, talented faculty, top-flight
recruiting -- and a four-year format that allows its ultracompetitive students
to delve deeply into business fundamentals -- lofted Wharton to the No. 1
position. "They are extremely accomplished students," Souleles says. "It doesn't
get any better."
Wharton celebrates its 125th anniversary this year and for much of
its history has been considered among the nation's finest. Like many top
schools, it has the best of both worlds: a high-quality undergraduate business
program and an MBA program ranked No. 3 in BusinessWeek's 2004 "Best B-Schools"
list. Indeed, nine of the Top 10 undergraduate programs have highly ranked MBA
programs as well.
In many ways then, Wharton's showing among the undergraduate
schools simply confirms its preeminent status. But the new ranking also shows
just how much good company Wharton has these days. Schools that had never been
thought of as top business programs, such as No. 18 Lehigh University's College
of Business & Economics, turn out to deserve more recognition. And schools that
have always enjoyed a solid reputation, such as Emory University's Goizueta
Business School and the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business,
come in among the top five -- and in many ways rival Wharton for the mantle of
best undergraduate B-school in America.
MBA-like Respect That fact underscores a curious transformation
that has taken place in higher education in recent years. As the economy
rebounded after the dot-com bust, students have been drawn to college business
programs, and recruiters, seeking to ramp up their diminished ranks of middle
managers, have followed. Under increased pressure from students and recruiters,
business schools have revamped their offerings, putting more emphasis on
specialized classes, real-world experience, and soft skills such as leadership.
Once a refuge for students with poor grades and modest ambitions, many
undergraduate business programs now get MBA-like respect. For many graduates,
these programs are now so good that the MBA is almost beside the point, an
academic credential for career switchers and those with corner office dreams but
unnecessary for mere mortals.
The undergraduate business degree is now clearly on the path to
respectability. With 54% of employers planning recruiting trips to undergraduate
campuses in 2006 and undergraduate hiring expected to surge by 14.5% -- its
third consecutive double-digit increase -- starting salaries for grads in all
majors are rising. But business majors have fared better than any other
discipline, with starting salaries up more than 49% since 1996, compared with
39% for engineering students and 29% for liberal arts grads, according to the
National Association of Colleges & Employers. The typical business grad now
earns $43,313, about $8,000 less than engineering students can expect. But for
undergraduates at top schools, the average can easily exceed $50,000.
Hot to Hire Even with rising salaries, recruiters are relying on
undergraduate degree holders to fill more jobs. In just three years, Microsoft
Corp. (MSFT ) has increased its recruiting on college campuses, including some
MBAs, by 60%. Defense contractor Raytheon Co. (RTN ) plans to hire nearly 1,200
new graduates this year, and 3 out of 4 will be from undergraduate programs. To
keep the talent pipeline full, Raytheon maintains close relationships with 26
campuses, assigning executives to each school to work with key professors to
identify the best job candidates. Even so, with Raytheon's business growing at a
double-digit clip, the company plans to recruit from 120 schools this year,
according to Keith Pedon, senior vice-president for human resources.
It's not just Raytheon, either. When the Big East career fair took
place at New York's Madison Square Garden in March, there were 81 companies
pitching to 1,000 students, and organizers had to turn away 50 more companies
for lack of space.
For a better understanding of the shifting landscape of
undergraduate business education, Business Week last year undertook an
extraordinary research project. The goal: to rank the best college business
programs in America. Among other things, the project included a survey with
Boston's Cambria Consulting Inc. of nearly 100,000 business majors at 84 of the
best U.S. colleges and universities, a second survey of college recruiters, and
a third survey of the business programs themselves. If one thing emerges from
the data, it's that the programs are, in a sense, all grown up and evolving in
ways that mimic the developmental arc of the MBA itself.
Like graduate B-schools, the undergraduate programs are separating
into two clearly discernible tiers, with the 50 programs in our ranking standing
head and shoulders above the rest. They're also dividing along the same
philosophical split that now partitions the MBA world. There are those,
including many at or near the top of the list, that are following a rigorously
academic model, with a heavy emphasis on economics, statistics, finance, and
accounting. Programs like Wharton's fall into this group, which generally do not
require -- or give credit for -- internships, even though many students get them
on their own. They also use MBA teaching methods such as case studies,
simulations, and team projects.
