Who's
Succeeding in Online Education?
The most respected online programs at this point in time seem to be embedded in
large university systems that have huge onsite extension programs as well as
online alternatives. Two noteworthy systems in this regard are the enormous
University of Wisconsin and the University of Texas extension programs. Under
the initial leadership of Jack Wilson, UMass Online thrives with hundreds
of online courses. I think Open University in the U.K. is the largest public
university in the world. Open University has online as well as onsite programs.
The University of Phoenix continues to be the largest private university in the
world in terms of student enrollments. I still do not put it and Open University
in the same class as the University of Wisconsin, however, because I'm dubious
of any university that relies mostly on part-time faculty.
From the University of Wisconsin
Distance Education Clearinghouse ---
http://www.uwex.edu/disted/home.html
I wonder if the day will come when we see
contrasting advertisements:
"A UC Berkeley Accounting PhD online in 5-6 Years Full Time"
"A Capella Accounting PhD online in 2 Years Full Time and no comprehensive
examinations"
Capella University is one of the better for-profit online universities in the
world. ---
http://www.capella.edu/
A Bridge Too Far
I discovered that Capella University is now offering an online Accounting PhD
Program ---
http://www.capella.edu/schools_programs/business_technology/phd/accounting.aspx
- Students with no business studies background (other than a basic
accounting course) can complete the program in 2.5 years part time or
slightly less than 2 years full-time.
- The the Capella accounting PhD curriculum is more like an MBA curriculum
and is totally unlike any other accounting PhD program in North America.
There are relatively few accounting courses and much less focus on research
skills.
- There are no comprehensive or oral examinations. The only requirements
120 quarter credits, including credits to be paid for a dissertation
- I'm still trying to learn whether there is access to any kind of
research library or the expensive financial databases that are required for
other North American accounting doctoral programs..
Although I have been recommending that accountancy doctoral programs break
out of the accountics mold, I don't think that the Capella's curriculum meets my
expectation ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
On May 4, 2010, PBS Frontline broadcast an hour-long video called College
Inc. --- a sobering analysis of for-profit onsite and online colleges and
universities.
For a time you can watch the video free online ---
Click Here
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=toparea&utm_source=toparea
Even in lean times, the $400 billion business of
higher education is booming. Nowhere is this more true than in one of the
fastest-growing -- and most controversial -- sectors of the industry:
for-profit colleges and universities that cater to non-traditional students,
often confer degrees over the Internet, and, along the way, successfully
capture billions of federal financial aid dollars.
In College, Inc., correspondent
Martin Smith investigates the promise and
explosive growth of the for-profit higher education industry. Through
interviews with school executives, government officials, admissions
counselors, former students and industry observers, this film explores the
tension between the industry --which says it's helping an underserved
student population obtain a quality education and marketable job skills --
and critics who charge the for-profits with churning out worthless degrees
that leave students with a mountain of debt.
At the center of it all stands a vulnerable
population of potential students, often working adults eager for a
university degree to move up the career ladder. FRONTLINE talks to a former
staffer at a California-based for-profit university who says she was under
pressure to sign up growing numbers of new students. "I didn't realize just
how many students we were expected to recruit," says the former enrollment
counselor. "They used to tell us, you know, 'Dig deep. Get to their pain.
Get to what's bothering them. So, that way, you can convince them that a
college degree is going to solve all their problems.'"
Graduates of another for-profit school -- a college
nursing program in California -- tell FRONTLINE that they received their
diplomas without ever setting foot in a hospital. Graduates at other
for-profit schools report being unable to find a job, or make their student
loan payments, because their degree was perceived to be of little worth by
prospective employers. One woman who enrolled in a for-profit doctorate
program in Dallas later learned that the school never acquired the proper
accreditation she would need to get the job she trained for. She is now
sinking in over $200,000 in student debt.
The biggest player in the for-profit sector is the
University of Phoenix -- now the largest college in the US with total
enrollment approaching half a million students. Its revenues of almost $4
billion last year, up 25 percent from 2008, have made it a darling of Wall
Street. Former top executive of the University of Phoenix
Mark DeFusco told FRONTLINE how the company's
business-approach to higher education has paid off: "If you think about any
business in America, what business would give up two months of business --
just essentially close down?" he asks. "[At the University of Phoenix],
people go to school all year round. We start classes every five weeks. We
built campuses by a freeway because we figured that's where the people
were."
"The education system that was created hundreds of
years ago needs to change," says
Michael Clifford, a major education entrepreneur
who speaks with FRONTLINE. Clifford, a former musician who never attended
college, purchases struggling traditional colleges and turns them into
for-profit companies. "The big opportunity," he says, "is the inefficiencies
of some of the state systems, and the ability to transform schools and
academic programs to better meet the needs of the people that need jobs."
"From a business perspective, it's a great story,"
says
Jeffrey Silber, a senior analyst at BMO Capital
Markets, the investment banking arm of the Bank of Montreal. "You're serving
a market that's been traditionally underserved. ... And it's a very
profitable business -- it generates a lot of free cash flow."
And the cash cow of the for-profit education
industry is the federal government. Though they enroll 10 percent of all
post-secondary students, for-profit schools receive almost a quarter of
federal financial aid. But Department of Education figures for 2009 show
that 44 percent of the students who defaulted within three years of
graduation were from for-profit schools, leading to serious questions about
one of the key pillars of the profit degree college movement: that their
degrees help students boost their earning power. This is a subject of
increasing concern to the Obama administration, which, last month, remade
the federal student loan program, and is now proposing changes that may make
it harder for the for-profit colleges to qualify.
"One of the ideas the Department of Education has
put out there is that in order for a college to be eligible to receive money
from student loans, it actually has to show that the education it's
providing has enough value in the job market so that students can pay their
loans back," says Kevin Carey of the Washington think tank Education Sector.
"Now, the for-profit colleges, I think this makes them very nervous," Carey
says. "They're worried because they know that many of their members are
charging a lot of money; that many of their members have students who are
defaulting en masse after they graduate. They're afraid that this rule will
cut them out of the program. But in many ways, that's the point."
FRONTLINE also finds that the regulators that
oversee university accreditation are looking closer at the for-profits and,
in some cases, threatening to withdraw the required accreditation that keeps
them eligible for federal student loans. "We've elevated the scrutiny
tremendously," says Dr. Sylvia Manning, president of the Higher Learning
Commission, which accredits many post-secondary institutions. "It is really
inappropriate for accreditation to be purchased the way a taxi license can
be purchased. ...When we see any problematic institution being acquired and
being changed we put it on a short leash."
Also note the comments that follow the above text.
But first I highly recommend that you watch the video at
---
Click Here
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=toparea&utm_source=toparea
May 5, 2010 reply from Paul Bjorklund
[paulbjorklund@AOL.COM]
Interesting program. I saw the first half of it and
was not surprised by anything, other than the volume of students. For
example, enrollment at University of Phoenix is 500,000. Compare that to
Arizona State's four campuses with maybe 60,000 to 70,000. The huge computer
rooms dedicated to online learning were fascinating too. We've come a long
way from the Oxford don sitting in his wood paneled office, quoting
Aristotle, and dispensing wisdom to students one at a time. The evolution:
From the pursuit of truth to technical training to cash on the barrelhead.
One question about the traditional university though -- When they eliminate
the cash flow from big time football, will they then be able to criticize
the dash for cash by the educational entrepreneurs?
Paul Bjorklund, CPA
Bjorklund Consulting, Ltd.
Flagstaff, Arizona
I wonder if the Secretary of Education watched the College Inc Frontline
PBS show? I doubt it!
"Duncan Says For-Profit Colleges Are Important to Obama's 2020 Goal," By
Andrea Fuller," by Andrea Fuller, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 11, 2010
---
http://chronicle.com/article/Duncan-Says-For-Profit/65477/
Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, expressed
support on Tuesday for the role that for-profit colleges play in higher
education at a policy forum here held by DeVry University.
For-profit institutions have come under fire
recently for their low graduation rates and high levels of student debt. A
Frontline documentary last week focused on the for-profit sector, and a
speech by Robert Shireman, a top Education Department official, was
initially reported as highly critical of for-profit colleges, even though a
transcript of Mr. Shireman's remarks showed that he actually spoke more
temperately.
Mr. Duncan said on Tuesday in a luncheon speech at
the forum that there are a "few bad apples" among actors in the for-profit
college sector, but he emphasized the "vital role" for-profit institutions
play in job training.
Those colleges, he said, are critical to helping
the nation achieve President Obama's goal of making the United States the
nation with the highest portion of college graduates by 2020. Mr. Duncan
also praised a partnership between DeVry and Chicago high schools that
allows students to receive both high-school and college credit while still
in high school.
Mr. Duncan's comments come at a time when
for-profit college officials are anxiously awaiting the release of new
proposed federal rules aimed at them. A proposal that would tie college
borrowing to future earnings has the sector especially concerned.
The rule is not yet final, but the Education
Department is considering putting a cap on loan payments at 8 percent of
graduates' expected earnings based on a 10-year repayment plan and earnings
data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Supporters of for-profit colleges say the rule
would basically force them to shut down educational programs and as a
consequence leave hundreds of thousands of students without classes.
On May 4, 2010, PBS Frontline broadcast an hour-long video called College
Inc. --- a sobering analysis of for-profit onsite and online colleges and
universities.
For a time you can watch the video free online ---
Click Here
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=toparea&utm_source=toparea
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Brainstorm on What For-Profit Colleges are Doing Right as Well as Wrong
"'College, Inc.'," by Kevin Carey, Chronicle of Higher Education,
May 10, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/College-Inc/23850/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
PBS broadcast a
documentary on for-profit higher education last
week, titled College, Inc. It begins with the slightly ridiculous
figure of
Michael Clifford, a former cocaine abuser turned
born-again Christian who never went to college, yet makes a living padding
around the lawn of his oceanside home wearing sandals and loose-fitting
print shirts, buying up distressed non-profit colleges and turning them into
for-profit money machines.
Improbably, Clifford emerges from the documentary
looking OK. When asked what he brings to the deals he brokers, he cites
nothing educational. Instead, it's the "Three M's: Money, Management, and
Marketing." And hey, there's nothing wrong with that. A college may have
deep traditions and dedicated faculty, but if it's bankrupt, anonymous, and
incompetently run, it won't do students much good. "Nonprofit" colleges that
pay their leaders executive salaries and run
multi-billion dollar sports franchises have long
since ceded the moral high ground when it comes to chasing the bottom line.
The problem with for-profit higher education, as
the documentary ably shows, is that people like Clifford are applying
private sector principles to an industry with a number of distinct
characteristics. Four stand out. First, it's heavily subsidized. Corporate
giants like the University of Phoenix are now pulling in hundreds of
millions of dollars per year from the taxpayers, through federal grants and
student loans. Second, it's awkwardly regulated. Regional accreditors may
protest that their imprimatur isn't like a taxicab medallion to be bought
and sold on the open market. But as the documentary makes clear, that's
precisely the way it works now. (Clifford puts the value at $10-million.)
Third, it's hard for consumers to know what they're
getting at the point of purchase. College is an experiential good;
reputations and brochures can only tell you so much. Fourth—and I don't
think this is given proper weight when people think about the dynamics of
the higher-education market—college is generally something you only buy a
couple of times, early in your adult life.
All of which creates the potential—arguably, the
inevitability—for sad situations like the three nursing students in the
documentary who were comprehensively ripped off by a for-profit school that
sent them to a daycare center for their "pediatric rotation" and left them
with no job prospects and tens of thousands of dollars in debt. The
government subsidies create huge incentives for for-profit colleges to
enroll anyone they can find. The awkward regulation offers little in the way
of effective oversight. The opaque nature of the higher-education experience
makes it hard for consumers to sniff out fraudsters up-front. And the fact
that people don't continually purchase higher education throughout their
lives limits the downside for bad actors. A restaurant or automobile
manufacturer that continually screws its customers will eventually go out of
business. For colleges, there's always another batch of high-school
graduates to enroll.
The Obama administration has made waves in recent
months by proposing to tackle some of these problems by implementing
"gainful
employment" rules that would essentially require
for-profits to show that students will be able to make enough money with
their degrees to pay back their loans. It's a good idea, but it also raises
an interesting question: Why apply this policy only to for-profits?
Corporate higher education may be the fastest growing segment of the market,
but it still educates a small minority of students and will for a long time
to come. There are plenty of traditional colleges out there that are mainly
in the business of preparing students for jobs, and that charge a lot of
money for degrees of questionable value. What would happen if the gainful
employment standard were applied to a mediocre private university that
happily allows undergraduates to take out six-figure loans in exchange for a
plain-vanilla business B.A.?
The gainful employment standard highlights some of
my biggest concerns about the Obama administration's approach to
higher-education policy. To its lasting credit, the administration has taken
on powerful moneyed interests and succeeded. Taking down the FFEL program
was a historic victory for low-income students and reining in the abuses of
for-profit higher education is a needed and important step.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
The biggest question remains concerning the value of "education" at the micro
level (the student) and the macro level (society). It would seem that students
in training programs should have prospects of paying back the cost of the
training if "industry" is not willing to fully subsidize that particular type of
training.
Education is another question entirely, and we're still trying to resolve
issues of how education should be financed. I'm not in favor of "gainful
employment rules" for state universities, although I think such rules should be
imposed on for-profit colleges and universities.
What is currently happening is that training and education programs are in
most cases promising more than they can deliver in terms of gainful employment.
Naive students think a certificate or degree is "the" ticket to career success,
and many of them borrow tens of thousands of dollars to a point where they are
in debtor's prisons with their meager laboring wages garnished (take a debtor's
wages on legal orders) to pay for their business, science, and humanities
degrees that did not pay off in terms of career opportunities.
But that does not mean that their education did not pay off in terms of
life's fuller meaning. The question is who should pay for "life's fuller
meaning?" Among our 50 states, California had the best plan for universal
education. But fiscal mismanagement, especially very generous unfunded
state-worker unfunded pension plans, has now brought California to the brink of
bankruptcy. Increasing taxes in California is difficult because it already has
the highest state taxes in the nation.
Student borrowing to pay for pricey certificates and degrees is not a good
answer in my opinion, but if students borrow I think the best alternative is to
choose a lower-priced accredited state university. It will be a long, long time
before the United States will be able to fund "universal education" because of
existing unfunded entitlements for Social Security and other pension
obligations, Medicare, Medicaid, military retirements, etc.
I think it's time for our best state universities to reach out with more
distance education and training that prevent many of the rip-offs taking place
in the for-profit training and education sector. The training and education may
not be free, but state universities have the best chance of keeping costs down
and quality up.
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
"Ph.D. From Diploma Mill Doesn't Block Prof's Tenure," Inside
Higher Ed, May 11, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/11/qt#227176
Northeastern Illinois University last year awarded
tenure to a faculty member who lists a Ph.D. from an unaccredited
institution that has been labeled a diploma mill, the
Chicago Sun-Times reported. The university
says that it awarded tenure under a little used rule that allows tenure for
"exceptional" teachers who lack doctorates. The faculty member says that he
disavowed the doctorate years ago, but the newspaper noted that it remains
on his university résumé and that the university president called him "Dr."
in documents related to his tenure approval.
Jensen Comment
It would be interesting to know if this is mostly tenure for great teaching or
if this professor met the other thresholds for "publish or perish?"
Bob Jensen's threads on diploma mills are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#DiplomaMill
Wake Up Little Suzie, Wake Up: Big Brother's Watching at Northern
Arizona University
"University Plans to Install Electronic Sensors to Track Class Attendance," by
Karen Wilkinson, Converge Magazine, May 8, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/infrastructure/University-Plans-to-Install-Electronic-Sensors-to-Track-Class-Attendance.html
Jensen Comment
These "proximity cards" have many types of other uses, including crime
prevention and law enforcement. But there are problems, including "Don't Leave
Home Without It." "It's a trend toward a surveillance
society that is not necessarily befitting of an institution or society," said
Adam Kissel, defense program director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in
Education. "It's a technology that could easily be expanded and used in student
conduct cases."
Bob Jensen's threads on the dark side of education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
"Scientists forecast decades of ash clouds: Many more of Iceland’s
volcanoes seem to be stirring," by Jonathan Leake and Chris Hastings, The
London Times, May 16, 2010 ---
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7127706.ece
THE Icelandic eruption that has caused misery for
air travellers could be part of a surge in volcanic activity that will
affect the whole of Europe for decades, scientists have warned.
They have reconstructed a timeline of 205 eruptions
in Iceland, spanning the past 1,100 years, and found that they occur in
regular cycles — with the relatively quiet phase that dominated the past
five decades now coming to an end.
At least three other big Icelandic volcanoes are
building towards an eruption, according to Thor Thordarson, a volcanologist
at Edinburgh University.
“The frequency of Icelandic eruptions seems to rise
and fall in a cycle lasting around 140 years,” he said. “In the latter part
of the 20th century we were in a low period, but now there is evidence that
we could be approaching a peak.”
His findings coincide with new warnings that the
eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, which has disrupted air traffic across Europe
for several weeks, could carry on for many months — and possibly years.
Some geologists have also warned of a serious
threat from a fourth volcano, Katla, which lies 15 miles to the east of
Eyjafjallajokull. Two of its past three eruptions seemed to be triggered by
those of its smaller neighbour and a report issued just before
Eyjafjallajokull blew suggested Katla was “close to failure [eruption]”.
The three other volcanoes cited by Thordarson as
being potentially close to a large eruption are Grimsvotn, Hekla and Askja —
all of which are bigger than Eyjafjallajokull.
In the past, they have proved devastating. Hekla
alone has erupted about 20 times since AD874, pouring out a total of two
cubic miles of lava from a line of fissures that stretches 3Å miles across
the mountain.
There was a minor eruption in 2000 and geologists
have reported that snow is once again melting on Hekla’s summit, suggesting
that magma is rising.
Grimsvotn, another highly active volcano, lies
under the huge Vatnajokull glacier in Iceland’s southeast. An eruption in
1996 saw much of this glacial ice melt, causing a flood that washed away the
country’s main ring road.
It is linked to the massive Laki fissure volcano
whose 1783 eruption ejected so much ash into the atmosphere that it cooled
the entire northern hemisphere for nearly three years. The resulting low
temperatures caused crop failures and famines that killed 2m people and
helped trigger the French Revolution.
Thordarson believes that the behaviour of the
volcanoes is linked to movements in the earth’s crust which create massive
subterranean stresses over wide areas.
As these stresses build up, more volcanoes erupt
and as the stress disappears, the volcanoes subside again.
The theory is a controversial one. Gillian Foulger,
professor of geophysics at Durham University, suggests that historic
clusters of eruptions could well have occurred by chance. She said: “This
needs rigorous statistical support.”
However, both she and Thordarson agree that Europe
needs to take the threat of further Icelandic eruptions more seriously,
including improving the monitoring of active volcanoes. Foulger is writing
to David Willetts, the new science minister, suggesting Britain could
support Iceland in such a project.
She said: “There are about 35 active [big]
volcanoes in Iceland and if we put a high quality seismograph and some
global positioning equipment on each one we would often be able to tell in
advance if an eruption was coming. The cost is tiny compared with the
potential economic damage from an unexpected eruption.”
Continued in article
"Typing Analysis Software Keeps Online Students Honest," by Tanya
Roscorla, Converge Magazine, May 12, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/Typing-Analysis-Software-Keeps-Online-Students-Honest.html
During his senior year, Shaun Sims took online
classes at the University of Texas at Austin to supplement his regular
courses. Some of his friends took online classes too, but they turned in
assignments that other people completed for them.
That's when Sims decided to do something to cut
back on cheating online. In 2009, he and computer science Ph.D student
Andrew Mills launched a startup company called Digital Proctor. By analyzing
each online participant's unique typing pattern, their software
authenticates the student's work.
“We verify that students who sign up are the same
students actually completing the coursework,” Sims said. "We make sure
students are who they say they are.”
Two customers are currently using the software in
pilot programs, including Midland College in Texas.
With the reauthorization of the Higher Education
Opportunity Act in 2008, colleges and universities must now meet 50 new
accountability requirements, one of which is making sure that the students
who sign up for online courses are the ones who are participating in it.
They have three options: use secure logins and passcodes; give proctored
examinations; or find new technologies that could verify students' identity.
Midland College already has the first two options,
but wants to be proactive in maintaining the integrity of their online
classes, said Dale Beikirch, dean of distance learning and continuing
education. So the college decided to enter a pilot with Digital Proctor.
“The day is coming when this secure login and
password is not going to be enough to authenticate students," Beikirch said,
"and that’s what’s sort of driving all of this is the need for schools to be
able to ensure that the person enrolled in a course is the one taking the
test.”
Continued in article
Cheating Issues Somewhat Unique to Distance Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#OnlineCheating
Cloud Computing ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
"Learning About Everything Under The 'Cloud'," by Walter S. Mossberg,
The Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703961104575226194192477512.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_TECHEDITORSPICKS
The digital world loves to revel in its own jargon,
and one of its most popular phrases today is "cloud computing." You see the
expression everywhere new uses for the Internet are discussed. But what do
techies and companies mean when they refer to doing things in "the cloud"?
They aren't talking about meteorology, and all they see when they use the
term—which is always singular—is sunshine, not rain.
To help you navigate through the talk about cloud
computing, here's a very basic explainer. It doesn't cover every detail
current among Internet experts. But I hope it gives regular folks a better
understanding of the "cloud" products and services being offered them.
At its most basic level, the "cloud" is simply the
Internet, or the vast array of servers around the world that comprise it.
When people say a digital document is stored, or a digital task is being
performed in the cloud, they mean that the file or application lives on a
server you access over an Internet connection, via a Web browser or app,
rather than on "local" devices, like your computer or smartphone.
This isn't a new idea. For years, there have been
services that would back up your files to a distant server over the Internet
or keep your photos online. And Web-based email programs, like Yahoo Mail or
Hotmail, are familiar examples of cloud-based applications. These programs
live on servers, not your PC, and you access them through a Web browser.
What's changed is that, in recent years,
large-scale Internet-based storage has gotten cheaper, so it's possible for
programmers to create more-sophisticated remote software, and the speed and
ubiquity of Internet connections have improved. Also, some users have
expressed a desire to share and collaborate in easier and richer ways than
emailing files. Cloud-based services let many users view, comment on, and
edit the same material. All this has given a boost to cloud computing.
On top of that, computers are changing in ways that
make cloud services more desirable. Your little netbook may lack the huge
hard disk needed to hold all your music or photos, but there are ways to
keep this material in the cloud and access it at will. Your smartphone can't
run all the sophisticated programs, or store all the files, that your PC
can. But, if it's connected to cloud storage and cloud-based apps, it can do
much more than its hardware specs suggest. And, with cloud file storage and
apps that run on remote servers, you could conceivably travel without any
computer. A borrowed PC, tablet or smartphone might be all you need to log
in and do real work.
So, in recent years, a flood of cloud-based
products and services have appeared to store and share files; to keep
information on all your devices synchronized; and even to perform tasks like
editing photos, or creating and editing long documents or large
spreadsheets.
For instance, I wrote parts of this column in a
private test edition of a cloud-based version of Microsoft Word that the
company will release soon. In fact, Microsoft will be making its entire
Office suite available free in the cloud. Google and others already have
such cloud-based productivity suites. Another example: Many of the 200,000
apps for Apple's iPhone are merely small programs that tap data or services
stored in the cloud to provide everything from restaurant choices to driving
directions.
There are other good examples. At Picnik.com,
you'll find an elegant, versatile cloud-based photo editor that can work on
pictures from a wide variety of Web-based photo sites as well as those on
your own hard disk. At Zoho.com, you'll find a cornucopia of cloud-based
apps that interact with both the Web and your local hard disk. You can track
your finances using a cloud-based program called Mint, which is available
from a PC browser, or from an iPhone or Android-based phone.
Of course, clever readers will have noticed that
this trend toward cloud computing has an obvious flaw. If you aren't
connected to the Internet—or are saddled with a poor connection—you could be
left high and dry when you want access to an important file stored remotely,
or need to use a cloud-based program. Google, which is building an entire
cloud-based operating system, and other companies have come up with ways to
store some remote material on your local device. But these solutions aren't
yet comprehensive, so wise users will make sure that the tools and files
they need most are still available on their devices.
Some products get around this by offering hybrid
cloud and local services. One of my favorites in this category is SugarSync,
which backs up key folders you select to the Web and synchronizes them to
the hard disks on your PCs or Macs, so you always have the freshest copies
handy, whether you have a connection or not. Another problem is privacy.
Many of these cloud services have good security, but prying hackers are
relentless and smart, so consumers should be careful about what they store
in the cloud. You may not care if a family photo is swiped, but your Social
Security number is a different matter.
Cloud computing is here, and growing, and quite
useful. It will only get better and better.
Question
Do you know why Socrates feared the high technology of writing?
"The soft bigotry of low expectations," Babbage Blog from
The Economist Magazine, May 14, 2010 ---
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/05/children_and_technology
This week Barack Obama offered a throwaway line
about technology in a
graduation speech at Hampton University.
With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and
PlayStations—none of which I know how to work—information becomes a
distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of
empowerment.
And we cranked out
a leader.
Socrates’s bugbear was the spread of the
biggest-ever innovation in communications—writing. He feared that
relying on written texts, rather than the oral tradition, would “create
forgetfulness in the learners’ souls…they will trust to the external
written characters and not remember of themselves.” Enos Hitchcock
voiced a widespread concern about the latest publishing fad in 1790.
“The free access which many young people have to romances, novels and
plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising
youth.” (There was a related worry that sofas, introduced at the same
time, encouraged young people to drift off into fantasy worlds.) Cinema
was denounced as “an evil pure and simple” in 1910; comic books were
said to lead children into delinquency in 1954; rock’n’roll was accused
of turning the young into “devil worshippers” in 1956; Hillary Clinton
attacked video games for “stealing the innocence of our children” in
2005.
I think we imagine on some level that our children
are weaker than we were. In 2004, I was working in a tech startup in
Cambridge, Mass. We took on a Harvard undergrad as an intern; I asked her
whether she used IM, which was how most of the office shared information.
(Five geeks in two rooms. It smelled bad in the winter). Her answer,
however, was
Oh, I stopped IMing in middle school. I just
found that it wasn't very productive.
Ultimately we all grow into some kind of ambition,
and have to make decisions about how we spend our time. There's no reason
ambition will find iPads any more difficult to conquer than it did IM or
novels before it. If spending time online is bad for your life (and I think
it can be), you'll figure it out.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on the dark side of education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
The Good Old Days: When the Best You Could Afford was a Model A Ford
"Tech.View: Cars and software bugs," Babbage Blog from The
Economist Magazine, May 16, 2010 ---
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/05/techview_cars_and_software_bugs
Watch the Video
"Adobe’s New Ads Take Aim at Apple." The Wall Street Journal, May
13, 2010 ---
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/05/13/digits-live-show-adobes-new-ads-take-aim-at-apple/?mod=rss_WSJBlog&mod=
Adobe has launched an ad campaign that says it
“hearts” Apple, but that it also loves choice and creative freedom. The Wall
Street Journal’s Lauren Goode and deputy managing editor Alan Murray talk
about Adobe’s latest volley in the ongoing feud with Apple about the
company’s decisions to limit the software—including Adobe’s Flash—that can
run on its devices. Walt Mossberg weighs in the role consumers and
developers will play in the platform wars, and also
compares options for digitally organizing personal
records and vital information.
Video from the Los Angeles Times: Android Versus iPhone ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17IB2ipYY3I
"A Wave of Android Smartphones Outsells Apple: Devices that run
Google's Android software outsold the iPhone in the first quarter, helping make
Verizon Wireless a smartphone powerhouse," Olga Kharl, Business Week,
May 20, 2010 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2010/tc20100510_027179.htm?link_position=link1
This story has been updated to include a comment from Apple.
A storefront in one of the busiest shopping
districts in downtown Portland, Ore., is painted black, with "Droid Does" in
large letters over the doors.
Orchestrated by carrier
Verizon Wireless, aggressive promotions such as
this one for Motorola's (MOT)
Droid smartphone, plus a blitz of direct mail,
newspaper, and TV ads, and two-for-one deals on Android-powered handsets,
lifted first-quarter sales of smartphones based on Google's (GOOG)
Android operating system above sales of Apple's
(AAPL)
iPhone for the first time, market researcher
NPD Group reported on May 10.
Android-powered phones accounted for 28 percent of
all smartphones sold in the U.S., exceeding Apple's 21 percent share during
the quarter, NPD said. Research in Motion's (RIMM)
BlackBerry models led the category with a 36 percent
share.
Leapfrogging Apple is an important milestone—and
not just for Android, an open-source software developed by a consortium of
companies led by Google. NPD's report also shows how quickly Verizon
Wireless has become a central player in the fast-growing market for the
pocket computers known as smartphones. In the first quarter, Verizon
customers bought 30 percent of all smartphones sold in the U.S., nearly
equaling the 32 percent share of AT&T (T),
which has an exclusive contract to sell the iPhone, according to the report.
AT&T also sells an Android handset from Motorola and plans to carry an
upcoming Android smartphone from Dell (DELL).
Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison said in an
e-mailed statement on May 11 that NPD's report is "very limited" and based
on 150,000 U.S. consumers responding to an online survey. The survey "does
not account for the more than 85 million iPhone and iPod touch customers
worldwide," she said. The "iPhone has 16.1 percent of the smartphone market
and growing, far outselling Android on a worldwide basis," Harrison said,
citing data from market researcher
IDC.
Verizon no longer seen as desperate
Until recently, Verizon was an also-ran in the
smartphone market. It carried the BlackBerry, but didn't have a breakthrough
consumer-oriented smartphone to compete with the iPhone. Analysts were
calling for Verizon to strike a deal with Apple to distribute the iPhone.
Last December, Verizon said it had
effected network upgrades that would enable its
network to handle extra traffic should Apple decide to expand the number of
carriers authorized to sell iPhones.
Question
What causes asset price bubbles?
"Asset-Price Bubbles," by Richard Posner, Becker-Posner Blog, May 16,
2010 ---
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/beckerposner/2010/05/assetprice-bubblesposner.html
"Social Interactions and Bubbles," by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker,
Becker-Posner Blog, May 16, 2010 ---
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/beckerposner/2010/05/social-interactions-and-bubbles-becker.html
Comparisons of Leading Plagiarism Detection Services
May 13, 2010 message from JustFit Studio
[admin@justfitstudio.com]
Hi Bob!
I have recently reviewed your threads on plagiarism here:
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm and
was impressed by how many sides of plagiarism it covers. It is very-very
good material both as a source for any further research and as a general
knowledge.
So, I simply wanted to say thank you for a good job researching the topic
and attract your attention to the article I recently posted on my website:
"Top 10 Tools to Detect Plagiarism Online". I saw
you posted the comparison of plagiarism detection services on your web page
and wanted to advice you have a look at my article. It is fresh and has
researched all the services available on the Internet and evaluated top 10
on a set of criteria. I mean maybe you will find any more information
valuable for your further research in it.
I also would really appreciate if you put a reference (link) to my article
from the web page of your threads.
Here is the link to it:
http://www.justfitstudio.com/articles/plagiarism-detection.html
Anyway I would love to read your feedback on the
article of mine. Just in case you'll have a minute to drop a line.
Thanks and regards,
Christian Farela
Human Subject Research Controversies
"Academe Hath No Fury Like a Fellow Professor Deceived," by Paul
Basken, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 8, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Academe-Hath-No-Fury-Like-a/65466/
University professors plying their trade have been
known at times to lie to store managers, restaurant owners, and even the
worldwide readership of Wikipedia.
A couple of them have now risked fibbing to a
potentially far more problematic lot: thousands of their fellow professors.
The researchers, Katherine L. Milkman of the
University of Pennsylvania and Modupe N. Akinola of Columbia University,
wanted to find out if people are more likely to act admirably when given
more time to do so. And so they sent fake e-mail messages to 6,300
professors nationwide, pretending to be a graduate student seeking a few
minutes of the professors' time.
Ms. Milkman and Ms. Akinola may now have their
answer, though perhaps not in the way they intended.
The study "belongs in the trash heap of ill-advised
research projects," Andrew E. Gelman, a professor of statistics and
political science at Columbia, fired back to Ms. Milkman and Ms. Akinola
after they revealed how and why they had deceived him. He posted his
response on his
blog, Statistical
Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.
Philip H. Daileader, an associate professor of
history at the College of William and Mary, wrote back to the two
researchers: "Involving colleagues, or any human beings, in a study without
their knowledge and their prior consent is unethical."
Compensation and
Apologies
The basic tactic employed by Ms. Milkman, an
assistant professor of operations and information management, and Ms.
Akinola, an assistant professor of management, is hardly without precedent.
Researchers routinely devise tests in which they or
others adopt the guise of job applicants, home buyers, store customers, and
many other false personae to test theories about such human behaviors as
fraud, racism, and greed.
And some of their targets have protested in the
past. One of the most
infamous cases, cited by Mr. Gelman in his
response to Ms. Milkman and Ms. Akinola, is that of Francis J. Flynn,
another Columbia researcher, who wrote to about 240 New York restaurants in
2001 claiming to have contracted food poisoning. Mr. Flynn, now at Stanford
University, said he wanted to study how the restaurant owners handled
complaints, and ended up being
sued by 10 of them.
Nobody is talking about suing Ms. Milkman and Ms.
Akinola, and Mr. Gelman readily acknowledges this is a far less serious
matter than the one involving Mr. Flynn. But at least a few of the 6,300
professors are complaining loudly and looking for some kind of compensation
or response.
Mr. Gelman estimates he is owed $10 for his lost
time. Mr. Daileader wants the researchers to know the damage they've done to
the atmosphere of trust at universities. Corrine McCarthy, an assistant
professor of English at George Mason University, feels she's owed some kind
of apology for being falsely led to believe that a student was actually
interested in the linguistics studies of a junior researcher like herself.
The professors contacted by Ms. Milkman and Ms.
Akinola were divided into two groups, with some told by their fictional
graduate student that he or she wanted a 10-minute meeting that same day,
and others asked by the fake student for a meeting in a week.
Ms. McCarthy, among those asked by her bogus e-mail
sender for an immediate meeting, wrote back saying she would be available
during her regular office hours from 10 to 11 a.m. that day. The researchers
sent out immediate cancellation messages to those who accepted, explaining
what they did and why, but Ms. McCarthy didn't find that follow-up e-mail
message until after sitting in anticipation the full hour.
Ms. Milkman and Ms. Akinola said in their
cancellation messages that they hoped to test previous research showing that
people "tend to favor doing things they viscerally want to do over what they
believe they should do when making decisions for now, while they are more
likely to do what they believe they should when making decisions for later."
They also varied the names and genders of their fabricated students, testing
what those differences might cause in response rates.
Human-Subject
Approvals
Neither Ms. Milkman nor Ms. Akinola responded to
requests from The Chronicle for comment. In their follow-up
messages to the deceived professors, they said the experiment was approved
by the institutional review boards at both Penn and Columbia, and that those
boards were prepared to answer any questions about their "rights as a
research subject."
The decision to use deceit in a research experiment
is a "really sensitive" matter, said Devah I. Pager, an associate professor
of sociology at Princeton University who has used the technique in her
exploration of racial discrimination throughout society.
Ms. Pager said she couldn't assess the propriety of
the Milkman-Akinola experiment, but she said she placed strong emphasis on
ensuring trust between faculty members and students. "It's not the same as
the type of trust between an employer and its employees or its customers,"
she said.
Others, both critical and supportive of the
Milkman-Akinola experiment, also suggested at least the possibility of
allowing differences between deceiving professors and deceiving most other
members of society.
Sandra M. Sanford, director of the Office of
Research Subject Protections at George Mason, said she disagreed with a
suggestion by Ms. McCarthy that Ms. Milkman and Ms. Akinola should have
obtained prior consent from the institutional review board at every
university where they contacted a professor. "It's not possible" to get
permission from hundreds of universities, for the sake of perhaps only a
handful of professors at each institution, Ms. Sanford said.
Ms. Sanford said her review panel, however, would
have expected Ms. Milkman and Ms. Akinola to seek its permission if it
appeared they were specifically interested in George Mason professors. In an
earlier unrelated case, she said, the George Mason review panel saw no need
for its researchers to gain the approval of stores when the researchers
proposed sending purported job applicants into the stores testing whether
their success was affected by wearing clothes of particular cultural or
religious affiliations.
One key factor in the panel's approval in that
case, Ms. Sanford said, is that the study did not pursue a single store or
chain of stores. The board also regarded the store managers collectively as
a single entity at each store, she said, rather than individuals deserving
any human-subject protection. She said she believed the university
professors contacted for the Milkman-Akinola study, by contrast, should have
been regarded as individuals.
Differences and
Regrets
T. Mills Kelly, an associate professor of history
at George Mason with his own controversial teaching practices, said Ms.
Sanford's review panel probably would not have approved the Milkman-Akinola
request if it came from George Mason professors, saying the board "is really
touchy about anything like that."
Mr. Kelly has gained attention for
experiments such as having his class post to
Wikipedia the fictional tale of a pirate who stalked the Chesapeake Bay in
the 1870s, to help the students gain a skeptical attitude toward the
reliability of historical accounts. Mr. Kelly never sought review-board
permission for that exercise, feeling it didn't technically involve human
subjects. The Milkman-Akinola method differed in that they sent their lie
directly to a few thousand professors, he said, rather than let an unknown
number of people find it on the Internet.
"There's a difference," Mr. Kelly said, "between
push and pull."
Continued in article
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.
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Benford's Law: How a mathematical phenomenon can help CPAs uncover fraud
and other irregularities
Benford's Law: It's interesting to read the "Silly" comments that
follow the article.
"Benford's Law And A Theory of Everything: A new relationship
between Benford's Law and the statistics of fundamental physics may hint at a
deeper theory of everything," MIT's Technology Review. May 7, 2010
---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25155/?nlid=2963
In 1938, the physicist Frank Benford made an
extraordinary discovery about numbers. He found that in many lists of
numbers drawn from real data, the leading digit is far more likely to be a 1
than a 9. In fact, the distribution of first digits follows a logarithmic
law. So the first digit is likely to be 1 about 30 per cent of time while
the number 9 appears only five per cent of the time.
That's an unsettling and counterintuitive
discovery. Why aren't numbers evenly distributed in such lists? One answer
is that if numbers have this type of distribution then it must be scale
invariant. So switching a data set measured in inches to one measured in
centimetres should not change the distribution. If that's the case, then the
only form such a distribution can take is logarithmic.
But while this is a powerful argument, it does
nothing to explan the existence of the distribution in the first place.
Then there is the fact that Benford Law seems to
apply only to certain types of data. Physicists have found that it crops up
in an amazing variety of data sets. Here are just a few: the areas of lakes,
the lengths of rivers, the physical constants, stock market indices, file
sizes in a personal computer and so on.
However, there are many data sets that do not
follow Benford's law, such as lottery and telephone numbers.
What's the difference between these data sets that
makes Benford's law apply or not? It's hard to escape the feeling that
something deeper must be going on.
Today, Lijing Shao and Bo-Qiang Ma at Peking
University in China provide a new insight into the nature of Benford's law.
They examine how Benford's law applies to three kinds of statistical
distributions widely used in physics.
These are: the Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution which
is a probability measure used to describe the distribution of the states of
a system; the Fermi-Dirac distribution which is a measure of the energies of
single particles that obey the Pauli exclusion principle (ie fermions); and
finally the Bose-Einstein distribution, a measure of the energies of single
particles that do not obey the Pauli exclusion principle (ie bosons).
Lijing and Bo-Qiang say that the Boltzmann-Gibbs
and Fermi-Dirac distributions distributions both fluctuate in a periodic
manner around the Benford distribution with respect to the temperature of
the system. The Bose Einstein distribution, on the other hand, conforms to
benford's Law exactly whatever the temperature is.
What to make of this discovery? Lijing and Bo-Qiang
say that logarithmic distributions are a general feature of statistical
physics and so "might be a more fundamental principle behind the complexity
of the nature".
That's an intriguing idea. Could it be that
Benford's law hints at some kind underlying theory that governs the nature
of many physical systems? Perhaps.
But what then of data sets that do not conform to
Benford's law? Any decent explanation will need to explain why some data
sets follow the law and others don't and it seems that Lijing and Bo-Qiang
are as far as ever from this.
It's interesting to read the "Silly" comments
that follow the article.
"I've Got Your Numbe: How a mathematical phenomenon can help CPAs
uncover fraud and other irregularities," by Mark J. Nigrini, Journal of
Accountancy, May 1999 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/1999/May/nigrini.htm
May 11, 2010 reply from J. S. Gangolly
[gangolly@CSC.ALBANY.EDU]
Bob,
I do not think there is anything new in this.
Benford's law has been around since the 30s, and power laws have been around
much longer; Benford's law is just a special case of power law.
Scale invariance property of power laws also has
been a fundamental concept in most sciences including physics, biology,
linguistics, psychology, economics, among others.
The most interesting work I have seen of scale
invariance is the work on fractals by Benoit Mandelbrot. (He was the thesis
advisor of Fama). An application in the finance area is called FAMA (Fractal
Adaptive Moving Averages). See for example:
http://systems4trading.com/formula,683,metastock,moving-average---fractal-adaptive-(fama).html
PBS had a fascinating program called "Hunting the
hidden dimension. See:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fractals/program.htm
Jagdish S. Gangolly,
Associate Professor (j.gangolly@albany.edu)
Director, PhD Program in Information Science,
Department of Informatics, College of Computing & Information 7A Harriman
Campus Road, Suite 220 State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY
12206. Phone: (518) 956-8251, Fax: (518) 956-8247
URL:
http://www.albany.edu/acc/gangolly
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm
"Pulse Smartpen by Livescribe," Rick Lillie's Thinking Outside the
Box Blog, May 9, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/pulse-smartpen-by-livescribe/
While attending a recent accounting education
conference, I played with
Pulse Smartpen by
Livescribe.
The Pulse Smartpen records and links audio to what you
write. It provides an interesting way to take notes and capture information
that can be played back later for review, study, and/or sharing with others.
I was curious about ways the Pulse Smartpen might
be used to create course materials and share them with students.
Livescribe’s website includes a variety of illustrative recordings. Click
this link to view a demo lecture entitled “Crossing
the Chasm.” The demo shows how to use
the Pulse Smartpen to record and share a lecture that includes
drawing a picture or diagram and supporting the drawing with audio.
[NOTE: In order to make the viewing screen easier to see, you may wish to
click the icon in the upper right-corner of the playback screen to enlarge
the viewing screen.]
I see how the Pulse Smartpen can capture a drawing
and audio explaining the drawing. This could be particularly useful for
creating a walk-through explanation of a problem or process. Note that you
need to draw the picture from scratch as you put together a walk-through
explanation.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on tricks and tools of the trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
"Truth Is at Hand How Gesture Adds Information During Investigative
Interviews," by Sara C. Broaders and Susan Goldin-Meadow, Psychological
Science, May 2010 ---
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/03/19/0956797610366082.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc
The accuracy of information obtained in forensic
interviews is critically important to credibility in the legal system.
Research has shown that the way interviewers frame questions influences the
accuracy of witnesses’ reports. A separate body of research has shown that
speakers gesture spontaneously when they talk and that these gestures can
convey information not found anywhere in the speakers’ words. In our study,
which joins these two literatures, we interviewed children about an event
that they had witnessed. Our results demonstrate that (a) interviewers’
gestures serve as a source of information (and, at times, misinformation)
that can lead witnesses to report incorrect details, and (b) the gestures
witnesses spontaneously produce during interviews convey substantive
information that is often not conveyed anywhere in their speech, and thus
would not appear in written transcripts of the proceedings. These findings
underscore the need to attend to, and document, gestures produced in
investigative interviews, particularly interviews conducted with children.
Continued in article
Questions
Has the art and science of reading faces ever been part of an auditing
curriculum?
Have there been any accountics studies of Ekman's theories as applied to
auditing behavioral experiments?
(I can imagine that some accounting doctoral students have not experimented
along these lines?)
Paul Ekman video on how to read faces and detect lying ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA8nYZg4VnI
This video runs for nearly one hour
Paul Ekman ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman
Ekman's work on facial expressions had its starting
point in the work of psychologist
Silvan Tomkins.[Ekman
showed that contrary to the belief of some
anthropologists including
Margaret Mead, facial expressions of emotion are
not culturally determined, but universal across human cultures and
thus
biological in origin. Expressions he found to be
universal included those indicating
anger,
disgust,
fear,
joy,
sadness, and
surprise. Findings on
contempt are less
clear, though there is at least some preliminary evidence that this emotion
and its expression are universally recognized.]
In a research project along with Dr. Maureen
O'Sullivan, called the
Wizards Project (previously named the
Diogenes Project), Ekman reported on facial "microexpressions"
which could be used to assist in lie detection. After testing a total of
15,000 [EDIT: This value conflicts with the 20,000 figure given in the
article on Microexpressions] people from all walks of life, he found only 50
people that had the ability to spot deception without any formal training.
These naturals are also known as "Truth Wizards", or wizards of
deception detection from demeanor.
He developed the
Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to taxonomize
every conceivable human facial expression. Ekman conducted and published
research on a wide variety of topics in the general area of non-verbal
behavior. His work on lying, for example, was not limited to the face, but
also to observation of the rest of the body.
In his profession he also uses verbal signs of
lying. When interviewed about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he mentioned that
he could detect that former President
Bill Clinton was lying because he used
distancing language.
Ekman has contributed much to the study of social
aspects of lying, why we lie,
and why we are often unconcerned with detecting lies.
He is currently on the Editorial Board of Greater Good magazine,
published by the
Greater Good Science Center of the
University of California, Berkeley. His
contributions include the interpretation of scientific research into the
roots of compassion, altruism, and peaceful human relationships. Ekman is
also working with Computer Vision researcher
Dimitris Metaxas on designing a visual
lie-detector.
"The New Face of Emoticons: Warping photos could help text-based
communications become more expressive," by Duncan Graham-Rowe, MIT's
Technology Review, March 27, 2007 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18438/
Bob Jensen's threads on visualization
Visualization of Multivariate Data (including faces) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm
Immigration Law News ---
http://www.canadausvisas.com/
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting news, blogs, tweets, and
social/professional networking in general ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
"Methodology Change for Ph.D. Rankings," by Scott
Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, May 10, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/10/nrc
The National Research
Council -- responding to criticism it received in the internal peer review
of its
forthcoming doctoral program rankings -- is
changing the methodology in a few key places for the
long-awaited project.
The changes -- which are
not yet final -- are likely to divide the main ranking of each program into
two separate rankings -- one based on explicit faculty determinations of
which criteria matter in given disciplines, and one based on implicit
criteria. Further, the council is likely to release ranges of ratings for a
90 percent "confidence level," not the confidence level target of 50 percent
that was in the methodology released last year.
The use of confidence
levels means that instead of saying that a given program is the second or
eighth or 20th best, the council will instead say that a given program is in
a certain range. By raising the confidence level to 90 percent, instead of
saying that there is a 50 percent chance that a program is between 20th and
26th, the council will say (to use that hypothetical) that there is a 90
percent chance that a program is between the 15th and 35th best in the
nation -- resulting in much broader ranges for the rankings.
The additional changes in
methodology -- which was
theoretically released in final form in July --
suggest that further delays are likely for the rankings. NRC officials have
for about a year now stopped answering questions about the timing of the
release, although the ratings are still expected in 2010.
Many graduate program
directors and deans are increasingly frustrated by the timing of the
project. Data collection for the project (whatever methodology changes are
used) started in 2006, with
an original schedule for releasing the rankings in 2007.
Many programs note that the departure or arrival of a
few faculty members who are skilled at landing grants means that some
programs may have changed significantly in the years that passed. Further,
with many universities looking at trimming graduate programs, some of those
who run stellar but threatened programs have been hoping that the NRC
rankings would bolster their defenses.
The NRC has not formally
announced that it is changing the methodology. But Jeremiah P. Ostriker,
chair of the committee overseeing the project and a professor of astronomy
at Princeton University, described for Inside Higher Ed the changes
that he said are "likely" but not yet certain.
On the question of the
ranges to be reported, Ostriker said that the committee has long wanted to
avoid the "spurious precision problem" of previous rankings in implying
certainty that a given program is a precise number in relation to all
others. Given the way programs change constantly, imperfections in
information and averages, and a range of other factors, Ostriker said the
rankings will be "more accurate" for being presented as a range, and not as
a single figure. He noted that "commercial" ranking efforts tend to give a
single number, "but that's no excuse for us making the error."
While the idea of giving
ranges was part of the methodology released last year, he said that the peer
review comments for the rankings (and outside comments) have led him and
other committee members to question the idea of giving a range that provides
only a 50 percent confidence level, meaning there is also a 50 percent
chance that the program is somewhere outside of that range. Peer reviewers
found it "confusing" to offer that low a confidence level, so the idea is to
increase it to 90 percent, which will have the effect of expanding the range
of possibilities.
Ostriker acknowledged that
this change will make it more difficult for people to pinpoint exactly where
a program stands. But he said that's because it is impossible to do so in
any accurate way. "We wanted more honesty and more data and we wanted to be
honest about the true uncertainties in rankings," he said. "We hope it
doesn't make people unhappy, but if that does make people unhappy, they will
need to get used to it."
Bob Jensen's threads on ranking controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
Bob Jensen's threads on vegetable ranking controversies
are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
US News Rankings of Universities and Colleges ---
http://www.usnews.com/rankings
Best Business Schools According to Business Week Magazine ---http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/08_47/B4109best_business_schools.htm
This includes a history link on the rankings over the years.
"Best Business Programs by Specialty: College business students
rated their schools on a dozen disciplines, from ethics to sustainability. The
top programs include some surprises," Business Week, May 6, 2010 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/may2010/bs2010055_765866.htm?link_position=link1
Irish eyes are smiling on Notre Dame's
Mendoza College of Business (Mendoza
Undergraduate Business Profile). Not only is
Mendoza home to the top-ranked undergraduate business program in the nation
and the most satisfied students; it's also the most decorated school in
Bloomberg Businessweek's annual ranking of the Best
Undergraduate Business Programs by Specialty.
As part of Bloomberg Businessweek's
annual ranking of the
top undergraduate business programs, senior
business students from the 139 participating schools were asked to assign
letter grades—from A to F—to their business programs in 12 specialty areas:
quantitative methods, operations management, ethics, sustainability,
calculus, microeconomics, macroeconomics, accounting, financial management,
marketing management, business law, and corporate strategy. Based on those
grades, scores were calculated for each of the ranked schools in each area.
Not surprisingly, the top-ranked schools in the
overall ranking, published in March, have the most top-10 specialty
rankings, as well. Notre Dame leads the way, appearing on eight top-10
lists, followed by
Cornell University (Cornell
Undergraduate Business Profile) and
Babson College (Babson
Undergraduate Business Profile)—Nos.5 and 15 in
the overall ranking, respectively—with six top-10 specialty ranks
apiece.Emory University's
Goizueta School of Business
(Goizueta
Undergraduate Business Profile), the
University of Pennsylvania's
Wharton School (Wharton
Undergraduate Business Profile), and the
Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of
North Carolina-Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler
Undergraduate Business Profile) each ranked near
the top of five specialty lists.
Racking Up Top Awards
Among them, the top three programs in the overall
ranking took eight of the No. 1 specialty ranks. No. 1 Notre Dame is tops in
accounting and ethics, No. 2 University of Virginia
McIntire School of Commerce (McIntire
Undergraduate Business Profile) takes the top spot
in both macroeconomics and business law, and No.3 Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Sloan School of Management (Sloan
Undergraduate Business Profile) is best in
quantitative methods, operations management, calculus, and marketing. "Sloan
requires a great deal of its students," says an MIT senior business student
responding to the Bloomberg Businessweek survey. "It's
exceedingly challenging, but that's a good thing."
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on ranking controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
"5 Year Jail Sentence for Former Louisville Dean," Inside Higher Ed,
May 18, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/18/qt#227682
Robert Felner, a former dean of education at the
University of Louisville, was sentenced Monday to 63 months in prison for
defrauding the university and the University of Rhode Island, where he had
worked previously, of $2.3 million and for tax evasion,
The Louisville Courier-Journal reported. In
a plea agreement in January, Felner pleaded guilty to nine federal charges.
Many professors
complained that the university for years ignored complaints over Felner,
who was highly successful at attracting grants and
attention to the education school before the investigations of his conduct
started.
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
"Silencing the Whistleblowers: Financial reform won’t prevent
another bubble if banks bulldoze their internal warning systems," by Michael
W. Hudson, The Big Money (Slate), May 9, 2010 ---
http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2010/05/07/silencing-whistleblowers
In early 2006, Darcy Parmer began to worry about
her job. She was a mortgage fraud investigator at Wells Fargo Bank. Her
managers weren’t happy with her. It wasn’t that she wasn’t doing a good job
of sniffing out questionable loans in the bank’s massive home-loan program.
The problem, she said, was that she was doing too good a job.
The bank’s executives and mortgage salesmen didn’t
like it, Parmer later claimed in a lawsuit, when she tried to block loans
that she suspected were underpinned by paperwork that exaggerated borrowers’
incomes and inflated their home values. One manager, she said, accused her
of launching “witch hunts” against the bank’s loan officers.
One of the skirmishes involved a borrower she later
referred to in court papers as “Ms. A.” An IRS document showed Ms. A earned
$5,030 a month. But Wells Fargo’s sales staff had won approval for Ms. A’s
loan by claiming she made more than twice that—$11,830 a month. When Parmer
questioned the deal, she said, a supervisor ordered her to close the
investigation, complaining, “This is what you do every time.”
Amid the frenzy of the nation’s mortgage boom, the
back-of-the-hand treatment that Parmer describes wasn’t out of the ordinary.
Parmer was one of a small band of in-house gumshoes at various financial
institutions who uncovered evidence of corruption in the mortgage
business—including made-up addresses, pyramid schemes, and organized
criminal rings—and tried to warn their employers that this wave of fraud
threatened consumers as well as the stability of the financial system.
Instead of heeding their warnings, they say, company officials ignored them,
harassed them, demoted them, or fired them.
In interviews and in court records, 10 former fraud
investigators at seven of the nation’s biggest banks and lenders—including
Wells Fargo (WFC), IndyMac Bank, and Countrywide Financial—describe
corporate cultures that allowed fraud to thrive in the pursuit of loan
volume and market share. Mortgage salesmen stuck homeowners into loans they
couldn’t afford by exaggerating borrowers’ assets and, in some cases,
forging their signatures on disclosure documents. In other instances, banks
opened their vaults to professional fraudsters who arranged millions of
dollars in loans using “straw buyers,” bogus identities, or, in a few
instances, dead people’s names and Social Security numbers.
Corporate managers looked the other way as these
practices flourished, the investigators say, because they didn’t want to
crimp loan sales. The investigators discovered that they’d been hired not so
much to find fraud but rather to provide window dressing—the illusion that
lenders were vetting borrowers before they booked loans and sold them to
Wall Street investors. “You’re like a dog on a leash. You’re allowed to go
as far as a company allows you to go,” recalled Kelly Dragna, who worked as
a fraud investigator at Ameriquest Mortgage Co., the largest subprime lender
during the home-loan boom. “At Ameriquest, we were on pretty short leash. We
were there for show. We were there to show people that they had a lot of
investigators on staff.”
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on the subprime sleaze ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Sleaze
Bob Jensen's threads on how whistle blowing is not rewarded ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#WhistleBlowing
Paula sent the following with respect to personal information in the
Spokeo database
Go to
www.spokeo.com &
type in your name. Wait until you see the info on YOU!
It's shocking that ANYONE can access the info (However, to obtain your
credit score, income, etc the "searcher" must pay a fee – and these websites
have been around for a long time, they’re nothing new!)
TO REMOVE YOUR
INFORMATION:
1st:
copy the URL (the website address where your information is found),
2nd:
go to the spokeo.com home page, scroll down to the bottom, and click on
“Privacy,” then follow the instructions.
This is TRUE! See:
http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/spokeo.asp
Paula
May 10, 2010 reply from Fordham, David
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
Bob, it's also inaccurate enough to be downright
laughable. It's low accuracy, not only with me and you, but of several
members of my family and several friends I checked, makes this a non-serious
site, one of limited use to anyone, including those with nefarious intent.
Although I've lived in the Shenandoah Valley for
almost 20 years, it has a lot of inaccurate information on me at three of my
former addresses, including my childhood home where it says I'm currently in
my mid-80's, recently graduated high school, have no children, work as a
gardener, own the home, and am a Capricorn!
In another entry, it has my father listed as two of
my children. It has me at the address of a vacation rental we stayed at for
four days back in the 1980's. It has my wife living at the address of her
old high school. Our address in Tallahassee doesn't include me or my wife,
but lists my oldest son (5 at the time) as being in his 70's, owning the
home, occupation as a professional, and the only other member of the family
is was Faraday, which was our cat.
I certainly wouldn't bother taking the time to
remove my information from this site... it's going to die a nice natural
death shortly, IMHO.
David Fordham
Jensen Comment
I found links to three Robert Jensen people in New Hampshire, but none of them
are related to me.
Fortunately I seem to have fallen through the cracks.
From the Scout Report on May 7, 2010
.LibraryThing ---
http://www.librarything.com/
Books are meant to be shared, so why not share your
personal favorites with others around the world? LibraryThing makes it easy
to do just this, and visitors can catalog their books online here after
creating a profile. After entering their books, visitors can offer their own
sage wisdom on each title, and cross-reference their thoughts with others on
the network who have read similar titles. Visitors can take a virtual tour
before signing up, and there's also a series of discussion boards. Users can
catalog their first 100 books at no charge, and LibraryThing is compatible
across all platforms, including Linux.
WinZip 14.5 ---
http://www.winzip.com/index.htm
The WinZip Computing organization recently released
the latest iteration of their utility program, and it has some noteworthy
additions. This version is aimed specifically at establishing complete
Windows 7 compliance, and it also adds previews for certain file types.
Additionally, the automatic wiping feature assures that the temporary file
created by WinZip will be "shredded" after the unzipping process is
completed. This version is free to try for 45 days, and it is compatible
with computers running Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7.
The United-Continental airline merge raises
questions and concerns for a range of travelers In United-Continental Deal,
Birth of a Behemoth [Free registration may be required]
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/04air.html?src=me
How the Continental-United merger will affect
business travelers
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/grossman/2010-05-04-continental-united-merger_N.htm
Workers, passengers wary over airline merger
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6986823.html
The World's Airlines. Past, Present & Future
http://www.airlinehistory.co.uk/
Airline Meals ---
http://www.airlinemeals.net/index.php
Flagrant Foul: Call for a Forensic Accountant: Could it be a
double dribble?
"Minority Owner Sues Cuban, Calls Mavericks ‘Insolvent’," by Richard Sandimir,
The New York Times, May 11, 2010 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/sports/basketball/12mavericks.html?hpw
Mark Cuban’s financial management of the Dallas
Mavericks was described as reckless in a lawsuit filed Monday in Texas by a
minority investor in the team who accused Cuban of amassing net losses of
$273 million and debt of more than $200 million.
Ross Perot Jr., who sold Cuban control of the team
in 2000 but retained a small stake, said in the state court filing that the
team was essentially insolvent and lacked the revenue to pay its debts.
Perot is seeking damages, the naming of a receiver
to take over the team and the appointment of a forensic accountant to
investigate its finances. Perot said that Cuban’s actions had diminished the
value of his investment in the team and violated his and other minority
owners’ rights.
In an e-mail message to The Dallas Morning News,
Cuban said: “There is no risk of insolvency. Everyone always has been and
will be paid on time.” He added that “being in business with Ross Perot is
one of the worst experiences of my business life.”
“He could care less about Mavs fans,” Cuban
continued. “He could care less about winning.”
The lawsuit partly opened the Mavericks’ books,
showing some results and projections. Perot said the team generated a net
loss of more than $50 million in the year ended June 2009 and a net cash
flow deficit of $176 million since 2001. Looking ahead, Perot said that
internal projections showed additional losses of $92 million through 2013
and debt rising to $281 million.
Marc Ganis, a sports industry consultant, said that
Perot “seems to want to be bought out at a premium, wants to restrict
Cuban’s ability to spend money on players, or it’s personal.”
The N.B.A. does not seem to be worried by Perot’s
accusations.
Adam Silver, the deputy commissioner of the N.B.A.,
said the league had “absolutely no concern” about Cuban’s financial
situation. In an e-mail message, he said, “We are in the process of
addressing our teams’ ongoing losses through the collective bargaining
process with our players.”
Cuban acquired the Mavericks for $285 million from
Perot in the 1999-2000 season and turned it into a winning franchise that
has made the playoffs every year since 2001. The lawsuit said Cuban owned 76
percent of the team.
He has become one of the most famous and boisterous
owners in sports, sitting courtside at home games and criticizing officials,
which has accounted for much of his nearly $2 million in league fines.
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Online Conference: Problem Solving with Smithsonian Experts ---
http://www.smithsonianconference.org/expert/
Smithsonian: Science and Technology
---
http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/Science_and_Technology/default.htm
Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next ---
http://pewresearch.org/millennials/
Greendex: Survey of Sustainable Consumption [Flash Player] ---
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/greendex/index.html
Self Made Scholar ---
http://selfmadescholar.com/b/2009/04/14/where-to-find-free-literature-and-literature-summaries/
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Science Education and Research Portal ---
http://www.amser.org/
Includes the AMSER Science Reader Monthly
Online Conference: Problem Solving with Smithsonian Experts ---
http://www.smithsonianconference.org/expert/
Smithsonian: Science and Technology
---
http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/Science_and_Technology/default.htm
OzCoasts (coastal erosion, habitat, and estuaries)
http://www.ozcoasts.org.au/
The Waterlines Project (Seattle shoreline and development videos) ---
http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/waterlines/
Water’s Journey Everglades Currents of Change ---
http://theevergladesstory.org/
Waterlife ---
http://waterlife.nfb.ca/
Freshwater Ecoregions of the World ---
http://www.feow.org/
The Museum of Underwater Archaeology ---
http://www.uri.edu/mua/
Greendex: Survey of Sustainable Consumption [Flash Player] ---
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/greendex/index.html
WSU Tree Fruit Research & Extension Center ---
http://www.tfrec.wsu.edu/
350.org [Flash Player, air pollution, carbon dioxide] ---
http://www.350.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
Millennials: A Portrait of
Generation Next ---
http://pewresearch.org/millennials/
The Wikipedia page on ethics --- http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics
Ethics in Science and Engineering National Clearinghouse ---
http://www.ethicslibrary.org/
MIT OpenCourseWare: Ethics (updated)
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Linguistics-and-Philosophy/24-231Fall-2009/CourseHome/index.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Case Study Links --- http://www.csulb.edu/library/subj/business/case_studies.html
Center for Study of Ethics in the Professions --- http://www.ids.ac.uk/eldis/hot/ethicsguide2.htm
Greendex: Survey of Sustainable Consumption [Flash Player] ---
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/greendex/index.html
The Avenue: The New Republic (Brookings, Urban Planning and Policy) ---
http://www.tnr.com/blogs/the-avenue
350.org [Flash Player, air pollution, carbon dioxide] ---
http://www.350.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Law and Legal Studies
The Wikipedia page on ethics --- http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics
Ethics in Science and Engineering National Clearinghouse ---
http://www.ethicslibrary.org/
MIT OpenCourseWare: Ethics (updated)
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Linguistics-and-Philosophy/24-231Fall-2009/CourseHome/index.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Case Study Links --- http://www.csulb.edu/library/subj/business/case_studies.html
Center for Study of Ethics in the Professions --- http://www.ids.ac.uk/eldis/hot/ethicsguide2.htm
Greendex: Survey of Sustainable Consumption [Flash Player] ---
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/greendex/index.html
350.org [Flash Player, air pollution, carbon dioxide] ---
http://www.350.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
Impatience With Theoretical Reasoning: Math Textbooks are
Equivalents of Sitcoms
Ted Video: Math Class Needs a Makeover (Dan Meyer Video) ---
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover.html
Video: Why Singapore Leads The World In Mathematics ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/why-singapore-leads-the-world-in-mathematics/
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
The Cornell Daily Sun (first published at Cornell University in 1880)
---
http://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/newscornell
This might be a helpful source when studying how students, campus life, culture,
morals, etc. have changed over more than a century.
Online Conference: Problem Solving with Smithsonian Experts ---
http://www.smithsonianconference.org/expert/
Smithsonian: Science and Technology
---
http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/Science_and_Technology/default.htm
The West Bank and East Jerusalem Archaeological Database Project ---
http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/abraham/archaeological-database.html
Philadelphia Museum of Art: Audio Tours ---
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/audiotours.html
Citizens' Council (white supremacist history) ---
http://www.citizenscouncils.com/
The Museum of Underwater Archaeology ---
http://www.uri.edu/mua/
Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917 ---
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/Matisse
The World's Airlines. Past, Present & Future
http://www.airlinehistory.co.uk/
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
Visualizing Text
May 12, 2010 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@BONACKERS.COM]
No-one questions whether tax rules are hard to read or not, but in school
I remember wondering if I would ever use sentence diagramming again.
Who knew?
This has a lot to do with the usefulness of
http://www.tax-charts.com/ and
http://www.andrewmitchel.com/html/topic.html
A college level refresher course on the meaning of words and sentence
structure might not be a bad idea .....
Scott Bonacker CPA
Springfield, MO
May 13, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen
Thanks Scott,
I added this to my threads on visualization at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm
This is somewhat related to concept maps.
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
May 11. 2010
May 12, 2010
May 13, 2010
May 14, 2010
May 15, 2010
May 17, 2010
May 18, 2010
May 19
NHS Videos: Media Library [Flash Player, Health]
---
http://www.nhs.uk/video/pages/MediaLibrary.aspx
Ellen listens
to Gladys ---
http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2007/ellen-gladys-hardy-p1.php?
The Stock Market Gets the Fast
Finger (Jon Stewart Comedy) ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/jon-stewart-takes-on-perfect-storms.html
Forwarded by The Carpers
WHAT
I OWE MY MOTHER:
1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.
'If you're going to kill each other, do it outside. I
just finished cleaning.'
2. My mother taught me RELIGION .
'You better pray that this will come out of the carpet.'
3. My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL
'If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next
week!'
4. My mother taught me LOGIC .
' Because I said so, that's why.'
5.My mother taught me MORE LOGIC .
'If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the
store with me.'
6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT.
'Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident.'
7. My mother taught me IRONY.
'Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about.'
8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS.
'Shut your mouth and eat your supper.'
9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM .
'Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!'
10. My mother taught me about STAMINA
'You'll sit there until all that SOUP is gone.'
11. My mother taught me about WEATHER ..
'This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it.'
12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY
'If I told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate!'
13. My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE .
'I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.'
14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION.
'Stop acting like your father!'
15. My mother taught me about ENVY.
'There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have
wonderful parents like you do..'
16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION.
'Just wait until we get home.'
17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING .
'You are going to get it when you get home!'
18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE.
'If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to
get stuck that way.'
19. My mother taught me ESP .
'Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you are cold?'
20. My mother taught me HUMOUR .
'When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me..'
21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT .
'If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up.'
22. My mother taught me GENETICS.
'You're just like your father.'
23. My
mother taught me about my ROOTS.
'Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a tent?'
24. My mother taught me WISDOM.
'When you get to be my age, you'll understand.'
25. And my favourite:
My mother taught me about JUSTICE
'One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you '
Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accountancy Discussion ListServs:
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a
ListServ (usually for free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc
Roles of a ListServ ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
|
CPAS-L (Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo
(Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation
Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu