Tidbits on April 8, 2010
Bob Jensen
Instead of the customary new snow this time
of year,
We've had record setting temperatures as high as 76F degrees
The snow is gone except on the tops of mountains
The grass is even turning green before its time
It's not unusual to have the early
crocus blossoms,
But it is unusual for the lilac
bushes to have leaf buds this early in the season
The forecasted freeze this week end may slow things down
And natives up here remind me of the heavy snow storms
That often arrive in late April or early May
I don't use this pump in the winter
A couple of months ago, Erika's rose garden
looked like this
But meanwhile in early April this year, I've
enjoyed the springtime teasers
I even saw the first robins of spring in the front lawn
The robins fly through in the spring and fall
But they don't usually nest for the summer in these mountains
I suspect that's because of our millions of killer crows
The killer crows stay up here in all four
seasons
What a racket they make at daybreak nearly every day
The only good I see in them is that they do eat the grubs
And since my pesky moles live mostly on grubs
I guess there is a purpose to killer crows
Erika speaks German with her German
friend Helene
Both women moved to America after World War II
Helene's husband survived four years as a machinist on a U-boat
Near the end of the war he was on the most advanced submarine in the German Navy
That submarine was sunk intentionally in the North Sea so that the Allies could
not study the new technology
My Christmas lighting looks great
from outdoors
But the lights are a little too bright in our front porch
At the end of the porch you can see the elevator shaft
We installed a lift after Erika had spine surgery 8 out of 12 to date
Erika can now use the stairs
But I don't know how I got along so many years without a lift in my house
and a tractor with a bucket loader that keeps me from getting back troubles
When looking eastward, sunsets can
be almost as spectacular as sunrises
But the sunrises still thrill me the
most
Because they push away the darkness
In front of my desk
The peaked mountain is called Mt. Garfield to the left of the Baby's Cradle
Two the left of Mt. Garfield are the Twin Mountains (North and South)
Our family physician just moved her office to the town of Twin Mountain
She and her husband own the Four Seasons Hotel across from her new office
Erika's Christmas cactus also blooms
around Easter
The following pictures were
forwarded by various friends
MilitaryCredentials.---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/MilitaryCredentials.pps
Bill Mauldin's Military Cartoons ---
Click Here
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&as_epq=Bill+Mauldin+&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images&q=%22Bill+Mauldin+%22&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=fXq4S9XDCML68AaQq_TeBw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=5&ved=0CCoQsAQwBA
Tidbits on April 8, 2010
Bob Jensen
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on April 8,
2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations040810.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
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/
149 Interesting People to Follow on Twitter (but I don't have time to follow
them) ---
http://ow.ly/1sj5q
-
- 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
- With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting
Review (TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
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
Me and My Shadow ( a very funny video link forwarded by David
Fordham) ---
Click Here
http://www.urlesque.com/2010/04/06/math-teacher-pranks/?icid=main|main|dl6|link5|http://www.urlesque.com/2010/04/06/math-teacher-pranks/
The only thing missing
is the music ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5hXtGkzZ9k
1927 Version ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrRsNWzfEZA
Very funny Jewish wedding with English subtitle (la boda) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NF3OWNJgYw
It gets better near the end!
Australian School Answering Machine ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjWWcKi2_I0
International Year of Biodiversity [Flash Player]
http://www.cbd.int/2010/welcome/
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Samuel Barber at the Library of Congress ---
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200183698/default.html
Ella Fitzgerald: America's First Lady Of Song ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125170386
Andre
Boccelli
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
Massachusetts Historical Society: Photographs of
Native Americans ---
http://www.masshist.org/photographs/nativeamericans/
Birds and Sayings ---
http://www.slideshare.net/ronaldl/birds-and-sayings
Bill Mauldin's Military Cartoons ---
Click Here
Mail Art (meaning art sent via the post office)
---
http://ubdigit.buffalo.edu/collections/lib/lib-pc/lib-pc001_MailArt.php
Art Through Time: A Global View ---
http://www.learner.org/courses/globalart/
Paul Revere Williams Project [architecture] ---
http://www.paulrwilliamsproject.org/
BlenderArt Magazine ---
http://blenderart.org/
Spiegel Photo Gallery (Germany) ---
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-53335-5.html
German Firm Wins Right to Make Beer Called 'F__king
Hell' ---
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,686305,00.html#ref=top
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various
types electronic literature available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
National (American) History Education Clearinghouse ---
http://teachinghistory.org/
American History
DuBoisopedia ---
http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/duboisopedia/doku.php
Heritage Preservation ---
http://www.heritagepreservation.org/
Nickel Weeklies (American History) ---
http://drc.library.bgsu.edu/handle/2374.BGSU/744
Many Pen and Ink Sketches
National American History: Museum Stories of Freedom and Justice
[iTunes]
http://americanhistory.si.edu/freedomandjustice/
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers'
Project, 1936-1940 ---
http://memory.loc.gov/wpaintro/wpahome.html
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on April 8, 2010,
2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations040810.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Update Video from David Walker, Bipartisan Former Top Government
Accountant Under President's Clinton and Bush
"U.S. Standard of Living Unsustainable Without Drastic Action, Former Top
Govt. Accountant Says," Yahoo Finance, March 31, 2010 ---
Click Here
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/u.s.-standard-of-living-unsustainable-without-drastic-action-former-top-govt.-accountant-says-458329.html?tickers=%5Edji,%5Egspc,dia,spy,tlt,IXJ,xlv&sec=topStories&pos=8&asset=&ccode=
Who will bail out America? A longtime budget hawk
and currently CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, David Walker says
America's growing long-term debt is dangerously close to passing a "tipping
point" that could trigger soaring interest rates and a plummeting dollar. In
a worst case scenario, that could trigger a "global depression," he says,
warning: "Nobody's going to bail out America."
With the U.S. facing $50 trillion in unfunded
liabilities and around $62 trillion in total long-term debt, what worries
Walker most is what happens after the recession dissipates, as detailed
here. "I'm less concerned with the short-term deficits than I am the fact
that we're not doing anything about those structural deficits that people
used to call long-term," says Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General and
head of the Government Accountability Office. "But the long-term is here."
What's ultimately at stake may be nothing short of
Americans' faith in government and our standard of living. "There is a way
forward. There is hope," Walker says. "But we need to actually make some
tough choices."
Walker, author of a new book, "Comeback America,"
argues the U.S. needs to tackle four key issues if the nation wants to
recover:
Impose tough budget limits Reform Social Security
Cut health-care costs Reform the U.S. tax system
The "Burning Platform" of the United States Empire
Former Chief Accountant of the United States, David Walker, is spreading the
word as widely as possible in the United States about the looming threat of our
unbooked entitlements. Two videos that feature David Walker's warnings are as
follows:
David Walker claims the U.S. economy is on a "burning platform" but does not
go into specifics as to what will be left in the ashes.
The US government
is on a “burning platform” of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal
deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military
commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon.
David M. Walker,
Former Chief Accountant of the United States ---
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/quinn/2009/0218.html
U.S. Debt/Deficit Clock ---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
The $61 Trillion Margin of Error, and What "Empire Decline" Means in
Layman's Terms
This is a bipartisan disaster from the beginning and will be until the end
David Walker ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Walker_(U.S._Comptroller_General)
Niall Ferguson ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson
Call it the fatal arithmetic of imperial
decline. Without radical fiscal reform, it could apply to America next.
Niall Ferguson,
"An Empire at Risk: How Great Powers Fail," Newsweek Magazine
Cover Story, November 26, 2009 ---
http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/page/1
Please note that this is NBC’s liberal Newsweek Magazine and not Fox News
or The Wall Street Journal.
.
. .
In other words, there
is no end in sight to the borrowing binge. Unless entitlements are cut or taxes
are raised, there will never be another balanced budget. Let's assume I live
another 30 years and follow my grandfathers to the grave at about 75. By 2039,
when I shuffle off this mortal coil, the federal debt held by the public will
have reached 91 percent of GDP, according to the CBO's extended baseline
projections. Nothing to worry about, retort -deficit-loving economists like Paul
Krugman.
.
. .
Another way of doing
this kind of exercise is to calculate the net present value of the unfunded
liabilities of the Social Security and Medicare systems. One recent estimate
puts them at about $104 trillion,
10 times the stated federal debt.
Continued in article ---
http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/page/1
Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch
professor of history at Harvard University and the author of The Ascent of
Money. In late 2009 he puts forth an unbooked discounted present
value liability of $104 trillion for Social Security plus Medicare. In late
2008, the former Chief Accountant of the United States Government, placed this
estimate at$43 trillion. We can hardly attribute the $104-$43=$61 trillion
difference to President Obama's first year in office. We must accordingly
attribute the $61 trillion to margin of error and most economists would
probably put a present value of unbooked (off-balance-sheet) present value of
Social Security and Medicare debt to be somewhere between $43 trillion and $107
trillion To this we must add other unbooked present value of entitlement debt
estimates which range from $13 trillion to $40 trillion. If Obamacare passes it
will add untold trillions to trillions more because our legislators are not
looking at entitlements beyond 2019.
The Meaning of "Unbooked" versus "Booked" National Debt
By "unbooked" we mean that the debt is not included in the current "booked"
National Debt of $12 trillion. The booked debt is debt of the United States for
which interest is now being paid daily at slightly under a million
dollars a minute. Cash must be raised daily for interest payments. Cash is
raised from taxes, borrowing, and/or (shudder) the current Fed approach to
simply printing money. Interest is not yet being paid on the unbooked debt for
which retirement and medical bills have not yet arrived in Washington DC for
payment. The unbooked debt is by far the most frightening because our leaders
keep adding to this debt without realizing how it may bring down the entire
American Dream to say nothing of reducing the U.S. Military to almost nothing.
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
This matters more for
a superpower than for a small Atlantic island for one very simple reason. As
interest payments eat into the budget, something has to give—and that something
is nearly always defense expenditure. According to the CBO, a significant
decline in the relative share of national security in the federal budget is
already baked into the cake. On the Pentagon's present plan, defense spending is
set to fall from above 4 percent now to 3.2 percent of GDP in 2015 and to 2.6
percent of GDP by 2028.
Over the longer run,
to my own estimated departure date of 2039, spending on health care rises from
16 percent to 33 percent of GDP (some of the money presumably is going to keep
me from expiring even sooner). But spending on everything other than health,
Social Security, and interest payments drops from 12 percent to 8.4 percent.
This is how empires
decline. It begins with a debt explosion.
It ends with an inexorable reduction in the resources available for the Army,
Navy, and Air Force. Which is why voters are right to worry about America's debt
crisis. According to a recent Rasmussen report, 42 percent of Americans now say
that cutting the deficit in half by the end of the president's first term should
be the administration's most important task—significantly more than the 24
percent who see health-care reform as the No. 1 priority. But cutting the
deficit in half is simply not enough. If the United States doesn't come up soon
with a credible plan to restore the federal budget to balance over the next five
to 10 years, the danger is very real that a debt crisis could lead to a major
weakening of American power.
Question
Amidst all the hype about the iPad, what new technology product is rather
quietly having far greater sales and profits?
Answer
In five months Microsoft has sold 90 million copies.
That's twice the rate of Microsoft's last operating system, Windows Vista.
"Windows 7 is on a tear right now," says Brad Brooks, vice president of Windows
consumer marketing. "The consumer PC segment has exploded since Windows 7
shipped." The growth rate for the consumer PC segment is now 20 percent, versus
6 percent before Windows 7 shipped—likely because a lot of customers were
sitting on the sidelines, waiting for Windows 7 before they bought a new PC.
"Microsoft's Unsung Success: Windows 7 is a Smash Hit," by Daniel
Lyons, Newsweek, April 12, 2010, Page 22 ---
http://www.newsweek.com/id/235725
These days I almost feel bad for the guys at
Microsoft. They've got what anyone in the world would consider a hit product
on their hands, and guess what? Nobody cares. Everybody is so busy gushing
over Apple's iPad—myself included—that they are not paying any attention to
what's going on in the land of Windows.
To wit: Windows 7, the latest version of
Microsoft's operating system, is the hottest-selling product in the
company's 35-year history. In five months Microsoft has sold 90 million
copies. That's twice the rate of Microsoft's last operating system, Windows
Vista. "Windows 7 is on a tear right now," says Brad Brooks, vice president
of Windows consumer marketing. "The consumer PC segment has exploded since
Windows 7 shipped." The growth rate for the consumer PC segment is now 20
percent, versus 6 percent before Windows 7 shipped—likely because a lot of
customers were sitting on the sidelines, waiting for Windows 7 before they
bought a new PC.
While Vista got blasted for being slow and bloated
and glitchy, by most accounts Windows 7 is pretty high-quality stuff.
Microsoft claims that in its own surveys, Windows 7 has received the highest
customer-satisfaction scores of any product in its history. That may be
because Microsoft ran a huge beta test, utilizing more than 8 million users
who helped Microsoft find and wipe out bugs. I've been running Windows 7 for
more than a year, and it's been very solid. To be sure, I still use Macs as
my primary machines, but these days that's mostly out of habit.
Another reason Windows 7 seems so good is that
Vista was such a disaster. The joke in Silicon Valley was that all Microsoft
had to do to market Windows 7 was give it the slogan "Windows 7: It's not
Vista." Vista had such a bad rap that many big companies refused to adopt
it. Instead they hunkered down and hung on to Windows XP and waited for
whatever came next. That was fine, since Windows XP was a solid performer.
But XP was introduced in 2001 and now has grown long in the tooth.
"Corporate customers realize they've got all the mileage out of Windows XP
that they can hope to get," says Al Gillen, analyst with market researcher
IDC, which projects Microsoft will ship 135 million copies of Windows 7 in
2010, on top of 27.5 million units in the last few months of 2009.
Perhaps for the first time ever, Microsoft is
actually putting some energy into trying to promote its operating system. In
the good old days they could just roll out a new operating system and then
sit back and count the money. Now "we're really marketing it," Brooks says.
"We hadn't done that for several years, but we're really pushing demand out
there."
Windows is also getting a boost from some of the
cool new computers that hardware makers are releasing, including super-light
laptops and desktops with touch-screen displays. My favorite is the Sony
Vaio X, a tiny notebook that weighs only a pound and a half. That's about
the same as the Apple iPad and about half of Apple's three-pound MacBook
Air.
This all sounds great for Microsoft. Its new
flagship product is selling well. Its partners are creating interesting,
unique, compelling new technologies. Revenues in the December quarter hit a
record $19 billion. So why does nobody seem to care?
It may be that as the computer market has grown
more mature, it has developed what consultants Al and Laura Riese call the
"mushy middle." That's the huge dead zone that lies between sexy, expensive
products at the high end and the low-end products that appeal to bargain
hunters. In computers, Apple holds the high ground with its expensive
laptops. The low end has been occupied by cheap netbooks, but now the low
end is also becoming Apple territory, thanks to the iPhone and the iPad,
both of which are basically small, simple computers.
Microsoft, meanwhile, sits in the middle,
generating loads of money—last year's net profit was $14.6 billion—but not
much in the way of excitement. That could change, of course. Maybe Project
Natal, Microsoft's forthcoming system that lets you control a videogame
using hand gestures and no controller, will bring the sexy back in Redmond
when it ships later this year.
If not, Microsoft may just have to trudge on,
raking in more than $60 billion a year and carrying 25 to 30 cents from
every dollar down to the bottom line. A lot of companies would love to be
that kind of boring.
Daniel Lyons is the author of Options: The Secret Life of Steve
Jobs and Dog Days: A Novel.
Jensen Comment
What amazes me is that so many Microsoft Windows haters continue to hate Windows
due to its past failures and have not really given Windows 7 a test ride.
Does this apply to you Jagdish?
Of course I'm no judge since I'm still using the buggy Windows XP.
Let's face it! Accounting, professors' job performance, and vegetable
nutrition have a lot systemic problems in common ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
"Why I Hate Annual Evaluations," by Ben Yagoda, Chronicle of Higher
Education, March 28, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-I-Hate-Annual-Evaluations/64815/
There are three things I don't like about my job.
Two of them are pretty obvious and completely unoriginal: correcting papers
and attending department meetings. The third thing is somewhat obvious as
well, but I hesitate to name it, for fear that it will make me look whiny.
However, that battle has probably already been
lost, so here goes: I hate my annual evaluation.
To the extent that this evaluation is necessary, it
is because of the collective-bargaining agreement between the University of
Delaware and our campus chapter of the American Association of University
Professors. As long as I've been here—going on 18 years—the agreement has
divided our annual pay raises into two parts. The first part is across the
board. This year our raise was 4 percent, of which 1.5 percent was across
the board, meaning, for example, that a full professor making the minimum
salary of about $85,000 got a raise of about $1,275.
The other part of the raise is based on "merit,"
and it works as follows. The average faculty salary is calculated. Say it is
$100,000. Every unit gets a pot of cash equivalent to 2.5 percent, or
$2,500, multiplied by the number of faculty members in the unit. In my unit,
the English department, that would be roughly 50 bodies. The chairman of the
department evaluates each professor's performance. The professor who is
precisely in the middle gets a $2,500 merit raise. Those rated higher will
get more, those rated lower will get less, but the average merit raise has
to be $2,500.
In other words, no department can be a Lake Wobegon,
where all the children are above average.
On paper, this all seems reasonable, and I freely
admit that part of my outsized resentment of the process stems from my own
quirks. It requires a lot of paperwork and rewards good record keeping. I
despise paperwork and am truly terrible at record keeping. (It is a cruel
twist of fate in my world that evaluation time and tax time arrive
together.) My early experience in the working world taught me that I also
deeply and irrationally resent being judged by a boss, which is probably the
main reason why, before becoming an academic, I was a freelance writer and
thus my own boss. Now here I am being evaluated by the department chair, who
isn't really my boss, but at this point the difference seems negligible.
But I maintain that some of my gripes have
objective merit. American colleges and universities, including the
University of Delaware, still view faculty members as a group of scholars
and teachers devoted to and bound by self-instilled standards of excellence.
Tenure, as long as it continues to exist, must and does require evaluation.
But—crucially—at Delaware and elsewhere, that evaluation and judgment are
performed not by the chair but by one's peers (ultimately ratified or not,
to be sure, by provosts, presidents, and other higher-ups).
For faculty members who will eventually go up for
tenure, it definitely makes sense to get input from as many sources as
possible, so I'll grant that for them an annual evaluation by the chair
makes sense. But for tenured faculty members? No—at least not the way we do
it at my university.
Every year around this time, we submit our
materials—publications, syllabi, evidence of service, and so forth—and fill
out a Web form. The chair, who has meanwhile received copies of students'
evaluations of our teaching, rates all of us on a scale of 1 (the worst) to
9 (the best) in scholarship, service, and teaching. Different percentages
are accorded to each area based on an elaborate formula, but generally
speaking, for tenured and tenure-track professors, scholarship counts for
roughly 50 percent, teaching 40 percent, and service 10 percent.
The whole thing is undignified and unseemly. What,
exactly, is the difference between a 5 and 7 in service? Number of
committees served on? Hours spent? Scholarship is even more thorny, because
as everyone knows, an article does not equal an article. Do two short
articles in PMLA equal a New York Review of Books mega-essay, or do I have
to throw in a draft choice and a player to be named later? Number of words
produced and place of publication are important, to be sure, but quality
trumps them both. And how can our chair be expected to judge the quality of
the work of every faculty member, some of whom work in fields very different
from his? The answer is he can't.
Evaluating teaching has its own well-documented set
of problems. We honor faculty autonomy to the extent that evaluators are not
welcome in another professor's classroom, and we are still a good distance
away from giving students No Child Left Behind tests that would "assess" the
extent to which a certain course has achieved its "goals." That's well and
good, but it doesn't leave much as a basis for judgment. There are syllabi
and the narrative Teaching Statements we provide each year, and sometimes
the evidence of a new course devised and designed, but the main thing used
to assess teaching are student evaluations. Those have some value, but they
are most assuredly not the whole story when it comes to the quality of one's
teaching. If they were, we might as well outsource the whole process to
RateMyProfessors.com.
The unseemliness multiplies when my colleagues (as
they often do) complain loudly and frequently about the marks they have
gotten. I would be embarrassed to tell you how many laments I have listened
to along the lines of, "I published a book, and he only gave me a 7!" I
would bet our students don't kvetch as much about their grades.
And what are the consequences of our evaluations?
In the 50-40-10 scholarship-teaching-service ratio, the difference between a
7 and a 9 rating in scholarship is about $540 a year. After taxes, that
comes out to maybe $400 a year, or $8 a week. Not only is that not much, but
for almost everyone, it gets evened out over time; some years, you can
expect to get maybe a little lower rating than you "really" deserve, some
years a little higher. For this my colleagues gnash their teeth and lose
sleep?
Several years ago, I came up with another way to
evaluate faculty performance, based on the understanding that we all expect
excellent work from ourselves and one another. Take the average merit raise
and give almost everyone in the department a raise slightly lower than that;
in the example I've been working with, that could be $2,300. That way, a
handful of colleagues who publish major books or get major awards or stellar
teaching evaluations can receive a slightly higher raise. And if a couple of
people are blatantly not carrying their weight, they can get a little less.
I proposed my idea at a department meeting, and it
was summarily shot down. My explanation for this is Freud's notion of the
narcissism of small differences—our need to exaggerate the minimal
distinctions between ourselves and people very much like ourselves.
Even as I write, we are negotiating our next
collective-bargaining agreement. Word on the street is that salaries will be
frozen for next year. If that happens, I will be secretly glad, and you know
why: It could very possibly mean no annual evaluation!
Ben Yagoda is a professor of English at the
University of Delaware and author, most recently, of Memoir: A History
(Riverhead Books, 2009). His blog on higher education is at
http://campuscomments.wordpress.com
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Super Teacher Joe Hoyle says the degree of student preparation for class
depends on the "payoff,"
Teaching Financial Accounting Blog, April 5, 2010 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2010/04/whats-payoff.html
Outsourcing the Grading of Papers
At Houston, business majors are now exposed to
Virtual-TA both as freshmen and as upperclassmen.
"Some Papers Are Uploaded to Bangalore to Be Graded," by Audrey Williams
June, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 4, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Outsourced-Grading-With/64954/
Lori Whisenant knows that one way to improve the
writing skills of undergraduates is to make them write more. But as each
student in her course in business law and ethics at the University of
Houston began to crank out—often awkwardly—nearly 5,000 words a semester, it
became clear to her that what would really help them was consistent,
detailed feedback.
Her seven teaching assistants, some of whom did not
have much experience, couldn't deliver. Their workload was staggering: About
1,000 juniors and seniors enroll in the course each year. "Our graders were
great," she says, "but they were not experts in providing feedback."
That shortcoming led Ms. Whisenant, director of
business law and ethics studies at Houston, to a novel solution last fall.
She outsourced assignment grading to a company whose employees are mostly in
Asia.
Virtual-TA, a service of a company called EduMetry
Inc., took over. The goal of the service is to relieve professors and
teaching assistants of a traditional and sometimes tiresome task—and even,
the company says, to do it better than TA's can.
The graders working for EduMetry, based in a
Virginia suburb of Washington, are concentrated in India, Singapore, and
Malaysia, along with some in the United States and elsewhere. They do their
work online and communicate with professors via e-mail. The company
advertises that its graders hold advanced degrees and can quickly turn
around assignments with sophisticated commentary, because they are not
juggling their own course work, too.
The company argues that professors freed from
grading papers can spend more time teaching and doing research.
"We tend to drop the ball when it comes to giving
rich feedback, and in the end this hurts the student," says Chandru Rajam,
who has been a business professor at several universities. "I just thought,
"'There's got to be a better way.'" He helped found the privately held
EduMetry five years ago and remains on its management staff.
Whether Virtual-TA is that better way remains to be
seen. Company officials would not say how many colleges use the service, but
Mr. Rajam acknowledges that the concept of anonymous and offshore grading is
often difficult for colleges to swallow.
Those that have signed up are a mix of for-profit
and nonprofit institutions, many of them business schools, both in the
United States and overseas. Professors and administrators say they have been
won over by on-the-job performance. "This is what they do for a living,"
says Ms. Whisenant. "We're working with professionals."
Anonymous Expertise Virtual-TA's tag line is "Your
expert teaching assistants." These graders, also called assessors, have at
least master's degrees, the company says, and must pass a writing test,
since conveying their thoughts on assignments is an integral part of the
job. The company declined to provide The Chronicle with names or degrees of
assessors. Mr. Rajam says that the company's focus is on "the process, not
the individual," and that professors and institutions have ample opportunity
to test the assessors' performance during a trial period, "because the proof
is in the pudding."
Assessors are trained in the use of rubrics, or
systematic guidelines for evaluating student work, and before they are hired
are given sample student assignments to see "how they perform on those,"
says Ravindra Singh Bangari, EduMetry's vice president of assessment
services.
Mr. Bangari, who is based in Bangalore, India,
oversees a group of assessors who work from their homes. He says his job is
to see that the graders, many of them women with children who are eager to
do part-time work, provide results that meet each client's standards and
help students improve.
"Training goes on all the time," says Mr. Bangari,
whose employees work mostly on assignments from business schools. "We are in
constant communication with U.S. faculty."
Such communication, part of a multi-step process,
begins early on. Before the work comes rolling in, the assessors receive the
rubrics that professors provide, along with syllabi and textbooks. In some
instances, the graders will assess a few initial assignments and return them
for the professor's approval.
Sometimes professors want changes in the nature of
the comments. Ms. Whisenant found those on her students' papers initially
"way too formal," she says. "We wanted our feedback to be conversational and
more direct. So we sent them examples of how we wanted it done, and they did
it."
Professors give final grades to assignments, but
the assessors score the papers based on the elements in the rubric and "help
students understand where their strengths and weaknesses are," says Tara
Sherman, vice president of client services at EduMetry. "Then the professors
can give the students the help they need based on the feedback."
Mr. Bangari says that colleges use Virtual-TA's
feedback differently, but that he has seen students' work improve the most
when professors have returned assignments to students and asked them to redo
the work to incorporate the feedback.
The assessors use technology that allows them to
embed comments in each document; professors can review the results (and edit
them if they choose) before passing assignments back to students. In
addition, professors receive a summary of comments from each assignment,
designed to show common "trouble spots" among students' answers, among other
things. The assessors have no contact with students, and the assignments
they grade are stripped of identifying information. Ms. Sherman says most
papers are returned in three or four days, which can be key when it comes to
how students learn. "You can reinforce certain ideas based on timely
feedback," Mr. Rajam says. "Two or three weeks after an assignment is too
long."
No Classroom Insight Critics of outsourced grading,
however, say the lack of a personal relationship is a problem.
"An outside grader has no insight into how
classroom discussion may have played into what a student wrote in their
paper," says Marilyn Valentino, chair of the board of the Conference on
College Composition and Communication and a veteran professor of English at
Lorain County Community College. "Are they able to say, 'Oh, I understand
where that came from' or 'I understand why they thought that, because Mary
said that in class'?"
Ms. Valentino also questions whether the money
spent on outsourced graders could be better used to help pay for more
classroom instructors.
Professors and on-site teaching assistants, she
says, are better positioned to learn enough about individual students to
adjust their tone to help each one get his or her ideas across on paper.
"Sometimes kidding them works, sometimes being strict and straightforward
works," Ms. Valentino says. "You have to figure out how to get in that
student's mind and motivate them."
Some professors "could be tempted to not even read"
the reports about how students responded to various parts of an assignment,
she says, because when "someone else is taking care of the grading," that
kind of information can become easier to ignore.
Terri Friel, dean of the business school at
Roosevelt University, says such worries are common but overstated. In her
former post as associate dean of administration at Butler University's
business school, she hired EduMetry to help the business school gather
assessment data it needed for accreditation — another service the company
offers. But Ms. Friel believed that Virtual-TA would not appeal to
professors there.
"Faculty have this opinion that grading is their
job, ... but then they'll turn right around and give papers to graduate
teaching assistants," Ms. Friel says. "What's the difference in grading work
online and grading it online from India? India has become known as a very
good place to get a good business education, and why not make use of that
capability?"
Acceptance has been a little easier at West Hills
Community College, in Coalinga, Calif., which turned to Virtual-TA to help
some students in its online classes get more feedback than instructors for
such classes have typically offered. The service is used for one section
each of three online courses—criminal justice, sociology, and basic math.
Instructors can use it for three to five assignments of their choice per
student. Using Virtual-TA for every assignment would be too costly, says
Susan Whitener, associate vice chancellor for educational planning. (The
price varies by length and complexity, but Virtual-TA suggests to potential
clients that each graded assignment will cost $12 per student. That means
outsourcing the grading of six assignments for 20 students in a course would
cost $1,440.)
But West Hills' investment, which it wouldn't
disclose, has paid off in an unexpected way. The feedback from Virtual-TA
seems to make the difference between a student's remaining in an online
course and dropping out.
"We definitely have a cost-benefit ratio that's
completely in our favor for us to do this," Ms. Whitener says.
Holly Suarez, an online instructor of sociology at
West Hills, says retention in her class has improved since she first used
Virtual-TA, two years ago, on weekly writing assignments. Before then, "I
would probably lose half of my students," says Ms. Suarez, who typically
teaches 50 students per class.
Because Virtual-TA provides detailed comments about
grammar, organization, and other writing errors in the papers, students have
a framework for improvement that some instructors may not be able to
provide, she says.
And although Ms. Suarez initially was wary of
Virtual-TA—"I thought I was being replaced"—she can now see its advantages,
she says. "Students are getting expert advice on how to write better, and I
get the chance to really focus on instruction."
At Houston, business majors are now exposed to
Virtual-TA both as freshmen and as upperclassmen.
Continued in article
Computer Grading of Essays ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Essays
For years essay questions have been computer graded for the GMAT examination
Sociology professor designs SAGrader software for grading student essays
Bob Jensen's threads on assessment are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm
Financial Education for Teachers: The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
---
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/community_education/teacher/
Question 1
Many colleges have internship courses where students work as interns. To receive
course credit, most of them have to write reports about what they learned in
their internship experience. Some interns get paid and other interns do not get
paid.
My first question is whether colleges will no longer give credit for
internships and training programs in for-profit business firms that do not pay
at least a minimum wage?
Question 2
It is especially common for interns in government agencies and other
not-for-profit organizations not to get paid. I assume that the U.S. Department
of Labor is not forcing those organizations to pay interns.
My second question is why internship slavery is legal in the public sector
but not in the private sector?
This is no small deal for some students since having experience on a resume
is often vital to landing a job whether it a a welding job, a nursing job, or a
CPA firm job. Large CPA firms generally pay interns, but some really small CPA
firms might withdraw from college internship programs. This is especially a
problem for most accounting education programs, because the large CPA firms and
large companies often cannot provide internships to all accounting students.
"War on Interns Making it illegal to work for free," The Wall
Street Journal, April 7, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303411604575168140600410262.html
The labor market is still in recession, but for
younger workers it feels more like a depression. In the last year, the
unemployment rate among workers age 20 to 24 has risen to almost 16%, and
among teenagers to 26%.
You might therefore expect a federal effort to
encourage employers to give unskilled youngsters a chance. You would be
wrong. The feds have instead decided to launch a campaign to crack down on
unpaid internships that regulators claim violate minimum-wage laws.
"If you're a for-profit employer or you want to
pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren't going to be
many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and
still be in compliance with the law," the Labor Department's Nancy J.
Leppink tells the New York Times.
The Times also quotes Trudy Steinfeld, director of
New York University's Office of Career Services, regarding opportunities for
unpaid internships. "A few famous banks have called and said, 'We'd like to
do this,' said Ms. Steinfeld. "I said, 'No way. You will not list on this
campus.'" To be fair, she doesn't want a Labor Department enforcer knocking
on her door next week. But we wonder what NYU students trying to get their
feet in the doors of financial firms think about Ms. Steinfeld rejecting
opportunities on their behalf.
How all of this helps young people who are trying
to develop marketable skills is a mystery. While the Department of Labor may
insist the world owes these kids a living, the truth is that many young
workers are willing to trade free labor for a chance to demonstrate their
skills and build a resume for the next job. Especially in a bad labor
market, the choice college students face may be to work without pay, or hang
by the beach.
This isn't exploiting young people. It's letting
young people exploit an opportunity.
Also see
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/07/obama-eyes-interns/
Jensen Comment
One of the problems is that the current high unemployment rate and other factors
cause persons out of a job to retrain for other types of work. Some employers
have jumped on this with so-called internships that exploit free labor. But a
heavy-handed law banning free internships should not prevent teens and college
students from gaining requisite experience in their intended for-profit careers.
My guess is that unpaid internships are still legal for those internships
that are strictly training courses in classroom settings or in online course
settings. The gray area is where those interns also go out on jobs for hands-on
training in the shadow of experienced workers. In the latter case, perhaps only
government itself and charities may provide unpaid hands-on training.
I would prefer that what is fair for the private sector is also fair for the
public sector.
Of course none of this should apply to workers
who are truly volunteers who are not trying to intern for hands-on experience
that benefits their employment skills.
For example, SCORE Association
volunteers should be able to help small businesses ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCORE_Association
April 7, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen to Professor XXXXX (who did not think
college credit should be given for internships)
Hi XXXXX,
Actually I think many colleges give some credit for
accounting internships. What I call the Texas model is very common in ---
Texas. Internships are given for a half-semester in the senior year.
Students intern for about eight weeks for credit and then take three
specially designed courses (not always in accounting) the second half of the
semester for nine credits. They earn six credits for the internship (that
includes writing at least one paper), thus giving them a 15-credit semester.
Of course most interns then go on to a graduate accounting program in order
to sit for the CPA examination.
Those students who get internships with the large
accounting firms or large corporations (like USAA and AT&T) are usually
pretty well paid for their eight weeks. At Trinity we also had internships
(for credit) in a single business course for non-accounting majors, and a
small proportion of those internships were unpaid. For example, some
marketing students interned with charities and engaged in design and
implementation of survey instruments. There was also a fair amount of unpaid
grunt work processing the incoming surveys.
I think the big CPA firms view internships as a
necessary headache resulting from the 150-hour requirement. When a year or
more of graduate study was added as a virtual requirement for most
accounting majors, the highly popular internships were added to lure
students into majoring in accounting.
Of course the CPA firms get some external benefits
from internships. They get to see interns in action on the job before having
to commit to making job offers. But my guess is that CPA firms would not be
as generous with the number of interns if internships were not so vital in
luring undergraduates into five-year accounting programs.
It is extremely rare for graduate accounting
students to not rave about their internships.
I perhaps should add that I'm adamantly opposed to
granting new admissions to college credit for "life experience."
All God's children have "life experience," and the
older college applicants have more of it. But it's just too hard to evaluate
and compare applicants' life experiences. I put internships into a different
category provided the college has pre-screening on what qualifies for an
internship and has some academic requirements for granting internship credit
such as the writing of one or more papers about the internship learning.
I'm also a snob lemming. Colleges that I respect
just do not give credit for life experience. Many of these, however, do give
limited credit for qualified internships. I'm always a snobby suspect of
colleges that do give credit for life experience. In most cases they're
doing so mainly to get more tuition revenue from older farts.
Perhaps it's sad not to give some college credit to
those honorable military veterans who protected America. But I think they
must earn new medals for their college degrees.
Bob Jensen
Question
Will the iPad replace Bob Jensen's laptop?
Answer
Never! Find out why below.
"Laptop Killer? Pretty Close iPad Is a 'Game Changer' That Makes Browsing
And Video a Pleasure; Challenge to the Mouse," by Walter S. Mossberg, The
Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052702304252704575155982711410678.html#mod=todays_us_personal_journal
For the past week or so, I have been testing a
sleek, light, silver-and-black tablet computer called an iPad. After
spending hours and hours with it, I believe this beautiful new touch-screen
device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly,
and to challenge the primacy of the laptop. It could even help, eventually,
to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the
mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades.
But first, it will have to prove that it really can
replace the laptop or netbook for enough common tasks, enough of the time,
to make it a viable alternative. And that may not be easy, because previous
tablet computers have failed to catch on in the mass market, and the iPad
lacks some of the features—such as a physical keyboard, a Webcam, USB ports
and multitasking—that most laptop or netbook users have come to expect.
If people see the iPad mainly as an extra device to
carry around, it will likely have limited appeal. If, however, they see it
as a way to replace heavier, bulkier computers much of the time—for Web
surfing, email, social-networking, video- and photo-viewing, gaming, music
and even some light content creation—it could be a game changer the way
Apple's iPhone has been.
The iPad is much more than an e-book or digital
periodical reader, though it does those tasks brilliantly, better in my view
than the Amazon Kindle. And it's far more than just a big iPhone, even
though it uses the same easy-to-master interface, and Apple says it runs
nearly all of the 150,000 apps that work on the iPhone.
It's qualitatively different, a whole new type of
computer that, through a simple interface, can run more-sophisticated,
PC-like software than a phone does, and whose large screen allows much more
functionality when compared with a phone's. But, because the iPad is a new
type of computer, you have to feel it, to use it, to fully understand it and
decide if it is for you, or whether, say, a netbook might do better.
So I've been using my test iPad heavily day and
night, instead of my trusty laptops most of the time. As I got deeper into
it, I found the iPad a pleasure to use, and had less and less interest in
cracking open my heavier ThinkPad or MacBook. I probably used the laptops
about 20% as often as normal, reserving them mainly for writing or editing
longer documents, or viewing Web videos in Adobe's Flash technology, which
the iPad doesn't support, despite its wide popularity online.
My verdict is that, while it has compromises and
drawbacks, the iPad can indeed replace a laptop for most data communication,
content consumption and even limited content creation, a lot of the time.
But it all depends on how you use your computer.
If you're mainly a Web surfer, note-taker,
social-networker and emailer, and a consumer of photos, videos, books,
periodicals and music—this could be for you. If you need to create or edit
giant spreadsheets or long documents, or you have elaborate systems for
organizing email, or need to perform video chats, the iPad isn't going to
cut it as your go-to device.
The iPad is thinner and lighter than any netbook or
laptop I've seen. It weighs just 1.5 pounds, and its aluminum and glass body
is a mere half-inch thick. It boasts a big, bright color 9.7-inch screen
that occupies most of the front. As on all Apple portable devices, the
battery is sealed in and nonreplaceable. It has a decent speaker, and even a
tiny microphone.
Memory, also sealed in and nonexpandable, ranges
from 16 gigabytes to 64 gigabytes. And you can order one with just a Wi-Fi
wireless connection to the Internet, or Wi-Fi plus an AT&T 3G cellular
connection. The Wi-Fi models will be available Saturday and the 3G models,
which I didn't test, about a month later.
Prices start at $499 and go to $829, with the
costlier models having more memory and/or 3G. The cellular models don't
require a contract or termination fee. You can pay AT&T either $15 a month
for 250 megabytes of data use, or $30 a month for unlimited data—a
significant reduction from typical prices for laptop cellular connectivity.
I was impressed with the iPad's battery life, which
I found to be even longer than Apple's ten-hour claim, and far longer than
on my laptops or smart phones. For my battery test, I played movies, TV
shows, and other videos back to back until the iPad died. This stressed the
device's most power-hogging feature, its screen. The iPad lasted 11 hours
and 28 minutes, about 15% more than Apple claimed. I was able to watch four
feature-length movies, four TV episodes, and a video of a 90-minute
corporate presentation, before the battery died midway through an episode of
"The Closer."
Oh, and all the while during this battery marathon,
I kept the Wi-Fi network running and the email downloading constantly in the
background. Your mileage may vary, but with Wi-Fi off and the screen turned
down from the fairly bright level I used, you might even do better. Music
plays far longer with the screen off. On the other hand, playing games
constantly might yield worse battery life.
Apple says video playback, Web use and book reading
all take about the same amount of juice. When I was doing the latter two
tasks for an hour or two at a time, the battery ran down so slowly for me
that I stopped thinking about it.
I also was impressed with the overall speed of the
iPad. Apple's custom processor makes it wicked fast. Screens appear almost
instantly and the Wi-Fi in my home tested as fast as it does on a laptop.
I found email easy and productive to use, and had
no trouble typing accurately and quickly on the wide on-screen keyboard. In
fact, I found the iPad virtual keyboard more comfortable and accurate to use
than the cramped keyboards and touchpads on many netbooks, though some fast
touch typists might disagree. Apple's $39 iPad case, which bends to set up a
nice angle for typing, helps.
The Web browser also works beautifully, and takes
advantage of the big screen to show full pages and cut down on scrolling. It
even now has a bookmarks bar at the top. As noted, however, it doesn't
support Adobe's Flash technology.
I also was able to easily sync the iPad's calendar
and contacts apps with Google and Apple's MobileMe.
Watching videos, viewing photos, listening to
music, reading books and playing games was satisfying and fun. I used the
device heavily for Twitter and Facebook. And I even got some light work done
in the optional iPad word processor, called Pages, which is part of a $30
suite that also includes a spreadsheet and presentation program.
This is a serious content creation app that should
help the iPad compete with laptops and can import Microsoft Office files.
However, only the word processor exports to Microsoft's formats, and not
always accurately. In one case, the exported Word file had misaligned text.
When I tried exporting the document as a PDF file, it was unreadable.
The iPad can run two types of third-party apps,
both available from Apple's app store. It can use nearly all existing iPhone
apps. These can either run in a small, iPhone-size window in the middle of
the screen, which makes them look tiny, or blown up to double size. The
larger size makes them fill the screen, but can make type inside them look
blocky. Still, the dozens I tested all worked properly. And it can run a new
class of specially designed iPad apps, of which Apple hopes to have 1,000 at
launch. I successfully tested the revamped App Store, which features the
iPad apps most prominently when you're on an iPad.
Based on my very small sample, some app developers
may be testing higher prices for iPad apps than the 99 cents or $1.99
typical for paid iPhone apps. The paid iPad apps I saw ranged from $3.99 to
$49.99. Others were free.
Apple has rebuilt its own core iPhone apps for the
iPad to add sophisticated features that make the programs look and work more
like PC or Mac software. For instance, there are "popover" menus that make
it easier to make choices without leaving the screen you're on. And, when
the iPad is held horizontally, in landscape mode, as I often preferred to
use it, many programs now have two panels, making them faster and more
useful. In email, a left-hand panel shows your message list, while a larger
right-hand panel shows the message itself.
The photo app is striking, and much more like the
one on the Mac than the one on the iPhone. The device can be used as a
digital picture frame. The iPod app is beautiful, as are the calendar and
contacts app. Unfortunately, Apple excluded some of the more familiar apps
from the iPhone, including Weather, Clock and Stocks.
I tested a small selection of the new third-party
iPad apps Apple hopes to have available at launch, and most were also rich
and feature-filled, beyond what iPhone apps offer. These included games such
as Scrabble and "Touch Hockey," a database app, news services and more.
I was able to try a pre-release version of The Wall
Street Journal's new iPad app (which I had nothing to do with designing),
and found it gorgeous and highly functional—by far the best implementation
of the newspaper I have ever seen on a screen. Unlike the Journal's Web
site, or its smart-phone apps, the iPad version blends much more of the look
and feel of the print paper into the electronic environment. Other
newspapers and magazines have announced plans for their own, dramatically
more realistic iPad apps.
I also found iBooks, Apple's book reader and store,
easy to use, and read a couple of books on it. I consider the larger color
screen superior to the Kindle's, and encountered no eye strain. But the iPad
is much heavier than the Kindle and most people will need two hands to use
it. The iBooks app also lacks any way to enter notes, and Apple's catalog at
launch will only be about 60,000 books versus over 400,000 for Kindle.
I did run into some other annoying limitations. For
instance, the email program lacks the ability to create local folders or
rules for auto-sorting messages, and it doesn't allow group addressing. The
browser lacks tabs. And the Wi-Fi-only version lacks GPS. Also, videophiles
may dislike the fact that the iPad's screen lacks wide-screen dimensions, so
you either get black bars above or below wide-screen videos, or, if you
choose an option to fill the screen, some of the picture may get cut off.
All in all, the iPad is an advance in making
more-sophisticated computing possible via a simple touch interface on a
slender, light device. Only time will tell if it's a real challenger to the
laptop and netbook.
Jensen Comment
The turnoff for me is the lack of features like "such as a
physical keyboard, a Webcam, USB ports and multitasking—that most laptop or
netbook users have come to expect." The iPad
will never replace my laptop.
One way to
identify iPad users is to look for people in the airport lugging four or more
pieces of equipment. There are some that will leave their laptops and cell
phones and overhead projectors at home, but I can’t imagine any presenters at a
conference leaving their laptops at home.
Gadget Lab ---
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/ipad-to-go-on-sale-april-3-pre-orders-begin-in-a-week/
Can you hook the ipad up to an overhead projector for
demonstrations (Schools, boardrooms)?
no. There is no standard video out port.
Can you swap files to a friend/coworker easily with
a USB drive?
no. No USB drive.
It doesn’t have a keyboard, except for the software
keyboard. Software keyboards always suck. I can type faster on a REAL keyboard
than software version anyday. yes they sell an external keyboard, but then I
have to “Build a cruddy laptop” every time I want to use it. That sucked in 2002
when I did it with my PDA + Targus keyboard, it would still suck.
It doesn’t have a stylus. Yes, Bill Gates was right
on the money on this one. if it had stylus support, think of the kick-butt art
programs students/professionals could use. It would be the ultimate sketch pad.
Sorry that Micro$oft saw this and Apple didn’t…
Not enough power. Really… no multitasking?
This doesn’t seem to be taking a serious approach as a real tool, but just as a
toy. It’s a novelty.
The only thing I can see this marketed as is a
ebook reader, and it’s very expensive for that… And the ipod touch/iPhone
already have kindle apps.
A full fledged kindle is cheaper.
The ipad whole marketing scheme seems to be “it’s
an ipad” and the fact that a geezer in a black turtle-neck says it’s cool.
Really, what is it used for?
Read More
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/ipad-to-go-on-sale-april-3-pre-orders-begin-in-a-week/#ixzz0jxWhyue3
Jensen Comments
And Google lets you download eBooks into your laptop.
Yes you can
connect to a wireless keyboard, but:
the IPad is no longer as portable since it requires both the keyboard docking
station and the keyboard itself. It’s not clear to me if these two hardware
items will also work with a Mac laptop or whether they must be purchased
separately. As Richard pointed out, most people will want the iPad as a playback
machine with only limited use as a production machine (other than email
messages).
Whereas the
iPhone can take pictures and record videos, no can do on the iPad --- a real
bummer.
And there are
limitations as a playback machine, including no Flash playback and no DVD
player.
Many other
questions are answered at
http://www.macworld.com/article/150276/2010/04/ipad_faq.html
Apple tweaked iWork to run on the iPad—why not
iLife?
At the moment, the iPad seems more focused on media
consumption than media production. You can view your photos and videos, listen
to music, read books, surf the Web, and so on. While the iPhone 3GS’s built-in
camera takes pictures and records videos, there’s no similar way of creating
media with iPad. As such, iLife programs like iMovie, GarageBand, iDVD, and even
the editing capabilities of iPhoto are all absent. iTunes’s capabilities are
mostly duplicated by the combination of the iPod application and the iTunes
storefront application.
While it seems likely that the iPad will feature
more media-creation tools (if not from Apple, then from third-party developers),
it’s possible Apple chose not to focus on that aspect of the device because it
was more complicated to develop the interface for media creation than it was to
do so for media consumption.
If I open a PowerPoint file in Keynote, and edit
it, can I save it back to PowerPoint?
No. Your options are to save it as a PDF or as a
Keynote file.
The big question
I already carry an iPhone and a laptop. Why do I
need a third device?
When you get right down to it, that’s the central
issue surrounding the iPad. Apple touts its tablet as something that goes in
between those devices. Not everyone will want one, but the theory seems to be
that many people don’t really need a laptop for a lot of tasks. A simpler device
like the iPad could better fit into people’s living rooms, or into their bags
for commuting or long trips. But it’s definitely a leap of faith by Apple.
Whether users will buy the iPad and integrate it into their lives, either
replacing or complementing their existing devices, remains to be seen.
We’ll try to address this big question in our
forthcoming full review.
Jensen Again
Worst of all for me is that Steve Jobs cannot get over his mistake with the Mac
that made Bill Gates a far richer man. Steve Jobs just wants hardware and
software monopoly powers on Apple products. This stifles software creativity and
vendor interest in supplying software and hardware for such things as Mac
computers and iPad whatevers. Think of all the windows software not available on
a Mac or not as updated and powerful for the Mac!
Poo on monopoly!
George Washington University networking officials say that security
features on their wireless system may keep iPad users from connecting, and the
issue may affect other universities as well.
Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 6, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Some-Campus-Networks-May-Not/22341/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
Among other things this could be a disaster for students wanting to download
into their allocated file space on campus servers. For example, if they have Web
pages on a campus Web server, they may not be able to get files in and out of
the Web pages while using an iPad instead of a full computer. The same would
apply to faculty.
Question
Will students buy iPads instead of laptops?
Answer
Probably not since the iPad is not really intended to be a production machine.
It's primarily a reader of multimedia (except for the popular Flash videos which
it will not read). The question is more of whether students will leave their
laptops at home while on campus or whether they will have to lug yet another
device on top of their iPhones and laptops.
Egads!
What if an accounting instructor requires that students use Excel workbook?
(There are of course still PC labs on most campuses but what about the distance
education student who buys an iPad instead of a real computer?)
What about the many AIS courses that require that students use MS Access? MS
Access is popular in AIS course in part because the college saves a great deal
of money by not having to by site licenses for more expensive relational
database software.
Jensen Conclusion
Students should be advised to buy computers that will run the most popular
collegiate Microsoft software (including PowerPoint, Excel, Word, and other
Office software commonly used by faculty). Of course this does not always mean
purchasing a Windows computer since MS Office will run on Mac laptops.
MS Office software will not, however, run on an iPad. It is possible to read
Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint files that are online in the Safari Browser.
However, suppose an instructor assigns an Excel problem that requires that the
student both read an Excel problem and answer in Excel such as using an Excel
function like the Bond Yield function? No can do on an iPad!
Also suppose that a student creates a project file that is too large to send
to the instructor as an email attachment. Currently some students burn the file
to a DVD disk that is submitted to the instructor. But students cannot burn DVD
disks on an iPad. In fact they cannot even read a DVD disk on an iPad.
"iPads Arrive on Campuses, to Mixed Reviews," by Jeff Young, Chronicle of
Higher Education, April 6, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/iPads-Arrive-on-Campus-to/22308/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
It's not every day that a new category of computer
hits the market, which explains some of the hype over Apple's new iPad. It's
not quite a laptop (because it doesn't have all the features of a standard
personal computer), not exactly a giant smartphone (because it's not a
phone), and not quite an e-reader (because it can play video and do other
things those machines can't). On campuses, the question is: Will this new
type of mobile device help teaching and research?
George Washington University's campus bookstore was
one of many across the country to start selling the devices today, and just
about every student who walked by the iPad display here stopped to give it a
look, and to flip around the device's shiny touch screen.
"I wanted to see if I could actually type on it,"
said Vince Kooper, a freshman who tapped out a sentence or two. Several
students said they would love to have one but could not afford the price,
which ranges from $499 to $829. "It's hard to afford that kind of stuff when
you're in college," said Matt Weitzfeld, an undergraduate who also stopped
to look.
While the iPad is certainly good enough to take
notes on in class, Mr. Weitzfeld said that several professors ban laptops
for fear that students would poke around on Facebook rather than listen to
lectures, and that iPads would most likely face the same restrictions.
The devices were not exactly flying off the
bookstore's shelves. Zach Dunseth, computer and software coordinator, said
15 iPads went to students who had preordered them, but that the store had
more in stock. Nationwide, Apple officials said they sold more than 300,000
iPads on the first day, though stores are not reporting widespread
shortages.
Eric Weil, managing partner at Student Monitor,
which studies student buying habits, said a survey last month found a
growing interest in e-reading devices (which is how the group categorized
them), and a stronger interest in the iPad than in the Kindle or other
e-readers.
"Better than three in 10 students said, 'I'm
somewhat interested in purchasing a wireless reading device,'" he reported.
Several professors spent the past few days sparring
on blogs and Twitter feeds over whether iPads will send big waves over the
academic and media landscape or something closer to a ripple.
"It's actually been a fairly interesting debate
online," said Dan Cohen, director of the Center for History and New Media at
George Mason University. Scholars profess either love or hate for iPads, he
said. "There's no gray area here."
Opponents of the device argue that it is not open
enough and sets a bad precedent for how computers and software are sold,
since Apple, by controlling access to its online store of apps, controls
what iPad software is allowed to be sold. Some fans, though, including some
artists and writers, are excited by what they see as a machine that
simplifies the experience of reading and viewing multimedia.
It will take months before the potential of these
new pad-style computers becomes clear, Mr. Cohen said, because developers
are still working out what a light, nine-inch computer can do that laptops,
netbooks, and smartphones can't.
Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
Hi Richard,
The problem is that some of the
leading accounting textbooks that have electronic versions that can be purchased
from Amazon do not have the exhibits included in the purchase. Hard copy
exhibits must be purchased separately (at least from Amazon for the Kindle).
For accounting textbooks in
question, Amazon will only sell the exhi8bits in hard copy to Kindle Users.
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/EbooksDeal.htm
I
was wondering if the iPad overcame this problem for these textbooks purchased
from Amazon . Wiley and other publishers will “lease” electronic textbooks that
contain the exhibits. By leasing I mean that the downloaded book expires and
cannot be permanently stored by lessees.
Amazon.com
Kindle Version of
Accounting Principles
Jerry J. Weygandt, Paul D. Kimmel, and Donald E. Kieso
Wiley, 9th Edition, 2010 |
|
Kindle eBook Price $95.96 ---
Click Here
We'll add in the chapter exhibits for an additional $147.95
Note that the chapter exhibits are only available in hard copy from
Amazon
Amazon doesn't tell you that there are no
chapter exhibits when you order the Kindle version
Order online today
Note that this book may also be leased as eBook --- Click
Here
The one year lease price direct from WileyPlus is $119.50
But it is only available from the Wiley server and may not be
downloaded into a student's computer
The leased online version does have all chapter exhibits
This leasing deal is only available through the publisher directly
and not through Amazon
February 21, 2010 reply from Burnell, Mary
[Mary.Burnell@FAIRMONTSTATE.EDU]
Bob,
I see lots of comments here, but not an exact answer about Wiley
Plus. I've used Wiley Plus since it was new with their introductory
books.
Their books are not downloadable. You must use them on the Wiley
server. That means that the student has a "lease" for a limited time
to all their material. Students can use the book for a set time
period -- usually a year.
I understand that is the same model with other publishers.
I've tried to negotiate a more permanent options for students, but
so far I've not managed it.
Just 2 cents from a lurker.
Dede Burnell
Mary A. Burnell, CPA Coordinator of Accounting and Finance Fairmont
State University 1201 Locust Avenue Fairmont, WV 26554 (304)
367-4189
Mary.Burnell@fairmontstate.edu
Jensen Comment
Back when I was teaching I almost always gave in-class open book
examinations. But I did not let students turn on computers in fear
that a miscreant might contact a buddy via email for help on the
examination or search for unauthorized help on the Internet.
I guess if some students only had leased online eBook versions of a
textbook, I could no longer give open book examinations.
About the only way for students to get permanent eBook ownership of
this Weygandt et al Accounting Principles textbook is to
download the $95.96 Kindle version (or some comparable version on
another reader such as the Sony Reader or Nook). But those
downloadable versions apparently don't have the essential chapter
exhibits. The good news is that if your Amazon Kindle blows, Amazon
will forever let you re-download the purchased edition for free. The
bad news is that it does not have chapter exhibits.
If this is beginning to sound like a Catch 22 here it's because it's
Catch $95.96 for the Kindle Edition 9 version of this particular
textbook?
For students who do not want permanent copies of an eBook version,
it's cheaper to buy the hard copy new from Amazon or some other
retailer for $147.95 (or eventually much less as a used book once
used Edition 9 hard copy versions are available from Amazon and B&N
and campus bookstores) and then sell them back as used books in
Amazon, B&N, or campus bookstores.
If a student has to repeat a basic accounting course a year later, I
wonder if WileyPlus will discount the $119.50 lease price for the
eBook containing all chapter exhibits?
I also found pirated downloads of the solutions manual and test bank
available at a Hong Kong site, but I will not disclose that link.
It is also interesting why publishing companies continue to give
instructors hard copy examination versions before the book is
actually adopted. It would seem that publishers could end the
process where instructors sell their free examination copies to
sleazy book buyers that stop by faculty offices with wads of cash in
their fists. All the publishers would have to do is give free access
to the online eBook versions. But some unscrupulous instructors
might never adopt any textbook where the book rep did not give them
several hard copy versions to sell for extra income. It's a dog eat
dog world out there. |
Bob Jensen's threads
on electronic books are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
To iPad or not to iPad (now) --- That is the Question!
The Good and the Bad from a Reviewer Who Thinks the iPad is a Game Changer
"My 48 Point iPad Review (after 72 hours)" ---
http://www.ipad-answers.com/ipad-reviews/my-48-point-ipad-review-after-72-hours
f) Bad Stuff
===========
1. No USB port is a crime. I wanted to plug my LiveScribe pen into it
and couldn't.
2. No camera is a crime. This device would be sick for video
conferencing. In fact, it would probably be a phone killer at home.
3. No removable memory is unforgivable. Every device and computer I
own has compact flash, SD or Micro SD. Would it kills jobs to allow an
SD card slot?
4. Internal speaker sounds disgraceful--like an AM radio that you
found in our grandmothers closet.
5. The Wifi is totally screwed up. In the same room, without moving, I
would get a full signal for 10 minutes followed by no signal. I'm
reminded of the MacBook Air's Wifi problems.
6. With $100 in accessories, $100 in basic applications and the
$600-700 price tag, you're basically talking about almost a grand for
this device. It's a great device but it's not worth the price.
7. While you can run iPhone applications and make them 2x the size,
they end up looking like horrible eVGA screens from 1987.
8. No Flash or Adobe Air is pathetic and anti-competitive. The
Government should really investigates Apple's jihad against
competitive application and media platforms--it's disgraceful.
g) Good Stuff
===========
1. The "hand feel" is exceptional in or out of a case. It fits and
feels like a custom shirt and suit fresh from the dry cleaner, or a
Tesla Roadster on a winding PCH road--which is to say, perfect.
2. Battery life is stunningly good. Only explanation is that Steve
Jobs must have been infuriated by the embarrassing scene of iPhone
users begging for a charge or, worse yet, carrying around those
pathetic, dorky external battery packs.
3. More on battery life: My brand new MacBook Air lasts < 2.5 hours,
my iPhone lasts < 1.5 hours and my iPad did 12 hours yesterday. Which
one will I use on my trip to NYC at the end of the week?
4. The native keyboard sucks for a power typist like myself, but the
Bluetooth keyboard option absolutely rocks.
5. Everything feels lightening fast: switching applications, surfing
the web, playing games, downloading and checking email. The A4 chip is
the revolution here, I think, since it's responsible for the speed and
battery life gains.
6. Screen resolution and brightness is stunning and makes the iPhone
look like garbage.
h) Who Should Buy One
===========
1. If you're rich or don't care about wasting $1,000 this month only
to replace it in a year: Yes! Why do you care about replacing
anything? Give this to your nephew when you upgrade.
2. If you're a student on a budget: No. Get a Dell laptop for $500
with 10x the features.
3. If you've got kids and can afford it: Probably. I've seen my
friends' kids turn from wild tree monkeys into zoned-out stoners from
the glow of an iPod Touch. The iPad is kid-grade heroin: one dose and
they will be out for hours.
4. You're a normal person of normal means: Only if you're a tech
junkie. There are going to be much, much better Android tablets in
6-12 months with a USB port, camera, removable batteries, a memory
card and a non-crippled OS.
Jensen
Comment
The iPad probably is a game changer, but those "me first" people that bought the
first versions will probably have paid a lot for paper weights when the revised
versions come out with things like USB/Firewire ports, Keyboard ports, LCD
projection ports, cameras, Flash, removable memory, etc.As for me, I've got too
many paper weights and no AT&T towers in these mountains.
As a professor I also would not buy an iPad until I verify that my college
campus network servers can be accessed from an iPad. Some campuses are not
equipped to handle iPad uploads and downloads. Also keep in mind that the iPad
requires monthly fees not required computers on campus that can connect free to
the Internet and to the campus network servers.
As a student I would not buy an iPad if I had to make a budget choice between an
iPad or a PC/Mac laptop. That’s a no brainer even for non-students!
Absent Student Shadows in Class:
Virtual Students in the Classroom
April 1, 2010 message from
Robert Blystone [mailto:rblyston@trinity.edu]
I remember years ago
receiving my first FAXed term paper (35 pages). I can add a new
technological wonder to my first-time teaching experiences. One of my
students left home early for Easter. I have a lab/class that meets at 4pm
Tuesday and Thursday. She Skyped into the class by contacting another
student in the class with a laptop. She attended the class via Skype and
commented on the festivities as they happened. Amazing.
Bob Blystone
Robert V. Blystone,
Ph.D. Professor of Biology Trinity University One Trinity Place San Antonio,
Texas 78212
rblyston@trinity.edu
210-999-7243
April; 2, 2010
reply from Knutel, Phillip
[pknutel@BENTLEY.EDU]
We use Saba-Centra - Skype on steroids, essentially
- in 90-100 grad classes in our MSA and other grad programs every year. We have
a camera built into the back wall of 13 "hybrid online" classrooms so online
students can see both the professor and classroom students as well as anything
on the PC or written on the Smartboard. Faculty clip on a wireless mic, and
there are built-in mics at every student seat. Online students click on a
"raise hand" icon to ask a question, and when called on, are heard via the
ceiling speakers. If online students have webcams, the class sees them as
well.
As of last semester, 37% of students attended online
vs. in the classroom, and 22% said the online option was why they chose
Bentley. 90% of in-class and online students play back recorded classes, and
unlike most online formats that struggle with simple student retention, 80% of
online students rated their experience an 8 or higher on a 1-10 scale. One of
these days, we may start advertising our hybrid-online programs, as enrollments
have grown significantly almost entirely due to word-of-mouth.
We have a TA in all these classes to monitor online
student technical/audio issues, and we also use the TA PC that we install next
to the primary classroom PC in the podium as a "hot swap" backup PC. If
anything goes wrong with the main PC, we can switch the room over to the TA PC
in a matter of seconds to keep classes running seamlessly until the next break.
These things you learn after doing this for 10 years!
Phil
Phillip Knutel, Ph.D.
Executive Director of Academic Technology, the Library, and Online Learning
Bentley University 180 Adamian Academic Center
175 Forest St.
Waltham, MA 02452
781.891.3422/3125 (fax)
April 2, 2010
reply form Peters, James M [jpeters@NMHU.EDU]
In effect, this is how I teach all my classes now.
I use Elluminate instead of Skype, which works much better because I can
broadcast what I am displaying on my in class computer and I don't broadcast a
video of the classroom, just sound and what is displaying on the computer. This
makes what on the computer much clearer. I have some students in class and some
students attending via the internet, but they are treated the same in the class
and I seamlessly switch from working with students in class and working with
those on the internet (i.e., I use Socratic Method and so classes are dialogs
and group problem solving exercises, not lectures).
Nothing really new here, at least not in my little
corner of the world.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board moved last
year to close the loophole that Lehman is accused of using, Bushee says. A new
rule, FAS 166, replaces the 98%-102% test with one designed to get at the intent
behind a repurchase agreement. The new rule, just taking effect now, looks at
whether a transaction truly involves a transfer of risk and reward. If it does
not, the agreement is deemed a loan and the assets stay on the borrower's
balance sheet.
Best Explanation to Date:
"Lehman's Demise and Repo 105: No Accounting for Deception,"
Knowledge@Wharton, March 31, 2010 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2464
The collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008
is widely seen as the trigger for the financial crisis, spreading panic that
brought lending to a halt. Now a 2,200-page report says that prior to the
collapse -- the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history -- the investment bank's
executives went to extraordinary lengths to conceal the risks they had
taken. A new term describing how Lehman converted securities and other
assets into cash has entered the financial vocabulary: "Repo 105."
While Lehman's huge indebtedness and other mistakes
have been well documented, the $30 million study by Anton Valukas, assigned
by the bankruptcy court, contains a number of surprises and new insights,
several Wharton faculty members say.
Among the report's most disturbing revelations,
according to Wharton finance professor
Richard J. Herring, is the picture of Lehman's
accountants at Ernst & Young. "Their main role was to help the firm
misrepresent its actual position to the public," Herring says, noting that
reforms after the Enron collapse of 2001 have apparently failed to make
accountants the watchdogs they should be.
"It was clearly a dodge.... to circumvent the
rules, to try to move things off the balance sheet," says Wharton accounting
professor professor
Brian J. Bushee, referring to Lehman's Repo 105
transactions. "Usually, in these kinds of situations I try to find some
silver lining for the company, to say that there are some legitimate reasons
to do this.... But it clearly was to get assets off the balance sheet."
The use of outside entities to remove risks from a
company's books is common and can be perfectly legal. And, as Wharton
finance professor
Jeremy J. Siegel points out, "window dressing" to
make the books look better for a quarterly or annual report is a widespread
practice that also can be perfectly legal. Companies, for example, often
rush to lay off workers or get rid of poor-performing units or investments,
so they won't mar the next financial report. "That's been going on for 50
years," Siegel says. Bushee notes, however, that Lehman's maneuvers were
more extreme than any he has seen since the Enron collapse.
Wharton finance professor professor
Franklin Allen suggests that the other firms
participating in Lehman's Repo 105 transactions must have known the whole
purpose was to deceive. "I thought Repo 105 was absolutely remarkable – that
Ernst & Young signed off on that. All of this was simply an artifice, to
deceive people." According to Siegel, the report confirms earlier evidence
that Lehman's chief problem was excessive borrowing, or over-leverage. He
argues that it strengthens the case for tougher restrictions on borrowing.
A Twist on a Standard Financing Method
In his report, Valukas, chairman of the law firm
Jenner & Block, says that Lehman disregarded its own risk controls "on a
regular basis," even as troubles in the real estate and credit markets put
the firm in an increasingly perilous situation. The report slams Ernst &
Young for failing to alert the board of directors, despite a warning of
accounting irregularities from a Lehman vice president. The auditing firm
has denied doing anything wrong, blaming Lehman's problems on market
conditions.
Much of Lehman's problem involved huge holdings of
securities based on subprime mortgages and other risky debt. As the market
for these securities deteriorated in 2008, Lehman began to suffer huge
losses and a plunging stock price. Ratings firms downgraded many of its
holdings, and other firms like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup demanded more
collateral on loans, making it harder for Lehman to borrow. The firm filed
for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008.
Prior to the bankruptcy, Lehman worked hard to make
its financial condition look better than it was, the Valukas report says. A
key step was to move $50 billion of assets off its books to conceal its
heavy borrowing, or leverage. The Repo 105 maneuver used to accomplish that
was a twist on a standard financing method known as a repurchase agreement.
Lehman first used Repo 105 in 2001 and became dependent on it in the months
before the bankruptcy.
Repos, as they are called, are used to convert
securities and other assets into cash needed for a firm's various
activities, such as trading. "There are a number of different kinds, but the
basic idea is you sell the security to somebody and they give you cash, and
then you agree to repurchase it the next day at a fixed price," Allen says.
In a standard repo transaction, a firm like Lehman
sells assets to another firm, agreeing to buy them back at a slightly higher
price after a short period, sometimes just overnight. Essentially, this is a
short-term loan using the assets as collateral. Because the term is so
brief, there is little risk the collateral will lose value. The lender – the
firm purchasing the assets – therefore demands a very low interest rate.
With a sequence of repo transactions, a firm can borrow more cheaply than it
could with one long-term agreement that would put the lender at greater
risk.
Under standard accounting rules, ordinary repo
transactions are considered loans, and the assets remain on the firm's
books, Bushee says. But Lehman found a way around the negotiations so it
could count the transaction as a sale that removed the assets from its
books, often just before the end of the quarterly financial reporting
period, according to the Valukas report. The move temporarily made the
firm's debt levels appear lower than they really were. About $39 billion was
removed from the balance sheet at the end of the fourth quarter of 2007, $49
billion at the end of the first quarter of 2008 and $50 billion at the end
of the next quarter, according to the report.
Bushee says Repo 105 has its roots in a rule called
FAS 140, approved by the Financial Accounting Standards Board in 2000. It
modified earlier rules that allow companies to "securitize" debts such as
mortgages, bundling them into packages and selling bond-like shares to
investors. "This is the rule that basically created the securitization
industry," he notes.
FAS 140 allowed the pooled securities to be moved
off the issuing firm's balance sheet, protecting investors who bought the
securities in case the issuer ran into trouble later. The issuer's
creditors, for example, cannot go after these securities if the issuer goes
bankrupt, he says.
Because repurchase agreements were really loans,
not sales, they did not fit the rule's intent, Bushee states. So the rule
contained a provision saying the assets involved would remain on the firm's
books so long as the firm agreed to buy them back for a price between 98%
and 102% of what it had received for them. If the repurchase price fell
outside that narrow band, the transaction would be counted as a sale, not a
loan, and the securities would not be reported on the firm's balance sheet
until they were bought back.
This provided the opening for Lehman. By agreeing
to buy the assets back for 105% of their sales price, the firm could book
them as a sale and remove them from the books. But the move was misleading,
as Lehman also entered into a forward contract giving it the right to buy
the assets back, Bushee says. The forward contract would be on Lehman's
books, but at a value near zero. "It's very similar to what Enron did with
their transactions. It's called 'round-tripping.'" Enron, the huge Houston
energy company, went bankrupt in 2001 in one of the best-known examples of
accounting deception.
Lehman's use of Repo 105 was clearly intended to
deceive, the Vakulas report concludes. One executive email cited in the
report described the program as just "window dressing." But the company,
which had international operations, managed to get a legal opinion from a
British law firm saying the technique was legal.
Bamboozled
The Financial Accounting Standards Board moved last
year to close the loophole that Lehman is accused of using, Bushee says. A
new rule, FAS 166, replaces the 98%-102% test with one designed to get at
the intent behind a repurchase agreement. The new rule, just taking effect
now, looks at whether a transaction truly involves a transfer of risk and
reward. If it does not, the agreement is deemed a loan and the assets stay
on the borrower's balance sheet.
The Vakulas report has led some experts to renew
calls for reforms in accounting firms, a topic that has not been
front-and-center in recent debates over financial regulation. Herring argues
that as long as accounting firms are paid by the companies they audit, there
will be an incentive to dress up the client's appearance. "There is really a
structural problem in the attitude of accountants." He says it may be
worthwhile to consider a solution, proposed by some of the industry's
critics, to tax firms to pay for auditing and have the Securities and
Exchange Commission assign the work and pay for it.
The Valukas report also shows the need for better
risk-management assessments by firm's boards of directors, Herring says.
"Every time they reached a line, there should have been a risk-management
committee on the board that at least knew about it." Lehman's ability to get
a favorable legal opinion in England when it could not in the U.S.
underscores the need for a "consistent set" of international accounting
rules, he adds.
Siegel argues that the report also confirms that
credit-rating agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's must bear a large
share of the blame for troubles at Lehman and other firms. By granting
triple-A ratings to risky securities backed by mortgages and other assets,
the ratings agencies made it easy for the firms to satisfy government
capital requirements, he says. In effect, the raters enabled the excessive
leverage that proved a disaster when those securities' prices fell to
pennies on the dollar. Regulators "were being bamboozled, counting as safe
capital investments that were nowhere near safe."
Some financial industry critics argue that big
firms like Lehman be broken up to eliminate the problem of companies being
deemed "too big to fail." But Siegel believes stricter capital requirements
are a better solution, because capping the size of U.S. firms would cripple
their ability to compete with mega-firms overseas.
While the report sheds light on Lehman's inner
workings as the crisis brewed, it has not settled the debate over whether
the government was right to let Lehman go under. Many experts believe
bankruptcy is the appropriate outcome for firms that take on too much risk.
But in this case, many feel Lehman was so big that its collapse threw
markets into turmoil, making the crisis worse than it would have been if the
government had propped Lehman up, as it did with a number of other firms.
Allen says regulators made the right call in
letting Lehman fail, given what they knew at the time. But with hindsight
he's not so sure it was the best decision. "I don't think anybody
anticipated that it would cause this tremendous stress in the financial
system, which then caused this tremendous recession in the world economy."
Allen, Siegel and Herring say regulators need a
better system for an orderly dismantling of big financial firms that run
into trouble, much as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. does with ordinary
banks. The financial reform bill introduced in the Senate by Democrat
Christopher J. Dodd provides for that. "I think the Dodd bill has a
resolution mechanism that would allow the firm to go bust without causing
the kind of disruption that we had," Allen says. "So, hopefully, next time
it can be done better. But whether anyone will have the courage to do that,
I'm not sure."
Bob Jensen's threads on the Lehman/Ernst controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#Ernst
"Recent College Grad From New Jersey Beaten Into Coma on Vacation in
Mexico," Fox News, March 31, 2010 ---
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/03/31/recent-grad-beaten-coma-vacation-mexico/?test=latestnews
A recent Rutgers University graduate who was
expected to start law school in the fall is clinging to life after he was
beaten into a coma while vacationing in Cancun, Mexico.
Joseph "Zeke" Rucker and a friend went to the
popular vacation spot two weeks ago to celebrate his graduation, but hours
after they arrived the 21-year-old was found severely beaten about 40 feet
away from the hotel's pool, CBS3.com reported.
"He has two huge skull fractures in the back of his
head and he has internal bleeding in his brain and hematoma," Rucker's
father Joseph told the Philadelphia station.
Rucker and his friend arrived in Cancun on March
15, and after a night out, they headed back to their hotel rooms, but Rucker
decided to sleep on a lounge chair near the hotel's pool, his friend says.
A security guard found Rucker injured around 4 a.m.
the next morning, the friend told CBS3.com.
Rucker's mother is devastated.
"It's heartbreaking. His eyes are open but not
focused. We don't know if he even knows who we are," Annie Rucker told
CBS4.com in Miami.
Rucker's parents left their home in Sewell, N.J.,
to be by their son's side in a Mexican hospital and then accompanied him
while he was transferred to Miami.
They had given him the trip as a graduation
present. Anne Rucker told CBS4.com she knew about the reported violence in
Mexico, but she thought her son would be safe in such a populated tourist
area.
She said the Mexican authorities seemed not to care
about the incident.
"They're not compassionate," she said. "The police
never even met with us."
Annie Rucker said after this incident, no one in
their family plans to go to Mexico again.
"We have a daughter, and she will never go to
Mexico," she said.
"An American Family's Cancun Horror," by Michelle Malkin, Townhall,
April 2, 2010 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2010/04/02/an_american_familys_cancun_horror
What's lacking in downloaded Kindle textbooks?
Would you believe the chapter exhibits?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/eBooksDeal.htm
I assume that iPad will have the same trouble with textbook exhibits (at
least in textbooks purchased from Amazon).
Amazon Kindle Books Also Available on iPad
However, there may not be textbook exhibits in either the Kindle or the iPad
versions (see below)
For NewMacOnline, April 5, 2010 ---
http://www.newmaconline.com/ipad-keeps-you-reading_2010-04-05/
The iPad is getting a lot of press these days for a
variety of reasons. One such reason is the notion that the iPad may
revolutionize the way that the masses read. Textbook publishers, for
instance, are making plans to publish textbooks for the iPad so that
students can read schoolbooks from their electronic device. This would
eliminate the need for students to lug around a backpack full of books, and
also provide students with a host of electronic tools to accompany their
reading. Magazines and newspapers are also lining up to make their works
available in an electronic format that is compatible with the iPad. And of
course, e-books are not a novel concept, and consumers can expect to see a
wide variety of best sellers available from the App Store.
Despite this recent wave of attention to online
books, however, the concept is by no means new. In fact, e-books have been
around for quite some time now, and many consumers have been reading them on
their Kindle devices for years. A recent article in Tech News World
discussed Amazon’s Kindle device and explained some of what Amazon has
decided to do to keep Kindle in competition with Apple. And interestingly,
Amazon’s approach is in no way threatening to Apple’s marketing strategy.
Instead of trying to promote Kindle as a superior
electronic reading device, Amazon is making electronic books that were once
only compatible with Kindles compatible with the iPad. In other words, when
consumers purchase e-books from Amazon, they will be able to read them from
not only their Kindles, but also from their iPads. Or, if the consumer
doesn’t have a Kindle, the iPad will work just fine by itself.
This is not a new decision for Amazon, as the
electronic books available for purchase at Amazon.com are already compatible
with iPods and iPhones. Consumers need only purchase an app from the App
Store and they can read their e-books from Amazon directly from their iPhone
or iPod. Upon the release of the iPad, this same technology will be
available on the iPad’s larger screen.
By allowing consumers to read e-books purchased on
Amazon from any type of device, Amazon is recognizing that digital books are
not entirely analogous to print books. The advantage to electronic books is
that consumers are not bound to carry them around. By requiring consumers to
carry around a Kindle in order to read an electronic book, the digital
format loses one of its main benefits. However, allowing readers to access
their digital books from anywhere and from any device allows electronic
books to retain their convenience.
It is really no wonder that Amazon decided to make
its electronic books available to readers who rely on Apple products. Apple
users have a fierce sense of loyalty to Apple products, and for good reason.
In reality, it is difficult to see how a Kindle could compete with a new
iPad, and excluding iPad owners from its electronic book market would be
quite detrimental to Amazon. At any rate, however, iPad consumers will be
glad to know that the entire selection of books available at Amazon will be
compatible with the iPad.
What's lacking in downloaded Kindle textbooks?
Would you believe the chapter exhibits?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/eBooksDeal.htm
I assume that iPad will have the same trouble with textbook exhibits.
"Preparing to Sell E-Books, Google Takes on
Amazon," by Motoko Rich, The New York Times, May 31, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/technology/internet/01google.html?hpw
Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books are
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
These Types of African Inheritance Frauds are Still Paying Off
The twist in this case is that the alleged fraudsters are from Ohio
"Nine people sue Solon woman, two Cleveland lawyers for alleged African
inheritance scam," by Peter Krouse, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland),
March 31, 2010 ---
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/03/solon_woman_and_two_local_lawy/691/comments-newest.html
Most people don't fall for the
African inheritance scam where a huge sum of money
sits in a foreign bank account waiting to be claimed -- but at a price.
But some do.
Nine people, including several from the Cleveland
area, sued a Solon (Ohio) woman and two lawyers this week claiming they
duped the plaintiffs into helping the woman recover $14.5 million left
behind in the African nation of Burkina Faso.
The lawsuit, filed in
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, claims Willia
Burton and two attorneys from
Baker Hostetler in
Cleveland persuaded the plaintiffs to give her more than $1 million. The
money was for legal fees and other payments necessary to recover the
inheritance left to Burton by her father. Each contributor was promised "a
huge return," the lawsuit states.
It's been five years and none of the nine has seen
a dime.
Some of the people who filed suit first met Burton,
who worked as a mortgage broker, through the real estate business.
One of the victims eventually helped the
U.S. Secret Service
investigate Burton, although no criminal charges
have been filed.
Fred Proctor Jr., 70, said his real estate
financing company in Georgia gave nearly $300,000 to Burton. He also said
the Secret Service fitted him with a wire to record a lunch conversation
with Burton in Cleveland, during which
strongly defended the deal.
The Secret Service would not comment on the matter,
nor would the U.S. Attorney's Office.
But the FBI and
Better Business Bureau
have warned for nearly a decade that deals like the
one described in the lawsuit -- in which people are asked to contribute
money up front to help get money from a foreign account -- are nothing more
than a scam.
The plaintiffs claim Burton arranged a meeting in
June 2005 between herself, Baker Hostetler attorneys and Proctor's son, Fred
Proctor III, to discuss the inheritance. Once Proctor III arrived at the
firm's Cleveland office, he met with
attorney
William Culbertson and talked by phone with
attorney Paul Feinberg, according to the lawsuit.
During that call, Feinberg verified that the $14.5
million was in a bank account in Burkina Faso and that the plaintiffs'
investment was needed to get the money, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs also said Baker Hostetler's lawyers
drafted promissory notes for the investors, and that Culbertson told Proctor
III at one point he "couldn't believe this deal" and that "if I had the
money, I would do the same as you," according to the lawsuit.
Based on those assurances, Proctor Jr. said, he
gave Burton a $75,000 check from his company, Family Home Providers Inc.
Ultimately, his firm gave Burton a total of $295,000, with a board member
kicking in another $100,000.
Proctor Jr. and the other plaintiffs claim they
only gave money to Burton because Baker Hostetler was involved.
"I didn't do anything until I got legal advice from
my attorney through Baker Hostetler," Proctor Jr. said. "I mean I'm not
stupid."
Baker Hostetler officials did not return calls
seeking comment Tuesday. Neither did Feinberg, who is retired, or
Culbertson.
Burton's attorney Mike Nelson believes she also was
a victim of the scam, likely perpetrated by a sophisticated organization in
Africa that includes government officials, bankers and others.
Nelson said Burton also relied on Baker Hostetler,
where she previously worked as a legal secretary, to
confirm the legitimacy of the inheritance.
"She's never been to Burkina Faso," Nelson said.
Proctor said he first met Burton
when she was a mortgage broker and came to him for help with financing.
Others caught up in the scam, such as Jim Hayzlett
of Beachwood, also knew Burton through the real estate business.
Hayzlett, who buys and refurbishes homes, said he
was introduced to Burton by members of a real estate investors club that met
weekly at a Knights of Columbus hall in Garfield Heights.
Hayzlett said he had known about the Nigerian money
scams at the time, but thought this was different because of the assurances
he understood to have come from Baker Hostetler. He said Burton told him
that her father had been in the mining business in Africa and left a lot of
money in a safe deposit box in Burkina Faso.
At the time, Hayzlett said, the inheritance had
purportedly made its way to a London account and all Burton needed was money
for a tax to have it released. Hayzlett gave Burton $135,000.
To this day, Hayzlett still does not know what
happened, or whether Burton was even in on the scam.
"That's a question I ask myself everyday," he said.
"Whether she was scammed or not."
Joel Levin, an
attorney for the plaintiffs, would not comment on the Baker Hostetler
attorneys or his clients, but said the type of scam they were caught up in
wasn't widely publicized in 2005 like it is now.
"Everybody looks foolish in a fraud scheme in
retrospect," he said.
Bob Jensen's threads on the forever profitable Nigerian 419 scams ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraudReporting.htm#NigerianFraud
"SBA Warns Small Businesses of Scams to Help Obtain Government Loans,"
Journal of Accountancy, April 1, 2010 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Web/20102758.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on fraud reporting are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraudReporting.htm
Bob Jensen's small business helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#SmallBusiness
Rationality in Economics
Peter J. Hammond
Department of Economics, Stanford
University, CA 94305-6072, U.S.A.
e-mail:
hammond@leland.stanford.edu
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~ecsgaj/ratEcon.pdf
1 Introduction and Outline
Rationality is one of the most
over-used words in economics. Behaviour can be rational, or irrational. So
can decisions, preferences, beliefs, expectations, decision procedures, and
knowledge. There may also be bounded rationality. And recent work in game
theory has considered strategies and beliefs or expectations that are “rationalizable”.
Here I propose to assess how
economists use and mis-use the term “rationality.”
Most of the discussion will concern
the normative approach to decision theory. First, I shall consider single
person decision theory. Then I shall move on to interactive or multi-person
decision theory, customarily called game theory. I shall argue that, in
normative decision theory, rationality has become little more than a
structural consistency criterion. At the least, it needs supplementing with
other criteria that reflect reality. Also, though there is no reason to
reject rationality hypotheses as normative criteria just because people do
not behave rationally, even so rationality as consistency seems so demanding
that it may not be very useful for practicable normative models either.
Towards the end, I shall offer a
possible explanation of how the economics profession has arrived where it
is. In particular, I shall offer some possible reasons why the rationality
hypothesis persists even in economic models which purport to be descriptive.
I shall conclude with tentative suggestions for future research —about where
we might do well to go in future.
2 Decision Theory with Measurable Objectives
In a few cases, a decision-making
agent may seem to have clear and measurable objectives. A football team,
regarded as a single agent, wants to score more goals than the opposition,
to win the most matches in the league, etc. A private corporation seeks to
make profits and so increase the value to its owners. A publicly owned
municipal transport company wants to provide citizens with adequate mobility
at reasonable fares while not requiring too heavy a subsidy out of general
tax revenue. A non-profit organization like a university tends to have more
complex objectives, like educating students, doing good research, etc. These
conflicting aims all have to be met within a limited budget.
Measurable objectives can be measured,
of course. This is not always as easily as keeping score in a football match
or even a tennis, basketball or cricket match. After all, accountants often
earn high incomes, ostensibly by measuring corporate profits and/or
earnings. For a firm whose profits are risky, shareholders with well
diversified portfolios will want that firm to maximize the expectation of
its stock market value. If there is uncertainty about states of the world
with unknown probabilities, each diversified shareholder will want the firm
to maximize subjective expected values, using the shareholder’s subjective
probabilities. Of course, it is then hard to satisfy all shareholders
simultaneously. And, as various recent spectacular bank failures show, it is
much harder to measure the extent to which profits are being made when there
is uncertainly.
In biology, modern evolutionary theory
ascribes objectives to genes —so the biologist Richard Dawkins has written
evocatively of the
Selfish Gene.
The measurable objective of a gene is the extent to which the gene survives
because future organisms inherit it. Thus, gene survival is an objective
that biologists can attempt to measure, even if the genes themselves and the
organisms that carry them remain entirely unaware of why they do what they
do in order to promote gene survival.
Early utility theories up to about the
time of Edgeworth also tried to treat utility as objectively measurable. The
Age of the Enlightenment had suggested worthy goals like “life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness,” as mentioned in the constitution of the U.S.A.
Jeremy Bentham wrote of maximizing pleasure minus pain, adding both over all
individuals. In dealing with risk, especially that posed by the St.
Petersburg Paradox, in the early 1700s first Gabriel Cramer (1728) and then
Daniel Bernoulli (1738) suggested maximizing expected utility; most previous
writers had apparently considered only maximizing expected wealth.
3 Ordinal Utility and Revealed Preference
Over time, it became increasingly
clear to economists that any behaviour as interesting and complex as
consumers’ responses to price and wealth changes could not be explained as
the maximization of some objective measure of utility. Instead, it was
postulated that consumers maximize unobservable subjective utility
functions. These utility functions were called “ordinal” because all that
mattered was the ordering between utilities of different consumption
bundles. It would have been mathematically more precise and perhaps less
confusing as well if we had learned to speak of an
ordinal equivalence
class of utility functions.
The idea is to regard two utility functions as equivalent if and only if
they both represent the same
preference ordering
— that is, the same
reflexive, complete, and transitive binary relation. Then, of course, all
that matters is the preference ordering — the choice of utility function
from the ordinal equivalence class that represents the preference ordering
is irrelevant. Indeed, provided that a preference ordering exists, it does
not even matter whether it can be represented by any utility function at
all.
Bob Jensen's threads on theory are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
"13 Bankers Versus One Professor: The author of a new book on
financial reform makes a case for breaking up the nation's largest banks,"
by Scott Leibs, CFO.com, April 2, 2010 ---
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/14488823/c_14489620?f=home_todayinfinance
"This is about power and control and who decides
your future," Simon Johnson warned for at least the second time on Friday.
He had just returned to the campus of MIT's Sloan School of Management in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, having been in New York hours earlier to deliver a
similar message on The Today Show. Both appearances were part of an
intensive launch of his latest book, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover
and the Next Financial Meltdown, co-authored with former McKinsey
consultant James Kwak.
The "13 bankers" of the book's title refers to the
financial-industry luminaries who were summoned to the White House on March
27, 2009, in a mostly futile effort to enlist their help in solving the very
economic crisis they had been so instrumental, in Johnson's view, in
creating.
"We're all in this together," President Obama told
the assembled bankers. The statement was more apt than Obama intended,
Johnson contends. Wall Street bankers have become so entrenched in
Washington in the past three decades that the solution proposed by Johnson
and Kwak — break up "too big to fail" banks into smaller entities for which
failure is, in fact, an option — faces a very long uphill climb.
If Johnson's solution isn't adopted, it won't be
for lack of effort on his part. Speaking to an audience of 150 at MIT, where
he is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship, Johnson argued
forcefully that the astounding rise of the nation's largest banks mandates
immediate corrective action. In 1995, he pointed out, the assets of the six
largest banks equaled 17% of GDP; by last year that figure had risen to more
than 60%. Profits (and compensation) have followed similarly stunning
trajectories, as has the clout wielded by bankers on both sides of the
political aisle.
When bankers came looking for a bailout, Johnson
said, they not only got one, they got it on terms that were "completely at
odds with conventional practices" in similar financial catastrophes. The
result was a rescue operation that amounts to "nontransparent corporate
welfare that must be stopped."
Johnson disagrees with Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner's claim that the Great Recession represents a 30- or 40-year flood
that few people will see again in their working lifetimes. A more apt
comparison, he said, is to weakened levees, and the key question is whether
the structural changes that have taken place in the financial industry will
cause those levees to be breached again in the near future. "Do we want to
experience this crisis again," he asked, "just because six banks can't be
made smaller?"
Johnson has no illusions that enacting stronger
regulations than those currently put forward will be easy. "It will take
time to change people's attitudes," he admitted, but he said there is
historical precedent for picking a fight that few people grasp, let alone
support. "When Teddy Roosevelt took on J.P. Morgan," he said, "no one
understood why, and of those who did, no one thought he would win." Yet
Roosevelt triumphed over not only Morgan but also monopolies such as
Standard Oil, which was broken into almost three dozen smaller companies.
Asked by an audience member whether banks have
learned valuable lessons from the meltdown and thus won't need tighter
regulation, Johnson responded, "The recent executive bonuses handed out
suggest not much has been learned." Indeed, Wells Fargo and several others
have recently announced lavish compensation awards to some of the very
executives Johnson believes should have been ousted as one condition of the
bailouts.
But he remains hopeful, citing several chief
executives who support his argument, sometimes publicly, sometimes
privately. Asked about potential support from CFOs, who rarely, if ever,
champion any form of financial regulation, Johnson quipped, "I don't expect
CFOs to be in the vanguard, but I do believe many will support the concept
of breaking up too-big-to-fail banks once they take a close look at the
issues."
Bob Jensen's threads on the economic crisis are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
From the Scout Report on March 26, 2010
Easeus Todo Backup 1.1 ---
http://www.todo-backup.com/
If you have a system problem or a crash, Easeus
Todo Backup can help. This program allows users to back and restore a disk
or partition after a virus attack, and also restore image files and even
backup the whole hard disk. This version is compatible with computers
running Windows 2000 and newer, and the website contains an extensive help
section.
High Quality Photo Resizer 5.02 ---
http://www.naturpic.com/resizer/index.html
If you're in the market for a photo resizer, this
version of High Quality Photo Resizer is a good place to start. The program
allows users to resize large batches of digital photos quickly, and it can
also be used to add effects like "colorize", "mosaic", and "swirl". This
version is compatible with computers running Windows 2000 and newer.
In California, a rather unique museum looks for a new home In California,
the Banana Museum Has Lost Its Appeal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704534904575131660097881550.html
The Saddest, Scariest Story About a Dying Banana Museum Ever
http://gawker.com/5499699/the-saddest-scariest-story-about-a-dying-banana-museum-ever
Bananas: A Storied Fruit With An Uncertain Future [Real Player]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19097412
The Banana Club Museum
http://www.bananaclub.com/InsideMuseum.htm
National Apple Museum
http://www.nationalapplemuseum.com/
All Recipes: Banana
http://allrecipes.com/Recipes/Fruits-and-Vegetables/Fruits/Bananas/Main.aspx
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Financial Education for Teachers: The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis ---
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/community_education/teacher/
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
.Teach. Genetics: Epigenetics [RealPlayer]
http://teach.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/
University of Kentucky Agricultural Information Center ---
http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/lib.php?lib_id=1
National Agricultural Library ---
http://www.nal.usda.gov/
Paul Revere Williams Project [architecture] ---
http://www.paulrwilliamsproject.org/
Environment Yale Magazine (featuring forestry) ---
http://environment.yale.edu/magazine/
International Year of Biodiversity [Flash Player]
http://www.cbd.int/2010/welcome/
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
Massachusetts Historical Society: Photographs of Native Americans ---
http://www.masshist.org/photographs/nativeamericans/
The Return of the Multi-Generational Family Household
---
http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/752/the-return-of-the-multi-generational-family-household
Latin American Public Opinion Project ---
http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/HOME
Fabian Society Online Archive (social democracy history and theory) ---
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/library/archive/online_resources/fabianarchive/home.aspx
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Law and Legal Studies
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
Art Through Time: A Global View ---
http://www.learner.org/courses/globalart/
Mail Art (meaning art sent via the post office) ---
http://ubdigit.buffalo.edu/collections/lib/lib-pc/lib-pc001_MailArt.php
The Hale Scrapbook (cartoon history) ---
http://cartoons.osu.edu/hale/Hale.php
Bill Mauldin's Military Cartoons ---
Click Here
The Opper Project (editorial cartoons) ---
http://hti.osu.edu/opper/index.cfm
University of Nebraska Libraries Digital Collections: Government Comics
Collection ---
http://contentdm.unl.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/comics
National (American) History Education Clearinghouse ---
http://teachinghistory.org/
Massachusetts Historical Society: Photographs of Native Americans ---
http://www.masshist.org/photographs/nativeamericans/
American History
DuBoisopedia ---
http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/duboisopedia/doku.php
Heritage Preservation ---
http://www.heritagepreservation.org/
Coal Mining in Southern Illinois ---
http://mccoy.lib.siu.edu/~horrell/
"Coalbrookdale
and the History of Coal Power," by Renee Montagne ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9955564
Nickel Weeklies (American History) ---
http://drc.library.bgsu.edu/handle/2374.BGSU/744
Many Pen and Ink Sketches
National American History: Museum Stories of Freedom and Justice
[iTunes]
http://americanhistory.si.edu/freedomandjustice/
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers'
Project, 1936-1940 ---
http://memory.loc.gov/wpaintro/wpahome.html
Fabian Society Online Archive (social democracy history and theory) ---
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/library/archive/online_resources/fabianarchive/home.aspx
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
Samuel Barber at the Library of Congress ---
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200183698/default.html
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music
Writing Tutorials
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
March 30, 2010
March 31, 2010
April 1, 2010
April 2, 2010
April 3, 2010
April 4, 2010
April 6, 2010
April 7, 2010
April 8, 2010
Very funny Jewish wedding with English subtitle (la boda) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NF3OWNJgYw
It gets better near the end!
Me and My Shadow ( a very funny video link forwarded by David
Fordham) ---
Click Here
http://www.urlesque.com/2010/04/06/math-teacher-pranks/?icid=main|main|dl6|link5|http://www.urlesque.com/2010/04/06/math-teacher-pranks/
The only thing missing
is the music ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5hXtGkzZ9k
1927 Version ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrRsNWzfEZA
Dear professor Robert Bob,
Thank for these funny videos.
My reply now:
1
http://vodpod.com/watch/2908094-are-you-smarter-then-a-monkey
2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5xVPJUdTHk&NR=1
3
http://riddles.yolasite.com/funny-videos.php
All the best,
Dan
(from Romania)
Forwarded by
Maureen
Getting old in Florida
Two elderly
ladies are sitting on the front porch in Bradenton ,
doing
nothing.
One lady turns and asks, 'Do you
still get horny?'
The other replies, 'Oh sure I
do.'
The first old lady asks, 'What do
you do about it?'
The second old lady replies, 'I
suck a lifesaver.'
After a few moments, the first
old lady asks, 'Who drives you to the beach?'
**********************************************************
Three old
ladies were sitting side by side in their retirement home
in Sarasota reminiscing.
The
first lady recalled shopping at the green grocers and demonstrated with
her hands, the length and thickness of a cucumber she could buy for a
penny.
The second old lady nodded,
adding that onions used to be much bigger and cheaper also, and
demonstrated the size of two big onions she could buy for a penny a
piece..
The third old lady remarked, 'I
can't hear a word you're saying, but I remember the guy you're talking
about.
**********************************************************
A little old
lady was sitting on a park bench in The Villages,
a Florida Adult
community. A
man walked over and sits down on the other end of the bench. After a few
moments, the woman asks, 'Are you a stranger
here?'
He replies, 'I lived here years
ago.'
'So, where were you all these
years?'
'In prison,' he
says.
'Why did they put you in
prison?'
He looked at her, and very
quietly said, 'I killed my wife.'
'Oh!' said the woman. 'So you're
single...?!'
**********************************************************
Two elderly
people living in Tamarac ,
he was a widower
and she a widow, had known each other for a number of years. One evening
there was a community supper in the big arena in the
Clubhouse.
The two were at the same table,
across from one another. As the meal went on, he took a few admiring
glances at her and finally gathered the courage to ask her, 'Will you
marry me?'
After about six seconds of
'careful consideration,' she answered 'Yes. Yes, I
will!'
The meal ended and, with a few
more pleasant exchanges, they went to their respective places. Next
morning, he was troubled. 'Did she say 'yes' or did she say
'no'?'
He couldn't remember. Try as he
might, he just could not recall. Not even a faint memory. With
trepidation, he went to the telephone and called
her.
First, he explained that he
didn't remember as well as he used to. Then he reviewed the lovely
evening past.. As he gained a little more courage, he inquired, 'When I
asked if you would marry me, did you say ' Yes' or did you say
'No'?'
He was delighted to hear her say,
'Why, I said, 'Yes, yes I will' and I meant it with all my heart.' Then
she continued, 'And I am so glad that you called, because I couldn't
remember who had asked me.'
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
A man was
telling his neighbor in Naples ,
'I just bought a
new hearing aid. It cost me four thousand dollars, but it's state of the
art. It's perfect.'
'Really,' answered the neighbor.
'What kind is it?'
'Twelve
thirty.'
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
A little old
man shuffled slowly into the 'Orange
Dipper', an ice cream
parlor in Ft Myers , and pulled himself slowly, painfully, up
onto a stool.
After catching his breath he
ordered a banana split.
The waitress asked kindly,
'Crushed nuts?'
'No,' he replied,
'hemorrhoids
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
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
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/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.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
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