But at the great majority of business programs, students are
exposed to less business theory -- too little, in the view of some experts --
and a heavy dose of practical training. A quarter century ago, virtually every
business program in America followed the latter model. At top schools that's no
longer the case. "What you're seeing is a polarization," says Barbara E. Kahn,
director of Wharton's undergraduate business division. "This is different from
what it was 25 years ago. It wasn't the academic experience it is today."
Few schools typify the scholarly approach more than Wharton, which
landed in the No. 1 spot largely on the strength of its academic quality. But
the same could be said for any of the schools near the top of the list. At No. 2
University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce, students said the two-year
format left them two additional years to explore the school's numerous offerings
but made for a tough course load in the junior year and a pressure-cooker
atmosphere in which many thrived. At No. 3 Notre Dame, rigorous classes
requiring teamwork skills and an intimate knowledge of economics, calculus, and
corporate strategy earned the school a high grade for teaching quality. The
curriculum works ethics into most classes, requires that half of all coursework
be in nonbusiness subjects, and emphasizes group projects.
One reason undergraduate business programs are getting better is
because the labor market is demanding it. To make graduates desirable to
recruiters, many business programs have begun making changes. Several schools
that had two-year programs, including No. 21 University of Southern California's
Marshall School of Business, have begun admitting freshmen in recent years. Such
moves permit students to take demanding business courses earlier, making them
more competitive internship candidates. Students are eagerly embracing these and
other changes. When No. 15 Washington University's Olin School of Business, a
four-year program, began offering a career management elective to sophomores in
2004, more than 70 students showed up, and a second section had to be added.
Continued in article
Business Week's Executive MBA Rankings and Profiles
---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/03/emba_rank.htm?campaign_id=nws_mbaxp_oct10&link_position=link9
"B-Schools Ranked on Social (Responsibility) Studies," Business Week,
November 1, 2005 ---
http://snipurl.com/BENov1
As part of the study, the organizations rank B-schools based on
how well they integrate social and environmental issues into their curriculum
and research. The ranking weighs a school's commitment in four categories,
including the number of courses offered, the enrollment for those courses, the
quality of the content, and the depth and breadth of faculty research. Nearly
600 MBA programs participated by responding to a survey, and 1,842 courses and
828 journal articles from leading peer-reviewed business publications were
analyzed to determine the top 30 schools.
The top 10 programs as ranked by "Beyond Grey Pinstripes" are:
01. Stanford University Graduate School of Business, U.S.
02. ESADE Business School, Spain
03. York University Schulich School of Business, Canada
04. ITESM (EGADE) Graduate School of Business, Mexico
05. University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business, U.S.
06. The George Washington University School of Business, U.S.
07. The Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, U.S.
08. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business
School, U.S.
09. Cornell University S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management, U.S.
10. Wake Forest University Babcock Graduate School of Management, U.S.
Although the business schools surveyed are making important
progress, the report's authors note that teaching and research on these topics
are still limited and not widespread. Only 4% of faculty at the surveyed schools
published research on related issues in top, peer-reviewed journals during the
survey period, says Mark Milstein, business research director for the World
Resources Institute's Sustainable Enterprise Program.
A Very Critical Article About College Rankings by the
Media
"It’s the Student Work, Stupid," by Sherman Dorn, Inside Higher Ed,
April 7, 2008 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/04/07/dorn
"Rankings Are Useful — But Go Beyond ‘U.S. News’," by Richard Vedder,
Inside Higher Ed, August 29, 2008 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/08/28/vedder
An economist at Vanderbilt University’s
business school has unveiled a new approach to business school rankings — an
approach that responds to one criticism of M.B.A. education, which is that
graduate schools of business are great at identifying talent, but don’t
necessarily do much with it once students are enrolled. Mike Schor, the
economist, took the top 50 programs, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, and
took data on inputs (college grades and scores on the GMAT) and outputs (average
salaries). It is no surprise of course that some of the top ranked programs see
their graduates do particularly well, but Schor noted that these schools attract
some of the best students — so he compared salaries to what might have been the
“predictive” salary based on GMAT scores and college grades. And he ranked the
50 in order of the gains in salary that the school appears to provide. Using
this system, Cornell University comes out on top, followed by Indiana University
at Bloomington and the University of Virginia. Details are at
Schor’s blog.
Inside Higher Ed, June 20, 2008 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/06/20/qt
Jensen Comment
This does not necessarily mean that a student admitted to Wharton, Harvard, or
Stanford should choose a "higher-ranked" Indiana University. There's too much
snob appeal among recruiters for companies and doctoral programs to count out
the prestige school halo impact on a resume. For example, Wharton opens doors on
Wall Street even if Wall Street's starting salaries are a bit lower and/or based
on securities sales commissions. Having said this, I once stated to a top
administrator at MIT that if MIT did not mess a student up over the course of
four years, the student would probably achieve great success whether or not the
student graduated from MIT because admission standards are so high just to get
into MIT. He nodded his head in agreement.
Trojan(R) Ranks U.S.
Colleges and Universities in Second Annual Sexual Health Report Card ---
Click Here
The makers of Trojan brand condoms today
released their 2007 Sexual Health Report Card, the second annual ranking of
sexual health resources at American colleges and universities. The study,
conducted by Sperling's BestPlaces on behalf of Trojan, finds a lack of
access to information and resources may prevent some students from being
sexually healthy.
This year's report card arrives in the wake of
Trojan's "Evolve" campaign
( http://www.trojanevolve.com
), a multimedia effort aimed at redefining the national dialogue on sexual
health with an emphasis on responsible behavior and partners' respect for
one another.
In total, 139 colleges and universities
representing each state and major NCAA Division I athletic conference were
reviewed. Placing first and second, the University of Minnesota and
University of Wyoming demonstrated "well- evolved" sexual health programs
and were the most sexually healthy schools according to the study. While
Ohio State and the University of Florida may have recently triumphed in
sports, the Trojan Report Card indicates their sexual health programs have
room to improve, as OSU and UF ranked 26th and 43rd, respectively.
Yale University, which topped the rankings in
2006, came in at number 16 this year. Access to sexual health information
and resources, including the schools annual Sex Week at Yale (SWAY),
continue to be highly rated; however, the school's lower ranking is a result
of the expanded categories and schools considered. The 2007 Sexual Health
Report Card examined 139 schools, nearly 50 percent more than last year, and
judged several categories not taken into consideration last year, resulting
in different rankings.
Highest- and Lowest-Ranked Schools
1. University of Minnesota (GPA 3.91)
2. University of Wyoming (GPA 3.91)
3. University of Washington (GPA 3.73)
4. Rutgers University (GPA 3.68)
5. Purdue University (GPA 3.64)
135. Villanova University (GPA 1.45)
136. University of Arkansas (GPA 1.36)
137. Arkansas State University (GPA 1.14)
138. University of Louisiana (GPA 0.91)
139. Louisiana Tech University (GPA 0.82)
For the first time, researchers allowed
students to weigh in with an online survey that generated more than 3,300
responses. This opinion poll did not factor into the rankings, but does
point to the opportunity for health centers on campus to evolve how they
meet the needs of their students.
Continued in article
Question
Where are the most beautiful college campuses in the United States?
Where are the happiest students?
Where are the most politically correct colleges?
What are the 2008 top-ranked party and or jock or weirdo schools in the United
States?
Hint: Chico and North Texas State have fallen from grace.
The No. 1 ranking colleges do not want is Princeton Review’s annual designation
in its college guide of the top party school. This year’s winner is West
Virginia University, followed by the University of Mississippi, the University
of Texas at Austin, the University of Florida, and the University of Georgia.
While Princeton Review’s guide is not known for the quality of its social
science research (student surveys are the key tool), it does win points for
creative categories — particularly in playing off of student’s studious or
not-so-studious reputations, and their politics. Clemson University is named the
top jock school. Eugene Lang College of New School University is named the place
that educates “dodgeball targets.” Hampshire College topped Bard College for the
coveted “Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging, clove-smoking vegetarians” award.
Macalester College was deemed most accepting of gay students while
Hampden-Sydney won for “alternative lifestyles not an alternative.” Another
tradition about these rankings is for the top party school’s president to
question the ranking. Mike Garrison, president elect at West Virginia, issued
this statement: “I’ve talked to thousands of our students over the weekend and
during the first day of classes, and their concerns are with their education,
with their futures, and with the great year we have ahead at WVU. I’m focused on
the way this university changes people’s lives, the research that we do, and the
service we provide to the state of West Virginia. This is a special place, and
the whole state is proud of it.”
