Tidbits on April 29, 2010
Bob Jensen

We got dumped on with over a foot of new snow this week
This was a killer storm
Aside from the crocus, yellow daffodils are the early flowers up here.
They bloom almost two months ahead of our mountain lupine.
The heavy wet snow crushed out all the flowers that tried to celebrate springtime in the mountains

I put a penny in and wished for spring

Mt. Washington is got more snow reinforcement this week

Meanwhile,
Texas is having a wonderful wildflower season
My San Antonio friend, Paula Kelly Ward, forwarded the following pictures
Paula retired from the Public Relations Department at Trinity University
And now has more time to sniff the flowers with her scientist husband John


I will show more pictures taken by Paula and John in future editions of Tidbits

My former Trinity colleague Bill Spinks captured turkey arousal
It's hard to imagine that this leads up to French kissing

Here are some pictures sent by other friends

Relax, it's only a refrigerator door magnet

 

I put on my cool sunglasses and took a home video of our April 27-28 killer snow ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/2010LateAprilSnow.3gp

Mostly funny photographs slide show --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/MostlyFunnyPhotographs.pps

Windows on Maine [Quick Time, Windows Media] --- http://windowsonmaine.library.umaine.edu/

Long Trail Photographs (the Green Mountains of Vermont) http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?title=Long%20Trail%20Photographs 
Oldest Long Distance Hiking Trail in the United States

Sexy Cars in My Day --- http://www.orono1960.com/000/9/3/0/14039/userfiles/file/Detroit_Fin_Days.pdf

Photos sent by my friend in Romania: http://www.pbase.com/lorin/romanian_landscapes
This link was forwarded by my Romanian friend Dan Gheorghe Somnea [dan_somnea@yahoo.com]

Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on April 29, 2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations042910.htm         

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

 

Tidbits on February April 29, 2010
Bob Jensen

For earlier editions of Tidbits go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/.




Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

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

 




Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

Nova on Behavioral Economics --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/money/about.html
Link Forwarded by Richard Sansing

PBS Video (Gory) :  American Experience: The Lobotomist [Flash Player] --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lobotomist/

Dogs Loving Snow --- http://www.dogwork.com/snow2/ 

Windows on Maine [Quick Time, Windows Media] --- http://windowsonmaine.library.umaine.edu/

Drawing With Light [Flash Player] http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/youth/dwl/default_e.jsp

Morris K. Udall: Oral History Project [pdf, Real Player] http://content.library.arizona.edu/collections/mo_udall_oralhist/
Audio Records of Great Leaders in Congress

Oral History of the U.S. House of Representatives --- http://oralhistory.clerk.house.gov/

Soil Science Society of America [Real Player, pdf] https://www.soils.org/

The Virtual Museum of Iraq [Flash Player] http://www.virtualmuseumiraq.cnr.it/prehome.htm
Iraq's History Page ---
http://www.angelfire.com/nt/Gilgamesh/history.html

The Diane Rehm Show [iTunes, Celebrity Interviews] http://thedianerehmshow.org/

Video:  Mattel dresses up its pro forma forecasts with some toy PR ---
http://corporate.mattel.com/
This link was forwarded by David Albrecht

Video:  "The Decline of Classic Maya Civilization: A Systems Perspective," by Jeremy Sabloff ---
http://www.santafe.edu/research/videos/play/?id=86c6ffd8-5652-4e1b-a050-026c3b12ca28

The decline and abandonment of many key cities in the Southern Maya Lowlands around A.D. 800 has long attracted scholarly and public attention. While archaeologists now understand contrary to previous thought that Maya civilization did not collapse at this time, as a number of Maya cities continued to thrive up until the 16th century Spanish Conquest, the causes of the relatively rapid demise of cities such as Tikal, Palenque, and Copan remain of great interest. New archaeological, epigraphic, and environmental information have enabled archaeologists to form better models that provide more systemic perspectives on this decline than ever before. Sabloff examines the new data and models and discusses their potential relevance to problems facing the world today.

 


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

Jozef van Wissem: Transcendental Lute --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126147314

David Russell: Tiny Desk Concert (Classical) --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126090904
The Restless Guitar Of David Russell --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126166755

Mickey Gilley --- http://www.gilleys.com/
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Gilley

 

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

Mother of All Art History Links --- http://www.art-design.umich.edu/mother/

Veterans Affairs Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers --- http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/veterans_affairs/index.html

Drawing With Light [Flash Player] http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/youth/dwl/default_e.jsp

Wyndham Lewis's Art Criticism in The Listener, 1946-1951 --- http://www.unirioja.es/listenerartcriticism/

Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present, March 14 - May 31 [Flash Player]
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/marinaabramovic/

Art Through Time: A Global View --- http://www.learner.org/resources/series211.html

The Virtual Museum of Iraq [Flash Player] http://www.virtualmuseumiraq.cnr.it/prehome.htm
Iraq's History Page --- http://www.angelfire.com/nt/Gilgamesh/history.html

Long Trail Photographs (the Green Mountains of Vermont) http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?title=Long%20Trail%20Photographs 
Oldest Long Distance Hiking Trail in the United States

Langston Hughes Papers and Photographs --- http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/hughes.ht

Richard Throssel Photographs --- http://digitalcollections.uwyo.edu:8180/luna/servlet/ahc-throssel~1~1

Sioux City History (Iowa, Native American) --- http://www.siouxcityhistory.org/

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

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

After Columbus: Four-Hundred Years of Native American Portraiture --- 
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/?collection=AfterColumbusFourhun&col_id=182

Brian Jungen: Strange Comfort --- http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/jungen/index.html
The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) opened this exhibition by Dunne-za/Canadian artist Brian Jungen late in 2009

Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano --- http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/04/more_from_eyjafjallajokull.html

The Kentucky Library and Museum Online: Built Environment  --- http://www.wku.edu/library/kylm/collections/online/environment/index.html

Kentuckiana Digital Library (focus is on Kentucky history and photographs) ---  http://kdl.kyvl.org/

Milwaukee Public Museum: 125 Objects, 125 Years --- http://www.mpm.edu/exhibitions/featured/virtual-exhibit/ 

Milwaukee Repertory Theater Photographic History --- http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/digilib/milrep/index.cfm 
The Tibet Album presents more than 6000 photographs spanning 30 years of Tibet's history. These extraordinary photographs are a unique record of people long gone and places changed beyond all recognition. They also document the ways that British visitors encountered Tibet and Tibetans.

Sexy Cars in My Day --- http://www.orono1960.com/000/9/3/0/14039/userfiles/file/Detroit_Fin_Days.pdf

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

Reading: Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History ---  http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/reading/ 
Includes annotated copies belonging to famous authors and poets

Lincolniana at Brown (Brown University Lincoln History Library) --- http://dl.lib.brown.edu/lincoln/index.html

Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves --- http://www.themorgan.org/collections/works/cleves/default.asp
Private library of financier Pierpont Morgan

Shmoop is an online study guide for English Literature, Poetry and American history --- http://www.shmoop.com/

Delaware Notes (various historical themes, including poetry and literature) --- http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/4445 

Forgotten Books --- http://www.forgottenbooks.org/catalog/index.php

Raphael Soyer Papers (Artist), 1933-1989 ---  http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/soyeraph/

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 29, 2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations042910.htm         

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




Video:  "The Decline of Classic Maya Civilization: A Systems Perspective," by Jeremy Sabloff ---
http://www.santafe.edu/research/videos/play/?id=86c6ffd8-5652-4e1b-a050-026c3b12ca28

The decline and abandonment of many key cities in the Southern Maya Lowlands around A.D. 800 has long attracted scholarly and public attention. While archaeologists now understand contrary to previous thought that Maya civilization did not collapse at this time, as a number of Maya cities continued to thrive up until the 16th century Spanish Conquest, the causes of the relatively rapid demise of cities such as Tikal, Palenque, and Copan remain of great interest. New archaeological, epigraphic, and environmental information have enabled archaeologists to form better models that provide more systemic perspectives on this decline than ever before. Sabloff examines the new data and models and discusses their potential relevance to problems facing the world today.
 

Early accounting was a knotty issue
South American Indian culture apparently used layers of knotted strings as a complicated ledger.

Two Harvard University researchers believe they have uncovered the meaning of a group of Incan khipus, cryptic assemblages of string and knots that were used by the South American civilization for record-keeping and perhaps even as a written language. Researchers have long known that some knot patterns represented a specific number. Archeologist Gary Urton and mathematician Carrie Brezine report today in the journal Science that computer analysis of 21 khipus showed how individual strings were combined into multilayered collections that were used as a kind of ledger.
Thomas H. Maugh, "Researchers Think They've Got the Incas' Numbers," Los Angeles Times, August 12, 2005 ---
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-khipu12aug12,1,6589325.story?coll=la-news-science&ctrack=1&cset=true
Also note http://snipurl.com/incaknots   [64_233_169_104

Jensen Comment:  I'm told that accounting tallies in Africa and other parts of the world preceded written language.  However, tallies alone did not permit aggregations such as accounting for such things as three goats plus sixty apples.   Modern accounting awaited a combination of the Arabic numbering ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numbers ) and a common valuation scheme for valuing heterogeneous items (e.g., gold equivalents or currency units) such that the values of goats and apples could be aggregated.  It is intriguing that Inca knot patterns were something more than simple tallies since patterns could depict different numbers and aggregations could possibly be achieved with "multilayered collections."


