Tidbits on March 8, 2010
Bob Jensen


According to local news the bears are awakening very hungry
Their favorite food is bird food
Three years ago, a big bear ripped out three of my bird feeders
So I emptied the bird feeder shown below (the red restaurant)

This is our cottage in 2010
It sits where there was once a huge hotel that was torn down in 1973
That hotel supposedly could sleep 340 guest

This is our cottage around 1900 (a guess) before it was moved from the golf course
In its early days it was known as the Pavillion Cottage with a Japanese style roof
First it was a golf course club house and later a tennis club house
About a hundred years ago a man named Brayton converted it to a summer cottage on the golf course
In 1974 an owner named Foss moved the cottage across the tennis court and settled over a basement
where the big hotel once stood (the Foss cottage was then winterized for the hard mountain winters)
But in the early 1900s it looked like this

For nearly 60 years there was an Easter Sunday sunrise service
On the front porch of the original Sunset Hill House Hotel before it was torn down in 1973
The picture below was scanned from an old postcard
Horse carriages used to bring guests up from the train depot
Sometimes wives and children stayed most of the summer
to escape the heat of the big cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia
Air conditioning played a huge role in ruining this business

This was actually part of a summer resort with a golf course, tennis courts, a casino, and a bowling alley
The power generating building remains and is now my barn
The Annex was used to house the Hotel's staff and has since been converted into
The much smaller Sunset Hill House Hotel of today

This is the old Annex that is now the functioning Sunset Hill Hotel

Our cottage was one of the three VIP cottages after sometime in the early 1900s
Owners of those cottages had full resort privileges on land owned by the resort
The red-roofed buildings in the foreground were carriage horse stables

I would love to see some pictures of the gardens of this resort in the 1900s
Alas I've not seen any pictures
Here is Erika tending her flower gardens where the hotel used to have flowers

What has not changed is the view from the front porch of the Main Hotel
This is the view of the White Mountains that people used to view from the Hotel's dining room

Straight west is Mt. Lafayette

And if they looked to the northeast this is their view of Mt. Washington in foliage season

 

The pictures below were forwarded by Auntie Bev and Paula


 

Due Diligence as Defined in the Connecticut Legislature (I could not verify this on Snopes)
Most professors get very upset if students are doing such things during lectures in electronic classrooms.
It would be a rare occasion to even get this many representatives seated in the U.S. House
Where C-Span films speeches given to a mostly empty chambers

Mom must've promised him a new pony, Sony Play Station, Harley or something really big?

As Seen  at the Huffington Post Site

I don't kiss like that on the first date

Question
Does he have white paint or black paint in the bucket?

The weatherman predicted two feet of snow, I didn't think he meant this.

Inflation Between 1955 and 2010

 

Bob Jensen's Version of Snow Plow Sculptures (home video)
Video as taken with my cool sunglasses
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/VideoCoolSunglasses/SnowSculptures.3gp

Things You Don't Hear Anymore (great art memories of my generation) ---
http://www.rockinghamremembered.com/ThingsYouDontHearAnymore.html

Take Me Back to the 1960s --- http://objflicks.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm

 

 

Tidbits on March 8, 2010
Bob Jensen

 

Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on March 8, 2010
To Accompany the March 8, 2010 edition of Tidbits
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations030810.htm        

Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm

 

 

Tidbits on March 8, 2010
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

574 Shields Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

 




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

Top Ten Things David Letterman Learned From Ten Area Accountants ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWIlHl3j7CQ
These are so bad they will not change the public image of accountants
However, Richard Cohen talks about me

"Amazing Stats: The State of the Internet [VIDEO],: by Rick Telberg, CPA Trendlines, March 3, 2010 ---
http://cpatrendlines.com/2010/03/03/amazing-stats-the-state-of-the-internet/

Mystery Bear of the Arctic --- http://ow.ly/1bLCV

Astronomy Media Player [iTunes] --- http://www.jodcast.net/amp/

Social Media Revolution Video --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8&feature=player_embedded

“The Tax Lady From Hell.” and Related Videos --- http://profalbrecht.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/a-man-so-upset-with-the-irs/

Great Public Sector Reform Speech ---
http://njn.net/television/webcast/ontherecord.html

Test of Your International Dining Out Sophistication ---
http://www.fekids.com/img/kln/flash/DontGrossOutTheWorld.swf

Humor Videos:  Pennsylvania Wants to Show CPAs Are Funny ---
http://www.webcpa.com/news/Pennsylvania-Wants-to-Show-CPAs-Are-Funny-53291-1.html

Dennis Swanberg - Bengy and the Zipper ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWH-VToohro

"There's a Communist Living in the White House," NBC's Saturday Night Live Star Victoria Jackson ---
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=126910

Huffington Post Comedy --- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/comedy/

Video:  Saturday Night Live Takes on "Extremely Unpopular" Healthcare Plan ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/07/snl-takes-on-deeply-unpop_n_489002.html

My Waffle Wedded Wife --- http://www.flixxy.com/wedding-ceremony.htm

 

"NBC's Saturday Night Live (Comedy) 'Presidents' Reunite to Promote Wall Street Reform," SmartPros, March 8, 2010 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x68955.xml

A new online video released from the creators and producers of Funny Or Die kicked off a week of action to urge Congress to act and pass real financial reform.

The video, directed by Ron Howard, brings together all the actors who portrayed “Presidents” on “Saturday Night Live,” including Will Ferrell (George W. Bush), Fred Armisen (Barack Obama), Darrell Hammond (Bill Clinton), Chevy Chase (Gerald Ford), Dan Aykroyd (Jimmy Carter), and Dana Carvey (George H. W. Bush). In addition, Jim Carrey rounds out the cast with his portrayal of Ronald Regan, and “SNL” alum Maya Rudolph (Michelle Obama) is also featured.

The video was created in association with Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of more than 200 national, state and local consumer, labor, investor, civil rights, community, small business and senior citizen organizations, to urge Congress to act now on Financial Reform and to make sure the cornerstone or real reform, a strong and independent consumer agency, is included in any final bill.

“To see all these fake Presidents together at once in a fake White House Bedroom with fake wigs was very fake inspiring,” said Adam McKay, co-founder of Funny Or Die and co-writer of the video.

In addition to the “Presidential Reunion” video, Funny and Die is working on additional videos to be released soon to urge Congress to act and pass financial reform.

The videos will be on www.funnyordie.com  and link to information and actions on www.mainstreetbrigade.org  and www.ourfinancialsecurity.org  .

Heather Booth, Executive Director of Americans for Financial Reform: “For months, the Big Banks and their army of high priced lobbyists have been swarming Capitol Hill looking to either kill or weaken real reform – including a strong and independent agency focused on standing up for consumers. We are thrilled the folks at Funny or Die, and their friends in Hollywood, are joining this fight. The Big Banks have had their say in Washington for long enough. It is time for Congress to listen to the American people and pass real financial reform, including a strong and independent CFPA, to ensure the Big Banks can not lead our economy over a cliff again.”

Bob Jensen's more serious threads on the needs for reform are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm


Free music downloads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

Things You Don't Hear Anymore (great art memories of my generation) ---
http://www.rockinghamremembered.com/ThingsYouDontHearAnymore.html

Take Me Back to the 1960s --- http://objflicks.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm

Jazzercise: Big-Band Buns Of Brass (Hear the Songs and Feel the Burn) ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124327282

The Lord's Prayer --- http://www.greatdanepro.com/Pray For America/index.htm

From wistful Waltzes and sensual Nocturnes to fiery Sonatas, what's not to love about Chopin?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124083875

Holly Steel Video (Britain's Got Talent) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHGtUYS3fdE
Also see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmmbH7iGzTw 

Fool's Gold: Afro-Hebrew Dance Music (full concert) ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121711550

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

Interactive Vatican --- http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/san_giovanni/vr_tour/index-en.html 

WWII Tank Found After Being in the Bottom of a Lake All These Years (it still runs) ---
http://www.saak.nl/WWII tank found after 62 years/index.htm

Michael Yon & Air Force Pararescue --- http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=35673

Pictures of College Mascots --- http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1652110_1426763,00.html

20 Geeky Images From Google Earth --- http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/02/20-geeky-images-from-space/
(including a shot of the "Airplane Graveyard")

Underwater Phtotgraphs (thousands) --- http://www.flickr.com/groups/scubaphotos/

Harry Ransom Center: Making Movies --- http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/2010/movies/ 

Ringling Collection: Images of 19th Century Actors and Actresses --- http://ufdcweb1.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc/?s=ringling

Amazing twelve year old artist --- http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=rmm-0-Rdxo8

Iowa Folklife --- http://www.uni.edu/iowaonline/folklife_v2/ 

Freer and Sackler Galleries [iTunes, Smithsonian Asian Art] --- http://www.asia.si.edu/podcasts/default.htm 

The Bunraku (Puppet Theatre) Collection --- http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/eastasian/bunraku/

Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills --- http://www.library.gatech.edu/fulton_bag/ 

Union Pacific Railroad: History and Photos http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/history/index.shtml

Steam and Electric Locomotives of the New Haven Railroad --- http://railroads.uconn.edu/locomotives/index.html

The Erie Railroad Glass Plate Negative Collection
http://libwww.syr.edu/information/spcollections/digital/erierr/

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

Country Dog Gentlemen Travel to Extraordinary Worlds [Art History] --- http://countrydogs.sfmoma.org/

Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History


ABC Reporting of a Hoax?
In a press conference on March 8, Toyota slammed the mechanics behind Brian Ross' ABC News report on unintended acceleration, showing how they were manipulated by recreating the same fault on a Chevy, Mercedes, Honda and Ford. Here's how the hoax occurred.
March 8. 2010 --- http://jalopnik.com/5488464/the-mechanics-of-abc-news-unintended-toyota-acceleration-hoax

The Toyota press conference held this morning and broadcast to anyone who would listen was a sign beige is fighting back smartly by pivoting media focus to the most ridiculous report — that done by ABC News. Toyota walked reporters through each step of Brian Ross's now-famous "Toyota Death Ride," which they're calling "a careful and deliberate manipulation."

. . .

March 8, 2010 reply from Jim McKinney [jim@MCKINNEYCPA.COM]

There was a brief report on the NPR Show On The Media that pointed out that news programs were frequently given bios of their talking heads that informed them of potential conflicts of interest but the shows often didn’t mention the conflicts. See http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2010/02/19 Shill Game Transcript: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/02/19/04 

That story refers to another article: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100301/jones 

Jim McKinney, Ph.D., C.P.A.
Tyser Teaching Fellow Accounting and Information Assurance
Robert H. Smith School of Business 4333G Van Munching Hall
University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742-1815
http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu

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


Bonuses for What?
The only guy to make almost a $100 Million dollars at GE is the CEO who destroyed shareholder value by nearly 50% in slightly less than a decade

"GE has been an investor disaster under Jeff Immelt," MarketWatch, March 8, 2010 ---
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ge-has-been-an-investor-disaster-under-jeff-immelt-2010-03-08

When things go well, chief executives of major companies rack up hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions, on their stock allotments and options.

It's always justified on the grounds that they've created lots of shareholder value. But what happens when things go badly?

For one example, take a look at General Electric Co. /quotes/comstock/13*!ge/quotes/nls/ge (GE 16.27, +0.04, +0.22%) , one of America's biggest and most important companies. It just revealed its latest annual glimpse inside the executive swag bag.

By any measure of shareholder value, GE has been a disaster under Jeffrey Immelt. Investors haven't made a nickel since he took the helm as chairman and chief executive nine years ago. In fact, they've lost tens of billions of dollars.

The stock, which was $40 and change when Immelt took over, has collapsed to around $16. Even if you include dividends, investors are still down about 40%. In real post-inflation terms, stockholders have lost about half their money.

So it may come as a shock to discover that during that same period, the 54-year old chief executive has racked up around $90 million in salary, cash and pension benefits.

GE is quick to point out that Immelt skipped his $5.8 million cash bonus in 2009 for the second year in a row, because business did so badly. And so he did.

Yet this apparent sacrifice has to viewed in context. Immelt still took home a "base salary" of $3.3 million and a total compensation of $9.9 million.

His compensation in the previous two years was $14.3 million and $9.3 million. That included everything from salary to stock awards, pension benefits and other perks.

Too often, the media just look at each year's pay in isolation. I decided to go back and take the longer view.

Since succeeding Jack Welch in 2001, Immelt has been paid a total of $28.2 million in salary and another $28.6 million in cash bonuses, for total payments of $56.8 million. That's over nine years, and in addition to all his stock- and option-grant entitlements.

It doesn't end there. Along with all his cash payments, Immelt also has accumulated a remarkable pension fund worth $32 million. That would be enough to provide, say, a 60-year-old retiree with a lifetime income of $192,000 a month.

Yes, Jeff Immelt has been at the company for 27 years, and some of this pension was accumulated in his early years rising up the ladder. But this isn't just his regular company pension. Nearly all of this is in the high-hat plan that's only available to senior GE executives.

Immelt's personal use of company jets -- I repeat, his personal use for vacations, weekend getaways and so on -- cost GE stockholders another $201,335 last year. (It's something shareholders can think about when they stand in line to take off their shoes at JFK -- if they're not lining up at the Port Authority for a bus.)

Bob Jensen's threads on outrageous executive compensation are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#OutrageousCompensation


The Price of Perfection:  That Straw That Saved the 10 Millionth Camel's Back 
Contemplate the flip side of my argument. A 100 percent safe car is impossible to build. As a manufacturer approaches 100 percent safety, the manufacturing costs increase exponentially. The real question is what is the customer (or society) willing to pay for safety as it approaches 100 percent safe. Most consumers would be willing to pay $20,000 for a car that is 99.8 percent safe but not $100,000 for a car that is 99.9 percent safe. Are the customers wrong? How would they react to Washington bureaucrats telling them they had to pay an additional $80,000 for an incremental 1/10 of 1 percent of safety?
Armstrong Williams, "Toyota’s Deadly Secret." Townhall, March 2, 2010 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/ArmstrongWilliams/2010/03/02/toyota%e2%80%99s_deadly_secret
Jensen Comment
I purchased a new Subaru last year in the Cash for Clunkers Program. I traded in my father's 1989 Cadillac that looked and ran like the day it was new. It accumulated 70,000 miles of absolutely trouble free driving. The Subaru cost me $19,700 plus some extras for heated seats and the extended warranty.

Subaru is rated the most safe car in its class, but would I have done this deal if the trade-in price had been $87,000 for some added safety protection currently not available on new vehicles other than such luxury cars like Mercedes models? Probably not, even though the old Cad I traded in did not even have air bags or various other safety features that are standard on a 2010 Subaru. Of course, up here we call it a rush hour traffic if we see two other vehicles on I-93 at 8:00 a.m. or 6:00 p.m.

Some safety features advertised by Mercedes --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuWMoqa1FFg

This begs the question of how much we should be forced to pay for epsilon improvements in safety? Of course I'm not talking about unsafe cars that lurch ahead uncontrollably or have defective braking systems. But my old Cad was extremely tried and true with respect to not having such severe safety hazards. In fact, the sheer complexities of my new Subaru with all its computerized controls of almost everything make it more of a risk in some ways as I drive to the village for milk and bread or a hair cut.

This also applies to costs of production of goods and services. Some medical procedures now cost ten times more than in 1990 for safety benefits that may only save one life out of ten million people. It certainly seems worth it if you're life is the one saved, but in the grand scheme of things is this added protection really a luxury that society can no longer afford? The same question might be raised about many of the current OSHA requirements for working Americans. How many wannabe workers cannot find jobs because of more stringent OSHA requirements?

Up here in the mountains, a small construction company that does a lot of building repairs laid off all of its full-time workers, because of the cost of Workers' Compensation Insurance. The former workers became "independent contractors" who now negotiate their own fees and no longer have benefits like employer-paid health insurance. Outsourced workers are paid by the job rather than the hour such that they, in turn, sometimes take more safety risks in their rush to finish jobs quickly.

March 3, 2010 reply from Roger Collins [Rcollins@TRU.CA]

Over on this side of the continent, in the mighty mountains of British Columbia, changes in forestry tenures and working practices 3 or 4 years ago lead to a substantial amount of outsourcing by the bigger companies. The use of independent contractors lead to competition for work, an increase in worker stress and a jump in fatalities and serious injuries, principally in falling and log-hauling. The log-hauling area became a matter of general concern as a fully loaded logging truck doesn't stop on a dime.. Eventually a number of groups got together to sort out the issue; deaths and injuries appear to have declined but I don't keep close tabs on the industry and am not sure of the reasons.

Roger

 

Bob Jensen's threads on managerial accounting are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#ManagementAccounting

 


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

American Mathematical Society Books Online --- http://www.ams.org/online_bks/onbk_list.html  

The following books are not free, but they may be of interest to mystery buffs that are also interested in history
"Five Best These historical mystery novels," by David B. Rivkin Jr., The Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704804204575069371115999474.html#mod=todays_us_weekend_journal

1
Alexandria
By Lindsey Davis
St. Martin's/Minotaur, 2009

Set during the first-century reign of the Roman emperor Vespasian, Lindsey Davis's "Alexandria" is an especially captivating entry in the historical-mystery series featuring Vespasian's "informer," sleuth extraordinaire Marcus Didius Falco. This time around, trouble finds Falco even when he is on a family vacation in Alexandria. Shortly after he dines with the head of Alexandria's renowned library, the librarian is found dead. Other mysterious deaths among the city's intelligentsia follow. As he begins digging into the case, the practical-minded Falco casts a sardonic eye on decadent Egyptian life in a city where people "picked pockets, exchanged goods, held assignations, complained about Roman taxes, insulted other sects, insulted their in-laws, cheated and fornicated." The novel offers many memorable elements, including a fine corpse-dissection scene and a monstrous man-eating Nile crocodile that terrorizes the city. One of Davis's virtues is the way she roots her tales in ancient times even as she adds sly modern touches; in "Alexandria" she lampoons today's universities with a hilarious portrayal of academia circa A.D. 75, replete with rancorous board meetings, pretentious intellectual wrangling and petty professional jealousies.

 

2
A Morbid Taste for Bones
By Ellis Peters
William Morrow, 1977

Brother Cadfael is a most unusual 12th-century monk: He has spent decades in the secular world, fighting in the Crusades, romping with the fairer sex and learning many of the skills that he uses to solve the mysteries in Ellis Peters's series. "A Morbid Taste for Bones" finds Brother Cadfael in a Welsh village called Gwytherine, where the remains of a local saint are coveted by an ambitious Benedictine prior, who wants to buy them for his abbey in far-away Shrewsbury. His plan meets fierce resistance in Gwytherine, where one of the most vocal opponents is murdered. Brother Cadfael, comfortable in both the secular and spiritual realms, investigates the killing and soon turns up evidence—by paying Holmesian attention to the big meaning of small details—and concludes that suspicion has been focused on the wrong party. The author keeps the suspense high, but Peters raises the story well above the average whodunit with his descriptions of the Welsh countryside's stark beauty, his vivid characters and his command of medieval church matters. Mystery, after all, is best framed by history.