Inside Higher Ed, August 21, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/21/qt
Jensen Comment
There are many other categories at the Princeton Review site ---
http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankings.asp
Check out the
categories! |
|
|
Bob Jensen's threads on college ranking systems are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
By now we've heard most all the reasons/excuses for the disappearance of all
investment banking firms
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#InvestmentBanking
The December 5, 2009 issue of The Economist magazine offers a new
twist by blaming, in part, the silo databases of Wall Street firms. This is
surprising since I would've assumed the big investment banks would've been early
adopters of ERP system-wide communicating databases.
The term "silo computing" or "data silo" dates back to before the days of
computer networking and refers to multiple databases in an organizations that
are not compatible and often require duplicate computing. For example, an
account sales database in the marketing department may be programmed differently
than the account sales database in the accounting department. Silo computing was
extremely common and extremely inefficient in COBOL days before the onset of
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) integrative (ERP) total enterprise
interactive databases of which the German SAP systems are the best known ERP
systems ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245glosap.htm
"Silo but deadly," The Economist, December 5-11, 2009, pp. 83-84 ---
http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15016132
NO INDUSTRY spends more on information technology
(IT) than financial services: about $500 billion globally, more than a fifth
of the total (see chart). Many of the world’s computers, networking and
storage systems live in the huge data centres run by banks. “Banks are
essentially technology firms,” says Hugo Banziger, chief risk officer at
Deutsche Bank. Yet the role of IT in the crisis is barely discussed.
It should be. Corporate IT systems—collections of
computers, applications and databases—always tend to be messy, but those of
banks are particularly bad. They were the first to adopt computers:
decades-old mainframes are still in use. Lots of product innovation means
new systems, as does merger activity, which has proliferated in the industry
in recent years: Citigroup had a notoriously fragmented IT set-up going into
the crisis. The need to comply with regulations, and the global presence of
big banks, adds complexity.
The demands of financial markets make matters
worse. Hedging positions, trading derivatives and modelling financial
products all require highly sophisticated programs that are only really
suited to specific asset classes. The code for new financial products has to
be developed quickly. Innovation often takes place on Excel spreadsheets on
traders’ desktops. “The big task of management is to manage down the number
of spreadsheets,” says one risk chief, whose bank creates 1,000 product
variations a year.
As a result, many banks have huge problems with
data quality. The same types of asset are often defined differently in
different programs. Numbers do not always add up. Managers from different
departments do not trust each other’s figures. Finding one’s way through all
these systems is detective work, says a former IT manager at a big British
bank. “And sometimes the trail would go cold.”
This fragmented IT landscape made it exceedingly
difficult to track a bank’s overall risk exposure before and during the
crisis. Mainly as a result of the Basel 2 capital accords, many banks had
put in new systems to calculate their aggregate exposure. Royal Bank of
Scotland (RBS) spent more than $100m to comply with Basel 2. But in most
cases the aggregate risk was only calculated once a day and some figures
were not worth the pixels they were made of.
During the turmoil many banks had to carry out big
fact-finding missions to see where they stood. “Answering such questions as
‘What is my exposure to this counterparty?’ should take minutes. But it
often took hours, if not days,” says Peyman Mestchian, managing partner at
Chartis Research, an advisory firm. Insiders at Lehman Brothers say its
European arm lacked an integrated picture of its risk position in the days
running up to its demise.
Whether the financial industry would have hit the
brakes if it had had digital dashboards showing banks’ overall exposures in
real time is a moot point. Some managers might not have even looked. And
better IT would have done little to counteract the bigger forces behind the
crisis, such as global economic imbalances.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on the recent Wall Street woes are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
The Unknown Professor who maintains the Financial Rounds
Blog recently lost his young son to cancer and is cutting back to blog entries
about once each week ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
He did just post this hilarious sign.
New integrative Washington Post and New York Times news site
---
http://livingstories.googlelabs.com/
Thus far, I think this Google news site is pretty disappointing and has too few
categories.
For example, where is the good stuff from Floyd Norris in The New York Times?
Maybe accounting is just not a "Hot Topic" like "Tiger Woods,"
This is somewhat of a desperation effort for big liberal newspapers to gain
more readership and possibly advertising since the world mostly will not pay to
subscribe to their electronic newspapers (I do like their free news generosity).
In contrast, The Wall Street Journal actually has so many paying subscribers it
has no need to partner with Google in this Living Story site.
"Google, Washington Post and N.Y. Times create news tool 'Living story pages'
aim to change views of journalism online," by Howard Kurtz, The Washington
Post, December 9, 2009 ---
Click Here
Take the engineering mystique of Google, add the
prestige of The Washington Post and New York Times, throw in the spice of
secret meetings, and what have you got?
A new online tool that, well, isn't exactly going
to revolutionize journalism. But those involved in the partnership between
the California software giant and two of the nation's top newspapers see it
as a first step toward changing the way news is consumed online.
It's called a
living
story page, and Google executives are touting it
as their contribution to the beleaguered newspaper business. The idea is to
simplify things for readers by grouping developing stories about a hot topic
-- say, Tiger Woods -- on a single Web page, with updates automatically
highlighted at the top of the screen.
"So much of what you see online today is a
reflection of the way it's told in newspapers," says Josh Cohen, senior
business product manager for Google News. "They haven't taken advantage of
what the Web offers to tell news in a different way."
By grouping the stories
at
http://livingstories.googlelabs.com day
after day under one Web address, the Times and Post could boost their Google
rankings, which would tend to push those pages toward the top of the list
when people search for that subject. After the Tuesday launch, the story
pages will reside at Google Labs for an experimental period of two to three
months, and revert to the papers' own Web sites if all goes well.
"Over the coming months, we'll refine Living
Stories based on your feedback," Google says in a blog posting. If the
format gains traction, Google plans to offer it to any interested newspaper,
magazine or Web site, at no charge.
For now, The Post is launching three such pages, on
health-care reform, D.C. schools and the Washington Redskins. The Times has
five, devoted to Afghanistan, executive compensation, global warming, swine
flu and health care.
R.B. Brenner, deputy editor of The Post's new
Universal News Desk, which oversees its print and Web operations, says the
"one-stop shopping" approach could spare readers from having to hunt for
previous stories on a subject. "The idea is that users, news consumers, are
interested in experiencing news in different ways, and it's important for
news organizations to be experimenting. . . . The question is, when you take
the car out for a spin, what are the advantages?"
Continued in article
California is Rationing Admissions: Denying Admissions of California
Citizens in Favor of Both Illegals and Legals from Other States
"U.S. Citizens Reap Unintended Benefit From California's Immigrant-Tuition
Law," by Josh Keller, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 6, 2009
---
http://chronicle.com/article/US-Citizens-Reap-Unintended/49327/?sid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en
A national battle over state laws that
grant cheaper, in-state college tuition to some undocumented immigrants is
now centered in California, where the state Supreme Court is expected to
begin hearing arguments early next year on whether offering the benefit
violates federal law.
The case is drawing close attention from
both sides of the immigration debate and from other states that offer
similar benefits. If the court throws out the California law, the decision
could sway other states to do the same, making it more difficult for
undocumented students to afford to go to college.
But the outcome of the case could also
have a direct effect on another, unlikely group of students: former
Californians.
In a little-known quirk of the state law,
thousands of students who receive in-state tuition under the provision are
not, in fact, undocumented immigrants. They are legal U.S. residents, who
are able to take advantage of the law's broad language to avoid paying
higher, out-of-state tuition.
Most of the unintended beneficiaries are
students who left California after attending high school there and then
return for college, officials say. Those students are able to take advantage
of language in the state law that promises in-state tuition to any student
who has a diploma from a California high school and attended high school in
the state for three years or more. The law was written broadly in an attempt
to avoid violating provisions of a federal immigration statute that
restricts benefits for undocumented students.
At the University of California and
California State University, legal residents who qualify for the tuition
benefit appear to outnumber the undocumented immigrants for whom the state
law was designed, according to university data and interviews with
officials.
Less than 20 percent of the 1,639
recipients of the tuition benefit in the 2006-7 academic year at the
University of California were undocumented, according to the system's most
recent report. On the Santa Barbara campus, the student records of only
three out of 72 recipients showed no sign of documentation, such as a Social
Security number, the report said.
The university system would have gained an
additional $18.5-million in tuition revenue in 2006-7 from students who were
legal residents had they not qualified for the benefit.
The lost revenue comes as all of the
state's colleges and universities struggle to meet unprecedented cuts in
state support. Last month the University of California raised undergraduate
tuition by 32 percent, leading to widespread student protests.
Mix of Students Some of the legal
residents who receive the benefit are undergraduates from other states who
attended boarding school in California. Others are graduate students who
attended high school in California and then moved away. Those students would
otherwise be required to pay out-of-state tuition—thousands of dollars
higher than the in-state rate—for one year after they came back to the
state. After their first year, they would qualify for residency.