It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle

"Science Warriors' Ego Trips," by Carlin Romano, Chronicle of Higher Education's The Chronicle Review, April 25, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Science-Warriors-Ego-Trips/65186/

Standing up for science excites some intellectuals the way beautiful actresses arouse Warren Beatty, or career liberals boil the blood of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. It's visceral. The thinker of this ilk looks in the mirror and sees Galileo bravely muttering "Eppure si muove!" ("And yet, it moves!") while Vatican guards drag him away. Sometimes the hero in the reflection is Voltaire sticking it to the clerics, or Darwin triumphing against both Church and Church-going wife. A brave champion of beleaguered science in the modern age of pseudoscience, this Ayn Rand protagonist sarcastically derides the benighted irrationalists and glows with a self-anointed superiority. Who wouldn't want to feel that sense of power and rightness?

You hear the voice regularly—along with far more sensible stuff—in the latest of a now common genre of science patriotism, Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science From Bunk (University of Chicago Press), by Massimo Pigliucci, a philosophy professor at the City University of New York. Like such not-so-distant books as Idiot America, by Charles P. Pierce (Doubleday, 2009), The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby (Pantheon, 2008), and Denialism, by Michael Specter (Penguin Press, 2009), it mixes eminent common sense and frequent good reporting with a cocksure hubris utterly inappropriate to the practice it apotheosizes.

According to Pigliucci, both Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxist theory of history "are too broad, too flexible with regard to observations, to actually tell us anything interesting." (That's right—not one "interesting" thing.) The idea of intelligent design in biology "has made no progress since its last serious articulation by natural theologian William Paley in 1802," and the empirical evidence for evolution is like that for "an open-and-shut murder case."

Pigliucci offers more hero sandwiches spiced with derision and certainty. Media coverage of science is "characterized by allegedly serious journalists who behave like comedians." Commenting on the highly publicized Dover, Pa., court case in which U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent-design theory is not science, Pigliucci labels the need for that judgment a "bizarre" consequence of the local school board's "inane" resolution. Noting the complaint of intelligent-design advocate William Buckingham that an approved science textbook didn't give creationism a fair shake, Pigliucci writes, "This is like complaining that a textbook in astronomy is too focused on the Copernican theory of the structure of the solar system and unfairly neglects the possibility that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is really pulling each planet's strings, unseen by the deluded scientists."

Is it really? Or is it possible that the alternate view unfairly neglected could be more like that of Harvard scientist Owen Gingerich, who contends in God's Universe (Harvard University Press, 2006) that it is partly statistical arguments—the extraordinary unlikelihood eons ago of the physical conditions necessary for self-conscious life—that support his belief in a universe "congenially designed for the existence of intelligent, self-reflective life"? Even if we agree that capital "I" and "D" intelligent-design of the scriptural sort—what Gingerich himself calls "primitive scriptural literalism"—is not scientifically credible, does that make Gingerich's assertion, "I believe in intelligent design, lowercase i and lowercase d," equivalent to Flying-Spaghetti-Monsterism?

Tone matters. And sarcasm is not science.

The problem with polemicists like Pigliucci is that a chasm has opened up between two groups that might loosely be distinguished as "philosophers of science" and "science warriors." Philosophers of science, often operating under the aegis of Thomas Kuhn, recognize that science is a diverse, social enterprise that has changed over time, developed different methodologies in different subsciences, and often advanced by taking putative pseudoscience seriously, as in debunking cold fusion. The science warriors, by contrast, often write as if our science of the moment is isomorphic with knowledge of an objective world-in-itself—Kant be damned!—and any form of inquiry that doesn't fit the writer's criteria of proper science must be banished as "bunk." Pigliucci, typically, hasn't much sympathy for radical philosophies of science. He calls the work of Paul Feyerabend "lunacy," deems Bruno Latour "a fool," and observes that "the great pronouncements of feminist science have fallen as flat as the similarly empty utterances of supporters of intelligent design."

It doesn't have to be this way. The noble enterprise of submitting nonscientific knowledge claims to critical scrutiny—an activity continuous with both philosophy and science—took off in an admirable way in the late 20th century when Paul Kurtz, of the University at Buffalo, established the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (Csicop) in May 1976. Csicop soon after launched the marvelous journal Skeptical Inquirer, edited for more than 30 years by Kendrick Frazier.

Although Pigliucci himself publishes in Skeptical Inquirer, his contributions there exhibit his signature smugness. For an antidote to Pigliucci's overweening scientism 'tude, it's refreshing to consult Kurtz's curtain-raising essay, "Science and the Public," in Science Under Siege (Prometheus Books, 2009, edited by Frazier), which gathers 30 years of the best of Skeptical Inquirer.

Kurtz's commandment might be stated, "Don't mock or ridicule—investigate and explain." He writes: "We attempted to make it clear that we were interested in fair and impartial inquiry, that we were not dogmatic or closed-minded, and that skepticism did not imply a priori rejection of any reasonable claim. Indeed, I insisted that our skepticism was not totalistic or nihilistic about paranormal claims."

Kurtz combines the ethos of both critical investigator and philosopher of science. Describing modern science as a practice in which "hypotheses and theories are based upon rigorous methods of empirical investigation, experimental confirmation, and replication," he notes: "One must be prepared to overthrow an entire theoretical framework—and this has happened often in the history of science ... skeptical doubt is an integral part of the method of science, and scientists should be prepared to question received scientific doctrines and reject them in the light of new evidence."

Considering the dodgy matters Skeptical Inquirer specializes in, Kurtz's methodological fairness looks even more impressive. Here's part of his own wonderful, detailed list: "Psychic claims and predictions; parapsychology (psi, ESP, clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis); UFO visitations and abductions by extraterrestrials (Roswell, cattle mutilations, crop circles); monsters of the deep (the Loch Ness monster) and of the forests and mountains (Sasquatch, or Bigfoot); mysteries of the oceans (the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis); cryptozoology (the search for unknown species); ghosts, apparitions, and haunted houses (the Amityville horror); astrology and horoscopes (Jeanne Dixon, the "Mars effect," the "Jupiter effect"); spoon bending (Uri Geller). ... "

Even when investigating miracles, Kurtz explains, Csicop's intrepid senior researcher Joe Nickell "refuses to declare a priori that any miracle claim is false." Instead, he conducts "an on-site inquest into the facts surrounding the case." That is, instead of declaring, "Nonsense on stilts!" he gets cracking.

Pigliucci, alas, allows his animus against the nonscientific to pull him away from sensitive distinctions among various sciences to sloppy arguments one didn't see in such earlier works of science patriotism as Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Random House, 1995). Indeed, he probably sets a world record for misuse of the word "fallacy."

To his credit, Pigliucci at times acknowledges the nondogmatic spine of science. He concedes that "science is characterized by a fuzzy borderline with other types of inquiry that may or may not one day become sciences." Science, he admits, "actually refers to a rather heterogeneous family of activities, not to a single and universal method." He rightly warns that some pseudoscience—for example, denial of HIV-AIDS causation—is dangerous and terrible.

But at other points, Pigliucci ferociously attacks opponents like the most unreflective science fanatic, as if he belongs to some Tea Party offshoot of the Royal Society. He dismisses Feyerabend's view that "science is a religion" as simply "preposterous," even though he elsewhere admits that "methodological naturalism"—the commitment of all scientists to reject "supernatural" explanations—is itself not an empirically verifiable principle or fact, but rather an almost Kantian precondition of scientific knowledge. An article of faith, some cold-eyed Feyerabend fans might say.

In an even greater disservice, Pigliucci repeatedly suggests that intelligent-design thinkers must want "supernatural explanations reintroduced into science," when that's not logically required. He writes, "ID is not a scientific theory at all because there is no empirical observation that can possibly contradict it. Anything we observe in nature could, in principle, be attributed to an unspecified intelligent designer who works in mysterious ways." But earlier in the book, he correctly argues against Karl Popper that susceptibility to falsification cannot be the sole criterion of science, because science also confirms. It is, in principle, possible that an empirical observation could confirm intelligent design—i.e., that magic moment when the ultimate UFO lands with representatives of the intergalactic society that planted early life here, and we accept their evidence that they did it. The point is not that this is remotely likely. It's that the possibility is not irrational, just as provocative science fiction is not irrational.

Pigliucci similarly derides religious explanations on logical grounds when he should be content with rejecting such explanations as unproven. "As long as we do not venture to make hypotheses about who the designer is and why and how she operates," he writes, "there are no empirical constraints on the 'theory' at all. Anything goes, and therefore nothing holds, because a theory that 'explains' everything really explains nothing."

Here, Pigliucci again mixes up what's likely or provable with what's logically possible or rational. The creation stories of traditional religions and scriptures do, in effect, offer hypotheses, or claims, about who the designer is—e.g., see the Bible. And believers sometimes put forth the existence of scriptures (think of them as "reports") and a centuries-long chain of believers in them as a form of empirical evidence. Far from explaining nothing because it explains everything, such an explanation explains a lot by explaining everything. It just doesn't explain it convincingly to a scientist with other evidentiary standards.