 

3
The Emperor's Pearl
By Robert H. van Gulik
Scribner, 1963

Judge Dee is a busy magistrate in late-seventh-century China: In addition to performing his legal duties in the fictional Poo-yang district, he juggles three wives, collects antiques and studies Confucius. Part of his job, as fans of the Judge Dee series will know, is criminal investigation. In "The Emperor's Pearl," the judge begins looking into a murder that leads from one killing to the next but all tied to a famous pearl that had been stolen from the imperial household generations ago. Aided by his faithful retainer, Sgt. Hoong, Judge Dee sets a clever trap to solve the case—a purloined domino plays an important role. But he is not entirely reliant on his mental powers: The judge is a ferocious interrogator, and there is no doubt about how he would treat today's captured terrorists. One of the pleasures of the Judge Dee mysteries—in addition to the fine storytelling and attention to period detail, like the Chinese love for dragon-boat racing—is the sprinkling of illustrations by the author, the Dutch diplomat and student of Chinese history, Robert H. van Gulik, who died in 1967.

 

4
Slayer of Gods
By Lynda S. Robinson
Warner, 2001

Lynda S. Robinson has a doctorate in anthropology, specializing in archaeology. Such expertise clearly informs her richly atmospheric depictions of ancient Egypt in her Lord Meren mysteries. In "Slayer of Gods," we find Meren serving as chief security officer for Pharoah Tutankhamun in the 14th century B.C. The young Tutankhamun is intent on restoring tradition after the turbulent reign of the heretical Pharoah Akhenaten. But unfinished business remains from Akhenaten's rule: the poisoning murder of his wife, Queen Nefertiti. It's considered a cold case, but Meren won't let it go and is soon entangled in a story fraught with immense political and religious significance, colored by that characteristic obsession of ancient Egypt, the afterlife.

 

5
The Fire Kimono
By Laura Joh Rowland
St. Martin's/Minotaur, 2008

In this entry from Laura Joh Rowland's beguiling series featuring the samurai detective Sano Ichirō at the turn of the 18th century in Japan, the shogun gives Sano three days to solve a 40-year-old mystery. Why? Because the mystery concerns a fire that nearly destroyed the shogun's city, Ido, and Sano's own mother has emerged as a suspect. But Sano has other pressing concerns as well: A rival is threatening his position at court, and the murder of a close relative of the shogun has outraged the tightly controlled social system. Rowland's tale is graced with evocative period detail, as when Sano is horrified to see his mother's maid cooking a duck—a culinary taboo at the time—only to be mollified when the woman explains that the dish is permissible because it is meant to restore his mother's fading strength. But "The Fire Kimono" lingers in the memory as a haunting story of an honest man trying to navigate in an honor-obsessed culture where elaborate ritual can conceal sinister intrigue.

 

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




A message to David on February 24, 2010

Hi David,

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom
 ... in a clarification of life -
... a momentary stay against confusion.

Robert Frost.

The problem with poetry today may be that more people want to write it than read it. This was not necessarily the case before 1900 when there were fewer things competing for entertainment time --- no radios, television, computers, mobile phones, movies, virtual worlds, YouTube, TED, automobiles, etc. Reading was more important for scholarship and entertainment. I think people spent more time in contemplation such as I imagine Robert Frost sitting alone on his front porch each night looking up at the nighttime stars above and beyond Mt. Lafayette. He had a swath of big trees cut down so he could look out at that mountain in all seasons.

There are two extremes in poetry. At one extreme we have poems that are perfectly structured ( e.g., iambic pentameter, iambic tetramete, or trochaic meter) but have uncreative content. This is like the band making lousy music while marching in perfect step. At the other extreme we have lazy poems in free form that have a message that is nothing more than prose in short lines. Good poets like Shakespeare could meter the lines and still have a message. This is very, very difficult even for the professional poets and is seldom truly appreciated by the untrained readers just as a great symphony is not supremely appreciated by untrained listeners. I've never been able to fully appreciate "modern" art and free-form poetry, although I sometimes like the color patterns and prose messages.

 

About two miles down Lafayette Road (the steep and narrow side road from our cottage) and a bit to the left is the Robert Frost Place (Museum) comprised of his old farm house and barn near the village of Franconia (just north of Franconia Notch). It's now open to the public and is a popular place for poetry readings. This world-famous poet lived in these mountains from 1915 to 1920, but he found the climate up here too harsh (frost covered) and moved to a somewhat warmer farm in southern Vermont. The museum in Franconia is stark, because austere Yankee living is how Robert Frost preferred to live after his years in the city. Perhaps he could see more amidst less clutter. The big trees in front were cut away so he could look out upon Mount Lafayette from his front porch.

When we see the parking lots full of cars in both our popular and less-popular inns each summer, Erika and I know that the poets are back in the mountains. For a few weeks each summer, all the area inns are brimming full of poets who descend on Franconia's Robert Frost Place to read their poems and have creations critiqued by fellow poets. They read and listen to each others' poems by day and then rush back to their rooms to rewrite lines over and over each night.

When Frost arrived in New York, he found a review of his book in a prominent paper. Now an acclaimed new poet, Frost wanted a farm in the mountains of New Hampshire, where he could "live cheap and get Yankier and Yankier." He settled in the town of Franconia and within a year published a third book of poetry. Franconia remained his home for 5 years, although he traveled quite a bit lecturing and teaching. In 1920, the Frosts moved to Shaftsbury, Vermont. Although he was now much more a poet-lecturer, Frost always kept a farm and took it seriously. He had trouble with early frosts in Franconia and required a warmer climate for his apple trees. Frost lived in Shaftsbury for about 20 years. His biographer called it "The Years of Triumph". Today, The Frost Place is owned by the town of Franconia and used in the summer as a writers' conference. Several rooms are open to the public during the season. Programs are given to commemorate the poet. Franconia 1915 - 1920 --- http://www.frostfriends.org/franconia.html  

Iambic Tetrameter Illustration
New Hampshire is a 1923 Pulitzer Prize-winning volume of poems written by Robert Frost. The book included several of Frost's best-known poems, including "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (in iambic tetrameter).

 

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

 

What I find interesting is that poets critique each other by looking for many things that are probably not important to most readers. For example, I enjoy the above poem but could care less as to whether it is metered, and since it is metered I don’t care two hoots about the perfection of the iambic tetrameter in that poem.

Poets are often like beasts of the field that sense changes in the weather or natural disasters before others in the world are aware of those pending events. “Wildlife officials in Sri Lanka's largest national park believe that animals sensed the Indian Ocean tsunami and fled to higher ground to avoid death.”
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-15666315-wild-animals-sensed-coming-catastrophe.do

I don’t know that poets experience life more intently than the rest of us, but I’m certain they spend much more time and effort trying to perfect the reporting of who they feel.

The problem for most of us is separating out the true poets from the great pretenders.

Another problem is that we expect a great poet who was truly inspired for some of her/his poems to be equally inspired for most of the other efforts that may not come close to the truly inspired works.

Bob Jensen

February 24, 2010 reply from Francine McKenna [retheauditors@GMAIL.COM]

I also take classic poems and rewrite them, matching rhyme and meter. It's an intellectual exercise. Translating obscure poetry from Spanish is fun, too.

This is a rewrite of Wordsworth's The World Is to Much With Us...
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-world-is-too-much-with-us/

The world is too much with me; night and day,

Buzzing and ringing, devices sapping my powers
of concentration, they preclude any glimpse of beauty;
This child's soul belongs to the Man, blessed curse!
Blackberries beeping instead of dripping sweet juice.
Codes and ciphers confounding daily tasks instead
of thrilling a secret lover across the miles.
Because of this, because of this pressing on me
like the flatiron in the morning, conforming me,
smoothing my kinks, assuring no wild hair
sticks out, ready to stab someone in the eye.
For this? For what have I succumbed
to the brain sucking idiocy? Jesus! I am not moved.
I'd rather be a Luddite, deprived and shorn
Of all accoutrements, walking the
playa larga
enjoying vistas that make me so much less forlorn,
my siren to beckon me from her sea
and the cock to call me to the morn.

************

The World is Too Much With Us
William Wordsworth

 The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. - Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.


Jensen CommentI
 I want to apologize for my previous neglect of Rick Lillie’s highly informative blog. Rick is an experienced CPA who entered a doctoral program later in life. He chose, I surmise, to get an education doctorate in part to better learn about and do research in education and learning technology. He knows more about education technology than almost all accounting professors and currently teaches financial accounting with an eye to learning and education technologies --- http://iaed.wordpress.com/about/

In any case, one blog that I will most certainly not neglect in the future is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/

 Bob Jensen's threads on professors who blog ---
 http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

"Understanding the Web of Learning: A Work-in-Process," by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside the Box, November 22. 2009 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/understanding-the-web-of-learning-a-work-in-process/

I enjoy moments where “dots connect”  and I realize how “connections” cause or influence other things.  Connecting the dots between books or articles that I read is sometimes pretty exciting.

For example, previously I read Friedman’s The World is FlatWhile I did not agree with all of his positions, Friedman helped me to better understand implications of globalization.  Currently, I am reading Bonk’s The World is Open:  How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education. A common thread (dot connector) between Friedman and Bonk is importance of the internet and Web 2.0 technologies in enabling worldwide connection and interaction.

Generally, my  blog postings focus on technology tools and their uses in teaching-learning processes.  This posting steps away from technology tools per se to  connecting dots between what Friedman and Bonk have to say about how technology is changing the ways we live, learn, communicate, and collaborate.

If you have not read these books, I suggest them to you.  I think you will enjoy the read and conclude the time well spent.

Rick Lillie (CalState San Bernardino)

Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/

Bob Jensen's threads on professors who blog ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm


"Amazing Stats: The State of the Internet [VIDEO]," by Rick Telberg, CPA Trendlines, March 3, 2010 ---
http://cpatrendlines.com/2010/03/03/amazing-stats-the-state-of-the-internet/

It’s the must-watch video for anyone trying to wrap their minds around just how immersed web technologies have become in our everyday lives, according to Mashable.com.

For example:

- There are 1.73 billion Internet users worldwide as of September 2009.

- There are 1.4 billion e-mail users worldwide, and on average we collectively send 247 billion e-mails per day. Unfortunately 200 billion of those are spam e-mails.

- As of December 2009, there are 234 million websites.

- Facebook gets 260 billion page views per month.

Jensen Links at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm
Some of these links are older and may be either out of date or broken altogether.

Web Data and Statistics

History of the Web --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web

Software Updates and Reviews --- http://www.versiontracker.com/windows/

Software Reviews --- http://www.gotoreviews.com/

Technology Product Price Comparisons

Retail Software Comparisons --- www.softwareadvice.com/retail
The new link should go to: http://www.softwareadvice.com/retail/

Search for Free Patents --- http://www.freepatentsonline.com/

Webmaster Resources (includes tutorials on making and maintaining a Web site) ---  http://www.boogiejack.com/index.html

Internet FAQ Archives --- http://www.faqs.org/faqs/

Oxford Internet Institute --- http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/
Research materials and college degrees are available.


Amazing Facts About the Internet

I watched the history of computing in the 1990s on the History Channel on July 21, 2008 --- http://www.history.com/

Some facts mentioned concerning today in 2008 amazed me. I did not dig out independent verification of these facts.

  • The amount of "information" on Internet servers now doubles every 12 hours.
    Jensen Comment
    For example we might soon have more barrels of information about oil on the Internet than barrels of oil underground. With stored information doubling every 12 hours this makes Google's ranking of "hits" in information searches all-powerful in guiding us to what we learn. I sure hope Google lives up to its motto:   "Do no evil!" But even if it does no evil intentionally, any ranking of gazillions of documents provides different learning than other rankings of the same gazillions of documents. And the rankings of documents on a topic in English are bound to vary from rankings of documents on the same topics in Chinese, Japanese, German, Russian, French, etc.
     
  • There are over one billion users of the Internet worldwide. Although 70% of the people in the United States now use the Internet, the U.S. usage only ranks third among nations of the world at the present time.
     
  • Google will not disclose the number of Internet servers currently in use for Google searches, but techies estimate that it's moving close to 500,000 high capacity servers. I don't know if this includes the amazing YouTube servers owned by Google, but I doubt it. I can't imagine the number of servers needed to serve up over a billion videos on YouTube. It takes about one gigabyte of storage just to store ten minutes of video compressed into a mpg format. The storage needed to serve up over a billion YouTube videos boggles my mind --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
     
  • Japanese robotic toys became popular in the 1990s and often sold between $35 and $100 per toy. What amazed me is that they sold over 80 million of just one type of robot about the size of a teddy bear and just as fluffy. This particular toy had a built in dictionary of over 100 English words and gave the impression that it was learning English over time as a child spoke to the robotic toy. Our National Intelligence Agency, however, was so stupid that taking this toy into their DC building was banned for employees because the NIA thought the toy robot might overhear secrets. I suppose one could be customized to record conversations, so maybe the NIA was not so stupid, although as of late the Agency has not demonstrated that in knows enough to worry about.

Bob Jensen's threads on how to find Internet statistics are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm
(Just scroll down a short bit)

We hear a lot about carbon footprints polluting the earth. We also have Internet servers polluting the earth.
Egads! I'm a big time polluter at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

I take solace in the following quotation:

It is a salutary discipline to consider the vast number of books that are written, the fair hopes with which their authors see them published, and the fate which awaits them. What chance is there that any book will make its way among the multitude? And the successful books are but the successes of a season. Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experiences he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey. And if I may judge from the reviews, many of these books are well and carefully written; much thought has gone to their composition; to some even has been given the anxious labor of a lifetime. The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of his thought; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.
W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919 --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_and_Sixpence

Skype vs. Vonage --- http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/skype-vonage3.htm


This is a must-view video
"Video: Ted Talk Pivot a new tool for web exploration?" Simoleon Sense, March 3, 2010 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-ted-talk-pivot-a-new-tool-for-web-exploration/

Gary Flake demos Pivot, a new way to browse and arrange massive amounts of images and data online. Built on breakthrough Seadragon technology, it enables spectacular zooms in and out of web databases, and the discovery of patterns and links invisible in standard web browsing.

Gary Flake is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, and the founder and director of Live Labs.

 

Bob Jensen's threads on visualization of multivariate data ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm

Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm


"Different Paths to Full Professor," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, March 5, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/05/osu

Last month, E. Gordon Gee mentioned to the Associated Press that he thought it was time to reconsider the way tenure is awarded. The wire story got a lot of attention, especially given that Gee, president of Ohio State University, wasn't suggesting abandoning tenure at all, but rethinking the criteria on which it is awarded.

Ohio State officials were quick to caution at the time that Gee wasn't making specific proposals, but was trying to get people thinking about an important topic. In fact, though, Ohio State is embarking on discussions on how to change the way professors are evaluated for promotion to full professor. University officials argue that, as in tenure reviews, research appears to be the dominant factor at that stage, despite official policies to weigh teaching and service as well.

Not only does Ohio State want to end the all-out dominance of research considerations in reviews for full professor, but the university wants to explore options where some academics might earn promotions based largely on research (and have their subsequent careers reshaped with that focus) while others might earn promotions based largely on teaching (and similarly have career expectations adjusted). Both could earn the title of full professor.

Further, the university wants to pay attention to questions of impact -- for both teaching and research. The concept in play would end the myth that candidates for full professor (and maybe, someday, candidates for tenure) should be great in everything. Why? Because most professors aren't great at everything.

Using a religious analogy in an interview, Gee said that there should be "multiple ways to salvation." Associate professors should be able to find "their real callings" and to focus on them, not fearing that following those passions will doom their chances of promotion for deviating from an equal balance between research, teaching and service. Ohio State's provost, Joseph A. Alutto, has started working

with faculty members on redefining promotion guidelines, and faculty leaders are backing the effort.

And while many college leaders talk about a desire to reward faculty members on factors beyond traditional measures of research excellence, actually shifting promotion criteria is rare at research universities.

"It could be revolutionary if we do this, and then others do it. We could really escape from some of the limitations of the system" in place now, said Sebastian D.G. Knowles, a professor of English and associate dean for faculty and research in the arts and humanities.

In a recent speech to the University Senate, Alutto outlined a path to a different approach for the promotion to full professor. He started by noting the traditional teaching/research/service demands for tenure, and stressed that he favored continuation of tenure. "Without the assurances provided by tenure, all of us in the academy would be constantly in danger of speaking only the current orthodoxy, for seeing the world in limited ways," he said.

When it comes time to promote to full professor, he said that it seems that Ohio State just wants "more of the same" in more high quality research, more great teaching and more service. But if that's the official policy, the de facto situation, he said, is that the focus is on research. Once research eminence is verified, teaching and service must be found only to be "adequate."

"This approach is insidiously harmful," Alutto said. "First, it generates cynicism among productive faculty, as they realize the 'game' being played. Second, it frustrates productive faculty who contribute to their disciplines and the university in unique and powerful ways other than -- or in addition to -- traditional research. Third, it flies in the face of everything we know about the need for a balanced portfolio of skills to achieve institutional success."

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Tenure-track faculty in our departments often become close friends. If they are mediocre teacher/scholars, it is very difficult to deny them tenure on the basis of teaching and scholarship, because our department faculty generally have to make the first denial in the tenure process. If instead they are mediocre researchers, we can transfer the denial to somebody outside the department such as journal referees and tenure/promotion research reviewers selected outside the university. I can't count the number of times I've had to review the research of somebody at another university who is being evaluated for tenure.

Even more complicated are minority faculty on tenure track. Research journal articles are generally refereed blind such that minority faculty get no special consideration in research evaluations. Teaching and scholarship evaluations are much more difficult to review blind. Hence, minority faculty may get special considerations on those "different paths" to tenure. Perhaps this is as it should be under a policy of affirmative action, but even without such a policy it will be a fact of life. I've been in departments were minority faculty, in my opinion, got more lenient treatment for tenure and promotion. Leniency becomes easier if less weight is put on research criteria for promotion and tenure.

My point here is that for "tenure-track faculty on "different paths" other than research, we're much more likely to tenure mediocre scholars because of more subjective criteria among friends.

March 5, 2010 reply from Chuck Pier [texcap@HOTMAIL.COM]

Hi Bob.

I saw this article this morning and thought you would post it here. I think it is very interesting that a large R-1 university is talking about this.

However, I was just reading in BizEd, the bimonthly magazine of the AACSB, That a very highly regarded business school is just now implementing a similar system. The article is in the current issue of BizEd, ("Paths to Performance," BizEd, Jan/Feb 2010, pp. 42-46). Unfortunately their website does not have links to current articles. Since the article is not available, as yet, online, I will provide a very brief overview.

The school is Wake Forest. In the past they had separate schools for undergraduate business (Calloway) and graduate business (Babcock). It appears that they have combined the two schools and at the same time replaced the traditional post tenure track with a four-path model. Again, this does not apply until tenure is granted. Once tenured a faculty member has a choice as to what path they will persue. It also appears that they will be able to move back and forth between tracks if they so desire.

The four paths for tenured faculty are:

1. Research Intensive, which has a 3 course annual teaching load with a 50%-30%-20% Research-Teaching-Service split. 2. Research Focused, which has a 4 course annual teaching load with a 40%-40%-20% Research-Teaching-Service split. 3. Teaching Focused, which has a 5 course annual teaching load with a 25%-55%-20% Research-Teaching-Service split. 1. Teaching Intensive, which has a 6 course annual teaching load with a 10%-70%-20% Research-Teaching-Service split.

In addition they have:

Tenure track: which has a 3 course annual teaching load with a 45%-45%-10% Research-Teaching-Service split Professor of Practice: which has a 6 course annual teaching load with a 0%-80%-20% Research-Teaching-Service split

The article is a good read and I would encourage those interested in this sort of thing to seek it out.