"My sense is that these are primarily
Asian students," said Elena Macías, special assistant to the president at
California State University at Long Beach. "They are students who have
graduated from high school here, gone to get their bachelor's degree
somewhere else, maybe settled into another state. … Then they come back
home."
The unintended effects of the law are not
widely known, added Ms. Macías, who trains administrators in
immigrant-student issues. "I have never encountered anybody who is aware of
the fact that U.S. citizens take advantage of this more than undocumented
students," she said.
Recipients' status is not known at the
state's 110-campus community-college system, which does not collect detailed
data on students who receive the benefit. A total of about 34,000 students
qualified for the benefit during the 2008-9 fiscal year, system officials
said.
The large number of students who have been
able to qualify under the 2001 law, known as AB 540, has surprised even its
supporters.
"I don't think anybody thought that the
large majority of people benefited would be citizens," said Alfred R.
Herrera, assistant vice provost for academic partnerships at the University
of California at Los Angeles, who advocated for the state law before it was
passed.
Skirting a Lawsuit The topsy-turvy dynamic
in California appears to be unique among the 10 states that offer some
version of the in-state tuition benefit meant to help undocumented
immigrants. The other nine states all require students to live in the state
for a period of time, usually a year, immediately leading up to the time
they enroll in college, making it difficult to qualify for those who have
left the state.
Lawmakers in California omitted the time
requirement because they feared it would make the law more susceptible to a
legal challenge, Mr. Herrera said. They feared the provision could be
interpreted as establishing a test of residency, violating a federal statute
that prohibits states from granting a postsecondary-education benefit to
illegal immigrants that is denied to legal residents.
Opponents of the law sued anyway, saying
the requirement that students attend a California high school itself
established a test that violates federal law.
That case, which is being considered by
the state Supreme Court, was brought by out-of-state students who said they
were unfairly denied the ability to pay in-state tuition. In a state Court
of Appeal last year, lawyers for the University of California argued, among
other things, that the large numbers of legal residents who receive the
tuition exemption were evidence that the law did not discriminate against
U.S. citizens.
But in a major victory for opponents of
the tuition benefit, the appeals court ruled in September 2008 that the
California provision clearly violated federal law. In its opinion, the court
took time to rebut the argument that a diversity of recipients in state
colleges and universities made the law more legally acceptable, calling it
"irrelevant."
Michael Brady, a lawyer for the students
who challenged the law, said he did not trust numbers reported by the
university that undocumented students were the minority of recipients. But
regardless, he argued, "Congress meant to deter the illegals absolutely, and
without qualification, from getting the benefit. There is no circumstance
under which an illegal alien should receive it."
Supporters of the in-state tuition laws
are divided on whether writing the law broadly, in a way that allowed former
residents to benefit, was a good idea. Michael A. Olivas, a law professor at
the University of Houston and a prominent proponent of such laws, said
California lawmakers should have included protections, like those in other
states, that prevent out-of-state students from obtaining in-state tuition.
"It's a badly written statute," Mr. Olivas
said. But the laws will survive in the courts even with the additional
requirement, he continued. "They were dodging a bullet that they didn't need
to dodge."
Ms. Macías, the Long Beach administrator,
said it was worth granting in-state tuition to all students who spent their
high-school years in California, even if the benefit has been widened by
accident. "In a way," she said, "what it signifies is that California has
made a commitment to its children that if you go to a public high school for
three years and graduate, you can go on paying in-state tuition."
From the Scout Report on December 4, 2009
Zimbra Collaboration Suite 6.0.3 ---
http://www.zimbra.com/products/
The Zimbra Collaboration Suite is designed to be
used in settings such as higher education, government offices, and various
enterprising types. The main part of the Suite is an interactive email and
calendar server that allows users in many different physical locations
coordinate meetings, conferences, and even lets people link-up different
email accounts. This particular version is compatible with computers running
Linux or Mac OS X 10.5 and newer.
Wise Registry Cleaner 4.83 ---
http://www.wisecleaner.com/
A good registry cleaner is always something nice to
have around, and this latest version of Wise Registry Cleaner doesn't
consume much memory and it works quickly. The Cleaner can be set up to check
the registry automatically, and it also offers an undo option. This version
is compatible with computers running Windows 95 and newer.