A sensible person can side with scientists on what's true, but not with Pigliucci on what's rational and possible. Pigliucci occasionally recognizes that. Late in his book, he concedes that "nonscientific claims may be true and still not qualify as science." But if that's so, and we care about truth, why exalt science to the degree he does? If there's really a heaven, and science can't (yet?) detect it, so much the worse for science.

As an epigram to his chapter titled "From Superstition to Natural Philosophy," Pigliucci quotes a line from Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Science warriors such as Pigliucci, or Michael Ruse in his recent clash with other philosophers in these pages, should reflect on a related modern sense of "entertain." One does not entertain a guest by mocking, deriding, and abusing the guest. Similarly, one does not entertain a thought or approach to knowledge by ridiculing it.

Long live Skeptical Inquirer! But can we deep-six the egomania and unearned arrogance of the science patriots? As Descartes, that immortal hero of scientists and skeptics everywhere, pointed out, true skepticism, like true charity, begins at home.

Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle Review, teaches philosophy and media theory at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jensen Comment
One way to distinguish my conceptualization of science from pseudo science is that science relentlessly seeks to replicate and validate purported discoveries, especially after the discoveries have been made public in scientific journals ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTar.htm
Science encourages conjecture but doggedly seeks truth about that conjecture. Pseudo science is less concerned about validating purported discoveries than it is about publishing new conjectures that are largely ignored by other pseudo scientists.

 

 


Human Subject Research Review Boards on Campus

A professor who prefers to remain anonymous asked what I thought about blogs being subjected to campus human subject research review boards. Typically on most college campuses these days, a professor, doctoral student, or staff member on campus who is proposing an experiment or otherwise having direct contact with human subjects in a research study must have the proposal cleared by a board concerning itself with the safety and well-being of the research participants.

These boards are concerned with use of human subjects in research experiments where the subjects are usually, but not always, students. Non-students might include simulation experiments using parents of autistic children or autistic children themselves. Experiments entail direct involvement with human subjects, whereas blog involvements are not so direct and manipulative.

I've never heard of a blog being subjected to a human subjects research review board. Blogs generally report research rather than conduct research. If the blog leader also conducts research on human subjects then that is quite another matter. You would only have to be concerned with a review if you conduct research using human subjects. And you would only have to be concerned if your college was somehow involved such as when you use students at the college or when you conduct the research on campus using other human subjects. If you had a summer grant to conduct some research at an off-campus research center you do not have to involve your campus review board even if you are on the faculty of the college --- in my opinion. There is a gray zone that might arise in this instance.

Human subjects research review boards are generally not something to be feared by ethical researchers. The first concern is that that research might harm the subjects in some way such as when Stanford University psychologist Phil Zimbardo conducted the infamous prison guard experiments that ran amuck and allegedly damaged student participants in the experiments.

If the Yale’s Milgram experiments had not already done so, Phil's experiments triggered creation of human subject research review boards in colleges across the world. I spent a year with Phil in a think tank called the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Advanced_Study_in_the_Behavioral_Sciences ) high on a hill beside Stanford's campus. That was less than a year before Phil commenced the prisoner guard experiments. Phil never anticipated the extreme experimental behavior that emerged ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

I never anticipated harm to subjects when Phil discussed his proposed experiments in advance with me. Phil actually is a very clever and ethical researcher. Perhaps a review board might’ve anticipated danger in the Stanford Prison Guard Experiments, but frankly I doubt it. The behavior of the guards in simulated settings shocked everybody!

A blog might actually harm people or organizations just like some of you on the AECM think at the moment that I am harming Ernst & Young with my comments about Repo 105 accounting, but that does not fall under the category of "human subject research." It would only be human subject research if I created an experiment, such as an accounting simulation experiment, using human subjects such as E&Y employees or my campus students.

If members of the academy had to get permission to be critical of events outside their own controlled experiments then Big Brother in Orwell's 1984 will have finally arrived on campus. Big Brother is not here yet. Libel laws are huge problems in the United Kingdom, but in the United States we're very tolerant of academic criticism that is not deemed by the court as becoming too personal and defamatory.

In any case, U.S. colleges have not yet set up criticism review boards. They only have human subject review boards and possibly lab safety review boards to prevent chemists from blowing up buildings. The academy would sink to an all-time low if we had to get permission just to be critical of research and writing.

A gray zone that I won’t get into is religious or ethnic criticism. Some types of critical research of a religious or ethnic group might endanger the campus itself such as criticism of a particular drug gang by name or defense of the author of some now-famous Danish cartoons. I really don’t know how colleges are dealing with writings that might harm the college itself. I don’t think this falls under the jurisdiction of the human subject research review boards. It probably must be dealt with by the Office of the President on campus.


There are several ways to interpret a Lay Professor

From Inside Higher Ed on April 26, 2010 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/26/qt#225958

Just as the University of Missouri at Columbia took some ribbing for its Ken Lay Chair in Economics, so Harvard University may now get some grief. As Inside Higher Ed blogger University Diaries noted, Harvard has a Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History. David Armitage, who holds the chair, declined to comment on how it feels to have a chair named for the Goldman Sachs CEO.

Jensen Comment
Key Lay was convicted of fraud and conspiracy as the founder and head of Enron, but he died before sentence was passed. Of course there are also a number of Andersen Accounting Professors in universities around the nation. I don't know of any Fastow Professors of Finance, but Andy certainly has the wealth needed to finance university chairs when he gets out of prison. His chairs might also be called Special Purpose chairs but that's probably going a bit too far. Andy might prefer designing complex Raptor I, II, and III chairs.


Trick or Tweets from the Graves:  Who invented calculus?
"Newton and Leibniz Duke It Out on Twitter," by Jill Laster, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 26, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/NewtonLeibniz-Duke-It-Out/23477/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

In accountancy, nobody knows who invented double entry accounting. But analysts argue about which scholar that first set double entry to printed words ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory


"Is Economics Art or Science?" by Evan R. Goldstein, Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, April 25, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Is-Economics-Art-or-Science-/65188/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

It began on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal. "For an economist, these are the best of times and the worst of times," wrote Russ Roberts, a professor of economics at George Mason University. While economic anxiety has heightened demand for economists, Roberts noted, "there is no consensus on the cause of the crisis or the best way forward." That got him thinking about how economics is unlike other areas of science, which tend to progress in a more linear fashion. Not so economics, where discredited theories regularly come back to life, and major thinkers—Friedman, Hayek, Keynes—move in and out of vogue. "The bottom line is that we should expect less of economists," he wrote.

Among the readers of the Roberts article was The New York Times columnist David Brooks, who was inspired to sketch a history of modern economics, in five acts. Brooks's account began with the discipline's embrace of a "crude vision" of human beings as perfectly rational, and a second act that questioned self-interest as the root of all behavior. The third act began with the economic crisis in 2008, a moment that, in Brooks's view, exposed the field's shortcomings. The current moment is Act IV, in which economics is pushed in a more humanistic direction as scholars turn to psychology, sociology, and neuroscience for insights. In the last act, Brooks predicted, economists will "blow up their whole field" and make it a subsection of history and moral philosophy. The future of economics is as an art, not a science, he concluded. And that is a good thing, because the "moral and social yearnings of fully realized human beings are not reducible to universal laws and cannot be studied like physics."

Where is the field of economics heading? Several thinkers have weighed in.

N. Gregory Mankiw, professor of economics, Harvard University: Journalists are fond of writing articles about how recent events require a fundamental rethinking of economic theory. ... But when they try to predict trends in academic theorizing from current events, they are usually incorrect. In particular, I think what we teach in economics courses is more robust than a reader of David's column would think.

To be sure, in undergraduate economics courses, some specific topics will need more coverage in the future. ... The role of leverage in financial institutions is one example. Those people who study financial institutions and their regulation have moved to the forefront of the profession for a while, and that area of work may well get more coverage in the undergraduate curriculum.

But I doubt there will be a fundamental change in the field of economics. (Greg Mankiw's Blog)

Justin Fox, editorial director, Harvard Business Review Group: David Brooks wondered ... if economists shouldn't try to become more like historians. That was interesting to read, given that I had just spent time with a bunch of historians (and a few other humanities professors) who were wondering how they could become more like economists.

The occasion was a conference on "Reputation, Emotion and the Market," at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School. I was there to speak about my book on the history of financial theory, but ended up mainly engaged in a long discussion with the 30 or so historians (and a smattering of scholars from other humanities disciplines) on hand about why economists had gained so much influence over the past half-century and historians had lost so much.

One answer I offered was that economists had managed a remarkable balancing act between making the guts of their work totally incomprehensible—and thus forbiddingly impressive—to the outside world while continuing to offer reasonably straightforward conclusions. ... An academic history paper, on the other hand, is often an uninterrupted cascade of semi-comprehensible jargon that neither impresses a lay reader nor offers any clear conclusions.

Why does any of this matter? Mainly because the ways in which scholars interpret the world can (with a time lag and a lot lost in translation) have a big influence on the way the rest of us see things. ... Economists have come to utterly dominate thinking about economic matters and begun to insinuate themselves into lots of other fields, too. Business education, and business advice, has certainly become much more economics-oriented. Which isn't all bad. But even an economist would agree that we could use more competition in the marketplace of ideas. Right? (Harvard Business Review Online)

Sean C. Safford, assistant professor of organizations and strategy, University of Chicago: Brooks makes it seem like sociologists, psychologists, and the like have been waiting for our moment. Sociology and the humanists originated the field, and we never really went away. (It's worth remembering that Max Weber called himself an economist; Act I in Brooks's formulation was preceded by a whole lot of people we would today call humanists, political scientists, and sociologists who were unpacking the nature of economic activity and action.) So one has to ask: If we've been right all along (and I think we have been), then why should we think that this crisis will be the one to change the game back in our favor? ...

People who need to make decisions want a rationale for those decisions to be conveyed with clarity. For as much as I think sociology and our sister—humanist-oriented—disciplines come closer to understanding reality, we nevertheless will continue to lose arguments because of the wishy-washy way we make our arguments. There is little interest or tolerance among economic sociologists for articulating a coherent, prescriptive philosophy of economic action.

Until we do, I'm afraid we are always going to be playing second fiddle. (orgtheory.net)

Barry W. Ickes, professor of economics, Pennsylvania State University: What sells in the wider audience, however, is not what economists are actually doing. It is a good market response to write a popular book saying economists are stupid, or whatever. But the professional work is getting more technical, not less. ... Economists for the most part do not see the financial crisis as a repudiation of their efforts. So there is no reason to re-evaluate what economists do. I think that is how this is viewed internally. And that is what governs the dynamics of the profession. (Ickman's Blog)

Aaron Bekemeyer, associate editor, Consider Magazine: Perhaps, as economists "perfect" their discipline, it won't be appropriate to call economics either a science or an art. The sharp disciplinary divisions between the arts and sciences (and their various subdisciplines) are a relatively recent development, only a century or two old. Who's to say these distinctions will be around forever? Maybe, in the not-too-distant future, we'll look back and see how silly and artificial our distinctions between art and science have been. Some of the disciplines we consider so vital to modern life—medicine, history, and, not least, economics—may come to be perfect examples of activities that rely equally on empiricism and inspiration, objectivity and intuition. (The Conversationalist, Consider online)

Mark D. White, professor of political science, economics, and philosophy, City University of New York's College of Staten Island: In a social science such as economics, we have persons, with intentions, emotions, and quirks—lots of them. Despite how they're reflected in economists' models, their actions are not determined solely by the forces around them, but also by the forces inside their heads—their preferences, beliefs, values, morals, principles, biases, prejudices, and so on. ...

If the government has already decided to spend around $2-trillion, then economists may be able to contribute to determining the precise amount necessary to achieve the desired end. But if the government is deciding whether or not to spend that large amount of money at all, or whether to nationalize health care, or bring back significant financial regulations—massive, qualitative changes in the economy, rather than marginal, quantitative changes—then a broader perspective is necessary, and philosophy certainly has a lot to offer to that discussion. (Economics and Ethics).

Jensen Comment
Sadly, some of our top accountancy teachers and researchers send accounting and economic history to the back of the bus.

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


SEC Tickles Its Porn Addicts by Lashing Them With a Feather
I don't know about you, but porno-surfing enough to get "blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as 'Sex' or 'Pornography'" would place a measurable hit on my production targets, and probably lead to something a bit more severe than a 14-day suspension.
Mike Welch, CNN, April 26, 2010 ---
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/04/26/welch.sec.porn.regulation/?hpt=C2


Illustration of a Great Tutorial Site That Relies Heavily on Camtasia videos ---
http://www.bionicturtle.com/

April 26, 2010 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

David Harper has built an excellent site providing study materials for finance certification exams. He relies heavily on Camtasia videos.

http://www.bionicturtle.com/
 
Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu

Here's a free sample (recommended by Amy Dunbar).
"How to use Excel’s LINEST() function to return multivariate regression - 10 min. screencast," by David Harper, Bionic Turtle, April 28, 2010 ---
http://www.bionicturtle.com/learn/article/how_to_use_excels_linest_function_to_return_multivariate_regression_10_min_/

Scroll down to watch the Camtasia video

Bob Jensen's Free Accounting Tutorials Using Camtasia Videos ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/
 

It’s amazingly easy to use Camtasia Studio from TechSmith ---
http://www.techsmith.com/


Question
What makes accounting popular as a major in college?

April 25, 2010 message from Fisher, Paul [PFisher@ROGUECC.EDU]

I am looking for information on why students choose accounting as a profession. I would like to take an inventory look on how our teaching practices impact student choice and if there are some changes we can or have made to increase interest in the accounting profession. The Accounting Education Change Commission advanced a number of concepts a few years ago. Have we changed our teaching? Do we know if having made those changes (or not) actually created a difference?

Thanks for your thoughts,

pf

 

April 25, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Paul,

I think the importance of teaching changed greatly from the Roaring 1990s vis-à-vis the early years of the 21st Century after the tech bubble of the 1990s burst.

The 1980s and 1990s were the opportunity years for computer science, computer engineering, and finance majors. Demand for good students exceeded supply to a point in the 1990s where graduates in those majors were getting signing bonuses and even stock options before they even spent the first day on the job.

The point here is that during the tech bubble there was great competition for luring top students into a major. The Big Six accounting firms actually went to the American Accounting Association and complained that the traditional way accounting was taught was actually turning the top students away instead of attracting to brightest and best into accounting. The Big 6 put its money where its mouth was and pledged $4 million if the AAA would create an Accounting Education Change Commission (AECC) to conduct teaching and curriculum experiments for purposes of doing a better job in attracting top students into accounting as opposed to computer science, computer engineering, and finance.

You can read about the AECC at http://aaahq.org/market/display.cfm?catID=7

Volume No. 13. Position and Issues Statements of the Accounting Education Change Commission

By Accounting Education Change Commission (AECC). Published 1996, 80 pages.

During its 7-year existence the AECC adopted two position statements and six issues statements. The purpose of this publication is to provide a convenient resource document for all of these statements.

Members No charge–print or online
Nonmembers No charge–print or online

Volume No. 14. The Accounting Education Change Commission Grant Experience: A Summary

Edited by Richard E. Flaherty. Published 1998, 150 pages.

Members No charge–print or online
Nonmembers No charge–print or online

Volume No. 15. The Accounting Education Change Commission: Its History and Impact

By Gary L. Sundem. Published 1999, 96 pages.

Members No charge–print or online
Nonmembers No charge–print or online

 

The point here is that the large CPA firms and many, many accounting educators thought that failings of accounting teachers and curricula was making the profession of accounting not competitive in a hot student market during the 1990s tech bubble.

Then the 1990s tech bubble burst. At the turn of Century computer science and computer engineering entry-level jobs dried up to a point where supply of top graduates in those areas greatly exceeded demand. Not long afterwards, finance majors and MBA graduates also became a dime a dozen.

But the job market for accounting graduates seems to remain relatively steady across the economic cycles. This is due heavily to the willingness of the largest accounting firms to provide entry-level jobs to top accounting graduates. Also because of some problems caused by the 150-hour requirement, the big accounting firms solved many of our problems by greatly expanding the widely-popular internship programs as an attraction for students to major in accounting in spite of having to invest another year or more to meet the 150-hour requirement.

The bottom line is that how we teach varies in importance with respect to attracting top student to major in accounting. If the competition for top students is hot, teaching becomes more important and more thought is probably given to what sells. If the competition can be largely ignored, there is less clamor for accounting education change on a scale envisioned by the AECC.

Also the AECC experiments themselves did not lead to widely popular changes that spread like wild fire to other colleges and universities. Some AECC experiments can probably be deemed as failures in bringing about change in the programs where the experiments took place.

In fairness, the AECC grants were spent before the dawn of explosive changes in education and networking technology. We’ve seen great changes in how college courses in general are taught and how students communicate interactively with teachers and other students. Because of unfortunate timing, the AECC did not surf the wave of education technology.

Now you ask why some of the best students who probably ranked accounting at the bottom of their interest list when arriving as first year students on campus eventually rank accounting as their top choice as a major by the second or third year of college?

I think the answer is heavily due to factors outside of what accounting teachers do in the classroom.

 

2009 Best Places to Start/Intern According to Bloomberg/Business Week --- Click Here
Also see the Internship and Table links at http://www.businessweek.com/careers/special_reports/20091211best_places_for_interns.htm
The Top five rankings contain all Big Four accountancy firms.
Somehow Proctor and Gamble slipped into Rank 4 above PwC
The accountancy firms of Grant Thornton and RMS McGladrey make the top 40 at ranks 32 and 33 respectively.

Best Places to Intern --- http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/dec2009/ca2009129_394659.htm?link_position=link1
I'm waiting for Francine to throw cold water on the "ever before" claim
Especially note the KPMG Experience Abroad module below
"Best Places to Intern:  Bloomberg BusinessWeek's 2009 list shows employers are hiring more interns to fill entry-level positions than ever before,"  by Lindsey Gerdes, Business Week, December 10, 2009 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/dec2009/ca2009129_394659.htm?link_position=link1

How valuable is a summer internship in a recession? Consider Goldman Sachs, the leading choice for students interested in a career on Wall Street. This year, the investment bank hired 600 fewer entry-level employees. That's not surprising given the stunted economy and the government bailout of banks. What is noteworthy is nearly 90% of Goldman's new hires were former interns. The previous year, Goldman wasn't as concerned about hiring a high percentage of students it had already invested time and money to trainonly 58% of entry-level hires had spent a summer at the company.

The same is true for other employers. KPMG, a Big Four accounting firm that finds itself in tight competition with Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, hired nearly 900 fewer entry-level employees this year. But 91% of those full-time hires were former interns, whereas only 71% of new hires in 2008 were interns.

Internships have long been seen as a primary recruiting tool at many top employers—a 10-week job tryout to see who would be the best fit for full-time employment. But with full-time hiring down, even the largest employers are trying to maximize the investment they've made in interns by hiring a larger percentage to fill entry-level position than ever before. "It's true for all years, but I think it's even more so in years like this," says Sandra Hurse, a senior executive at Goldman who handles campus recruiting.

Evaluating Employers

With this ranking, Bloomberg BusinessWeek has put together its third annual guide to the best internships, providing information on the number of interns each company recruits, how many are offered full-time jobs, the number of interns expected to be hired next year, even the salaries students receive.To compile our list, we judged employers based on survey data from 60 career services directors around the country and a separate survey completed by each employer.We also consider how each employer fared in the annual Best Places to Launch a Career, our ranking of top U.S. entry-level employers released in September of each year.

Our ranking of the best U.S.companies for undergraduate internships highlights employers who have put together an outstanding experience for students.Accounting firm Deloitte tops our list, followed by rivals KPMG (No.2) and Ernst & Young (No.3).The last of the Big Four accounting companies, PricewaterhouseCoopers, comes in at No.5, right behind consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble.

The employers on our list understand that an outstanding internship experience is their most effective recruiting tool to snap up the top entry-level job candidates. That's why some companies have invested a considerable amount of money in their programs. Microsoft, for example, estimates it spends on average $30,000 per intern, when you factor in pay and benefits. Considering the company hired 542 undergraduate interns in 2009, that's roughly a $16 million investment.

Experience Abroad

Two years ago KPMG realized it had to make a substantial investment in its internship program if it hoped to woo top students from larger consulting and accounting firms. So the company decided to offer interns an opportunity to gain valuable overseas experience. KPMG lets student interns spend four weeks in the U.S. and four weeks abroad. "It's extremely competitive [to recruit top students], and this is a differentiator," says Blane Ruschak, executive director of campus recruiting at KPMG.

A chance to work overseas is precisely what appealed to Andrew Fedele, 21, an accounting and economics double major at Pennsylvania State University. "I was sold pretty much when I first read about [KPMG's] global internship program." He spent four weeks in Chicago and four weeks in Johannesburg, South Africa. "South Africa has just such an interesting history. To go there and live with the locals and work with them was really exciting."

What did KPMG get in return? Exactly what it hoped: Fedele accepted a full-time job almost immediately after KPMG made its offer at the end of the summer.

Gerdes is a staff editor for BusinessWeek in New York.

Last year's rankings were similar --- Click Here
http://bigfouralumni.blogspot.com/search/label/Best Places to Launch a Career

"All Big Four Firms Are Best Companies To Work For In 2009," Big Four Blog, January 22, 2010 ---
http://bigfouralumni.blogspot.com/2010/01/all-big-four-firms-are-best-companies.html

All the Big Four firms recently made Fortune’s 2009 “100 Best Companies to Work For” list, though not at the very top as we have become very accustomed to seeing in BusinessWeek or Diversity or Working Mothers magazine. Nonetheless a very creditable performance against a tough crowd of equally impressive and quality peers. 2009 sported tougher competition as three of the five firms dropped rank from the 2008 listing.

In addition, we are seeing a varied picture with firms actively cutting positions to some minor increases at Deloitte and PwC from 2008 to 2009, in line with the general decrease in business for these firms in the Americas.

Check out our January 2009 blog post on the 2008 rankings


However, tough external conditions appear to have created some welcome bonuses for employees, either through additional holidays, a sabbatical program or less travel.

Fortune has a rigorous process to select these top companies, and with a large chunk of the selection process based on true employee responses, its hard to game this list, so makes the results reliable. It conducts the most extensive employee survey in corporate America with 347 companies in the overall pool. Two-thirds of a company's score is based on the results of survey sent to a random sample of employees from each company with questions on attitudes management's credibility, job satisfaction, and camaraderie. The other third of the scoring is based on the company's responses on pay and benefit programs, hiring, communication, and diversity.

Continued in article


Profitability:  Based on 300,000 companies, most with annual sales under $10 million. One takeaway: Specialization pays off

What a great Rank 1 slide for college recruitment of accounting majors  ---
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/15/most-profitable-small-businesses-entrepreneurs-finance-sageworks_slide_21.html

The most profitable niche of the bunch (CPA bunch) enjoys a nice mix of pricing power (everybody needs accountants, no matter how the economy is doing), low overhead and marketing scale, thanks to plenty of repeat clients.

Other Accounting Services comes it at Rank 3 ---
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/15/most-profitable-small-businesses-entrepreneurs-finance-sageworks_slide_19.html

Various accounting, bookkeeping, billing and tax preparation services in any form, handled not necessarily by a Certified Public Accountant (see No. 1 on our list).

And at Rank 5 are Tax Preparation Services (one rank below dentist offices) ---
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/15/most-profitable-small-businesses-entrepreneurs-finance-sageworks_slide_17.html

Who likes doing their taxes? Exactly.

"The Most Profitable Small Businesses," by Brett Nelson and Maureen Farrell, Forbes, April 15, 2010 ---
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/15/most-profitable-small-businesses-entrepreneurs-finance-sageworks.html?boxes=entrepreneurschannelinentre 

The 20 Most Profitable Slide Show (The top line has a Next button) ---
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/15/most-profitable-small-businesses-entrepreneurs-finance-sageworks_slide.html

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

 

And there, in a nutshell, you have the main reason why accounting became a much more popular major after the 1990s tech bubble burst.

Bob Jensen


iPhone Versus the Blackberry?
Here’s a video ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl7cqFQatP4

April 23, 2010 reply from Roger Collins [rcollins@TRU.CA]

Just a note that the video suggested by Bob is almost 2 years old - both the iPhone and the Blackberry have moved on since then.

A quick appraisal - if you want lots of applications, the iPhone wins hands down (unless you want Flash video of course - this morning Adobe announced that they weren't going to support Flash on the iPhone). Adobe is rumoured to be developing Flash for Blackberry.

The video is correct in saying the Blackberry's current Web browser is lousy and that the Blackberry e-mail is the better of the two.

If I were you I'd hold off a purchase until after next week, when RIM (Blackberry's maker) shows off its products at its trade show - April 27-29 in Orlando, Florida --- http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63L4OH20100422 

Give the techies a few days to evaluate any new offerings, and make a decision then.

If your need isn't urgent I'd suggest waiting 3 months or so (not all offerings work right the first time and the Blackberry Storm (first version) was, to put it frankly, a bust. Storm 2 is now rumored to be much better).

Roger

April 24, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

Thank you for the update Roger.

Storm 1 versus Storm 2 comparisons are given in the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06l0o4Itjkw

 


Video:  Laser Pico Projector Microvision "Show" --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UfarRM0BoM

"iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Projector Plans Revealed," ElectricPig, March 17, 2010 ---
http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2010/03/17/ipad-iphone-and-macbook-projector-plans-revealed-apple-patent-spied/

iPad, iPhone and Macbook models could become part of a projector system if Apple makes good on a patent that’s been uncovered. The plans revive speculation that Apple is pondering putting pico projectors into future iPad, iPhone and Macbook designs and using them as controllers in a projection system.

Apple’s patent details several different approaches to creating a projection system. It may create a brand new controller for a projection system with a pico projector built-in or bake the feature in to future versions of the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Macbook.

With its eye on further promoting the iPhone and iPad (and its iWork suite) as business tools, one reason for bringing a projector to the iPhone OS family would be to make them more attractive to business people that give presentations all the time.

Putting a powerful pico projector into the iPad or iPhone would give business folk a way of quickly showing what they’re working on and as Patently Apple suggests could easily be integrated with Apple’s Keynote Remote app.

Meanwhile, after promoting the iPod Touch as the “funnest iPod” and gunning for the gaming market with the iPhone and iPad, a pico projector could bring extra appeal for casual gamers. Rumours of an iPhone pico projector first surfaced last summer.

There’s also the potential for a pico projector power up to allow you to project films or TV shows from your iPad or iPhone onto any suitable surface. It would be a great move to make the iPad even more appealing as an on-the-go entertainment machine.

Apple’s patent details a networked projection system using multiple clients and suggests that the projector could even be built into a network hub in the same way that Time Capsule has a router built-in.

As usual with Apple, just because they’ve toyed with an idea doesn’t mean it will ever reach us. But we’d love to see Apple TV perked up with a built-in projector and future iPad and iPhone variations with pico projectors.

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology


McAfee antivirus program goes berserk, reboots PCs
MIT’s Technology Review, April 21, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/wire/25175/?nlid=2921&a=f 

Jensen Comment What on earth made me think of HAL in the 2001 Space Odyssey Movie?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Space_Odyssey


"Supreme Court Rules on Investment Adviser Fees:  The high court reaches back 70 years to reject two lower court rulings on investment adviser compensation," by Robert Willens, CFO.com, April 19, 2010 ---
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/14491972/c_14492636?f=home_todayinfinance


"California Dumbs Down Tests," by Linda Chavez, Townhall, April 23, 2010 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/LindaChavez/2010/04/23/california_dumbs_down_tests

When it comes to education trends, as California goes, so goes the nation. Which is all the more reason to be concerned about the latest effort in California to dumb down standards. The University of California's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) has launched another salvo in its long-running war against the SAT, the test used by many colleges and universities to assess academic achievement among high school seniors. This is only the latest in a series of moves by BOARS against the SAT, but this one may be a stalking horse to eliminate standardized tests in general, especially if they conflict with the goal of promoting racial and ethnic diversity.

BOARS has already eliminated a requirement that University of California applicants take at least two subject-matter tests in addition to the SAT Reasoning Test. Now BOARS is taking aim at the SAT directly. What makes the action more suspicious is that BOARS' own report notes that the SAT-R was developed specifically in response to testing principles it promulgated and that the new test "adds significant gains in predictive power of first year grades at UC." Nonetheless, BOARS is now recommending that students forgo the SAT in favor of the less-popular ACT.

Both tests have been accepted for more than 30 years and do a good job of predicting first-year grades. So why is BOARS now signaling preference for one test over another? After reading the report, it's hard to come away without feeling that the real target is standardized testing in general.

As numerous studies and the raw data on test scores have shown, performance on standardized tests varies not just between individuals but also between different racial and ethnic groups. In general, black and Latino students perform less well as a group than do white and Asian students. Since BOARS is committed to boosting the number of black and Latino students admitted to the UC system, standardized tests that do not produce politically correct results are a problem. It's not too far-fetched to wonder whether BOARS' effort to discourage students from taking the SAT may be the first step in getting rid of standardized tests altogether.

But getting rid of standardized tests is not the way to solve the problem of underperforming black and Latino students. Standardized tests, whether they be the SAT or state tests taken to assess elementary and secondary school performance required by the No Child Left Behind Act, merely document the skills gap that exists between whites and Asians on the one hand and blacks and Latinos on the other. The answer isn't fixing the tests to produce more even results between racial groups but improving the skills of those students who lag behind.

In 1996, voters in California did away with racial preferences in college admissions to state schools by enacting Proposition 209. Since then, many administrators in the UC system have tried to figure out a backdoor way to boost admissions of blacks and Latinos to the university's flagship schools, UC Berkley and UCLA. What they've failed to notice is that black and Latino enrollment system-wide is up over the levels when racial preferences were common. The students now enrolled under more race-neutral standards are doing just fine, graduating in higher percentages than they were when racial preferences admitted many students to campuses where they couldn't compete with their peers because their grades and test scores were substantially lower.

Eliminating standardized tests or dumbing down their contents doesn't help anyone. It simply sweeps evidence of academic disparities under the rug, where they can't be dealt with. If California really wants to improve education for all its students, it will work to keep high standards in place and encourage students to test what they have learned. California students prefer the SAT to other standardized tests, judging by the numbers who take this test now. BOARS' job should be to encourage students to make their own choices about which test they prefer, not to pick one test over another -- but most of all not to discourage the use of standardized tests altogether in the hopes of promoting greater diversity.

Bob Jensen's threads on affirmative action versus academic standards ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#AcademicStandards

Bob Jensen's threads on grade inflation scandals ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor


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


Gallup Poll Results, December 9, 2009 ---
http://www.gallup.com/poll/124625/Honesty-Ethics-Poll-Finds-Congress-Image-Tarnished.aspx

 


"Two Cheers for General Motors:  Yes, it's paid back $6 billion and is more efficient. It still owes taxpayers about $52 billion," by Paul Ingrassia, The Wall Street Journal, April 23, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704133804575198262088791270.html


From the Scout Report on April 16, 2010

Flying Bit Password Keeper 1.4.0.42 --- http://www.pwkeeper.com/ 

It can be a challenge to keep one's passwords all straight, but this application offers a potential solution. With this simple interface, visitors can organize their passwords in the directory, and these crucial items are then stored in an encrypted database. Also, the program can be used to create a database on a removable media device with very little fuss. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 98 and newer.


Lincoln Lore
A rare depiction of Abraham Lincoln turns up in New Hampshire Lincoln restored, thanks to NH find --- Click Here
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Lincoln+restored%2C+thanks+to+NH+find&articleId=0043598a-28cb-4253-8f9b-8e05bc420019

Long-Lost 1913 Lincoln Film to Premiere at the Putnam
http://keeneweb.org/newsline/2010/04/06/long-lost-1913-lincoln-film-to-premiere-at-the-putnam/ 

National Film Preservation Foundation http://www.filmpreservation.org/ 

The Bioscope http://bioscopic.wordpress.com/ 

Internet Archive: Abraham Lincoln http://www.archive.org/details/abraham_lincoln 

Silent Movies http://www.silent-movies.org/

 


From the /Scout Report on April 23, 2010

Weather Bar 2.1 --- http://weatherbar.codeplex.com/ 

It might be raining outside, but how will you know? Fortunately, there is the ever-handy Weather Bar, created by Dennis Delimarsky. This delightfully simple program sits in the taskbar, and visitors can set their location, and also elect to have weather updates sent out every minute. This program promises the highs and lows, the relative humidity levels, and a predictive icon. This version is compatible with computers running with all operating systems, including Linux.


NetNewsWire 3.2 --- http://www.newsgator.com/individuals/netnewswire/default.aspx 

There's a great deal of information out on the Internet, but not nearly enough knowledge. Fortunately, NetNewsWire can help users keep abreast of such knowledge via its towering command of rounding up the most valuable news from thousands of websites and blogs. With NetNewsWire, users can take advantage of their features, including complete desktop integration, a three-paneled interface, and a sort feature that keeps priority items highlighted. This version is compatible with computers running Mac OS X 10.5 and newer.


A Much Sought After Coffee Emerges From An Unusual Source >From Dung to Coffee Brew With No Aftertaste [Free registration >required]
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/world/asia/18civetcoffee.html?hpw 

The Horse Meat of the Coffee World http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/04/the-horse-meat-of-the-coffee-world/39126/  

A cup is more than a cup sometimes http://www.selmatimesjournal.com/news/2010/apr/17/cup-more-cup-sometimes/ 

The Straight Dope: Does kopi luwak coffee come from pre-eaten beans?
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2306/does-civet-come-from-tortured-cats 

From the Ground Up: Organic Coffee Certification, Production and Processing http://www.ota.com/pics/documents/CoffeeTalkMagazineExcerptNovember2009.pdf 

National Geographic: Coffee http://www.nationalgeographic.com/coffee/

 


Education Tutorials

Teaching History With Technology --- http://www.thwt.org/

Drawing With Light [Flash Player] http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/youth/dwl/default_e.jsp

Financial Literacy in the General Curriculum

April 20, 2010 message from Linda A Kidwell, University of Wyoming [lkidwell@UWYO.EDU]

This is a call for help from my accounting colleagues.  Here at the University of Wyoming, a group of us have been working for two years on getting financial literacy added to the general education requirements.

This would be a three hour requirement that could be satisfied with certain courses in the business school or by courses developed within other disciplines (such as those we already offer in agriculture and engineering).  The idea is not to replace a different requirement but to make FL part of a menu from which students can choose.  The student senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution in support, and the executive committee of the faculty senate unanimously supported the idea.  However once the proposal made it to the full faculty senate, there was tremendous pushback from the arts and sciences faculty.  I am hoping that some of you can help me respond to some of the objections.

The first objection is that financial literacy is not part of a liberal arts education and is adequately covered by the current requirement that students take a quantitative course like math.  Another objection is that there is no need, i.e. we have no evidence that this is a problem for our students.  I don't have time before the next senate meeting to do a comprehensive survey of our students, but I am quite certain that there is ample reason to believe our students are ill-prepared for life after college on this front.

I need help of two kinds.  First, if you are familiar with any recent literature about the financial literacy of recent college graduates, please send those my way.  I will do a lit review myself, of course, but if you have any golden nuggets, I'd sure appreciate them!  Second, if you have experience with this argument and have any advice on how to approach it, I'd love those ideas too.

As a liberal arts graduate myself, I do understand the general approach my colleagues have, but I do not understand why they have a blind spot on this.  If we can't make the case in the midst of the current economic problems, including the role of foolish mortgage behavior on the part of consumers, I don't think we can ever get it through.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Linda Kidwell

April 20, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Linda,

Some answers to your questions about needs for financial literacy are contained in the Chicago Federal Reserve videos at http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/summit2010/webcast.php
Also note the materials available and the monthly newsletter.

I maintain a small business helper site that also serves as a helper site for financial literacy at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#SmallBusiness

Example links to consider include the following:

"The Best Online Tools (software, services) for Personal Finance," The Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2009 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/PersonalFinanceTools.htm


A Government Website for Helpers in Personal Finance
MyMoney.gov is the U.S. government's website dedicated to teaching all Americans the basics about financial education. Whether you are planning to buy a home, balancing your checkbook, or investing in your 401k, the resources on MyMoney.gov can help you do it better. Throughout the site, you will find important information from 20 federal agencies government wide.
My Money.gov --- http://www.mymoney.gov/

The AICPA's Financial Literacy Helper Site --- http://www.360financialliteracy.org/

Money Smart from the FDIC --- http://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/moneysmart/

The Small Business Training Network has a number of good videos ---
http://www.sba.gov/training/index.html

Financial Literacy Music --- http://www.financialliteracymusic.com/

National Youth Financial Literacy Curriculum (not free) ---
http://www.financialeducatorscouncil.org/curriculum.htm
Also see http://helpmnsave.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={DA3AAB18-9112-489D-8B12-F5C214D98523}

Financial Literacy Websites (Resources) --- http://www.sabes.org/resources/financial-literacy.htm

I maintain a small business helper site that also serves as a helper site for financial literacy at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#SmallBusiness

February 20, 2010 reply from Tracey Zink [tzink@VSCPA.COM]

Virginia Society of CPAs and the Virginia Jump$tart coalition also worked towards adding a one-credit financial literacy course to the graduation requirements for high school students. We were recently successful in passing this requirement in Virginia. Here are some articles that may give you ideas on how to communicate your position in Wyoming:

http://cpacafe.blogspot.com/2010/01/pr-plan-celebrating-financial-literacy.html

http://www.webcpa.com/news/Teaching-Virginia-Children-Some-Cents-52681-1.html

I hope you'll find this information helpful.

Kind regards,

Tracey Zink
Community Relations Coordinator
Virginia Society of CPAs

www.vscpa.com
(804) 612-9427
tzink@vscpa.com │ LinkedIn Twitter

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


Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

Science News --- http://www.sciencenews.org/ 
Also see PhysOrg --- http://www.physorg.com/

The National Academies Present: What You Need to Know About Energy --- http://needtoknow.nas.edu/energy/

Essentials of Geology --- http://www.wwnorton.com/college/geo/egeo/welcome.htm

Resources for Earth Sciences and Geography Instruction --- http://webs.cmich.edu/resgi/

Soil Science Society of America [Real Player, pdf] https://www.soils.org/ 

Dig It! The Secrets of Soil --- http://forces.si.edu/soils/

MIT OpenCourseWare: Introduction to Geology --- Click Here

Global Canopy Programme (geology and climate) --- http://www.globalcanopy.org/

Geology Resources: The University of Texas of the Permian Basin http://ceed.utpb.edu/geology-resources/

"Setback for Enhanced Geothermal Energy," by Kevin Bullis, MIT's Technology Review, August 20, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/energy/24020/?nlid=2291

Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health --- http://apps.nlm.nih.gov/againsttheodds/index.cfm

National Institutes of Health: History of Medicine (England) --- http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/
Includes books, reports, pictures, videos, etc.

Both ENDS [global ecology, environment] --- http://www.bothends.org/

Philadelphia: The State of the City: A 2010 Update --- http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report_detail.aspx?id=57931

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

Nova on Behavioral Economics --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/money/about.html
Link Forwarded by Richard Sansing

Race, Immigration and America's Changing Electorate ---
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2008/0227_demographics_frey/0227_demographics_paper_frey.pdf

Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs --- http://ochaonline.un.org/

The California Loyalty Oath Digital Collection --- http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/loyaltyoath/

Veterans Affairs Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers --- http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/veterans_affairs/index.html

Integrating U.S. Climate, Energy, and Transportation Policies --- http://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_proceedings/2009/RAND_CF256.pdf

U.S. Department of Transportation: Federal Highway Administration: Geotechnical Engineering --- 
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/engineering/geotech/pubs/century/index.cfm

The University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center --- http://www.hsrc.unc.edu/index.cfm

MassTransitMag --- http://www.masstransitmag.com/

Expect Delays: An Analysis of Air Travel Trends in the United States ---  http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2009/1008_air_travel_tomer_puentes.aspx

Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health --- http://apps.nlm.nih.gov/againsttheodds/index.cfm

Both ENDS [global ecology, environment] --- http://www.bothends.org/

Philadelphia: The State of the City: A 2010 Update --- http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report_detail.aspx?id=57931

United States History (Philadelphia) ---  http://www.ushistory.org/index.html

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

Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals: United Nations War Crimes Commission ---
 http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/law-reports-trials-war-criminals.html

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

Teaching History With Technology --- http://www.thwt.org/

The Diane Rehm Show [iTunes, Celebrity Interviews] http://thedianerehmshow.org/

Morris K. Udall: Oral History Project [pdf, Real Player] http://content.library.arizona.edu/collections/mo_udall_oralhist/
Audio Records of Great Leaders in Congress

Oral History of the U.S. House of Representatives --- http://oralhistory.clerk.house.gov/

Reading: Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History ---  http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/reading/ 
Includes annotated copies belonging to famous authors and poets

Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves --- http://www.themorgan.org/collections/works/cleves/default.asp
Private library of financier Pierpont Morgan

The Virtual Museum of Iraq [Flash Player] http://www.virtualmuseumiraq.cnr.it/prehome.htm
Iraq's History Page --- http://www.angelfire.com/nt/Gilgamesh/history.html

Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present, March 14 - May 31 [Flash Player]
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/marinaabramovic/

Lincolniana at Brown (Brown University Lincoln History Library) --- http://dl.lib.brown.edu/lincoln/index.html

Veterans Affairs Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers --- http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/veterans_affairs/index.html

Shmoop is an online study guide for English Literature, Poetry and American history --- http://www.shmoop.com/

Delaware Notes (various historical themes, including poetry and literature) --- http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/4445 

Forgotten Books --- http://www.forgottenbooks.org/catalog/index.php

Art Through Time: A Global View --- http://www.learner.org/resources/series211.html

Wyndham Lewis's Art Criticism in The Listener, 1946-1951 --- http://www.unirioja.es/listenerartcriticism/

Raphael Soyer Papers (Artist), 1933-1989 ---  http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/soyeraph/

Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals: United Nations War Crimes Commission ---
 http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/law-reports-trials-war-criminals.html

Long Trail Photographs (the Green Mountains of Vermont) http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?title=Long%20Trail%20Photographs 
Oldest Long Distance Hiking Trail in the United States

Windows on Maine [Quick Time, Windows Media] --- http://windowsonmaine.library.umaine.edu/

Sioux City History (Iowa, Native American) --- http://www.siouxcityhistory.org/

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

PBS Video (Gory) :  American Experience: The Lobotomist [Flash Player] --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lobotomist/

Brian Jungen: Strange Comfort --- http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/jungen/index.html
The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) opened this exhibition by Dunne-za/Canadian artist Brian Jungen late in 2009.

Philadelphia: The State of the City: A 2010 Update --- http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report_detail.aspx?id=57931

United States History (Philadelphia) ---  http://www.ushistory.org/index.html

The Kentucky Library and Museum Online: Built Environment  --- http://www.wku.edu/library/kylm/collections/online/environment/index.html

Kentuckiana Digital Library (focus is on Kentucky history and photographs) ---  http://kdl.kyvl.org/

Milwaukee Public Museum: 125 Objects, 125 Years --- http://www.mpm.edu/exhibitions/featured/virtual-exhibit/ 

Milwaukee Repertory Theater Photographic History --- http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/digilib/milrep/index.cfm 
The Tibet Album presents more than 6000 photographs spanning 30 years of Tibet's history. These extraordinary photographs are a unique record of people long gone and places changed beyond all recognition. They also document the ways that British visitors encountered Tibet and Tibetans.

Sexy Cars in My Day --- http://www.orono1960.com/000/9/3/0/14039/userfiles/file/Detroit_Fin_Days.pdf

Video:  "The Decline of Classic Maya Civilization: A Systems Perspective," by Jeremy Sabloff ---
http://www.santafe.edu/research/videos/play/?id=86c6ffd8-5652-4e1b-a050-026c3b12ca28

The decline and abandonment of many key cities in the Southern Maya Lowlands around A.D. 800 has long attracted scholarly and public attention. While archaeologists now understand contrary to previous thought that Maya civilization did not collapse at this time, as a number of Maya cities continued to thrive up until the 16th century Spanish Conquest, the causes of the relatively rapid demise of cities such as Tikal, Palenque, and Copan remain of great interest. New archaeological, epigraphic, and environmental information have enabled archaeologists to form better models that provide more systemic perspectives on this decline than ever before. Sabloff examines the new data and models and discusses their potential relevance to problems facing the world today.
 

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


Language Tutorials

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


Music Tutorials

 

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


Writing Tutorials

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


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

April 20, 2010 

April 21, 2010

April 22, 2010

April 23, 2010

April 24, 2010

April 26, 2010

April 28, 2010




The Hippy CPA

The Hippy CPA
William corresponds with me privately on occasion and seems to have a very inquiring mind. He’s becoming more active on the CPA-L listserv.

William is a practitioner who actually works for a living, but like Scott Bonacker and some other practitioners on Barry’s listservs, William sometimes thinks and acts more like a professor of accountancy.

This of course begs the question of what “thinking like a professor” really means?

 

1.       A student with bad grammar lends some insight into what many students think it means.
http://studyskills.suite101.com/article.cfm/secrets_from_behind_the_professors_robes


 

2.       McMaster University provides some provocative thoughts on what it means --- Click Here
http://maclife.mcmaster.ca/academicskills/summaries/summary.cfm?videofilename=thinklikeaprof&totaltime=230&workshop=Full%20Frontal%20Learning&videoname=Think%20Like%20A%20Professor


 

3.       Roy Harris provides some added thoughts on this question.
http://careers.cfo.com/article.cfm/2988368/c_3046527?f=magazine_alsoinside

 Bob Jensen

From: THE Internet Accounting List/Forum for CPAs [mailto:CPAS-L@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU] On Behalf Of Accountants CPA Hartford CT William Brighenti CPA
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 4:45 PM
To: CPAS-L@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU
Subject: To any former hippies who became a CPA

 

The Hippy CPA

You may ask yourself—if you have virtually no clients and nothing to do or have just been fired for being a loser at a public accounting firm or have just smoked a joint and experienced a profound metaphysical rush—how a former hippy could have found the light, converted, and become a CPA?  The terms “hippy CPA” are oxymoronic, if not contradictory, in nature.

 

Yes, I confess…I was there at Woodstock, saw and heard Jimmy Hendrix play the star spangled banner to 300,000 fans on orange sunshine at sunrise; campaigned for Eugene McCarthy for President during the Vietnam war and obtained the most signatures in Connecticut for him to be placed on the ballot qualifying me to meet him in New York; then worked for Bobby Kennedy and met Ethel at the Kennedy Compound after his death; talked to Abbie Hoffman at an anti-war rally and stole his book; participated in SDS’s takeover of the administration building at the University of Connecticut and by doing such received an A grade in Social Organization from a tenured professor subsequently dismissed from the University for being a campus radical….I was there on the left fringes of society attempting to usher in the new Great Society, where peace, justice, equal opportunity, and love prevailed.  Yes, I opposed the corporate state of our country, where 5% of our populace owns 95% of our country’s wealth, where Big Brother multinational corporations control our lives, outsourcing all jobs to distant countries and laying us off at will, leaving us penniless and unable to pay our mortgages and destined to become itinerants as in the Grapes of Wrath….I saw all of this 40 years ago and then forgot and abandoned all of these causes because I needed a job, so I became a CPA, an enemy and traitor to the Great Cause, selling out my former brothers and sisters for 30 pieces of silver….

 

It’s perhaps unfortunate that too many of us abandoned our youthful ideals out of mercenary needs.  If we had remained united, fighting for all of the causes of the Great Society, opposing the mammoth multinationals, big brother corporations, from controlling our government and our lives, perhaps this recent economic collapse of our country—that was foreseen and predicted by so many Nostradamuses so many years ago—could have been avoided.  How many of you in Accounting Land were there at Woodstock, at the Lincoln Memorial’s peace rally, at Martin Luther’s “I had a dream” speech?  How many of you remember that fleeting moment when we believed our country could have escaped this fate that has now landed on us with the crushing weight of Plymouth Rock, leaving our country broke and broken?  How many of you were there that yearned for a better America, where all had jobs, homes not in foreclosure, universal healthcare, pensions, and hopes for better lives for our children?  We had a dream and then squandered it, unlike our parents, the great generation, who defeated Nazism and Fascism during World War II.  We failed miserably.

 

We chanted the litany of Madison Avenue, buy on credit beyond our means, we need every nonsense product now at any cost…buy, buy, buy…consume, consume, consume.  Over a lifetime we’ve collected so much junk that we have now run out of landfills to dispose of all of it.  We have become a country of repossessed houses, abandoned factories, unemployed workers, business shells of outsourced businesses, landfills, and junk.  We have squandered all of our resources and have violated every creed of the conservationists.  We are now wasting our most valuable natural resource:  the human resource, unemploying and underemploying our labor force.  We have failed miserably.

 

As a nation, our national debt spiraled from $250 billion after World War II to $12 trillion.  We create wars for the multinational defense industries—that industrial military complex that President Eisenhower warned us about—to profit by.  $300 billion here this year; $300 billion there next year.  Tuitions skyrocket, children go uneducated, the dream of an educated populace has been forgotten and forfeited.

 

I believe angels are the accountants in heaven, debiting and crediting the actions of our everyday lives.  They have posted every transaction, recording it faithfully, shaking their heads in disbelief at our performance, recording all of the penalties and fines we have so justly incurred.  So really, in all honesty, when it's all done and over with, when your cardiac arrest train inevitably does arrive as suddenly and scary as the third, grim reaper spirit in "A Christmas Carol", would you then be surprised to learn that you have been given an “F” grade for the contribution to humanity of your entire life’s work?

 

Mea culpa.


William Brighenti, CPA
Accountants CPA Hartford, LLC
46 Mildrum Rd, Berlin, CT 06037-2423
Phone/Fax: 860-828-3269
accountantscpahartfordllc@gmail.com
http://www.cpa-connecticut.com

 


Forwarded by Nancy

1. She was in the bathroom, putting on her makeup, under the watchful eyes of her young granddaughter, as she'd done many times before. After she applied her lipstick and started to leave, the little one said, "But Gramma, you forgot to kiss the toilet paper good-bye!" I will probably never put lipstick on again without thinking about kissing the toilet paper good-bye...

2. My young grandson called the other day to wish me Happy Birthday. He asked me how old I was, and I told him, 62. My grandson was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, "Did you start at 1?"

3. After putting her grandchildren to bed, a grandmother changed into old slacks and a droopy blouse and proceeded to wash her hair. As she heard the children getting more and more rambunctious, her patience grew thin. Finally, she threw a towel around her head and stormed into their room, putting them back to bed with stern warnings. As she left the room, she heard the three-year-old say with a trembling voice, "Who was THAT?"

4. A grandmother was telling her little granddaughter what her own childhood was like: "We used to skate outside on a pond. I had a swing made from a tire; it hung from a tree in our front yard. We rode our pony. We picked wild raspberries in the woods." The little girl was wide-eyed, taking this all in. At last she said, "I sure wish I'd gotten to know you sooner!"

5. My grandson was visiting one day when he asked, "Grandma, do you know how you and God are alike?" I mentally polished my halo and I said, "No, how are we alike?'' "You're both old," he replied.

6. A little girl was diligently pounding away on her grandfather's word processor. She told him she was writing a story.. "What's it about?" he asked. "I don't know," she replied. "I can't read.."

7. I didn't know if my granddaughter had learned her colors yet, so I decided to test her. I would point out something and ask what color it was She would tell me and was always correct. It was fun for me, so I continued. At last, she headed for the door, saying, "Grandma, I think you should try to figure out some of these, yourself!"

8. When my grandson Billy and I entered our vacation cabin, we kept the lights off until we were inside to keep from attracting pesky insects. Still, a few fireflies followed us in. Noticing them before I did, Billy whispered, "It's no use Grandpa. Now the mosquitoes are coming after us with flashlights."

9. When my grandson asked me how old I was, I teasingly replied, "I'm not sure." "Look in your underwear, Grandpa," he advised, "mine says I'm 4 to 6."

10. A second grader came home from school and said to her grandmother, "Grandma, guess what? We learned how to make babies today." The grandmother, more than a little surprised, tried to keep her cool "That's interesting," she said, "how do you make babies?" "It's simple," replied the girl. "You just change 'y' to 'i' and add 'es'.."

11 Children's Logic: "Give me a sentence about a public servant," said a teacher. The small boy wrote: "The fireman came down the ladder pregnant." The teacher took the lad aside to correct him. "Don't you know what pregnant means?" she asked. "Sure," said the young boy confidently. 'It means carrying a child."

12. A grandfather was delivering his grandchildren to their home one day when a fire truck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the fire truck was a Dalmatian dog. The children started discussing the dog's duties. "They use him to keep crowds back," said one child. "No," said another. "He's just for good luck." A third child brought the argument to a close."They use the dogs," she said firmly, "to find the fire hydrants."

13. A 6-year-old was asked where his grandma lived. "Oh," he said, "she lives at the airport, and when we want her, we just go get her. Then, when we're done having her visit, we take her back to the airport."

14. Grandpa is the smartest man on earth! He teaches me good things, but I don't get to see him enough to get as smart as him!

15. My Grandparents are funny, when they bend over; you hear gas leaks, and they blame their dog.




Tidbits Archives --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/

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

What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?  ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm

Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So

Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews

 

World Clock --- http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/

Interesting Online Clock and Calendar --- http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones --- http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) --- http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
         Also see http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
        
Facts about population growth (video) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth --- http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq --- http://www.costofwar.com/ 
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons --- http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.

Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

CPA Examination --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle --- http://cpareviewforfree.com/

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