March 5, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Chuck,

That was a helpful reply.

I’m not certain, but I think Temple (a very large urban university in Philadelphia) has had something similar in terms of teaching loads for years (although I do not know that this applies to tenure granting as well). I think a four-course teaching load can count as 100% of the load at Temple.

In my viewpoint, what is needed on “different paths” toward tenure and promotion is some way other than research publishing to demonstrate advances in scholarship. Students as a rule are not very good judges as to whether their professor is really a leading edge scholar if the professor does not publish research.

Also consulting does not necessarily equate to advances in scholarship without further details into the content of the consulting.

Any ideas for evaluating scholarship apart from research?

One way in accounting is to get some added certifications in internal auditing, fraud examination, forensic accounting, management accounting, etc. But professors usually don’t want to spend their entire careers adding more letters behind their names. Years ago I recall that Wanda Wallace had an unbelievable string of letters after her name, including of course PhD.

The Wanda Wallaces of this world might be called acronym professors! Of course Wanda is also a research professor.

Another way in modern times is to evaluate the content of a professor’s Website, especially the content of additions to the Website such as the additions of book reviews, journal article reviews, scholarly debates on listservs that are posted to the Website, etc.

Of course in self-evaluations each year for departmental performance reports, faculty members are encouraged to summarize their most recent efforts to advance their scholarship and professional competence.

Bob Jensen

How much credit should be given to micro-level research in tenure and promotion evaluations?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#MicroLevelResearch

Bob Jensen's threads on tenure-granting controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#TeachingVsResearch


"Google's New Photo Editor Web app Picnik may be integrated with Picasa," by Erica Naone, MIT's Technology Review, March 1, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/24875/?nlid=2784&a=f

Google announced today that it has acquired Picnik, a company that provides a fully-featured Web-based photo editing application. This is the latest in a recent string of acquisitions that has also seen Google snap up the social search site Aardvark.

Picnik is a flash-based photo editor capable of real-time cropping, resizing, rotating, special effects, and other manipulations. It can pull photos from websites including Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, and MySpace, or from a user's computer. The basic service is free, but the site offers a more sophisticated service for about $25 a year.

Google most likely wants to beef up its online photo-sharing service, Picasa, which currently has fairly minimal photo editing capabilities. It says it's not changing Picnik yet, but will be working on "integration and new features."

Other online photo editors include Photoshop.com, Aviary, and FotoFlexer.

Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm


In April the blog search engine Technorati reported that it was tracking 70 million blogs, with 120,000 new ones arriving every day --- http://technorati.com/weblog/2007/04/328.html
Technorati --- http://technorati.com/

Search for Blogs (Weblogs) ---  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Blogs

In July 2006, the YouTube revealed that more than 100 million videos were being watched every day on YouTube, and 2.5 billion videos were watched in June 2006. 50,000 videos were being added per day in May 2006, and this increased to 65,000 by July --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

Search for Blogs (Weblogs) ---  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm 

TechNewsWorld --- http://www.technewsworld.com/

Potential Roles of ListServs and Blogs
Getting More Than We Give --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on economic statistics are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics


"LecturesOnline and BritannicaU," by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, February 28, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/lecturesonline_and_britannicau 

In 1999, while teaching at West Virginia University, I created a site called LecturesOnline.org. You can find the original home page for LecturesOnline at the Internet Archive site. LecturesOnline.org was created out of my desire to easily locate materials for teaching, and to share the materials that I was creating for my classes with other faculty.

The home page contains the following text:

"LecturesOnline.org is the one-stop site to preview, examine, and download academically focussed digital work-product, such as PowerPoint lectures, demonstrations, figures, charts, graphs, and HTML pages. [The site]… tries to fill a gap in the academic world; the absence of a web site that allows academics to easily find, distribute, disseminate and trade educational materials that they produce for teaching."

In 1999, while still teaching at WVU, I started consulting for the Britannica - and in 2000 I sold LecturesOnline to the company. That same year I left my job at WVU to join Britannica's new San Francisco based educational start-up. The original idea was to leverage Britannica's expertise, resources, and brand to expand the reach and content of LecturesOnline. A site called "BritannicaU" would develop out of LecturesOnline, one that would fold in Britannica's multimedia and text content with user-submitted teaching materials and perhaps content from other sources. The site would be organized around disciplines, the way a college/university is organized, allowing faculty looking for lecture material to easily locate high quality content.

This vision never came to fruition. Looking back, I still think that BritannicaU (or an expanded LecturesOnline) was a pretty good idea. A site such as BritannicaU would have (and perhaps still would) fill a need for quality discipline (or course) specific teaching materials. Faculty still produce tons of PowerPoint lectures for their own courses, and these lectures are never shared (as they are locked up in learning management systems or on individual hard drives). At least a certain percentage of faculty members would be willing to share their teaching materials, particularly if they got attribution and their material was not re-purposed for commercial use (this was before Creative Commons). Sharing would be encouraged if an easy exchange method for borrowing was part of the deal. For Britannica, mixing their existing content with user submitted materials would have increased the relevancy and visibility of their brand. I've long thought that Encyclopædia Britannica content is useful for teaching, and a site like BritannicaU would have demonstrated this idea.

Why did BritannicaU never get off the ground? The idea died before we were able to produce any workable site, it never even made it to the stage of being released (although a good deal of money was spent on outsourced Web design, consulting and prototyping).

Some reasons for the failure of BritannicaU:

1) Business Model: BritannicaU, sort of an expanded LecturesOnline with Britannica content and a more advanced platform, may have been a good idea but it would have never been a huge revenue generator. The whole point of the original site was a nonprofit exchange. Why would faculty upload their teaching materials if someone else was making money off them? This tension existed from the day I sold LecturesOnline to Britannica. How would BritannicaU monetize? Advertising seemed like the only possibility, but again this would violate the original spirit and rationale of the site. Britannica could have made the site a dot-org, foregone advertising and decided to live with the site as channel to market their content as relevant to higher ed faculty, but that would have cannibalized its paid (subscription) properties. A "LecturesOnline" brought to you by Britannica probably would have been the best bet, but Britannica was never interested in moving too far beyond their core content (or other expensively produced original content), or supporting a property that did not make money.

2) Leadership and Experience: The Britannica Educational Division, initially based in a couple of live/work lofts South of Market (SOMA) and finally at the Presidio before closing in 2001, recruited some very smart people. Most of these folks never worked on BritannicaU, as the inherent lack of a business model quickly doomed the higher ed. site, with the focus quickly moving to a product called BritannicaSchool for the K-12 market. As for me, I had really no idea what I was doing and did not have the skills or influence to make BritannicaU a reality. Someone should write the story of Britannica's foray in the San Francisco start-up world to launch an education division, putting this effort into the larger context of Britannica's historical transformation from print to digital. My role at Britannica was too marginal, too peripheral and too short-term to write this story, but I hope someone takes it up. (Note: I'd like to connect with the old San Francisco Britannica.com Education people).

3) Technology: Back in 2000 during the dot-com bubble some crucial technologies and business models were not in place. User generated content and the read/write Web were not really mainstreams concepts. Building any kind of website, much less one that would incorporate the technologies necessary to allow anyone to upload, tag, search, and discover teaching materials, was an incredibly expensive proposition. Today a site like this could be built on Drupal, with storage come from Amazon S3, for very little money. Bandwidth and storage are now cheap, 10 years ago these were expensive and scarce commodities.

Today, if you go to LecturesOnline.org you will find some Web squatter. Britannica was never really interested in the idea of user generated and shared content, and after buying the site from me they never did anything with it. The dot-com bubble collapsed, Britannica's management and business model changed (and changed again), and I left the company in late 2001. I'll be forever grateful for the opportunity that Britannica gave me to participate in a start-up culture and transition my career from a traditional faculty track to educational technology. While I never moved full-time to San Francisco (tele-commuting from West Virginia, where my wife was in medical school), I cherish the time I spent with all the amazing people who at one time worked at Britannica.com Education and who still work for the company in Chicago.

If I could have a "do-over", I think that it would have been smarter to have not sold LecturesOnline.org to Britannica, and to have maintained the site as an independent nonprofit. Perhaps I could have figured out a way to have a company "sponsor" the site, some way to bring the expertise and resources necessary to scale the idea. Certainly my lack of programming skills, lack of money, the fact I had a full-time teaching gig, and the state of the technology when I began LecturesOnline would have made this difficult. I still think that Britannica's Encyclopædia content is much more useful for teaching than most faculty realize, and there should be a way to get this material into the hands of people putting together lectures. Mostly, I'm happy that I had the opportunity to start something new, try to grow it, and to fail. No doubt that failure is the best teacher, and I hope to have many more failures in the course of my career.

Distance Education Alternatives --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.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


"How Colleges Are Buying Respect:  For-profit education companies are scooping up small schools to gain accreditation—and the financial aid dollars that come with it," by Daniel Golden, Business Week, March 4, 2010 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_11/b4170050344129.htm?link_position=link4

TT Educational Services (ESI) didn't pay $20.8 million for debt-ridden Daniel Webster College in June just to acquire its red-brick campus, 1,200 students, or computer science and aviation training programs.

To ITT, the third-biggest higher-education company in the U.S., the Nashua (N.H.) college's "most attractive" feature was its regional accreditation, says Michael Goldstein, an attorney at Dow Lohnes, a Washington firm that has long represented the Carmel (Ind.) company. Regional accreditation, the same gold standard of academic quality enjoyed by Harvard, is a way to increase enrollment and tap into the more than $100 billion the federal government pays out annually in financial aid.

The nation's for-profit higher-education companies have tripled enrollment, to 1.4 million students, and revenue, to $26 billion, in the past decade, in part through the recruitment of low-income students and active-duty military. Now they're taking a new tack. By exploiting loopholes in government regulation and an accreditation system that wasn't designed to evaluate for-profit takeovers, they're acquiring struggling nonprofit and religious colleges—and their coveted accreditation. Often their goal is to transform the schools into taxpayer-funded behemoths by dramatically expanding enrollment with online-only programs; most of those new students will receive federally backed financial aid, which is only available at accredited colleges.

"The companies are buying accreditation," said Kevin Kinser, an associate professor at the State University of New York at Albany who studies for-profit higher education. "You can get accreditation a lot of ways, but all of the others take time. They don't have time. They want to boost enrollment 100% in two years."

By acquiring regional accreditation, trade schools and online colleges gain a credential associated with traditional academia. Six nonprofit regional associations set standards on financial stability, governance, faculty, and academic programs. Normally the process takes five years and requires evaluations by outside professors. Most for-profits have been accredited by less prestigious national organizations. Students enrolled at both regionally and nationally accredited colleges can receive federal aid, but those at regionally accredited schools can transfer credits more easily from one college to the next.

"CREATIVE ARRANGEMENTS"

For-profit education companies, including ITT and Baltimore-based Laureate Education, have purchased at least 16 nonprofit colleges with regional accreditation since 2004. The U.S. Education Dept., which doled out $129 billion in federal financial aid to students at accredited postsecondary schools in the year ended Sept. 30, is examining whether these kinds of acquisitions circumvent a federal law that requires a two-year wait before new for-profit colleges can qualify for assistance, says Deputy Education Under Secretary Robert Shireman. Under federal regulations taking effect on July 1, accrediting bodies may also have to notify the Education Secretary if enrollment at a college with online courses increases more than 50% in one year. "It certainly has been a challenge both for accreditors and the Department of Education to keep up with the new creative arrangements that have been developing," Shireman says.

Buying accreditation lets the new owners immediately benefit from federal student aid, which provides more than 80% of revenue for some for-profit colleges, instead of having to wait at least two years. Traditional colleges are also more inclined to offer transfer credits for courses taken at regionally approved institutions, making it easier to attract students.

The regional accreditors, which rely on academic volunteers, bestow the valuable credential with scant scrutiny of the buyers' backgrounds, says Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars & Admissions Officers in Washington.

Jensen Comment
Buying a college for its accreditation status is a risky proposition. I've always said that losing accreditation is far more devastating than not getting it in the first place. The analogy might be a very messy, costly, and emotionally damaging divorce that might've been avoided by not having been married.

It may be especially risky to buy up a marginal accredited college struggling with resources and deteriorating academic standards. It takes a lot of resources to restore credibility of such a college and to meet the standards of accreditation renewal. Accreditation is not a one-time celebration. Accreditation must be constantly renewed ad infinitum by accrediting bodies. And as I said above, losing accreditation might be more devastating than not having it in the first place.

March 6, 2010 reply from Jagdish Gangolly [gangolly@GMAIL.COM]

Bob,

I agree that losing accreditation can be a disaster. But then again, how many institutions lose it? It is a black swan event?

I abhor the thought of looking upon education as a "business", but if we want accountability, we must recognise that there is a business aspect to education. And it is here that some marriage of business and education might help.

In businesses, normal attrition takes care of efficiency and career advancement problems the same way that wars take care of similar issues in the military. In the universities, on the other hand, the tenure system prevents that from happening. That has two consequences:

1. It reduces mobility and promotes stagnation. So, the only people who can and do move are the well-dressed beggars in the blog I sent a bit earlier today.

2. The career path comes to a dead end once you have reached the full (or chaired) slot. The result is that thew organisation comes to resemble an inverted pyramid, obviously a disequilibrium. Most universities solve this problem by creating fancy titles and taking people out of the classrooms (how many Deans or vice Presidents teach or are active in their fields?).

The businesses taking over smaller institutions might bring better accountability and greater efficiencies.But I am not sure it would maintain the standard of education or sustain freedom of inquiry and academic freedom. Such universities might resemble Chinese factories producing standardised low quality stuff at an attractive price.

Jagdish S. Gangolly
Department of Informatics College of Computing & Information State University of New York at Albany Harriman Campus, Building 7A, Suite 220 Albany, NY 12222 Phone: 518-956-8251, Fax: 518-956-8247

 

March 6, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Jagdish,

Anecdotally, I know of quite a few colleges who were put on regional accreditation probation. The only way they saved their accreditation was to manage to get their finances and academic standards back on track. There are of course some that went under.

One of the best known cases recently was Florida A&M’s loss of accreditation. This university has since turned itself around ---
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/paper-trail/2008/06/30/florida-am-regains-accreditation.html
Another famous case of a university that let academic standards slide was Gallaudet University ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/AR2007050202453.html
I think Gallaudet turned itself around.

There are also some Colleges of Business that were put on AACSB probation. In most of those cases the university had to take from Peter Humanities to pay Paul Business.

This brings up one point concerning strategy regarding accrediting a program within a university. In truth, AACSB accreditation is very costly with only limited benefits to universities that have solid reputations university-wide. For example, who cares if the Harvard Business School has AACSB accreditation? For that matter, who cares if the University of Maine is AACSB accreditation.

When I was at the University of Maine (UMO) I was the person assigned the duty of getting AACSB accreditation for UMO. Doing so was the strategy of a very smart Dean (for four decades) of the College of Business named Stan Devino (one of my all-time best friends in my entire life). Somehow Stan convinced the President of UMO that getting AACSB accreditation was a great idea.

But Stan’s secret motive was to lever UMO for more resources. At the time UMO’s College of Business was under fed in terms of numbers of tenured business faculty, office space, salaries of business faculty, and scholarships for the MBA program. We got some resources to gain the initial accreditation. But in later years when UMO budgets fell under greater stress, the College of Business was not cut back as much as other campus programs because losing AACSB accreditation would be devastating for UMO. I suspect the President of UMO rued the day he helped us become attain AACSB accreditation. The College of Business even jumped to the top of the capital expenditure list for a great new building.

Hence, the threat of losing accreditation is a double-edged sword that can play to the advantage of a cunning Dean. If I was the President of a reputed college I would probably throw any dean out of my office who proposed a quest to get program accreditation unless there were exceptional benefits from such accreditation. If graduates of a program virtually cannot advance unless their program has accreditation then this is an exceptional benefit. For example, I think this is the case for nursing programs. It is not the case for business programs in universities have great university-wide reputations.

Bob Jensen

March 6, 2010 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Jack Welch bought a bankrupt college and started his own MBA program:
Below is a link to a very, very unusual accounting curriculum

http://www.chancelloru.edu/downloads/degrees/BSBA_Accounting.pdf

Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu

Jensen Comment

Thank you so much for this Jack Welch update Richard. I wrote previously about the startup MBA program of Jack and his wife Suzi, and I wrote about my concerns for how difficult it would be to succeed without accreditation. Startup corporate MBA programs have a very, very difficult time achieving AACSB accreditation. I really thought this startup MBA program might become General Electric's MBA Program and that a high proportion of the students would be GE employees.

It seemed a little less likely that Jack and Suzi would buy an entire university that came with accreditation. Firstly, I did not think Jack and Suzi were interested in running any programs other than MBA programs. Secondly, some bankrupt universities have regional accreditation, but it is rare for them to also have AACSB accreditation.

AACSB Accreditation via Partnering
One of the first for-profit venture to buy up a regionally accredited university was UNext Corporation when it bought up Cardean University ---
Steve Orpurt taught for UNext and made a CPE presentation in one of my technology workshops on August 11, 2001 ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/001cpe/01start.htm
UNext originated in a for-profit venture to bring education programs into corporations in an alliance with several prestigious universities like Stanford, Columbia, and the London School of Economics ---
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/990715/unext.shtml
Also see http://www.learnshare.com/Press/NewsReleases/UNext.asp
And see http://chronicle.com/article/Closely-Watched-UNext-Rolls/13982/
I think UNext now operates as the Cardean Learning Group --- http://cardeanlearninggroup.com/
It seems to now be a distance education service provider for partnering institutions, many of whom have AACSB accreditation.---
http://www.onlinedegrees.net/schools/cardean-university/
Hence this is an example of achieving AACSB accreditation via a partnering arrangement to deliver online courses, although Cardean also provides instructors and complete courses.

Two of the leading for-profit universities that went the other route by achieving their own regional accreditations rather than buying them includes the University of Phoenix and Capella Univerersity. I don't think either one of these has yet achieved AACSB accredition. They are not likely to achieve AACSB accredition given the strong bias of the AACSB against granting first-time accreditation to for-profit universities.Some prestigious corporations and consulting groups formed MBA programs that tried and failed for years to get AACSB accreditation.

I tried to find Chancellor University in the current AACSB listing of accredited programs ---
https://www.aacsb.net/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?Site=AACSB&WebKey=ED088FF2-979E-48C6-B104-33768F1DE01D
There is no accredited program on the list under Chancellor or Welch.
However, in addition to having regional accreditation, Chancellor University has added business accreditation from the
Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE) --- http://www.iacbe.org/
It is unlikely that Chancellor University will obtain AACSB accreditation which is more of a unionized Deans Club for reputable non-profit institutions worldwide.

Here was my Tidbit on the MBA Program startup of Jack and Suzi before they bought Chancellor University:
"Jack Welch Launches Online MBA:  The legendary former GE CEO says he knows a thing or two about management, and for $20,000 you can, too," by Geoff Gloeckler, Business Week, June 22, 2009 --- http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jun2009/bs20090622_962094.htm?link_position=link1

A corporate icon is diving into the MBA world, and he's bringing his well-documented management and leadership principles with him. Jack Welch, former CEO at General Electric (GE) (and Business Week columnist), has announced plans to start an MBA program based on the business principles he made famous teaching managers and executives in GE's Crotonville classroom.

The Jack Welch Management Institute (JWMI) will officially launch this week, with the first classes starting in the fall. The MBA will be offered almost entirely online. Compared to the $100,000-plus price tag for most brick-and-mortar MBA programs, the $600 per credit hour tuition means students can get an MBA for just over $20,000. "We think it will make the MBA more accessible to those who are hungry to play," Welch says. "And they can keep their job while doing it."

To make the Jack Welch Management Institute a reality, a group led by educational entrepreneur Michael Clifford purchased financially troubled Myers University in Cleveland in 2008, Welch says. Welch got involved with Clifford and his group of investors and made the agreement to launch the Welch Management Institute.

Popularized Six Sigma For Welch, the new educational endeavor is the latest chapter in a long and storied career. As GE's longtime chief, he developed a management philosophy based on relentless efficiency, productivity, and talent development. He popularized Six Sigma, wasn't shy about firing his worst-performing managers, and advocated exiting any business where GE wasn't the No. 1 or No. 2 player. Under Welch, GE became a factory for producing managerial talent, spawning CEOs that included James McNerney at Boeing (BA), Robert Nardelli at Chrysler, and Jeff Immelt, his successor at GE.

Welch's decision to jump into online education shows impeccable timing. Business schools in general are experiencing a rise in applications as mid-level managers look to expand their business acumen while waiting out the current job slump. The new program's flexible schedule—paired with the low tuition cost—could be doubly attractive to those looking to move up the corporate ladder as the market begins to rebound.

Ted Snyder, dean of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, agrees. "I think it's a good time for someone to launch a high-profile online degree," Snyder says. "If you make the investment in contentthat allows for a lot of interaction between faculty and students and also among students, you can get good quality at a much more reasonable tuition level."

Welch's Secret Weapon That being said, there are challenges that an online MBA program like Welch's will have a difficult time overcoming, even if the technology and faculty are there. "The integrity and quality of engagement between faculty and students is the most precious thing we have," Snyder says. "Assuming it's there, it dominates. These things are hard to replicate online."

But Welch does have one thing that differentiates his MBA from others: himself. "We'll have all of the things the other schools have, only we'll have what Jack Welch believes are things that work in business, in a real-time way," he says. "Every week I will have an online streaming video of business today. For example, if I was teaching this week, I would be putting up the health-care plan. I'd be putting up the financial restructuring plan, talking about it, laying out the literature, what others are saying, and I'd be talking about it. I'll be doing that every week."

Welch and his wife Suzy are also heavily involved in curriculum design, leaning heavily on the principles he used training managers at GE.

Continued in Article

Bob Jensen's threads on accreditation controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#AccreditationIssues

Online Distance Education is Rapidly Gaining Acceptance in Traditional as Well as For-Profit Colleges ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#DistanceEducation

The Dark Side ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm

Online Training and Education Alternatives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm


Google Buzz --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz
Yahoo Buzz --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Buzz

"Why Google Pushed Buzz Out The Door Before It Was Ready," by Erick Schonfeld,  TechCrunch.com via The Washington Post, February 28, 2010 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/01/AR2010030100008.html?wpisrc=nl_tech

When  Google Buzz launched three weeks ago, the product wasn't ready. There were basic privacy issues that still needed to be hammered out (and were quickly addressed by Google), but beyond that Google Buzz simply did not work smoothly enough to force feed it to 175 million Gmail users without any warning. (MG covered some of the usability issues last week).So why was Google Buzz pushed out the door too soon? I have three interrelated theories:Google still wants to buy  Twitter, and putting Buzz into Gmail might be enough of a threat to bring Twitter back to the table. Buzz did not launch in some Google Labs backwater. It is placed front and center in Gmail. Buzz is Google's strongest effort yet to enter the stream. If Buzz can gain traction it would certainly help Google's negotiating position with Twitter.Independent of any pressure it may place on Twitter, Google needs to have its own realtime micro-messaging communications system. The micro-message bus is just a more efficient way to communicate than email for many types of messages so it makes sense to add it as a layer to Gmail: broadcast your public messages via Buzz, and keep private ones on email or chat, all from the same place.The other reason Google needed to establish its own social stream pronto is that links passed through social sharing are beginning to rival search as a primary driver of traffic for many sites. Part of Google's prowess stems from the fact that it is the largest referrer of traffic to many other Websites. It doesn't want to lose that status to social sharing streams such as Facebook or Twitter. Already, Buzz is helping to boost sharing through Google Reader. While Google doesn't benefit directly from that traffic (yet), simply knowing what links people are sharing and clicking on is valuable data which can help it improve its search results.Google needed to get into this game as fast as it could, even if there were bumps along the way. The question now is whether Buzz can keep building.Photo credit: Flickr/ChelseagirlCrunchBase InformationGoogle BuzzTwitterInformation provided by CrunchBase

Bob Jensen's threads on Twitter and Social Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm


The following tidbit was added by Julie Smith David at http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/7aee034519

title:
Open-source alternatives bring flexibility to textbooks
citation:
The State Press,  Open-source alternatives bring flexibility to textbooks

By Joseph Schmidt February 25, 2010 at 1:16 am

brief description:
Our School paper is exploring how open source textbooks might lower the costs for students, and when they interviewed me, I thought more broadly about how open source communities support all of the members in the community - and I considered whether the AAACommons is actually the foundation for an "open source" community of Accounting Professors... what do you think?  Would you use an open source textbook?  Write one?
member(s) quoted:
Julie Smith David

Jensen Comment

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 Lectures, Videos, and Course Materials From Prestigious Universities  ---

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

 


"Turning Math into Cash:  IBM has found a new source of revenue: using its mathematicians' formulas in business services," by William M. Bulkeley , MIT's Technology Review, March/April 2010 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/24556/?nlid=2777

Five years ago, Brenda Dietrich started to investigate how IBM's 40,000 salespeople could learn to rely a little more on math than on their gut instincts. In particular, Dietrich, who heads the company's 200-person worldwide team of math researchers, was asked to see if math could help managers do a better job of setting sales quotas. She assigned three mathematicians at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, to work on new techniques for predicting how much business the company could get from a given customer.

The mathematicians collected several years' worth of data about every sale IBM made around the world. They compared the results with the sales quotas set at the beginning of the year, most of which were developed by district sales managers who negotiated them with sales teams on the basis of past experience. To spot opportunities the sales teams didn't recognize, the researchers collected external data on IT spending patterns by industry and combined that information with the internal sales data. Then they used a technique called high-quantile modeling--which tries to predict, say, the 90th percentile of a distribution rather than the mean--to estimate potential spending by each customer and calculate how much of that demand IBM could fulfill.

Armed with these predictions about how much equipment IBM should be able to sell to each customer, Dietrich's mathematicians looked at the size and makeup of the sales team on each account and compared its actual performance with the theoretical maximum. Some teams were so small they couldn't sell enough to meet that potential demand. Other teams were unnecessarily large. So the mathematicians advised the sales department to shift its staff around, taking less productive salespeople off the big teams and putting them on teams that had been too small. Sales in the latter accounts quickly grew.

The two-year project had a tremendous payoff for IBM. The corporate controller concluded that it generated $1 billion in additional sales through 2008, the year after the team finished its work, says Dietrich, a 50-year-old PhD with a sneaking suspicion that the world would work better if it were run by mathematicians. Since then, IBM has incorporated high-quantile modeling into its workforce analytics practice, a service it offers to help clients make decisions about human-resources issues such as how best to deploy their salespeople.

Continued in article

Where the math fails us ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm


"Professor's Epic Email Response To a Tardy And Entitled Student," by the Unknown Professor, Financial Rounds Blog (which is mostly inactive this semester), February 14, 2010 ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/search/label/A Day In The Life

Like most faculty, students coming late to class bothers me - it disrupts the class, interrupts my train of thought, and in general causes a negative externality. In previous years, the problem seems to have gotten worse - in some classes, 15% would wander in after class has started. So this semester, I borrowed a page from a colleague's book. He teaches law for our B-School, and is a former partner for a major Wall Street Law firm. He's very formal in class, is known throughout the school as a fantastic professor, and a bit of a hardass (formal, but a hardass).

So now, whenever a student walks into class late, I merely stop talking in mid sentence. I then quietlty wait until the student is seated. At this point, they're usually embarrassed. I continue waiting they have their book AND pencil out. Of course, the spotlight on them makes them extremely uncomfortable. I don't ream them, don't make any faces, comments, or do anything else - merely ask "Are you ready now?" Then I take up right where I left off. It's kind of fun, and I don't have to come off like my usual sarcastic self. It seems to work pretty well - late arrivals have really dropped off this semester.

But
this guy (Scott Galloway at NYU) just throws them out if they come in late. A student got the treatment recently and sent him a (to my ears) somewhat entitled email. Galloway give him an epic reaming.

Read the responses - they're classic (particularly the David Mamet references). If you have any favorite techniques for dealing with late students, feel free to share.

Of course, as they say in the ads, "your mileage may vary".


HT: Craig Newmark (who gets it)

Jensen Comment
I heard about an instructor who stretched construction zone tape across both doorways to the classroom before closing the doors. The tape was not to be crossed for any reason. Some instructors lock the doors, but this is acceptable only when the doors can be opened from the inside in case of fire.

But a professor needs a Plan B for the occasional student that is late for reasons beyond that student's control. Perhaps the student really was mugged or had an epileptic seizure on the way to class. Then there are the unacceptable excuses such as the student that was held up by traffic congestion or a traffic cop. I always considered those to be excuses and not valid reasons since students could've allowed more time for such contingencies.

Plan B might be instigated outside of class rather than by allowing class to be disrupted for any valid reason for lateness. But Plan B should be stated clearly in the syllabus.

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on tricks and tools of the trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


Turing Test (a test for the degree of machine "intelligence") --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Test

Can humans distinguish between sequences of real and randomly generated financial data?
Scientist have developed a new test to find out.

"Scientists Develop Financial Turing Test," MIT's Technology Review, February 26, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24861/?nlid=2780

Bob Jensen's threads on financial reporting theory are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm


The Amazing (read that gasp) Bloom Box Fuel Cell
K.R. Sridhar's ultimate goal is to make this softball-sized electric power generator (actually a fuel cell) available to every home for $3,000 to generate all the power needs of the average home. In theory there will not even be a need for transmission lines or a power grid.

News of this amazing fuel cell reached the public for the first time on CBS Sixty Minutes on September 21, 2010 ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6228923n

"Bloom Reveals New Fuel Cells Its 100-kilowatt modules have been sold to Google, eBay, and Walmart," by Kevin Bullis, MIT's Technology Review, February 25, 2010 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/24650/?nlid=2774

The up-to-now secretive startup Bloom Energy took the wraps off its technology this week, unveiling a fuel-cell system that the company claims can run on a variety of fuels and pay for itself in three to five years via lower energy bills.

The company's founder and CEO, KR Sridhar, said at the official unveiling of the company on Wednesday that the technology--when it's powered by natural gas--can cut carbon dioxide emissions in half compared to the emissions produced conventional power sources, on average. Several major companies, including Google, eBay, and Walmart, have already bought Bloom's technology, and in the few months these fuel cells have been in operation, they've generated 11 million kilowatt hours of electricity (about enough to power 1,000 homes for a year).

According to Bloom Energy, electricity costs are lower than buying electricity from the grid because the fuel cells are efficient and because the electricity is generated on-site, avoiding the need for a grid to distribute electricity.

While Bloom is not releasing full details of the technology, it's a type of solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC). Unlike hydrogen fuel cells proposed for use in vehicles, SOFCs operate at high temperatures (typically well over 600 ºC) and can run on a variety of fuels. They can be more efficient than conventional turbines for generating electricity. But their high cost and reliability problems have kept them from widespread commercial use.

Sridhar says Bloom's technology has made the fuel cells affordable. What's more, costs are expected to decrease significantly as production ramps up.

"All indications are that they have taken pretty conventional SOFC technology (zirconia electrolyte, nickel anode) and spent a lot of money to do a very good job of engineering and process development," says Jeff Bentley, CEO of CellTech Power, which is developing its own fuel cells that can run on fuels such as diesel and even coal. According to Bloom, the technology is based on planar solid oxide fuel cells that Sridhar developed as a professor at the University of Arizona.

Bloom sells 100-kilowatt modules. They're made of small, flat 25-watt fuel cells that can be stacked together. A complete 100-kilowatt module, with multiple stacks and equipment for converting DC power from the stacks into AC power to be used in buildings, is about the size of a parking space. The company says each module can power a small supermarket.

In addition to Google, eBay, and Walmart, Bloom's customers include Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Cox Enterprises, FedEx, and Staples. A 400-kilowatt system powers a building at Google that contains an experimental data center. Walmart has installed Bloom modules at two locations, where they generate between 60 to 80 percent of the electricity for the stores.

Sridhar said the long-term goal is to use the technology as both a way to generate electricity and to store it. It's possible to run the fuel cells in reverse, pumping in electricity to generate fuel. The system could then be used to store solar power generated during the day as a fuel for use at night. He says such a system, however, won't be available for another decade.

The company first started raising venture capital in 2001, and was the first energy company to be funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, CA, that was an earlier investor in Google. "They have spent a lot of time and money in field testing prior to making any public claims--that is refreshing for the fuel cell industry," Bentley says.

You can read more about it at http://www.physorg.com/news186123245.html


Think of What They Might Have Been if They'd Stuck With Accountancy
Before these celebrities hit the big time, they shared one thing in common: They either studied to become accountants or wanted to become accountants. In fact, Jagger was so good, he actually earned a scholarship to study accounting and finance at the London School of Economics before running off to become a Rolling Stone.
Sam Ali, CPA Trendlines, February 16, 2010 --- http://ow.ly/16AMde

February 27, 2010 reply from Jagdish Gangolly [gangolly@GMAIL.COM]

Bob,

Mick Jagger didn't look back, but Brian May (lead guitarist of Queen) did. Long after the Queen broke up since Freddie Mercury's passing (Queen with Paul Rogers is non-queen, he is like Wayne Newton in a sombrero subbing for Mick Jaeger), Brian May went back to school, completed his PhD in Astrophysics (dissertation on Inter-planetary dust) at the Imperial College, and is currently the Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.

There have been others who did not look back, like drummer Roger Taylor (dentistry), bass guitarist John Deacon (engineering),..

A few years ago I went all the way back to Bombay for Rollingstones "forty licks" concert. He was then close to qualifying for social security in Britain, and yet could gallop around the large stage at Brabourne stadium like plucked chicken. Amazing.

Jagdish S. Gangolly Department of Informatics College of Computing & Information State University of New York at Albany Harriman Campus, Building 7A, Suite 220 Albany, NY 12222

 


Our Meaner and Nastier IRS?

February 24, 2010 --- Robert Bowers [M.Robert.Bowers@WHARTON.UPENN.EDU]

I’m sure this will be a popular item to respond to in the heat of tax season ”Heat of Tax Season” – btw I am writing from the Balt-DC area. This past few wks I have had 65” of snow. I can’t find my office door.

The Question:

In my part of the woods the IRS is cracking down like I haven’t seen in ages. At the exam, and now Appeals, they are demanding receipts for every item.

This notwithstanding their own IRM says, if original receipts are unavailable, secondary records, incl testimony, are acceptable. This notwithstanding they are ignoring the “Cohan Rule”, wherein the Court of Appeals ruled that, if receipts are unavailable, reasonable estimates are allowable.

The IRS’ers in this area have thrown all that out. Strangely enough, I think the Cohan case is still the law, has never been overturned. Even stranger, the section on estimates in their own IRM, the Bible for Appeals, still allows estimates.

So I guess the IRS can change the rules any time they want. Reverse their own written guidelines, and even reverse the Court of Appeals.

This flies in the face of everything I have learned. It certainly runs counter to good accounting practice. If the T/P cannot estimate at all, the return certainly won’t “present fairly” (to use an auditing term) the tax liability of that T/P.

Am I venting? I really think those of us on the firing line need to fight back when there is injustice. Maybe I should have been one of the three amigos.

Respectfully,
 M. Robert Bowers,
CPA Bowers,
Marin & Co Ph. (410) 461-6161 Fax (443-269-2626

e-mail M.Robert.Bowers@Wharton.UPenn.edu 

On February 24, 2010 Daniel Maiuro wrote:

I think you have every right to vent. Dealing with the IRS is  frustrating and even surprising when they don’t even follow their own IRM (or the law for that matter.) I deal in representation all the time and invoke the Cohan Rule when paperwork is scant and have to rely on estimates. It is still law and I have Revenue Agents who will ignore the Cohan rule when I bring it up but that’s almost expected. That’s why you can request manager conferences and go to appeals if need be. Last resort, have the client file a petition in Tax Court. Based on the figures, appr. 85% of the cases that are petitioned wind > up going back to appeals for settlement.

Dan

February 24, 2010 reply from patti [patti@PHKCPA.COM]

Oh my gosh...I am so glad to know that I'm not the only one having this problem. In the last two years I have seen rudeness and disregard of the taxpayer's rights that I have never seen in 27 years. I wonder where the directives are coming from.

Patti

Jensen Comment
Other CPAs report agreeing with Robert Bowers on this observation. I suspect that it comes from increased pressures (targets?) to extract every last dollar from taxpayers under the present tax law when there are monumental deficits in virtually all cities, states, and an unsmiling Uncle Sam himself


David Albrecht requested that I provide a listing of my favorite "accounting novels."

When I did an Amazon search of "accounting novels," I got 39 hits, a few of which are actually accounting novels. Of course this is a biased listing of only accounting novels that are still in print and for which there are people who will still pay for these books from Amazon. I'm sorry to say that I've not read a single one of that listing of "accounting novels." Hence, I'm not a very good judge of accounting novels. I will, however, be ordering several that look most interesting to me.

There are really two types of accountancy novels. The first kind (Type 1) is a novel written primarily to entertain that features accounting in the process much like it is popular to feature law, psychology, sociology, and anthropology in novel writing. The second kind (Type 2) is a novel written primarily to teach accounting that is put into a novel for purposes of attracting and holding the reader's attention. Most accounting novels of the latter kind are mystery novels.

I'm sorry to say that I'm disappointed in all the Type 2 accounting novels that I've ever read  (but I've not read them all by any means). As to the Type 1 accounting novels, I can't find any to recommend even though they all are top novels according to critics of repute. I think you can learn a lot about psychology and the criminal mind from some Type 1 books. To the extent that the criminal mind is focused on an accounting crime like embezzlement, the reader may learn a great deal about psychology. But what is learned about accounting seems hardly worth mentioning.

Type 2 novels that are written primarily to teach accounting usually lack research into the historical settings, and it is often this "realism" of the setting that separates great novels from hack jobs.

May 27, 2002 message from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM

I'm taking a few weeks off, and am thinking of reading some novels. A Google search on "accountant & movies" reveals the following. Can anyone recommend any of these books? I am purposefully bypassing the accountant books written by a professor for students. -- Dave Albrecht (Bowling Green State University)

David Dodge wrote four novels starring a San Francisco tax accountant James “Whit” Whitney, who becomes a reluctant detective. They are: 

Paul Anthony wrote Old Accountants Never Die

John Grisham wrote Skipping Christmas

Paul Bennett (crime thriller author) - Nick Shannon is an accountant who investigates fraud Due Diligence Collateral Damage False Profits The Money Race

Mike Resnick wrote: Eros Ascending: Book 1 of Tales of the Velvet Comet

 

Type 1 Novels
Suppose we begin with somebody's listing of the top 100 novels of all time such as the listing at
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html
It's relatively easy to identify some of those that teach economics, the noteworthy author being Ayn Rand and George Orwell. I'm sorry to say that I personally cannot recommend a single novel among the classics that I would recommend as a supplement for teaching accounting.

Nor can I recommend any of my favorite novelists on the basis of accounting? No! Actually I cannot recommend a favorite novelist without some sort of criterion. For example, in terms of realism of settings one of my favorite novelists of all time is Joseph Conrad. However, if I'm planning a long flight I generally add several books by Agatha Christie and Nagio Marsh to my carry-on luggage. Give me an old Christie or Marsh re-read to a current James Patterson or Mary Higgins Clark new-read any day. I do somewhat like Elizabeth George and PD James, although they often get tedious.

I also don't find any interesting accounting novels among the top banned books.

The Online Banned Books Page (updated in 2009) --- http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/banned-books.html

Banned Books --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_books

I draw a blank in terms of recommending Type 1 novels for learning accounting, even those that may feature accountants.

 

Type 2 Novels
Among the more financially successful Type 2 novels designed to teach management are the Eliyahu Moshe Goldratt books --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliyahu_M._Goldratt
I can honestly say that I never read one of his books that I thought was worth a tinkers damn in spite of the fact that cults have formed in praise of Eliyahu's fads.

The most financially successful mystery novels designed to teach economics as well as entertain were those of my former colleague Bill Breit and Ken Elzinga.

Three mystery novels penned under the name of Marshall Jevons are as follows:

Although I never personally thought these were great novels, for a time they became widely popular as high school adoptions where there is a huge sales market. One time I wrote a tribute to Bill and Ken at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/muppets.htm 
Wherein I wrote my own Muppets screen play about arbitrage.

One of the more serious accounting education mystery novels is Code Blue by R.E. McDermott, K.D. Stocks, and J. Ogden (Syracuse, UT:  Traemus Books, ISBN 0-9675072-0-0, 2000) --- http://www.traemus-books.com/ 

What you are about to read represents a new way of teaching technical material. As the approach is unorthodox, an explanation is warranted. The format chosen is that of a textbook-novel. It tells the story of a CPA who accepts a consulting job for a community hospital, a job that involves him in romance, mystery, murder, intrigue, and...managed care!

My primary purpose in selecting this format is learning in context. Many learners complain that traditional education fails to prepare them for the real world. In this textbook-novel, I discuss not only how to find the right answers but also how to identify the right questions. My experience has been that the second issue is often far more important than the first.

In a similar vein, the book stresses the principle that how a manager does something is often as important as what he or she does. Some managers fail even though they do the right thing--because they do it in the wrong way. It is not enough to be sincere; one must be right. It is not enough to be right; one must be effective!

Creativity is another topic that can best be covered in the format of a textbook-novel. How does one apply old principles to a new environment? What process does one follow in breaking a complex consulting project into manageable tasks?

This book was written for anyone impacted by the cost of healthcare or interest in one "solution" that has been offered--a set of principles known as managed care. This audience certainly includes physicians, nurses, healthcare administrators, accountants, personnel directors and other executives of businesses that pay the cost through health insurance premiums.

In a recent Fortune Magazine poll, nearly two out of three CEOs called skyrocketing medical costs one of the most important problems facing American corporations. One-third of those surveyed stated that healthcare costs are the single biggest problem they would face this decade. The United States currently spends more than $1 trillion for the healthcare of its citizens. Projections indicate this figure will double within the next decade.

This book also contains technical material for the accounting student who is interested in learning more about healthcare cost accounting. It has been three decades since the number of service-industry jobs in the United States bypassed those in manufacturing. Still, accounting textbooks continue to emphasize traditional manufacturing cost accounting while neglecting or even ignoring the service industry.

Technical supplements, found in the appendix, illustrate the concepts taught, explain service industry accounting and contrast it with manufacturing accounting. This material is not essential to the story line and can be skipped by the more general reader. Questions for each chapter can be found on the author's web page: http://www.traemus-books.com

As a boy, I lived on the shores of Lake Washington in the small community of Hunt's Point. Many of the homes have docks, and one of our neighbors bought an airplane boat--not a plane with floating pods, as one often sees in that part of the country, but a plane with a hull--like a boat!

The advantages of such a craft in the Pacific Northwest are not hard to imagine, but the vehicle had some drawbacks. Although it did things neither a boat nor airplane could do alone, it didn't always fly as well as a plane nor sail as well as a boat. This analogy had come to me as I've studied the art of fiction. I am a hospital administrator turned consultant as well as a professor of accounting and healthcare administration. In my formal training, I was taught expository writing. Fiction is obviously a different animal.

In a professional article, the author begins with an introductory statement: a thesis that is followed by an explanation and a summary. Organization is tight--redundancy is discouraged. In fiction, the author must have a story line that involves opposition. Characters must be interesting; and the plot must keep moving. Merging the objectives of these two writing styles presents challenges, especially when the purpose is to explain the technical principles of managed care, accounting, and finance.

A textbook-novel is not as easy to write as a textbook and may not be as action focused as a novel. On the other hand, a textbook-novel is hopefully more informative than many novels and is certainly more interesting, perhaps even more educational from the standpoint of context, than a textbook.

As the creator of Code Blue, my goal is to make learning easy by making it fun. It is up to you to determine how successful we were in achieving this objective.

Richard E. McDermott 
January 1, 2000

The most prolific accounting mystery novel writer is Larry Cumbley at LSU. Larry eventually took his books into the realm of forensic accounting education.

"SHERLOCK HOLMES AND FORENSIC ACCOUNTING ," D. Larry Crumbley, Stanley H. Kratchman, and L. Murphy Smith, Texas A&M, March 4, 1997 ---  http://acct.tamu.edu/kratchman/holmes.htm

Larry Crumbley authored or co-authored a number of accounting novels, but they seemed too formula driven (Larry's a novel writing machine) and never appealed to my tastes. Many were written under the pen name Iris Weil Collett and were designed to teach forensic accounting as well as entertain --- http://www.bus.lsu.edu/accounting/faculty/lcrumbley/oilgas.html

The best of the Crumbley books may be
Larry Crumbley and Doug Ziegenfuss and (O'Shaughnessy?), Forensic Accounting Educational Novel, Carolina Academic Press, Second Edition, 2008 ---
http://www.cap-press.com/books/1780

Risk. It's a factor calculated into all big-time sports operations. But baseball was completely unprepared for the risk of major league murder in the stands. Fleet Walker, internal auditor for the New York Yankees, a forensic accountant, a FBI agent, and the protagonist of The Big R lead the reader through the fundamentals of forensic auditing, while using their accounting skills and knowledge of baseball history to track a serial killer who is threatening the national pastime.

Using the form of a novel to stimulate interest, The Big R is designed to supplement a forensic auditing, internal auditing, fraud examination, or graduate financial statements course. Readers will enjoy the suspense of this psychological thriller that integrates the foundations of forensic accounting and brings these applications to life. Authors Crumbley, Ziegenfuss, and O'Shaughnessy mix engaging storytelling with factual and practical information to create a resource guide that is both entertaining and informative.

Larry's mass-produced books that I'm less fond of include the following:

Collett, I.W., Accosting the Golden Spire, Sun Lakes, AZ 85248: Thomas Horton & Daughters, 26662 S. New Town Drive, Sun Lakes, AZ 85248, 1988; The Ultimate Rip-off: A Taxing Tale, Sun Lakes, AZ: Thomas Horton & Daughters, 1988; and L.M. Smith, Trap Doors and Trojan Horses, Sun Lakes, AZ: Thomas Horton & Daughters, 1991. 

Collett, I.W., The Ultimate Rip-off: A Taxing Tale, Sun Lakes, AZ: Thomas Horton & Daughters, 1988; 

Collett, I.W., Accosting the Golden Spire, Sun Lakes, AZ: Thomas Horton & Daughters, 1988.

Collett, I.W. and L.M. Smith, Trap Doors and Trojan Horses, Sun Lakes, AZ: Thomas Horton & Daughters, 1991. See M. Opsata, "It was a Dark and Stormy Night," Dow Jones Investment Advisor, January 1997, pp. 98-102.

Collett, I.W. and Dana Forgione, Costly Reflections in a Midas Mirror, Sun Lakes, AZ: Thomas Horton & Daughters, 1995.

Smith, K., M. Smith, and D. Crumbley, The Bottom Line is Betrayal, Dame Publications, Inc., Houston, TX, 1995

Larry Crumbley and Stanley Kratchman, Deadly Art Puzzle: Accounting for Murder, Dame Publications, Inc., 7800 Bissonnet, Suite 415, Houston, TX 77074, 1996.

Larry Crumbley, Gary Giroux, and Bob Myers, Nonprofit Sleuths, Dame Publications, Inc., Houston, TX. See also http://www.bus.lsu.edu/accounting/faculty/lcrumbley/forensic.html.

Here are a couple of older messages from  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/muppets.htm

Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry
August 22, 2005 message from Dennis Beresford [dberesfo@TERRY.UGA.EDU]

I recently purchased Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry [Paperback] By: B.S. Johnson through Amazon. While I haven't had a chance to start reading it yet, the following is the book's description in Amazon:

BS Johnson is one of those experimental writers, controversial during their lives that subsequently vanishes from print. Johnson was a journalist, a socialist, and a fine novelist. Best known for The Unfortunates (his book in a box where every chapter is separately bound and the reader is invited to read them in any order he or she wishes), Christie Malry's Own Double Entry is perhaps his most accessible novel. However, this "accessibility" is in the midst of a studiedly experimental text. This is a corruscating satire in which Johnson targets one of the symbols of capitalism, the double entry system. The very basis of accountancy, and the manipulation of finance, Johnson turns this building block on its head as his central character, Christie Malry, a young man with a future, decides that he will live his life according to the principles of double entry.

Johnson's novel has acute observations on a variety of issues in British life that still merit comment. How working class people come to vote conservative, the manner in which people's worth is measured financially; and all of this is in the midst of an angry satire where Malry wreaks vengeance on the system. It is a bitter cycnical novel, with a dark wit.

There is love, sex, and death; and an unusual use for shaving foam. And all of this is presented in a slightly distant way, where Johnson continually turns to the reader and winks, letting you know this is a novel. Characters are aware of their place in fiction, and Johnson deconstructs the novel to let you see how it works. (end of review)

By the way, while it is not on point with your request, I just finished reading "The World is Flat" and found it to be one of the most interesting and provocative books I've read in a long time.

Denny Beresford

August 22, 2005 reply from JOHN STANCIL [jstancil@VERIZON.NET]

“The Principles” by Barry Cameron and Tom Pryor ( www.icms.net ) is a novel incorporating the principles of Activity Based Costing.

John Stancil

Although I've great respect for USC's Zoe-Vonna Palmrose, I cannot say her Thog's Guide co-authored "novel" appealed to me in the least. Maybe I'm just too dense to find greatness in Thog's Guide.

March 2, 2010 reply from Clikeman, Paul [pclikema@RICHMOND.EDU]

Here are two accounting novels I would recommend.

1)       The Rose Engagement, by Richard E. and Beverly A. Brown

Unfortunately, this book is no longer in print, but used copies are available on-line.

Reader reviews from Amazon:

 

5.0 out of 5 stars Very intriguing and creative. It was accounting with a twist, March 15, 1999

I found this book to be an interesting way to explain some of the governmental accounting issues that auditors face. The story line kept my interest the entire time I was reading. Also, the outrageous plot made the technical material easier to remember. This book made for interesting reading of a not-so-interesting topic. Thank you Dr. and Mrs. Brown.

 

4.0 out of 5 stars The Rose Engagement, June 3, 2002

   

Very enjoyable. Fascinating plot line. As a CPA who does governmental audits, it was exciting to read about standards in a murder mystery format. I would recommend it to accountants and certainly to students who are considering going into accounting. It is informative as well as entertaining.

2)       Risk, by Dick Francis

An auditor as a hero, accountants everywhere will cheer, March 15, 2001

Dick Francis has a winning formula: he writes books about a young man of around 30, in a career most people might think is boring, but which turns out to be exciting. His hero is usually taken for granted and under-appreciated by his family, and under-employed, but in the course of the book proves he is far smarter, cleverer, and more observant than anyone supposed. Usually, there's a highly intelligent middle-aged career woman who recognizes his worth and helps him along. It's a formula, but the details that Francis provides makes it work every time.

In this case, our hero is an accountant, an auditor. Many people would start to snore at the thought that auditing could be an exciting job; as a former auditor myself, who has since traded it in for the relative calm of a desk job, I was pleased to see him show how varied and interesting the job can be. Auditors have to know a great deal about a variety of industries, do a lot of travelling, and have highly analytical minds used to investigating small details and discrepancies that most people would not notice. (There might be a bit of bias on my part, of course.) All this means that an auditor winds up making a good investigator of mysteries, as well.

Along with the details of Roland's regular job, and the details of horse-racing that are in every book, we also happen to find out a great deal about yacht-building. Such details are all through Francis's books; he seems to know about every possible job, and must collect details as much as most people collect lint. I always enjoy learning these details!

In this particular book, we have some ambiguous people who turn out not to be bad guys, the person captaining the yacht that Roland first is stored on when kidnapped. Then, the bad guy turns out to be a total surprise, someone we don't suspect at all till the end is revealed. Nonetheless, once the details are pointed out, one goes "Of course!"

 

 Paul M. Clikeman, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Accounting. Robins School of Business, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA 23173
pclikema@richmond.edu

Conclusion
Hence David, I await your forthcoming enlightenment about the top accounting novels that I should be reading.

I'm sorry to say that I'm disappointed in all the Type 2 accounting novels that I've ever read  (but I've not read them all by any means). As to the Type 1 accounting novels, I can't find any to recommend even though they all are top novels according to critics of repute. I think you can learn a lot about psychology and the criminal mind from some Type 1 books. To the extent that the criminal mind is focused on an accounting crime like embezzlement, the reader may learn a great deal about psychology. But what is learned about accounting seems hardly worth mentioning.


Question
How is accountancy practice like mystery writing?

"Mystery Writer," by Gail Farrelly, Journal of Accountancy, March 2010 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2010/Mar/20092392.htm

As different as they seem, accounting and mystery writing actually have a lot in common: Both deal with details. Both are structured. Both require intricate and involved thinking. And, on a personal level, both have been an important and fulfilling part of my life.

 

Writing mysteries was not one of my early life goals. Armed with an MBA as well as an M.A. in philosophy, I taught business subjects in a junior college. Then, in 1977 The George Washington University was searching for an accounting teacher who would earn a stipend and free tuition to work on a doctorate. I jumped at the opportunity to apply. Being able to teach at a higher level appealed to me. I was accepted, and I earned my doctorate in business administration from GWU, with a major in accounting and a minor in finance.

 

The more I studied accounting, the more I discovered how much I liked it—so much so that I sat for the CPA exam while I was still in graduate school. After earning my doctorate, I chose to continue teaching accounting, first at Southern Methodist University for three years, then at Rutgers University for 18 years.

 

I began “serious” writing long before I published my first mystery novel. “Publish or perish” is the unwritten rule for those of us in academia, so throughout my university career I published a number of papers. One of them, co-authored with another professor, caught the eye of Quorum Books. We added another author and published Shaping the Corporate Image: An Analytical Guide for Executive Decision Makers. It was my first book.

 

Sometimes, when I was doing a serious paper or an op-ed article for the newspapers, I began to dream about writing for fun, which, to me, was to write a novel. I finally decided to see if I could make my dream come true and started my first work of fiction.

 

Mysteries have always topped my list of leisure reading. As a girl, I read all of the Nancy Drew books, then worked my way through Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. From an interest perspective, it was natural for me to tackle the mystery genre for my fiction work. After a five-year effort, in 1995 I published my first novel. Seeing my name on the book cover— an experience that is hard to describe—motivated me to start on my second mystery. Because I wrote after hours, it took me another five years to finish it.

 

In 2002, I was ready to begin the next chapter in my life—to become a full-time writer. With my future financially secure, I took an early retirement from the university and devoted myself to writing. My biggest adjustment has been budgeting my time, since as a writer I do not have short-term deadlines as I did as a professor.

 

My CPA background has helped me in an unexpected way: I’ve called upon it to develop plots for two of my books—Beaned in Boston: Murder at a Finance Convention and Duped by Derivatives.  Likewise, I used my academic experience as a backdrop for my third novel, Creamed at Commencement.

 

Writing is more than putting words on paper and organizing them to tell a story. Writing involves hard work—even after a book is written. I am constantly looking to promote my books by giving talks, blogging, arranging book signings and exploring ways to expand distribution, such as through e-publishing.

 

Writers are dreamers. Two of my dreams have been fulfilled teaching at the university level and publishing novels. My wildest dream is to get on The New York Times best-seller list! I don’t know if I will ever reach that goal, but I know I will have a lot of fun trying. Many people have a similar dream; they would like to write a book. My advice: Just do it—but in little chunks each day. Once you see your name in print, you’ll never regret the sacrifice it took to get it there.

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting novels are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNovels.htm


"Historical British Novels," by Cynthia Crossen, The Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703862704575099672318111704.html#mod=todays_us_weekend_journal

Until last week, I had never read anything by Philippa Gregory. I was put off by the covers of her books—her best known is "The Other Boleyn Girl"—which suggest the subgenre of historical fiction that Hilary Mantel, author of "Wolf Hall," calls "chick-lit with wimples."

My library had Ms. Gregory's 2008 "The Other Queen," so that's what I read. It wasn't bad. Bosoms didn't heave, manhoods didn't throb, and the real historical characters seem to have done more or less what history says they did.

In my favorite historical novels of Great Britain, I can really feel the cold, smell the smoke and taste the mutton. Among them:

"Jack Maggs" by Peter Carey. Inspired by Charles Dickens's "Great Expectations," this is the story of an ex-convict who returns to London from an Australian penal colony in the 19th century.

"The Crimson Petal and the White" by Michel Faber. It's been described as bawdy—the heroine is a prostitute—but this novel of 19th-century England is about class, medicine, manners and hypocrisy.

"The Observations" by Jane Harris. The saucy heroine of this novel (set in Scotland) is tart in every way; though she's nothing but a servant girl, she outsmarts many of her so-called betters.

"The Quincunx" by Charles Palliser. This 800-page doorstop is one of the few modern historical novels that deserves to be called "Dickensian." It teems with plot, characters and the bare bones of 19th-century London.

"Rose" by Martin Cruz Smith. A mystery, a love story and a terrifying depiction of the lives of coal miners in 19th-century England.

"Restoration" by Rose Tremain. A doctor in the 17th-century court of Charles II survives the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London and, barely, his marriage to one of the king's mistresses.

"Fingersmith" by Sarah Waters. Crime and love in Victorian London as two women plot to escape their destinies—one as a petty thief, the other as a captive of her aristocratic uncle.

My promise: None of these falls into the category of historical fiction George Steiner once described as "improbable gallants pursuing terrified yet rather lightly clad young ladies across flamboyant dust-wrappers."

March 5, 2010 reply from George Wright [Geo@LOYOLA.EDU]

Don't Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels (http://tinyurl.com/yfp46se) even rate a mention :-(? (Note: these should be read in order, starting with Master and Commander.

And how about George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman series (http://tinyurl.com/yg8d8sj)? (Need not be read in order.)

Geo

March 5, 2010 reply newmanphd [newmanphd@EARTHLINK.NET]

A double vote for Patrick O’Brian! And don’t overlook Sharon Kay Penman who writes absolutely amazing historical novels of Irish-Welsh-English origins and lineage.

Ray G Newman PhD CPA
Visiting Professor University of Southern Mississippi

 

Bob Jensen's threads on free electronic literature are at
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703862704575099672318111704.html#mod=todays_us_weekend_journal


"Ebooks: Getting Beyond Disruption," by Ania Wieckowski, Harvard Business Publishing Blog, February 26, 2010 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hbreditors/2010/02/ebooks_getting_beyond_disruption.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE

Enhanced ebooks. The first step beyond simply putting the text of books onto ereading devices is, essentially, adding different media to the mix. This doesn't mean just cute animations (though there were a fair share of those in some of the demos I saw). It means adding video — that's the hallmark of the "Vook" and a feature of the forthcoming Apple iPad's iBook as well. Those videos, as the people at Vook told me, can be integral to the text itself (such as the workout demos in a fitness book) or a kind of footnote with more information (such as the scholarly incursions into their text of Sherlock Holmes stories). Digital "footnotes" are available through visual search and augmented reality: technologies that allow you to point your phone's camera at a paragraph to bring up related content, such as opening up a set of further-reading links or finding a song mentioned in the text with iTunes. Vendors and speakers alike hailed the opportunities for adding synced audio, interactive tables of contents, and for collecting fine-grained user data. All of these possibilities go beyond what a physical book could possibly do to add new value for readers and for publishers.

Community. The biggest push throughout the conference was for technologies that allow readers to share their reading experiences. In his annual program session on current ereaders, Keith Fahlgren of Threepress Consulting noted that while "the first Kindle didn't really offer that much more than a paper book," there is much more to come in the form of networks of ereaders. In the future, ebooks will likely be stored "on the cloud": out on the internet, ready for you to grab and read from any device you have handy. This is the model showcased by Copia, a major sponsor of the conference, in their proposed social network–cum—ecommerce platform–cum–cloud econtent provider. In their vision, users are be able to see not only what their friends are reading, but where they are in the book, what their annotations have been, and what else is on their shelves. This may not be something we all make use of every day, but there are strong possibilities for the value-add for educational users and could, in the end, become part of the way we all read.

While the Consumer Electronics Show in January marked the apogee of ereader proliferation, at the time I was still irked by the fact that the ebook didn't really have that much to offer consumers over a physical book. Apple's iPad, introduced a few weeks later, showed more promise in that regard. But the most exciting thing I've heard all spring is what one of my fellow attendees at TOC told me: "What's new this year is that ebooks have arrived — now we get to figure out what we can do with them."

Ania Wieckowski is an Assistant Editor at the Harvard Business Review.

"Kindle Debuts at Oregon State," Converge Magazine, February 25, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/edtech/E-Book-Readers-Debut-at-Oregon-State.html

Wander around Oregon State University’s Valley Library and plenty of students are browsing for books, or curled up in cozy chairs with a stack of hardbound novels. But as information technology advances, so does the library’s range of offerings.

While books won’t be disappearing from the library’s shelves anytime soon, students and others are using a variety of new ways to access information, which is why the library has begun offering Amazon Kindles — e-book readers that can store digital books, which are displayed, page-by-page, on a palm-sized screen.

Loretta Rielly, interim head of collections at the library, said the library has long wanted to provide more popular reading titles to patrons but it has been too costly to stack shelves with new fiction and non-fiction titles that may only have a few years shelf-life. While there is plenty of classic fiction in the library, popular fiction hasn’t really had a place.

“We get people who ask us, “Don’t you just have something to read?’” Rielly said. That request fit perfectly with the library’s attempt to explore and incorporate new technology.

“We’re really committed to investigate new technologies,” she said.

Kindles provide a way to make a large array of popular titles, as well as classics, available in a slim, portable reader that can be checked out for two weeks at a time. The library originally purchased six Kindles last summer, and immediately had about 60 requests to use them. Now the library has 12 Kindles, which contain 121 downloaded e-books. The readers and e-books are purchased using library gift funds.

Titles are purchased from Google on request from patrons, to insure that librarians aren’t guessing what readers want. What patrons are looking for varies greatly. For instance, they’ve had more requests for “Pride, Prejudice and Zombies,” than for the Austen original, though there have been plenty of requests for the classic version as well.

Claire Semadeni, who oversees the Kindle project, said they’ve been keeping track of user information, and about 48 percent of those checking out Kindles are undergraduates. The rest is a mix of graduate students, staff and faculty. So far, the only issue they’ve had in loaning out the technology, other than demand far exceeding availability, is that Kindles can get damaged in freezing weather, so they now carry warning labels.

Kindles display in black and white only, which limits their use in terms of offering digital textbooks. Publishers also are hesitant to make their textbooks available on a digital platform, because of digital rights management. So the days of students casting aside a heavy backpack for a slim e-reader are still far away.

“It’s the obvious place for e-books to go, but right now there isn’t a good platform for it,” said Anne-Marie Deitering, Franklin McEdward Professor for Undergraduate Learning Initiatives, who is part of the team looking into the Kindle program.

Deitering and Rielly guess that most of the patrons checking out Kindles are doing so to get used to the technology, and eventually, the library will focus less on providing e-book readers, and more on actually providing e-books for download to user’s home readers. But the legal and logistical details of that project are still being worked out.

For now, patrons hoping to check out a Kindle from the library are in for a wait — up to 20 weeks, that is. There are 120 holds in place for the dozen in circulation. Library staff expects demand to slow, but for now, there are plenty of people clamoring for a look at a new kind of book.

Bob Jensen's threads on eBooks are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm


Textbooks: Purchased Hardcopy vs. Downloadable eBook Purchases vs. Non-downloadable eBook Leases ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/eBooksDeal.htm

What's lacking in downloaded Kindle eBooks?
Would you believe the chapter exhibits?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/eBooksDeal.htm

New Tool for Rewriting E-Textbooks:  It's the "Wikipedia of Textbooks"
Macmillan, a major textbook publisher, is today introducing a new service that will let faculty members to customize digital textbooks, adding and subtracting chapters, and to rewrite individual sentences and paragraphs, The New York Times reported. While coursepacks that allow faculty members to build customized digital or print materials for courses are common, this system may go further in allowing professors to overhaul a single existing work.
Inside Higher Ed, February 22, 2010 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/02/22/qt#220816 
"Textbooks That Professors Can Rewrite Digitally," by Motoko Rich, The New York Times, February 21, 2010 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/business/media/22textbook.html?ref=education

Readers can modify content on the Web, so why not in books?

In a kind of Wikipedia of textbooks, Macmillan, one of the five largest publishers of trade books and textbooks, is introducing software called DynamicBooks, which will allow college instructors to edit digital editions of textbooks and customize them for their individual classes.

Professors will be able to reorganize or delete chapters; upload course syllabuses, notes, videos, pictures and graphs; and perhaps most notably, rewrite or delete individual paragraphs, equations or illustrations.

While many publishers have offered customized print textbooks for years — allowing instructors to reorder chapters or insert third-party content from other publications or their own writing — DynamicBooks gives instructors the power to alter individual sentences and paragraphs without consulting the original authors or publisher.

“Basically they will go online, log on to the authoring tool, have the content right there and make whatever changes they want,” said Brian Napack, president of Macmillan. “And we don’t even look at it.”

In August, Macmillan plans to start selling 100 titles through DynamicBooks, including “Chemical Principles: The Quest for Insight,” by Peter Atkins and Loretta Jones; “Discovering the Universe,” by Neil F. Comins and William J. Kaufmann; and “Psychology,” by Daniel L. Schacter, Daniel T. Gilbert and Daniel M. Wegner. Mr. Napack said Macmillan was considering talking to other publishers to invite them to sell their books through DynamicBooks.

Students will be able to buy the e-books at dynamicbooks.com, in college bookstores and through CourseSmart, a joint venture among five textbook publishers that sells electronic textbooks. The DynamicBooks editions — which can be reached online or downloaded — can be read on laptops and the iPhone from Apple. Clancy Marshall, general manager of DynamicBooks, said the company planned to negotiate agreements with Apple so the electronic books could be read on the iPad.

The modifiable e-book editions will be much cheaper than traditional print textbooks. “Psychology,” for example, which has a list price of $134.29 (available on Barnes & Noble’s Web site for $122.73), will sell for $48.76 in the DynamicBooks version. Macmillan is also offering print-on-demand versions of the customized books, which will be priced closer to traditional textbooks.

Fritz Foy, senior vice president for digital content at Macmillan, said the company expected e-book sales to replace the sales of used books. Part of the reason publishers charge high prices for traditional textbooks is that students usually resell them in the used market for several years before a new edition is released. DynamicBooks, Mr. Foy said, will be “semester and classroom specific,” and the lower price, he said, should attract students who might otherwise look for used or even pirated editions.

Instructors who have tested the DynamicBooks software say they like the idea of being able to fine-tune a textbook. “There’s almost always some piece here or some piece there that a faculty person would have rather done differently,” said Todd Ruskell, senior lecturer in physics at the Colorado School of Mines, who tested an electronic edition of “Physics for Scientists and Engineers” by Paul A. Tipler and Gene Mosca.

Frank Lyman, executive vice president of CourseSmart, said he expected that some professors would embrace the opportunity to customize e-books but that most would continue to rely on traditional textbooks.

“For many instructors, that’s very helpful to know it’s been through a process and represents a best practice in terms of a particular curriculum,” he said.

Even other publishers that allow instructors some level of customization hesitate about permitting changes at the sentence and paragraph level.

“There is a flow to books, and there’s voice to them,” said Don Kilburn, chief executive of Pearson Learning Solutions, which does allow instructors to change chapter orders and insert material from other sources. Mr. Kilburn said he had not been briefed on Macmillan’s plans.

Mr. Ruskell said he did not change much in the physics textbook he tested with DynamicBooks. “You don’t just want to say, ‘Oh, I don’t like this, I’m going to do this instead,’ ” he said. “You really want to think about it.”

Mr. Comins, an author of “Discovering the Universe,” a popular astronomy textbook, said the new e-book program was a way to speed up the process for incorporating suggestions that he often receives while revising new print editions. “I’ve learned as an author over the years that I am not perfect,” he said. “So if somebody in Iowa sees something in my book that they perceive is wrong, I am absolutely willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.”

On the other hand, if an instructor decided to rewrite paragraphs about the origins of the universe from a religious rather than an evolutionary perspective, he said, “I would absolutely, positively be livid.”

Ms. Clancy of Macmillan said the publisher reserved the right to “remove anything that is considered offensive or plagiarism,” and would rely on students, parents and other instructors to help monitor changes.

February 22, 2010 message from mailto:campbell@rio.edu

Bob:
However, this model could be construed as providing kickbacks to those professors providing modifications.

This was mentioned later in the article.

Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu

February 22, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

I’m not certain “kickback” is the correct term if professors are being paid above the board for their innovative creations and their hard work. Payments, however, should be rewarded such as payments for providing high quality videos for commercial books.

The publishers might also take for-profit advantage of some of the open sharing stuff. For example, a “customized” textbook might provide links to Susan Crossan’s outstanding free videos, thereby taking advantage somewhat of her open sharing spirit to add to the profitability of the commercial textbook --- http://dept.sfcollege.edu/business/susan.crosson/

It might also be construed as doing the following two things.

Bad
Once Kindle and the other eTextbook providers get their acts together regarding eBooks (e.g., providing chapter exhibits), this move by publishing companies might put the competition out of business if you can only get the eTextbook revision capabilities if you buy/rent the textbook directly from the publisher. Welcome to the world or true monopoly pricing of our textbooks!

Good (and bad)
This move might further destroy the hard copy book market, especially the used textbook market. This is bad for hard copy book lovers like me, but it will be more cost efficient for students and will put the sleazy book buyers that roam our halls out of business.

Bob Jensen

February 20, 2010 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

The future of publishing:

http://vook.com/vook.php 

Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu

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

A Vook is a digital book type that combines video, links to the internet and text into one application that's available both on the Web and as a mobile application.

Vook officially launched October 1, 2009 with four debut titles, published in partnership with Atria, an imprint of Simon and Schuster: Promises, a romance by Jude Deveraux; The 90 Second Fitness Solution, a fitness book by Pete Cerqua; Embassy, a thriller by Richard Doetsch; and Return to Beauty, a health book by Narine Nikogosian. Vook followed up these titles with a Vook version of Gary Vaynerchuk's Crush It!, released in late 2009. The company has since released a CookVook for Woman's Day, as well as numerous public domain titles, as well as moving into production on a Vook with author Seth Godin. On February 10th, 2010, the company announced a forthcoming Vook with Anne Rice.

Vook was founded by serial Internet entrepreneur Bradley Inman and came to public attention after being featured in an article in the New York Times in April, 2009.

From the Trites E-business Blog (in Canada) --- http://www.zorba.ca/2010/02/pricing-struggle-over-e-books-in-recent.html
 February 3, 2010

An Open Standard for E-Readers?

E-Readers, such as the kindle are selling like hot cakes, yet the very existence of a proprietary standard for such devices is unsustainable. People don't want to have to buy 5 different e-readers just to read the books they purchase from different suppliers.

In a move that is definitely in the right direction, the top magazine publishers have entered into a deal to support a common open standard platform for their magazines. Clearly, this is to the benefit of the consumers - the magazine readers.

While this new open standard appears to be restricted to magazines, hopefully a similar open standard will emerge for book e-readers as well. Then watch e-reading take off!

For an article on the magazine publishers' initiative ---

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/ebusiness/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222001131 ee this article.

Bob Jensen's threads on eBooks are at 
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm

Here's a really informative link:
Comparison of eBook formats
--- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats

"BookBoon.com works to alleviate students of textbook bills," by Christine Montemurro, Loyola University of Maryland Student Newspaper, February 23, 2010 --- Click Here
http://media.www.loyolagreyhound.com/media/storage/paper665/news/2010/02/23/News/Bookboon.com.Works.To.Alleviate.Students.Of.Textbook.Bills-3876887.shtml
Thank you for the heads up Barry!

In an age where the Internet is flooded with websites for discount and rented textbooks, students now have the option of downloading their textbooks for free online with BookBoon.com.

BookBoon.com is a website that easily provides students with thousands of electronic textbooks free of charge. Customers are not required to enter any personal information in order to browse the website or download books. Books on the website are targeted at engineering students, IT students, and students of economy and finance.

The books contain relevant advertisements on every third page that help fund the project. Textbooks are available in five different languages for students all around the world. All books featured on BookBoon.com are developed and written for the website, so the textbooks students receive are only available from Bookboon.

Thomas Buus Madsen, founder of BookBoon.com, explains why he and his brother began the business back in 2004:

"Every time we started a new class at university, one of our fellow students went to the library, borrowed the textbook, made 50 Xerox copies of the book, and sold these to the other students for maybe 10 dollars. We decided to come up with a concept that would allow the students to download textbooks free of charge. The ambition was that the students should always be able to find and download the book in less than a minute," says Madsen.

The movement to free textbooks in the United States began when The Digital Textbooks Initiative for California demanded that the state of California stop wasting money on expensive, out dated, hardbound textbooks. BoonBoon.com publishes a range of textbooks that are written exclusively for the website by leading authors in their fields. Each textbook is made available to download free of charge in a PDF e-book format with no registration fee.

According to its website, BookBoon.com is "the only provider of its kind that never charges its users or requires registration. In fact, it is impossible to register or make any payment at BookBoon.com."

Continued in article

Here's a really informative link:
Comparison of eBook formats
--- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats

Bob Jensen's threads on other free textbooks and course videos ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/electronicliterature.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing videos and course materials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


"Shameful: Lack of Diversity in the CPA Profession," by Frank Ross of Howard University,

Howard University’s Center for Accounting Education and Cook Ross Inc. finds that many African Americans are leaving public accounting out of frustration with a lack of advancement.

Only 1 percent of public accounting partners are African American and only 3 percent of CFOs of Fortune 500 companies have minority backgrounds. Accounting firms have been trying to improve their recruitment of minorities, but efforts to hold on to minority staffers, particularly African Americans, are falling short. In 2007-2008, 22 percent of all new accounting graduates were minorities, down from 26 percent in the previous year. Within this group only 4 percent were African Americans in 2007-2008, down from 8 percent in 2006-2007.

Jensen Comment
This is a tragedy, especially for African Americans who passed the CPA examination. It would be interesting to know how many leaving public accounting were licensed CPAs.

It would also be nice to know how many African American CPAs left public accounting for higher paying opportunities, perhaps even higher paying than what they would be making as CPA firm partners. Corporations aggressively recruit minority CPAs. We might then get a better idea of the proportion of minority CPAs who left public accounting because of glass ceilings on promotions and partnerships.

"KPMG Foundation Celebrates 15th Year of Minority Accounting Doctoral Program," SmartPros, August 1, 2009 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x67298.xml 

The KPMG Foundation is marking the 15th anniversary of its Minority Accounting Doctoral Scholarship program by announcing today it has awarded a total of $390,000 in scholarships to 39 minority doctoral scholars for the 2009 - 2010 academic year.

Of the awards, eight are to new recipients scheduled to begin their accounting doctoral program this fall, three are to new recipients who have already begun programs, and 28 are renewals of scholarships previously awarded.

Each of the scholarships is valued at $10,000 and renewable annually for a total of five years. The Foundation established the scholarship program in 1994 as part of its ongoing efforts to increase the number of minority students and professors in business schools – and has since awarded $8.7 million to minorities pursuing doctorate degrees.

“We’re proud of the achievements of our program over the last 15 years, and we have seen a healthy increase in the number of minority faculty members at our nation’s business schools, although more work needs to be done,” said Bernard J. Milano, President of the KPMG Foundation and The PhD Project. “That’s why we continue to award new scholarships each year and we remain committed to our mission.”

Together with The PhD Project, a related program whose mission is to increase the diversity of business school faculty, the Minority Accounting Doctoral Scholarship program has helped to more than triple the number of minority business professors in the United States since The PhD Project first began in 1994. Today, there are 985 minority business school professors teaching in the United States. Nearly 400 minority students are currently enrolled in business doctoral programs.

The Minority Accounting Doctoral Scholarship recipients come from a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds. This year’s new recipients are:

Continued in article

 

Jensen Comment
Under the guidance of KPMG Executive Partner Bernie Milano this program became more than a money awards program. KPMG works with some recipients in customized counseling and assistance when problems arise for certain individuals still studying for their doctorates. Various types of problems arise, including some crises within families.

Minority Hiring Success Varies Greatly by Discipline:  Law, Business, and Sciences Have the Worst Records
The major cause lies in the supply chain of PhD graduates

One of the reasons for the shortage of minority undergraduate students in accounting has been the lack of role models teaching accounting courses in college.

 


Now You See Me and Now You Don't"  Politics and Taxation in the United Kingdom
Now, ahead of a Freedom of Information statement by the Cabinet Office, Lord Ashcroft has acknowledged that he is non-domiciled in the UK for tax purposes. That means that he pays income tax on his personal income and gains arising in the UK, or foreign income and gains remitted to the UK. Unlike most other citizens, the law permits him to arrange his personal affairs in such a way that his worldwide income, subject to double taxation relief, is not taxed in the UK. Despite this, the Conservative party secured a life peerage for him, which therefore gave him a role as a legislator in the Houses of Parliament. In that capacity, he can speak and vote in the House of Lords on all legislative matters, including taxation, yet as an unelected appointee he cannot be removed, no matter how dissatisfied people may be with him.
"Lord Ashcroft's non-dom disclosureNo party should be comfortable with the financial backing of a peer who uses non-domicile tax status to avoid paying UK ta." by Prem Sikka, The Guardian, March 1, 2010 ---
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/michael-ashcroft-tax-non-dom 


From the Trites E-business Blog (in Canada) --- http://www.zorba.ca/2010/02/has-social-networking-run-its-course.html
 February 22, 2010

Has Social Networking Run Its Course?

A recent poll - unscientific and all - has resulted in some 400 readers of Internet Evolution to call for the elimination of Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. The poll asked the question: "If you could eliminate one Web service, which one would it be?" Biased, for sure, but nevertheless food for thought.

There are plenty of reasons why social networking could run out of steam. It started with teenagers, notorious for social interaction but - - between themselves. Now that it has gone mainstream, it loses its appeal to them. Also, the privacy and security implications of social networking are becoming increasingly evident to everyone. That will turn off many people - as it already has employers and other organizations.

That said, people are inherently social and it could be that social networking is just going through a fine tuning stage. Stay tuned.

For a write-up on the survey, follow this link---
http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=466&doc_id=188181&f_src=internetevolution_section_466

Other recent posts to Jerry's E-business Blog ---
http://www.zorba.ca/blog.html

From Jerry Trite's E-Business Blog on February 25, 2010 ---
http://www.zorba.ca/blog.html

Freedom of Speech vs Privacy

There has been a conflict between internet based free speech and privacy legislation since the beginning. nowhere does this conflict become more obvious that in the area of social media. Do we really have the right to say those things about other people publicly? Should we?

Freedom of speech has been a central mantra of democratic countries for centuries, well at least a couple. However, the internet has brought in important changes that haven't been digested yet by our institutions. While freedom of expression will hopefully remain a central tenet of our society, we may have to redefine it somewhat. At one time, freedom of speech would have been tempered by traditional courtesy and respect for others, those aspects of society have dissipated considerably. As with so much else, the moderation may have to be legislated.

Read more:  http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/utility_ondemand/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=223100601
See here a writeup on a recent case in Italy which may change the situation a lot.

Jerry's home page is at http://www.zorba.ca/

Jensen Comment
Jerry is not given enough credit for being a blogging pioneer. He was one of the first accounting professors in the world to provide chronological blogs. As I recall he started blogs on E-commerce and XBRL about the same time, and I'm sorry that I've not tracked these blogs more closely in recent years. Like good wine, they've improved with age.

Bob Jensen's threads on professors who blog and social networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

 


Second Life 3-D and Interactive Virtual World Free Software (including learning experiments) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

Professor James Martin provides a summary of the following article in his MAAW Blog on February 25, 2010 at
http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumKaplanHaenlein09.htm

Kaplan, A. M. and M. Haenlein. 2009. The fairyland of Second Life: About virtual social worlds and how to use them. Business Horizons 52(6): 563-572.

February 22, 2010 message from James R. Martin, University of South Florida [jmartin@MAAW.INFO]

For those who would like to learn more about Accounting in the Second Life environment, I've developed a section on Second Life with a brief summary of the Johnson-Middleton article, a bibliography, and a links page. See http://maaw.info/SecondLifeMain.htm 

There are a considerable number of related books, articles, and You Tube videos, but I have not found much in the accounting literature. When I find more and learn more I will place it on the pages mentioned above.

I joined Second Life, developed and avatar, and have been looking around, but don't know how to do much. Those who are using Second Life for accounting education purposes have an opportunity to write about it for publication in the accounting education journals. Many accounting faculty members would be interested in what they are doing, and unfortunately, if they don't write about it, they are not likely to get any credit for their work in the academic environment.

Another idea, perhaps there should be a Second Life section on AAA Commons. I call the MAAW section "Second Life, Avatars, and Virtual Worlds".

Bob Jensen's threads on Second Life are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife


"The Case Against College Education," by Ramesh Ponnuru, Time Magazine, February 24, 2010 ---
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1967580,00.html?xid=huffpo-direct
Thank you Ms. Huffington for the heads up.

Even in these days of partisan rancor, there is a bipartisan consensus on the high value of postsecondary education. That more people should go to college is usually taken as a given. In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama echoed the words of countless high school guidance counselors around the country: "In this economy, a high school diploma no longer guarantees a good job." Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, who gave the Republican response, concurred: "All Americans agree that a young person needs a world-class education to compete in the global economy."

The statistics seem to bear him out. People with college degrees make a lot more than people without them, and that difference has been growing. But does that mean that we should help more kids go to college — or that we should make it easier for people who didn't go to college to make a living? (See the 10 best college presidents.) --- http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1937938_1937934,00.html

We may be close to maxing out on the first strategy. Our high college drop-out rate — 40% of kids who enroll in college don't get a degree within six years — may be a sign that we're trying to push too many people who aren't suited for college to enroll. It has been estimated that, in 2007, most people in their 20s who had college degrees were not in jobs that required them: another sign that we are pushing kids into college who will not get much out of it but debt. 

The benefits of putting more people in college are also oversold. Part of the college wage premium is an illusion. People who go to college are, on average, smarter than people who don't. In an economy that increasingly rewards intelligence, you'd expect college grads to pull ahead of the pack even if their diplomas signified nothing but their smarts. College must make many students more productive workers. But at least some of the apparent value of a college degree, and maybe a lot of it, reflects the fact that employers can use it as a rough measure of job applicants' intelligence and willingness to work hard.

We could probably increase the number of high school seniors who are ready to go to college — and likely to make it to graduation — if we made the K-12 system more academically rigorous. But let's face it: college isn't for everyone, especially if it takes the form of four years of going to classes on a campus.
(See pictures of the college dorm's evolution.) --- http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1838306_1759869,00.html

To talk about college this way may sound élitist. It may even sound philistine, since the purpose of a liberal-arts education is to produce well-rounded citizens rather than productive workers. But perhaps it is more foolishly élitist to think that going to school until age 22 is necessary to being well-rounded, or to tell millions of kids that their future depends on performing a task that only a minority of them can actually accomplish.

The good news is that there have never been more alternatives to the traditional college. Some of these will no doubt be discussed by a panel of education experts on Feb. 26 at the National Press Club, a debate that will be aired on PBS. Online learning is more flexible and affordable than the brick-and-mortar model of higher education. Certification tests could be developed so that in many occupations employers could get more useful knowledge about a job applicant than whether he has a degree. Career and technical education could be expanded at a fraction of the cost of college subsidies. Occupational licensure rules could be relaxed to create opportunities for people without formal education.

It is absurd that people have to get college degrees to be considered for good jobs in hotel management or accounting — or journalism. It is inefficient, both because it wastes a lot of money and because it locks people who would have done good work out of some jobs. The tight connection between college degrees and economic success may be a nearly unquestioned part of our social order. Future generations may look back and shudder at the cruelty of it.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1967580,00.html?xid=huffpo-direct#ixzz0gYarvwQM

Time's Special Report on Paying for a College Education --- http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1838709,00.html

Jensen Comment
I think it is misleading to talk about the "value" of education in terms of of the discounted present value of a degree due to career advantages. Firstly, education has many intangible values that cannot be measured such as being inspired to really enjoy some of the dead or living poets.

Secondly, even if  college graduates on average make a lot more money, this is an illustration of how to lie with statistics. A major problem is in the variance about the mean. Much depends upon where students graduate, what they majored in for their first degree, how well they performed in college, whether or not they attended graduate school, what they majored in in graduate school, where they got their graduate degree, etc. Average incomes may also be skewed upward by kurtosis and the related problem of bounds on the left tail of the distribution. Low income levels are bounded whereas high income levels may explode toward the moon for bankers, corporate executives, physician specialists, etc.

In any case telling every student to expect more than a million dollars just for getting a bachelors degree is a big lie!

Bob Jensen's threads on the "Criterion Problem" are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#CriterionProblem


"NYU Professor Faces Libel Lawsuit in France for Refusing to Purge Negative Book Review," by Aisha Labi, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 25, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/NYU-Professor-Faces-Libel/64370/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

A law professor at New York University faces trial in a French criminal court in June on libel charges, after refusing to purge an academic book review from a Web site affiliated with a law journal that he edits, Times Higher Education reports.

Joseph Weiler, editor in chief of the European Journal of International Law, is being sued by Karin Calvo-Goller, a senior lecturer at the Academic Centre of Law and Business in Israel, for a review of her book, The Trial Proceedings of the International Criminal Court, that was published on the Web site in 2007.

Soon after it appeared, Ms. Calvo-Goller wrote to Mr. Weiler, saying that the review, by Thomas Weigend, director of the Cologne Institute of Foreign and International Criminal Law and dean of the faculty of law at the University of Cologne, was defamatory. She asked that the review be removed from the site.

"Prof. Weigend's review goes beyond the expression of an opinion, fair comment, and criticism," she wrote in correspondence reproduced in an editorial on "Book Reviewing and Academic Freedom" that Mr. Weiler has written for the current issue of the European Journal of International Law. She deemed the review "libelous," saying it could "cause harm to my professional reputation and academic promotion," and provided an example of a positive review the book had received from another German professor.

Mr. Weiler refused to remove the review but offered to publish a response from Ms. Calvo-Goller, "so that anyone reading the review would immediately be able to read her reply," an approach that "would have amply and generously vindicated all possible interests of the author of the book," he wrote in the editorial. "I continue to believe that in all the circumstances of the case ... removing the review by Professor Weigend would have dealt a very serious blow to notions of freedom of speech, free academic exchange, and the very important institution of book reviewing."

Faced with what he notes is "the heavy financial burden of defending such a case — expenses which are in large part not recoverable even if acquitted," Mr. Weiler has appealed for "moral and material assistance" from the academic community and writes that he is optimistic that he will be acquitted at trial. "Any other result will deal a heavy blow to academic freedom and change the landscape of book reviewing in scholarly journals, especially when reviews have a cyber presence as is so common today."

Jensen Comment
I do not conclude that this book review as "defamatory" ---
http://www.globallawbooks.org/reviews/detail.asp?id=298

February 28, 2010 reply from Dan Stone, Univ. of Kentucky [dstone@UKY.EDU]

Try this exercise:

1. you are a journal editor of, say, AAA's Journal of Information Systems, (as I was for 4 years). 2. you receive a review on a MS like the book review with which Bob started this thread. The relevant point for our exercise is that the tone of the review is inappropriate and offensive.

What to do?

Option #1: write the reviewer and ask them to change the tone of their review. Thoughts: Get real. The reviewer has volunteered several hours of their time to you. They have done you a favor. And your reply is to critique their review?

Option #2: Omit the review from the material sent to the author. Thoughts: I've done this. However, often the offending review contains useful content along with the offensive: not an ideal option.

Option #3: Send a rejection cover letter along with the offensive review. Thoughts: Editors are volunteers also and regularly receive hate mail from rejected authors. It is part of the job (see earlier note posted to this thread). If you are processing 100+ manuscripts a year then work/life balance leads to compromises: this option is not ideal but it is quick and it gets you onto the next manuscript or home to see your family or to the next meeting.

Option #4: Don't use this reviewer again. Thoughts: Yes, obviously.

Option #5: Regularly send appeals to reviewers and Associate Editors of the need for a constructive tone and critique of manuscripts. Thoughts: Yes, obviously.

February 28, 2010 reply from Jagdish Gangolly [gangolly@GMAIL.COM]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 8:54 AM, Dan Stone, Univ. of Kentucky <dstone@uky.edu>  wrote: Try this exercise:

1. you are a journal editor of, say, AAA's Journal of Information Systems, (as I was for 4 years). 2. you receive a review on a MS like the book review with which Bob started this thread. The relevant point for our exercise is that the tone of the review is inappropriate and offensive.

What to do?

Option #1: write the reviewer and ask them to change the tone of their review. Thoughts: Get real. The reviewer has volunteered several hours of their time to you. They have done you a favor. And your reply is to critique their review?

Can the editor let the journal quality and reputation be held hostage by a few contemptuously insolent referees? If I were the editor, I would instruct the referees up front that the review is to be strictly limited to what is in the paper. And that it is not the referee's charge to evaluate the competence of the authors.

If I were the editor: If any referee violates this rule I would never reuse that person as a referee if the offense was deliberate. If I can not find enough referees who are not so contemptuously insolent I would step down as editor and recommend that the journal be shut down for the sake of the profession.

Option #2: Omit the review from the material sent to the author. Thoughts: I've done this. However, often the offending review contains useful content along with the offensive: not an ideal option.

This option sweeps the PROBLEM under the rug. It is important to realise that these referees are the bed bugs of the academia. For the sake of the integrity of the academia I would 1, send the whole review to the author, 2. admonish the referee for violating the integrity of the refereeing process, send the letter of admonition to the author, and publish that letter in the journal with the names redacted.

That would send an unequivocal message to all, and the author would have the parts of the review that are useful.

I would take the accept/reject decision after ignoring the offending part of the review.

Option #3: Send a rejection cover letter along with the offensive review. Thoughts: Editors are volunteers also and regularly receive hate mail from rejected authors. It is part of the job (see earlier note posted to this thread). If you are processing 100+ manuscripts a year then work/life balance leads to compromises: this option is not ideal but it is quick and it gets you onto the next manuscript or home to see your family or to the next meeting.

That's the reason why there are associate editors and a large editorial board. The editor should be like a CEO who coordinates at a high level. At the rate at which I have received papers for refereeing over the years, I have often wondered if editors in accounting are overworked and the editorial board is asleep at the wheel.

Option #4: Don't use this reviewer again. Thoughts: Yes, obviously.

I am not so sure. Perhaps the arrogance is not intentional. I do not know of a single journal (I have been on about half a dozen journals, associate editor of one, and have refereed for over a dozen journals in Accounting, Economics, Operations Research, and Computer Science) which provides explicit guideline that ad hominem remarks in the review are unacceptable, unethical, uncivilised, and uncalled for in the academia..

On the other hand, accounting journals are the only ones where I have encountered this arrogance. A few years ago one of my papers was rejected by INFORMS Journal on Computing. It was devastating because we had ignored an old paper in an obscure journal that made our main result in the paper redundant. I think the referees had every right to question our competence, but the review was so fair (with no vituperative ad hominem remarks) that we were embarrassed but not angered. And I have sent papers to all four area journals.

Most authors in the academia are fair and accept a referee verdict when it is fair. But they do not like to be slandered. If an editor does get hate mail, the author is probably a good candidate referee of the kind we are talking about.

Option #5: Regularly send appeals to reviewers and Associate Editors of the need for a constructive tone and critique of manuscripts. Thoughts: Yes, obviously.

I completely agree.

Regards,

Jagdish -- Jagdish S. Gangolly Department of Informatics College of Computing & Information State University of New York at Albany Harriman Campus, Building 7A, Suite 220 Albany, NY 12222 Phone: 518-956-8251, Fax: 518-956-8247


Monkey Business
"Ex-Ohio man charged with bilking investors to finance movie 'Who's Your Monkey'." by Peter Krouse, Cleveland.com, March 3, 2010 ---
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/03/former_ashtabula_county_man_ch.html

The 2007 dark comedy "Who's Your Monkey?" was hardly a box office smash.

It played in maybe six cities before being relegated to DVD.

But the movie has special meaning to a group of Northeast Ohio investors who unwittingly financed the low-budget flick and are now clamoring for blood.

Federal prosecutors this week indicted Thomas F. Fink, 61, formerly of Ashtabula County, and his son Thomas C. Fink, 35. The financial advisers are charged with looting client accounts, including those of friends and family.

Instead of putting their clients' money into conservative investments such as Microsoft stock and GE Capital bonds, prosecutors said the father and son diverted $4.5 million for other purposes, including the production of "Who's Your Monkey?"

The scheme began in 2005, according to prosecutors, when Thomas K. Fink, a financial adviser with AXA Advisors, moved to Las Vegas to go into business with his son.

The two men created investment funds, including one called TTF Strategic Growth Partners LLC.

TTF was designed for conservative investments, but about 25 clients who thought their money was going into blue chip stocks and bonds later learned their money was spent on the younger Fink's personal expenses and production of a movie, prosecutors said.

The Finks kept their clients at bay by sending them bogus account statements, according to the indictment for multiple counts of mail fraud.

Thomas F. Fink's lawyer said his client is ashamed of what happened and will plead guilty. The younger Fink is another question.

"As far as I know, the son has fled to Dubai and is refusing to return to face this indictment," lawyer Jerry Emoff said.

Emoff said the elder Fink lost his own money in the fraud and did not know his son used client funds to finance "Who's Your Monkey?"

"The father really never knew what the son was doing," Emoff said, but is admitting guilt because he should have kept a closer watch on things.

It's not clear how Thomas C. Fink came to be involved with "Who's Your Monkey?" or how the profits -- if there were any -- were used. The movie cost $625,000 to make, according to the Internet Movie Data Base.

The film is about four old friends come together after one of them, an unemployed doctor, uses a martial arts throwing star to kill (partly in self defense) one of his crystal meth customers who is involved with animal porn.

The film features Scott Grimes, a former regular on "ER," and Wayne Knight, who played Newman on "Seinfeld."

Warren Skeels, one of the film's producers, said more star power would have helped promote the movie.

"A ton of people put a lot of hard work into bringing that film to fruition," said Skeels, whose Tigerlily Media was hired to produce the movie in Florida.

All that effort doesn't soothe the feelings of people like Terry and Debby Fink of North Ridgeville. Terry Fink is Thomas K. Fink's cousin.

Terry and Debby said they lost their life savings in the scheme. A few other relatives of the elder Fink, including a cousin in Middlefield, also lost out.

"Kind of tore the family apart," Debby Fink said.

Debby Fink said she thinks the younger Fink was the mastermind of the fraud, but that the father should have been more diligent in tracking the money.

Fink said she didn't know the son very well, but he was smart, personable and made a lot of wealthy friends while attending Washington & Lee University in Virginia. She also remembers him spending time in Dubai and Europe.

"He just lived a very lavish lifestyle," she said.

And she has no interest in watching "Who's Your Monkey?", the movie her money helped produce.

"It just kind of makes me ill," she said. "I wouldn't want any part of it."

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraudUpdates.htm


From the Chronicle of Higher Education, February 21, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/What-Theyre-Reading-on/64306/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Freakonomics has been Number 1 or Number 2 for months.

What They're Reading on College Campuses

1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

2. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

3. Nightlight: A Parody by the staff of The Harvard Lampoon 10

4. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown 1

5. Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler 

6. Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan

7. Dear John by Nicholas Sparks 

8. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

9. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith 3

10. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain

Jensen Comment
Erika and I just watched the videos of Dan Brown's two earlier books.
What a waste of time. We actually stopped watching after the endless car chases and Hollywood sensationalism.
Can't say I'd care to even read the books.


From the Scout Report on February 19, 2010

Photobie 7.0 ---  http://www.photobie.com/

Editing and transforming photographs from an Arbor Day celebration (or any other holiday) has never been easier than with the Photobie application. The program allows visitors to create their own animations from still photographs, make pdf files from photographs, and also perform more common tasks, such as red-eye removal. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 2000 and newer. 


Glary Utilities 2.20.0.831 --- http://www.glaryutilities.com/gu.html?tag=download 

If you're looking for a way to keep things clean on your computer, this latest version of Glary Utilities is a good program to consider. The application contains a registry cleaner, a government standard file-shredder to effectively delete data, and a tool management program. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7.


Looking for new markets, professional baseball representatives pay a visit to China Baseball in China: Striking Out http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15498407&fsrc=rss

Yankees Take Baseball To Asia --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703427704575051851121605296.html

 Global appeal of basketball soars, with NBA leading way --- Click Here
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-globalnba_14met.ART0.Central.Edition1.4bd750d.html

 International Baseball Federation [Flash Player] http://www.ibaf.org/

Baseball notes for coaches and players --- Click Here

Spring Training Online http://www.springtrainingonline.com/


Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance, economics, and statistics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks


Education Tutorials

NYCityMap [interactive] --- http://gis.nyc.gov/doitt/nycitymap/

"Thinking About Teaching," by Joe Hoyle, Teaching Financial Accounting Blog, February 28, 2010 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2010/02/thinking-about-teaching.html

You may have seen the video below (it is four minutes long). It had a lot of impact on me when I was creating our new Financial Accounting textbook. The video was apparently created by the students you see and really made me think about the state of education today. As far as I am concerned, education is expensive and, too often, both boring and inefficient. I wanted to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. As a result, I helped design and create this new type of Financial Accounting textbook.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
**

As I have mentioned previously, a few years ago I wrote a free on-line teaching tips book (https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~jhoyle/). I was lucky, a few people read it and told other people and then I got a very nice review in the Chronicle of Higher Education. As a result, I started getting emails from around the world about teaching. That was wonderful.

One day I received an email from a professor in London who said something like: “you don’t know me but I have read your teaching tips book and have a quote that I think you are going to love.” And, he was absolutely correct—this is one of my two or three favorite quotes about teaching. Whenever I give a teaching presentation, I always use this quote to explain what I believe is the true secret for becoming a better teacher. It is the best piece of advice that I can give any teacher who wants to improve.

"Teaching does not come from years of doing it. It actually comes from thinking about it."

I get pretty decent teaching evaluations from my students and I have won a few awards. Whenever anyone asks me how I managed to do that, I always say: “I think about this stuff a lot. Whether it is 6:00 a.m. when I wake up or 10:30 p.m. when I go to bed, teaching and my students and how to help them learn is always floating around in my head.”

So, today, I decided to tell you about what has been floating around in my head recently.

It seems to me that college education in my lifetime has focused on the conveyance of information. One content expert (the teacher) conveys information to a group of individuals who want (or are required) to gain a bit of that expertise. Despite what we might say, that process has not changed too radically in the last four decades since I was a college student.

However, with the Internet, Google, Bing and the like, information is readily available to most individuals at any time. It is hard to find a factual question that you cannot answer in less than one minute using a search engine. What then is the future purpose of a college education (other than the acquisition of a very expensive diploma)? If there is no longer a huge need for the conveyance of information from one generation to the next because it is so readily available, what are we doing? Don’t we need to know that before we even start the first class?

Do we who teach in college think about that question enough or just try to ignore it as best we can?

When I give teaching presentations, we work on developing “fly-on-the-wall” philosophies. What the heck is that? I ask the members of the audience to picture the course that is their favorite to teach. Then think of the final day of the semester when the students file out of the room for the last time. I ask each of the teachers to pretend they are a fly on the wall right above the door. If you were that fly on the wall, what would you want to hear from your students as they exited for the final time?

--The teacher sure conveyed a lot of information??
--I certainly took some great notes this semester??
--I memorized a lot of material so I could pass a test??

From my experience, a lot of teachers teach as if that is their goal. But, surely that cannot be the reason we became teachers. In 2010, doesn’t it have to be something more than that? And, if the answer is Yes, then what is the purpose of a college course?

I can tell you my own personal fly-on-the-wall philosophy but I am not sure that I am not ready for some change in it. So, if you have suggestions, let me know.

Here is my mine. On the last day of class, I would love to hear by students say:

“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”

What is yours?


Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

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


Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

Infrared Astronomy --- http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/ir_tutorial/

Down to Earth Astronomy  --- http://oposite.stsci.edu/edu_nf.html

Astronomy Media Player [iTunes] --- http://www.jodcast.net/amp/

Fun and Educational Science Videos
Sixty Symbols (in physics and astronomy) --- http://www.sixtysymbols.com/ 

Chandra Chronicles (astronomy) --- http://chandra.harvard.edu/chronicle/

Air & Space Power Course --- http://www.apc.maxwell.af.mil/main.htm

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

Future Agricultures --- http://www.future-agricultures.org/

USGS: Cascades Volcano Observatory Educational Outreach --- http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Outreach/framework.html

USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory: Maps and Graphics --- http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Graphics/

Neuroscience Information Framework --- http://neuinfo.org/

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

"Harvard’s Rogoff Sees Sovereign Defaults, ‘Painful’ Austerity," by Aki Ito and Jason Clenfield, Bloomberg, February 24, 2010 ---
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2065100&sid=aaeViPPUVSw4
Thank you for the heads up Jim Mahar.

Ballooning debt is likely to force several countries to default and the U.S. to cut spending, according to Harvard University Professor Kenneth Rogoff , who in 2008 predicted the failure of big American banks.

Following banking crises, “we usually see a bunch of sovereign defaults, say in a few years,” Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, said at a forum in Tokyo yesterday. “I predict we will again.”

The U.S. is likely to tighten monetary policy before cutting government spending, sending “shockwaves” through financial markets, Rogoff said in an interview after the speech. Fiscal policy won’t be curbed until soaring bond yields trigger “very painful” tax increases and spending cuts, he said.

Global scrutiny of sovereign debt has risen after budget shortfalls of countries including Greece swelled in the wake of the worst global financial meltdown since the 1930s. The U.S. is facing an unprecedented $1.6 trillion budget deficit in the year ending Sept. 30, the government has forecast.

“Most countries have reached a point where it would be much wiser to phase out fiscal stimulus,” said Rogoff, who co- wrote a history of financial crises published in 2009. It would be better “to keep monetary policy soft and start gradually tightening fiscal policy even if it meant some inflation.”

Failed Marriage

Rogoff, 56, said he expects Greece will eventually be bailed out by the IMF rather than the European Union. Greece will probably announce an austerity program “in a few weeks” that will prompt the EU to provide a bridge loan which won’t be enough to save the country in the long run, he said.

“It’s like two people getting married and saying therefore they’re living happily ever after,” said Rogoff. “I don’t think Europe’s going to succeed.”

Investors will eventually demand higher interest rates to lend to countries around the world that have accumulated debt, including the U.S., he said. The IMF forecast in November that gross U.S. borrowings will amount to the equivalent of 99.5 percent of annual economic output in 2011. The U.K.’s will reach 94.1 percent and Japan’s will spiral to 204.3 percent.

“In rich countries -- Germany, the United States and maybe Japan -- we are going to see slow growth. They will tighten their belts when the problem hits with interest rates,” Rogoff said at the forum, which was hosted by CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, a unit of Credit Agricole SA, France’s largest retail bank. Japanese fiscal policy is “out of control,” he said.

Euro Concerns

So far concerns about the euro zone’s ability to withstand the deteriorating finances of its member nations have outweighed the U.S.’s deficit woes, propping up the dollar.

“The more they suck in Greece, the lower the euro goes, because it’s not a viable plan,” Rogoff said. “Clearly the dollar is going to go down against the emerging markets -- there’s going to be concern about inflation and the debt.”

The dollar has surged more than 9 percent against the euro in the past three months. Ten-year Treasuries yielded 3.72 percent as of 10:16 a.m. in New York.

The U.S. government will delay any efforts to contain the deficit until Treasury yields reach around 6 percent to 7 percent, Rogoff said.

“The U.S. is in a state of paralysis in its fiscal policy,” he said. “Monetary policy will tighten first, and I don’t think it’s the right mix.”

Fed Exit

The Federal Reserve last week raised the discount rate charged to banks for direct loans, and plans to end its $1.25 trillion purchases of mortgage-backed securities in March. President Barack Obama ’s administration is proposing a $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2011 to spur the recovery.

“When they start tightening monetary policy even a little bit, it’s going to send shockwaves through the system,” Rogoff said.

In an interview a month before Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. went bankrupt in 2008, Rogoff said “the worst is yet to come in the U.S.” and predicted the collapse of “major” investment banks. His 2009 book “This Time Is Different,” co- written with Carmen M. Reinhart , charts the history of financial crises in 66 countries.

“We almost always have sovereign risk crises in the wake of an international banking crisis, usually in a few years, and that’s happening,” he said. “Greece is just the beginning.”

Greece’s debt totaled 298.5 billion euros ($405 billion) at the end of 2009, according to the Finance Ministry. That’s more than five times more than Russia owed when it defaulted in 1998 and Argentina when it missed payments in 2001.

The cost of protecting Greek bonds from default surged in January, then declined this month as concern eased over the country’s creditworthiness. Credit-default swaps on Greek sovereign debt have fallen to 356 basis points from 428 last month, according to CMA DataVision. That’s up from 171 at the start of December.

“Greece just highlights that one of those risks is sovereign default,” said Naomi Fink , a strategist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. Still, “it doesn’t justify the situation where we’re all in a panic and are going back to cash in the post-Lehman shock.”

U.S. Debt/Deficit Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Bob Jensen's threads on looming entitlements disasters ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/entitlements.htm

David Walker --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Walker_(U.S._Comptroller_General)

Niall Ferguson --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson
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.

From Harvard University:  Accounting and Finance History of Lehman Brothers Deal Books
Lehman Brothers Collection --- http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/lehman/

This guide provides information about the resources available within the Lehman Brothers Collection, including both the deal book collection and the business records.

Company pages in this guide give a summary of each deal as well as a company history. Researchers can browse the Lehman Brothers deal book collection via three access points: the date of the deal, the company name at the time of the deal, or industry type.

Jensen Comment
For accounting history scholars there are various research opportunities presented by this open sharing Harvard collection.

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting history are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory

Ancient Finance from Harvard Business School

From Jim Mahar's blog on May 17, 2006 --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/

 
The HBS Working Knowledge site has an interesting article by William Goetzmann on financial instruments back in the time of the Romans and Greeks. For instance on checks:

...bankers' checks written in Greek on papyri appeared in ancient Egypt as far back as 250 B.C. Papyri preserved well in Egypt thanks to its arid climate, but Goetzmann thinks it's safe to say such checks changed hands throughout the Mediterranean world . . . So the whole tradition of bank checks predates the current era and has its roots at least in Hellenistic Greek times," he says.

 

University of Illinois at Chicago Report on Massive Political Corruption in Chicago
"Chicago Is a 'Dark Pool Of Political Corruption'," Judicial Watch, February 22, 2010 ---
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2010/feb/dark-pool-political-corruption-chicago

A major U.S. city long known as a hotbed of pay-to-play politics infested with clout and patronage has seen nearly 150 employees, politicians and contractors get convicted of corruption in the last five decades.

Chicago has long been distinguished for its pandemic of public corruption, but actual cumulative figures have never been offered like this. The astounding information is featured in a lengthy report published by one of Illinois’s biggest public universities.

Cook County, the nation’s second largest, has been a “dark pool of political corruption” for more than a century, according to the informative study conducted by the University of Illinois at Chicago, the city’s largest public college. The report offers a detailed history of corruption in the Windy City beginning in 1869 when county commissioners were imprisoned for rigging a contract to paint City Hall.

It’s downhill from there, with a plethora of political scandals that include 31 Chicago alderman convicted of crimes in the last 36 years and more than 140 convicted since 1970. The scams involve bribes, payoffs, padded contracts, ghost employees and whole sale subversion of the judicial system, according to the report. 

Elected officials at the highest levels of city, county and state government—including prominent judges—were the perpetrators and they worked in various government locales, including the assessor’s office, the county sheriff, treasurer and the President’s Office of Employment and Training. The last to fall was renowned political bully Isaac Carothers, who just a few weeks ago pleaded guilty to federal bribery and tax charges.

In the last few years alone several dozen officials have been convicted and more than 30 indicted for taking bribes, shaking down companies for political contributions and rigging hiring. Among the convictions were fraud, violating court orders against using politics as a basis for hiring city workers and the disappearance of 840 truckloads of asphalt earmarked for city jobs. 

A few months ago the city’s largest newspaper revealed that Chicago aldermen keep a secret, taxpayer-funded pot of cash (about $1.3 million) to pay family members, campaign workers and political allies for a variety of questionable jobs. The covert account has been utilized for decades by Chicago lawmakers but has escaped public scrutiny because it’s kept under wraps. 

Judicial Watch has extensively investigated Chicago corruption, most recently the conflicted ties of top White House officials to the city, including Barack and Michelle Obama as well as top administration officials like Chief of Staff Rahm Emanual and Senior Advisor David Axelrod. In November Judicial Watch sued Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's office to obtain records related to the president’s failed bid to bring the Olympics to the city.

U.S. Government Accountability Office: High Risk --- http://www.gao.gov/highrisk/

This Web site brings together GAO's research on issues that are of great national concern and highlights GAO's High-Risk list, which calls attention to the agencies and program areas that are high risk due to their vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement or are most in need of broad reform. GAO has produced the list every two years since 1990. In addition to the most up-to-date information on the High-Risk list and other major challenges, this Web site also features:
  • GAO's recommendations for addressing the issues
  • Video messages from GAO issue-area experts
  • Links to key reports for further research
  • Contact information for GAO experts

Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of government accounting and accountability ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#GovernmentalAccounting

The Most Criminal Class Writes the Laws ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#Lawmakers

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraudUpdates.htm

Global Compact --- http://www.unglobalcompact.org/

The United Nations Global Compact is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption.

PBS Video on Multinational Illegal Payments
FRONTLINE: Black Money --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/blackmoney/

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

U.S. Government Accountability Office: High Risk --- http://www.gao.gov/highrisk/

This Web site brings together GAO's research on issues that are of great national concern and highlights GAO's High-Risk list, which calls attention to the agencies and program areas that are high risk due to their vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement or are most in need of broad reform. GAO has produced the list every two years since 1990. In addition to the most up-to-date information on the High-Risk list and other major challenges, this Web site also features:
  • GAO's recommendations for addressing the issues
  • Video messages from GAO issue-area experts
  • Links to key reports for further research
  • Contact information for GAO experts

Global Compact --- http://www.unglobalcompact.org/

The United Nations Global Compact is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption.

Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of government accounting and accountability ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#GovernmentalAccounting

The Most Criminal Class Writes the Laws ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#Lawmakers

 

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


Math Tutorials

American Mathematical Society Books Online --- http://www.ams.org/online_bks/onbk_list.html  

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


History Tutorials

Afghanistan Digital Library --- http://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/

Isaac Mayer Wise Digital Archive (Jewish History) ---  http://www.americanjewisharchives.org/wise/home.php

The Association of Jewish Libraries --- http://www.jewishlibraries.org/ajlweb/

Harry Ransom Center: Making Movies --- http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/2010/movies/ 

Ringling Collection: Images of 19th Century Actors and Actresses --- http://ufdcweb1.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc/?s=ringling

Iowa Folklife --- http://www.uni.edu/iowaonline/folklife_v2/ 

Freer and Sackler Galleries [iTunes, Smithsonian Asian Art] --- http://www.asia.si.edu/podcasts/default.htm 

The Bunraku (Puppet Theatre) Collection --- http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/eastasian/bunraku/

NYCityMap [interactive] --- http://gis.nyc.gov/doitt/nycitymap/

Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills --- http://www.library.gatech.edu/fulton_bag/ 

Union Pacific Railroad: History and Photos http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/history/index.shtml

Steam and Electric Locomotives of the New Haven Railroad --- http://railroads.uconn.edu/locomotives/index.html

The Erie Railroad Glass Plate Negative Collection
http://libwww.syr.edu/information/spcollections/digital/erierr/

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

Country Dog Gentlemen Travel to Extraordinary Worlds [Art History] --- http://countrydogs.sfmoma.org/

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


Language Tutorials

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


Music Tutorials

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


Writing Tutorials

"The New Math of Poetry," by David Alpaugh, Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, February 21, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-Math-of-Poetry/64249/

It's hard to figure out how much poetry is being published in America. When I suggested to Michael Neff, founder of Web del Sol, that anyone can start an online journal for $100, he pointed out that anyone can start one via a blog for nothing. If current trends persist, the sheer amount of poetry "published" is likely to double, quadruple, "ten-tuple" in the decades ahead.

Who is writing all this poetry? In quieter times, the art's only significant promoters were English professors who focused on reading poetry for its own sake. Today colleges across America have hundreds of programs devoted to teaching men and women how to actually write the stuff. Those in charge of undergraduate and M.F.A. programs have cast themselves in the role of poetry-writing cheerleaders who are busy assuring tens of thousands of students that they are talented poets who should expect their work not only to be published but to win awards as well.

The notion that writing and performing "poetry" is the easiest way to satisfy the American itch for 15 minutes of fame has spilled out of our campuses and into the wider culture. You can't pick up a violin or oboe for the first time on Monday morning and expect to play at Lincoln Center that weekend, but you can write your first poem in May and appear at an open mike in June waving a "chapbook" for sale. The new math of poetry is driven not by reader demand for great or even good poetry but by the demand of myriads of aspiring poets to experience the thrill of "publication."

The new math is stunning. Len Fulton, editor of Dustbooks, which publishes the International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses, estimates the total number of literary journals publishing poetry 50 years ago as 300 to 400. Today the online writers' resource Duotrope's Digest lists more than 2,000 "current markets that accept poetry," with the number growing at a rate of more than one new journal per day in the past six months. Some of these journals publish 100 poems per issue, others just a dozen. If we proceed cautiously and assume an average of 50 poems per publication per year, more than 100,000 poems will be published in 2010.

But hold on to your pantoums, your prose poems, and ghazals. If journals merely continue to grow at the current rate, there will be more than 35,000 of them by 2100, and approximately 86 million poems will be published in the 21st century!

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on free online poetry (including the classic dead poets) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/electronicliterature.htm


Bob Jensen's threads on the Robert Frost Museum down the road about two miles ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2007/tidbits070905.htm

 

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


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

February 23, 2010

February 24, 2010

February 25, 2010

February 26, 2010

February 27, 2010

March 1, 2010

March 2, 2010

March 4, 2010

March 5, 2010

March 6, 2010

March 7, 2010

 


Neuroscience Information Framework --- http://neuinfo.org/




Huffington Post Comedy --- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/comedy/


"The Ten Geekiest Ways to Hide Your Age," Wired News, February 25, 2010 ---
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/02/the-10-geekiest-ways-to-hide-your-age/


Forwarded by Debbie

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the 2009 winners:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus (n.): A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxication (n.): Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation (n.): Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy (n.): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7. Giraffiti (n.): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high

8. Sarchasm (n.): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte (n.): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Osteopornosis (n.): A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon (n.): It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido (n.): All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler Effect (n.): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

____________________________________________________

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

And the winners are:

1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.

6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.




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/

Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?  ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm

Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So

Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews

 

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.

Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

CPA Examination --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle --- http://cpareviewforfree.com/

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

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

 

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

Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/

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