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning ---
Click Here
The Miniature Guide To Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools ---
Click Here
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Biomedical Search ---
http://www.biomedsearch.com/
Imagining Cell Biology ---
http://www.cell.com/trends/cell-biology/special_issue
Australian Antarctic Magazine ---
http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=2006
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
The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning ---
Click Here
The Miniature Guide To Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools ---
Click Here
Open Congressional Research Reports for the People ---
http://opencrs.com/
Governing Sourcebook ---
http://sourcebook.governing.com/
Census Information --- http://www.peoplefind.com/frames/freeresources/govdataindex.htm
Also see http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/
20 Years After: Life Beyond Communism in Central & Eastern Europe [Flash
Player] ---
http://20years.tol.org/
The Digital Locke Project (John Locke) ---
http://www.digitallockeproject.nl/
John Donne (metaphysics, poetry, philosophy) ---
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/
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
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
The Digital Locke Project (John Locke) ---
http://www.digitallockeproject.nl/
John Donne (metaphysics, poetry, philosophy) ---
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project,
1936-1940 ---
http://memory.loc.gov/wpaintro/wpahome.html
Route 66 ---
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/route66/index.html
Sitters, artists and photographers talking (portrait painters) ---
http://www.npg.org.uk/learning/digital/Sitters-artists-and-photographers-talking.php
20 Years After: Life Beyond Communism in Central & Eastern Europe [Flash
Player] ---
http://20years.tol.org/
Australian Antarctic Magazine ---
http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=2006
Dallas Museum of Art.TV ---
http://www.dallasmuseumofart.tv/
The Hale Scrapbook (cartoon history) ---
http://cartoons.osu.edu/hale/Hale.php
The Opper Project (editorial cartoons) ---
http://hti.osu.edu/opper/index.cfm
University of Nebraska Libraries Digital Collections: Government Comics
Collection ---
http://contentdm.unl.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/comics
Chinese Anti-Malaria Posters ---
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/chineseantimalaria/
Photographs of Frank B. Snyder ---
http://digital.lib.muohio.edu/snyder/
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain Digital Archive at Bowdoin College (Longfellow)
---
http://learn.bowdoin.edu/joshua-lawrence-chamberlain/
The Pullman State Historic Site (Florida) ---
http://www.pullman-museum.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
Boston Symphony Orchestra Podcasts [iTunes] ---
http://www.bso.org/bso/mods/toc_01_gen_noSubCat.jsp?id=bcat12650019
Dance Magazine ---
http://www.dancemagazine.com/
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/
December 8, 2009
December 9, 2009
December 10, 2009
December 11, 2009
December 12, 2009
December 14, 2009
December 15, 2009
December 16, 2009
"Brain Implant Cuts Seizures: Epilepsy patients who
don't respond to drugs may soon have a new option," by Emily Singer, MIT's
Technology Review, December 9, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/24095/?nlid=2587
"MS sufferer walks after stem cell treatment," by Bonnie Malkin,
London Telegraph, December 14, 2009 ---
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6810546/MS-sufferer-walks-after-stem-cell-treatment.html
An Australian man who was confined to a wheelchair
by multiple sclerosis has made a remarkable recovery after receiving a
groundbreaking stem cell treatment.
Ben Leahy, 20, was diagnosed with the disease in
2008 and lost the ability to stand within a few months.
However, a new procedure to combat the disease has
helped him regain his health and he is now walking again.
The treatment targets the immune system of multiple
sclerosis patients, which turns in on itself causing damage to nerves which
can lead to blurred vision, loss of balance and paralysis.
Doctors carried out a new technique to remove stem
cells from his bone marrow before using chemicals to destroy all his immune
cells.
The stem cells were then transplanted back into Mr
Leahy's body to replenish the immune system – effectively resetting it.
Dr Colin Andrews, a neurologist from Canberra, said
the positive results had surprised doctors.
"At the moment there's a good chance we may have
arrested the disease," he said.
"He walks pretty well, there's only some mild
weakness in his right leg and some visual loss in one eye and apart from
that he's very intact.".
Dr Andrews said doctors had previously been
reluctant to use the technique because of the risk of death was estimated to
be around eight per cent several years ago.
But improvements in the techniques meant the risk
was now one per cent and Dr Andrews said the outstanding results of Mr
Leahy's treatment meant it could be used on more patients in the future.
"It sets another landmark for people to work
towards," he said.
Continued in article
From the Reader's Digest on November 2009, Page 72
During inspection, our new company commander stopped and chatted up a
corporal.
"How long have you been in the marines?" he asked.
"Two years, eight months, and 24 days Sir," the corporal responded.
"Do you plan to reenlist"
"No Sir."
"What are you going to do after discharge?"
"Cartwheels and handstands, Sir."
Jensen Comment
I sometimes saw students doing handstands and cartwheels after finishing my
accounting theory and AIS courses.
From the Reader's Digest on November 2009, Page 128
You're a dumb criminal if:
You air your neighbor's dirty laundry
As she walked around her neighbor's yard sale in Severn, Maryland the woman
couldn't help admiring the items. The Oriental rug,, the luggage, the shoes ---
they were exactly here style. And why not? They were hers!
You let your supply of antismoking patches run out
An Indiana state trooper stopped a car for a traffic violation. When a
passenger, Honesty Knight, asked if she could smoke, the officer said yes. She
proceeded, police say, to light up a marijuana joint.
You don't know when to write off a loss
John Opperman-Green robbed a Kissimmee, Florida 7-Eleven, then called the cops
to complain when he tried to hitch a ride with strangers, who, in ther, robbed
him.
Jensen Comment
The was a similar police report in NYC about a bank robber who went running down
the street and latter reported that he was mugged.
You harbor grudges
Joseph Goetz's alleged attempt to rob a York, Pennsylvania, bank met with some
snags. Cops say the first teller he tried to rob fainted and the next two
insisted they had no cash in their drawers. Fed up, Goetz stormed out,
threatening to write an angry letter to the bank.
You can't let go of your friends
Two New Zealand prisoners had the brilliant idea of fleeing the courthouse while
tethered together by handcuffs. They might have escaped had a light pole not
gotten between them. Like a pare of click-an-clacks, they slammed into each
other and were arrested trying to get back to their feet.
Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Three Finance Blogs
Jim Mahar's FinanceProfessor Blog ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/
FinancialRounds Blog ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
Karen Alpert's FinancialMusings (Australia) ---
http://financemusings.blogspot.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
The Master List of Free
Online College Courses ---
http://universitiesandcolleges.org/
Shared Open Courseware
(OCW) from Around the World: OKI, MIT, Rice, Berkeley, Yale, and Other Sharing
Universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Free Textbooks and Cases ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Mathematics and Statistics Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
Free Science and Medicine Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Free Social Science and Philosophy Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Free Education Discipline Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Teaching Materials (especially
video) from PBS
Teacher Source: Arts and
Literature ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/arts_lit.htm
Teacher Source: Health & Fitness
---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/health.htm
Teacher Source: Math ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/math.htm
Teacher Source: Science ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/sci_tech.htm
Teacher Source: PreK2 ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/prek2.htm
Teacher Source: Library Media ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/library.htm
Free Education and
Research Videos from Harvard University ---
http://athome.harvard.edu/archive/archive.asp
VYOM eBooks Directory ---
http://www.vyomebooks.com/
From Princeton Online
The Incredible Art Department ---
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/
Online Mathematics Textbooks ---
http://www.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html
National Library of Virtual Manipulatives ---
http://enlvm.usu.edu/ma/nav/doc/intro.jsp
Moodle ---
http://moodle.org/
The word moodle is an acronym for "modular
object-oriented dynamic learning environment", which is quite a mouthful.
The Scout Report stated the following about Moodle 1.7. It is a
tremendously helpful opens-source e-learning platform. With Moodle,
educators can create a wide range of online courses with features that
include forums, quizzes, blogs, wikis, chat rooms, and surveys. On the
Moodle website, visitors can also learn about other features and read about
recent updates to the program. This application is compatible with computers
running Windows 98 and newer or Mac OS X and newer.
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accountancy Discussion ListServs:
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a
ListServ (usually for free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc
Roles of a ListServ ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
|
CPAS-L (Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo
(Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation
Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Some Accounting Blogs
Paul Pacter's IAS Plus (International
Accounting) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm
International Association of Accountants News ---
http://www.aia.org.uk/
AccountingEducation.com and Double Entries ---
http://www.accountingeducation.com/
Gerald Trites'eBusiness and
XBRL Blogs ---
http://www.zorba.ca/
AccountingWeb ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/
SmartPros ---
http://www.smartpros.com/
Management and Accounting Blog ---
http://maaw.info/
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu