Tidbits on May 27, 2010
Bob Jensen
Isn't April beautiful in the "White
Mountains" of New Hampshire?
This is how it looked in late April before
we had more than a foot of new snow to douse our early springtime
These were our bushes before being covered
with snow
In this edition of Tidbits, I will feature
various seasons of our flower gardens
The picture below was taken in April after the pond thawed and our deep snow had
all melted
However, a foot new April snow covered our early springtime blossoms
The mountains are totally obscured by heavy
clouds
Here are
our unplanted Alyssum, Snap Dragons, and Impatience annuals still in their trays
on May 24
I prefer the annual plants to perennials
Our annuals bloom all summer whereas perennial blooms are too short lived
And here's our freshly planted Alyssum, Snap
Dragons, and Impatience on May 26, 2010
(Bob does the planting because of Erika's poor health)
Now we
will wait for the seedlings to grow and spread (like us)
This was our garden in July 2009
In the Summer of 2009 I featured pansies, snap dragons, verbena, alyssum, and
bordering yellow-bidens
Below is a Polka Weigela bush that blooms
twice each summer every year
And this was a clematis vine in July 2009
And this is a Polka Weigela bush that blooms
twice each summer of every year
In autumn the leaves rather than the
blossoms that provide our color in the magnificent foliage season
In the winter season Erika's roses are wrapped for a 2010 Mothers Day
unveiling
It's still too early for rose blossoms in our
garden,
but Erika received some beautiful Wisconsin roses from daughter Maria on Mothers Day
Mt Lafayette is adorned with a new April cap
of snow (sunset looking east from my desk)
Sunrise (looking east from my desk)
After Mothers Day we got our usual crop of a
million or more dandelions
And the Phlox adorned the rock garden on the
south side of the cottage
My tractor is alongside the driveway (I
didn't want you to miss that)
St. Francis guarding our garage door in
Winter beside a lilac bush (his snow cap was a total act of nature)
And this is St. Francis in May 26, 2010
after I planted new seedlings at his feet
Normally I don't like statues in the yard
But this particular statue is a favorite that Erika has wanted in our yard for
years
The following pictures were sent to me
They seem appropriate as we approach the Memorial Day holiday
For Memorial Day in 2010
My favorite
slide show
Thank You
America (slide show)
---
Click Here
|
Bob Jensen's other inspirational links to music and video ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm#Inspirational
Tidbits on May 27, 2010
Bob Jensen
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/.
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
CPA
Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
World Clock and World Facts ---
http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf
U.S. Debt/Deficit Clock ---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Free Residential and Business Telephone Directory (you must listen to an
opening advertisement) --- dial 800-FREE411 or 800-373-3411
Free Online Telephone Directory ---
http://snipurl.com/411directory [www_public-records-now_com]
Free online 800 telephone numbers ---
http://www.tollfree.att.net/tf.html
Google Free Business Phone Directory --- 800-goog411
To find names addresses from listed phone numbers, go to
www.google.com and read in the phone number without spaces, dashes, or
parens
Daily News Sites for Accountancy, Tax, Fraud, IFRS, XBRL, Accounting
History, and More ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Education Technology Search ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Distance Education Search ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Search for Listservs, Blogs, and Social Networks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
Bob Jensen's essay on the financial crisis bailout's aftermath and an alphabet soup of
appendices can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
The Master List of Free
Online College Courses ---
http://universitiesandcolleges.org/
149 Interesting People to Follow on Twitter (but I don't have time to follow
them) ---
http://ow.ly/1sj5q
-
- I see from my house by the side of the road
- By the side of the highway of life,
- The men who press with the ardor of hope,
- The men who are faint with the strife,
- But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,
- Both parts of an infinite plan-
- Let me live in a house by the side of the road
- And be a friend to man.
Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911)
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbitsdirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New
Bookmarks go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
On May 14, 2006 I retired from Trinity University after a long
and wonderful career as an accounting professor in four universities. I was
generously granted "Emeritus" status by the Trustees of Trinity University. My
wife and I now live in a cottage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm
Bob Jensen's blogs and various threads on many topics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
(Also scroll down to the table at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ )
Global Incident Map ---
http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php
If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops ---
http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
574 Shields Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
- With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting
Review (TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire [Flash Player]
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/aztec/index.html
From PBS: American Experience: Earth Days ---
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/earthdays/
The Seattle Public Library: Podcasts [iTunes]
http://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=collection_podcasts
Textiles and Costumes: Henry Art Gallery [Flash Player]
http://dig.henryart.org/textiles/
National Museums of Kenya [Flash Player]
http://www.museums.or.ke/
Five Years Old on 911 ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=eDARfDJw80s
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Chicago Amplified (Lyric Opera from the Chicago
Public Library) ---
http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Program_AMP.aspx
Lena Horne -- Activist and Singer -- Dies at 92
---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1X7GS_291E&feature=fvst
Web outfits like
Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content
that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2
TheRadio (my favorite commercial-free
online music site) ---
http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) ---
http://www.slacker.com/
Gerald Trites likes this
international radio site ---
http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:
Search for a song or band and play the selection ---
http://songza.com/
Also try Jango ---
http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let it play through) ---
http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live ---
http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note U.S. Army Band recordings
---
http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp
Bob Jensen listens to music free online (and no commercials)
---
http://www.slacker.com/
Photographs and Art
Carl V. Hartman & The Costa Rica Collections ---
http://www.carnegiemnh.org/anthro/hartman/index.htm
Wild and Scenic Rivers ---
http://www.rivers.gov/
Barnard-Stockbridge Photograph Collection (Art
History) ---
http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/Stockbridge/
Masterpieces of European Painting from Dulwich
Picture Gallery ---
http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/dulwich/index.htm
Honor? Daumier Digitized Lithographs ---
http://ir.brandeis.edu/handle/10192/5
Factory Tours USA
http://www.factorytoursusa.com/
Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site
http://www.nps.gov/sair/index.htm
National Geographic: Environment ---
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/?source=NavEnvHome
The Stuart McDonald
Cartoon Collection
http://www.library.und.edu/digital/McDonald.htm
The Hale Scrapbook (cartoon history) ---
http://cartoons.osu.edu/hale/Hale.php
Wild and Scenic Rivers ---
http://www.rivers.gov/
From the Library of Commerce (History, Geography)
Rivers, Edens, Empires ---
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/lewisandclark/lewisandclark.html
Textiles and Costumes: Henry Art Gallery [Flash Player]
http://dig.henryart.org/textiles/
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various
types electronic literature available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
The Stuart McDonald
Cartoon Collection
http://www.library.und.edu/digital/McDonald.htm
The Hale Scrapbook (cartoon history) ---
http://cartoons.osu.edu/hale/Hale.php
Amswer Applied Math and Science Education Repository ---
http://www.amser.org/
Especially note the AMSER Science Reader Monthly
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
---
http://dig.lib.niu.edu/ISHS/index.html
Chicago Amplified (Lyric Opera from the Chicago Public
Library) ---
http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Program_AMP.aspx
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on May 27,
2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations052710.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
I have written repeatedly about the virtual lack of validity checking of
research published in the academy's leading accounting research journals ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
Validity checking is probably highest for articles published in physical
science research journals and is improving for social science research journals.
There also is aggressive validity checking in some areas of humanities, notably
history.
"Amazing Disgrace," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, May 19,
2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee290
Also see
http://hnn.us/articles/568.html
"History, Not Politics," by Serena Golden, Inside Higher Ed,
May 21, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/21/spence
Jonathan Spence came here
to deliver a speech, but don't let that fool you: his address -- the 39th
Annual Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, which took place Thursday -- in
no way resembled the sort typically associated with D.C.
The Jefferson Lecture is
sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which describes the
lecture as "the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for
distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities." Those
chosen
for the distinction are typically academics or
creative types (or both) -- but, given the setting, the sponsor, and the
nature of the award (which "recognizes an individual... who has the ability
to communicate the knowledge and wisdom of the humanities in a broad,
appealing way"), Jefferson Lecturers have historically taken the opportunity
to make a larger (and sometimes tacitly political) point related to the
humanities. Last year, controversial bioethicist
Leon Kass used his lecture
to criticize the way the humanities are taught and researched at American
universities; in 2007,
Harvey Mansfield argued, with many subtle
political allusions, that the social sciences are in dire need of "the help
of literature and history";
Tom Wolfe's 2006 lecture discussed how the
humanities shed light on modern culture (and lamented the current state of
that culture on campuses); 2005 lecturer Donald Kagan and 2004 lecturer
Helen Vendler offered opposing views on which disciplines of the humanities
are most crucial, and why.
If any of those in the
crowd (noticeably larger than last year's) at the Warner Theater last night
were familiar with the Jefferson Lectures of years prior, they were in for a
surprise.
Spence is Sterling
Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University, whose faculty he joined in
1966. His specialty has always been China -- his 14 books on Chinese history
include 1990's The Search for Modern China, upon whose publication
the New York Times
accurately predicted that it would "undoubtedly
become a standard text on the subject" -- and his lecture was entitled
"When
Minds Met: China and the West in the Seventeenth Century."
Even this relatively specific appellation, however,
conveys a misleading breadth, for Spence's lecture focused almost
exclusively on three men -- Shen Fuzong, an exceptionally learned Chinese
traveler; Thomas Hyde, an English scholar of history and language; and
Robert Boyle, also English, a scientist and philosopher of considerable
renown -- and one year: 1687.
In his lecture, Spence gave
what may (or may not) have been one brief acknowledgment that he'd chosen an
unusually narrow topic of discourse: "It is a commonplace, I think, that the
sources that underpin our concept of the humanities, as a focus for our
thinking, are expected to be broadly inclusive." But, for himself, Spence
dismissed that notion in one more sentence: "...as a historian I have always
been drawn to the apparently small-scale happenings in circumscribed
settings, out of which we can tease a more expansive story."
Thus he dedicated the rest
of his lecture to the story of those three historical figures in the year
1687. Shen had traveled to Europe in the company of one of his teachers, a
Flemish Jesuit priest who was co-editing a book of the sayings of Confucius
from Chinese into Latin. Hyde, librarian at the University of Oxford's
Bodleian Library, invited Shen there to assist him with the cataloging of
some Chinese books -- and also because Hyde, who in that era would have been
called an Orientalist, wanted to learn Chinese himself. After a brief stay
at Oxford, Shen returned to London, bearing a letter of introduction from
Hyde to his friend Boyle; the letter recommended that Boyle meet and
converse with the Chinese scholar. The letter had to be convincing, Spence
explained, because Boyle's reputation was by then widespread, and "he was so
inundated with curious visitors that at times he had to withdraw into
self-enforced seclusion...."
Shen did meet Boyle at
least once; Boyle's work diary mentions their discussion of the Chinese
language and its scholars (a conversation that, like all of those between
Shen and Hyde, must have taken place in Latin: Shen's Latin was excellent,
but he did not, evidently, know English). And Hyde maintained correspondence
not only with his old friend Boyle -- over the years, the two had "discussed
Arabic and Persian texts, Malay grammars... and how to access books from
Tangier, Constantinople and Bombay" as well as "the chemical constituents of
sal ammoniac and amber, the effectiveness of certain Mexican herbs...
current studies of human blood and air, the nature of papyrus, the writings
of Ramon Llull and the use of elixirs and alchemy in the treatment of
illnesses" -- but also with Shen, until around the time of the latter's
departure from England for Portugal in the spring of 1688.The letters
between Shen and Hyde covered such topics as "Chinese vocabulary... China's
units of weights and measurements... the workings of the Chinese examination
system and bureaucracy... [and] the Chinese Buddhist belief in the
transmigration of souls."
"All three men," Spence
ultimately concluded, "though so different, shared certain basic ideas about
human knowledge: these included... the importance of linguistic precision,
the need for broad-based comparative studies, the role of clarity in
argument, the need for thorough scrutiny of philosophical and theological
principles.... Theirs, though brief, had been a real meeting of the minds.
And the values they shared remain, well over three hundred years later, the
kind that we can seek to practice even in our own hurried lives."
That final point was the
closest Spence came to suggesting a particular take-home message for his
audience; however, in an interview with Inside Higher Ed, held that
morning in the lobby of the Willard Hotel, he did mention a few ideas that
he was hoping to convey. For one thing, Spence said, given the current
importance of U.S.-China relations, he hopes this much older, smaller-scale
example of dialogue between the East and West will "give some perspective to
that."
"Historians," he said,
"try to get people away from just focusing on the present; they try to give
them some sort of stronger sense of continuity, human continuity. And I just
like the range of things, these three people that draw together, and they're
writing their letters to each other, and their few meetings... and in that
short time they talk about examination systems, they talk about language,
competition, they talk about medicine, they talk about -- I was fascinated,
they talk about chess..... All these things seemed to me to flow together,
and I think they'd make an interesting -- I hope they'd make an interesting
-- package about cultural contact."
There's a message in that,
Spence said: "to make our range of contact as wide as possible, and to use
our intelligence about how to do this."
Another issue raised in
the lecture, Spence said -- "maybe a small point, but perhaps worth making"
-- has to do with the teaching and learning of languages; Hyde dreamed of
bringing native speakers of various Eastern languages to Oxford, to
establish a college of languages. "Why should everybody else on the planet
speak English?" Spence asked. "I mean, why should they?"
But on the larger
importance of the humanities, and their current status in higher education
and society at large, Spence was reluctant to make a strong argument. "It's
not just a case of encouraging humanities in the abstract; it's having
something to say.... The main search should be for what is the most
meaningful thing you can achieve with the humanities, how can you share some
kind of broader cultural values, or how can you learn things about yourself
or other societies. The challenge is to use the humane intelligence and see
what can be built on that."
And when it comes to
funding, "any government has to put its priorities somewhere, and this does
usually mean cutting something."
His lecture, Spence said,
isn't "meant to be exactly a political speech, you know, I hope people
understand that."
For the most part, those
in attendance seemed more than satisfied. Spence's talk was punctuated
frequently by warm laughter from the audience -- whom he indulged
shamelessly, often departing from his prepared remarks to expound upon
details that interested him, or to make additional jokes whenever the crowd
found one of his remarks especially humorous. When he finished, the applause
was long and loud, and one woman remarked audibly, "That was amazing!"; her
companion replied, "Nice, really nice!"
But at least a few people
reacted with more ambivalence. One group of young attendees, who identified
themselves as fans of Spence, having been students of his as undergraduates
at Yale, said that while they'd enjoyed the lecture, they had been hoping
that Spence would make a more explicit connection between his topic and
issues of current cultural or political relevance. One noted that, in his
introductory remarks that evening, NEH Chairman James Leach had described
the purpose of the Jefferson Lecture as being "to narrow the gap between the
world of academia and public affairs," and had emphasized the Endowment's
goal of "bridging cultures."
There was an "irony," this
young man said, in the fact that Spence's lecture precisely addressed the
bridging of two cultures, but Spence hadn't made a bridge between his own
remarks -- which the audience member interpreted as "a clarion call for
better scholarship" -- and any other realm. "Listeners," he said (possibly
referring to himself), "want something that's cut and dry, that's tweetable."
The possibility of such
complaints about his speech had arisen during Inside Higher Ed's
interview with Spence that morning; he hadn't seemed concerned. "I'm not
going to sort of over-apologize to the audience... they've chosen to come to
hear about the seventeenth century" -- he chuckled -- "I think we announced
that!"
Bob Jensen’s call for better research in the accounting academy ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting history are at
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/21/spence
The Power of Collective Intelligence
"Humans: Why They Triumphed: How did one ape 45,000 years ago happen to
turn into a planet dominator? The answer lies in an epochal collision of creativity,"
by Matt Ridley, The Wall Street Journal, May 22, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703691804575254533386933138.html#mod=todays_us_weekend_journal
Human evolution presents a puzzle. Nothing seems to
explain the sudden takeoff of the last 45,000 years—the conversion of just
another rare predatory ape into a planet dominator with rapidly progressing
technologies. Once "progress" started to produce new tools, different ways
of life and burgeoning populations, it accelerated all over the world,
culminating in agriculture, cities, literacy and all the rest. Yet all the
ingredients of human success—tool making, big brains, culture, fire, even
language—seem to have been in place half a million years before and nothing
happened. Tools were made to the same monotonous design for hundreds of
thousands of years and the ecological impact of people was minimal. Then
suddenly—bang!—culture exploded, starting in Africa. Why then, why there?
The answer lies in a new idea, borrowed from
economics, known as collective intelligence: the notion that what determines
the inventiveness and rate of cultural change of a population is the amount
of interaction between individuals. Even as it explains very old patterns in
prehistory, this idea holds out hope that the human race will prosper
mightily in the years ahead—because ideas are having sex with each other as
never before.
The more scientists discover, the bigger the
evolution puzzle has become. Tool-making itself has now been pushed back at
least two million years, and modern tool kits emerged very gradually over
300,000 years in Africa. Meanwhile, Neanderthals are now known to have had
brains that were bigger than ours and to have inherited the same genetic
mutations that facilitate speech as us. Yet, despite surviving until 30,000
years ago, they hardly invented any new tools, let alone farms, cities and
toothpaste. The Neanderthals prove that it is quite possible to be
intelligent and imaginative human beings (they buried their dead) yet not
experience cultural and economic progress.
Scientists have so far been looking for the answer
to this riddle in the wrong place: inside human heads. Most have been
expecting to find a sort of neural or genetic breakthrough that sparked a
"big bang of human consciousness," an auspicious mutation so that people
could speak, think or plan better, setting the human race on the path to
continuous and exponential innovation.
But the sophistication of the modern world lies not
in individual intelligence or imagination. It is a collective enterprise.
Nobody—literally nobody—knows how to make the pencil on my desk (as the
economist Leonard Read once pointed out), let alone the computer on which I
am writing. The knowledge of how to design, mine, fell, extract, synthesize,
combine, manufacture and market these things is fragmented among thousands,
sometimes millions of heads. Once human progress started, it was no longer
limited by the size of human brains. Intelligence became collective and
cumulative.
In the modern world, innovation is a collective
enterprise that relies on exchange. As Brian Arthur argues in his book "The
Nature of Technology," nearly all technologies are combinations of other
technologies and new ideas come from swapping things and thoughts. (My
favorite example is the camera pill—invented after a conversation between a
gastroenterologist and a guided missile designer.) We tend to forget that
trade and urbanization are the grand stimuli to invention, far more
important than governments, money or individual genius. It is no coincidence
that trade-obsessed cities—Tyre, Athens, Alexandria, Baghdad, Pisa,
Amsterdam, London, Hong Kong, New York, Tokyo, San Francisco—are the places
where invention and discovery happened. Think of them as well-endowed
collective brains.
Trade also gave way to centralized institutions.
Around 5,200 years ago, Uruk, in southern Mesopotamia, was probably the
first city the world had ever seen, housing more than 50,000 people within
its six miles of wall. Uruk, its agriculture made prosperous by
sophisticated irrigation canals, was home to the first class of middlemen,
trade intermediaries.
As with traders ever since, increasingly it came to
look like tribute as Uruk merchants' dwellings were plonked amid the rural
settlements of the trading partners in the hills. A cooperative trade
network seems to have turned into something more like colonialism. Tax and
even slavery began to rear their ugly heads. Thus was set the pattern that
would endure for the next 6,000 years—merchants make wealth; chiefs
nationalize it.
Agriculture was invented where people were already
living in dense trading societies. The oldest farming settlements of all in
what is now Syria and Jordan are situated at oases where trade routes
crossed, as proved by finds of obsidian (volcanic glass) tools from
Cappadocia. When farmers first colonized Greek islands 9,000 years ago they
relied on imported tools and exported produce from the very start. Trade
came before—and stimulated—farming.
Go even further back and you find the same thing.
The explosion of new technologies for hunting and gathering in western Asia
around 45,000 years ago, often called the Upper Paleolithic Revolution,
occurred in an area with an especially dense population of
hunter-gatherers—with a bigger collective brain. Long before the ancestors
of modern people first set foot outside Africa, there was cultural progress
within Africa itself, but it had a strangely intermittent, ephemeral
quality: There would be flowerings of new tool kits and new ways of life,
which then faded again.
Recently at Pinnacle Point in South Africa, Curtis
Marean of Arizona State University found evidence of seafood-eating people
who made sophisticated "bladelet" stone tools, with small blades less than
10 millimeters wide, and who used ochre pigments to decorate themselves
(implying symbolic behavior) as long as 164,000 years ago. They disappeared,
but a similar complex culture re-emerged around 80,000 years ago at Blombos
cave nearby. Adam Powell of University College, London, and his colleagues
have recently modeled human populations and concluded that these flowerings
are caused by transiently dense populations: "Variation in regional
subpopulation density and/or migratory activity results in spatial
structuring of cultural skill accumulation."
The notion that exchange stimulated innovation by
bringing together different ideas has a close parallel in biological
evolution. The Darwinian process by which creatures change depends crucially
on sexual reproduction, which brings together mutations from different
lineages. Without sex, the best mutations defeat the second best, which then
get lost to posterity. With sex, they come together and join the same team.
So sex makes evolution a collective and cumulative process in which any
individual can draw on the gene pool of the whole species. And when it comes
to gene pools, the species with gene lakes generally do better than the ones
with gene ponds—hence the vulnerability of island species to competition
with continental ones.
It is precisely the same in cultural evolution.
Trade is to culture as sex is to biology. Exchange makes cultural change
collective and cumulative. It becomes possible to draw upon inventions made
throughout society, not just in your neighborhood. The rate of cultural and
economic progress depends on the rate at which ideas are having sex.
Dense populations don't produce innovation in other
species. They only do so in human beings, because only human beings indulge
in regular exchange of different items among unrelated, unmated individuals
and even among strangers. So here is the answer to the puzzle of human
takeoff. It was caused by the invention of a collective brain itself made
possible by the invention of exchange.
Once human beings started swapping things and
thoughts, they stumbled upon divisions of labor, in which specialization led
to mutually beneficial collective knowledge. Specialization is the means by
which exchange encourages innovation: In getting better at making your
product or delivering your service, you come up with new tools. The story of
the human race has been a gradual spread of specialization and exchange ever
since: Prosperity consists of getting more and more narrow in what you make
and more and more diverse in what you buy. Self-sufficiency—subsistence—is
poverty.
This theory neatly explains why some parts of the
world lagged behind in their rate of cultural evolution after the Upper
Paleolithic takeoff. Australia, though it was colonized by modern people
20,000 years earlier than most of Europe, saw comparatively slow change in
technology and never experienced the transition to farming. This might have
been because its dry and erratic climate never allowed hunter-gatherers to
reach high enough densities of interaction to indulge in more than a little
specialization.
Where population falls or is fragmented, cultural
evolution may actually regress. A telling example comes from Tasmania, where
people who had been making bone tools, clothing and fishing equipment for
25,000 years gradually gave these up after being isolated by rising sea
levels 10,000 years ago. Joe Henrich of the University of British Columbia
argues that the population of 4,000 Tasmanians on the island constituted too
small a collective brain to sustain, let alone improve, the existing
technology.
Tierra del Fuego, in a similar climatic and
demographic position, experienced no such technological regress because its
people remained in trading contact with the mainland of South America across
a much narrower strait throughout the prehistoric period. In effect, they
had access to a continental collective brain.
Further proof that exchange and collective
intelligence are the key to human progress comes from Neanderthal remains.
Almost all Neanderthal tools are found close to their likely site of origin:
they did not trade. In the southern Caucasus, argues Daniel Adler of the
University of Connecticut, it is the "development and maintenance of larger
social networks, rather than technological innovations or increased hunting
prowess, that distinguish modern humans from Neanderthals."
The oldest evidence for human trade comes from
roughly 80,000 to 120,000 years ago, when shell beads in Algeria and
obsidian tools in Ethiopia began to move more than 100 miles from the sea
and from a particular volcano respectively. (In recent centuries stone tools
moved such distances in Australia by trade rather than by migration.) This
first stirring of trade was the most momentous innovation of the human
species, because it led to the invention of invention. Why it happened in
Africa remains a puzzle, but Steve Kuhn and Mary Stiner of the University of
Arizona have argued that for some reason only Africans had invented a sexual
division of labor between male hunters and female gatherers—the most basic
of all trades.
There's a cheery modern lesson in this theory about
ancient events. Given that progress is inexorable, cumulative and collective
if human beings exchange and specialize, then globalization and the Internet
are bound to ensure furious economic progress in the coming century—despite
the usual setbacks from recessions, wars, spendthrift governments and
natural disasters.
The process of cumulative innovation that has
doubled life span, cut child mortality by three-quarters and multiplied per
capita income ninefold—world-wide—in little more than a century is driven by
ideas having sex. And things like the search engine, the mobile phone and
container shipping just made ideas a whole lot more promiscuous still.
Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Bob Jensen's threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
GPA-SAT correlations
"Psychometric thresholds for physics and mathematics," by Stephen Hsu and
James Schombert, MIT's Technology Review, May 24, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/posts.aspx?bid=354
This is a follow up to our
earlier paper on GPA-SAT correlations. Click below
for the pdf.
Non-linear Psychometric Thresholds for Physics and Mathematics
ABSTRACT
We analyze 5 years of student records at the University of Oregon to
estimate the probability of success (as defined by superior
undergraduate record; sufficient for admission to graduate school)
in Physics and Mathematics as a function of SAT-M score. We find
evidence of a non-linear threshold: below SAT-M score of roughly
600, the probability of success is very low. Interestingly, no
similar threshold exists in other majors, such as Sociology,
History, English or Biology, whether on SAT combined, SAT-R or
SAT-M. Our findings have significant implications for the demographic
makeup of graduate populations in mathematically intensive subjects,
given the current distribution of SAT-M scores.
There is clearly something different about the physics
and math GPA vs SAT distributions compared to all of the other majors we
looked at (see figure 1 in the paper). In the other majors (history,
sociology, etc.) it appears that hard work can compensate for low SAT score.
But that is not the case in math and physics.
One interesting question is whether the apparent cognitive threshold is a
linear or non-linear effect. Our data suggests that the probability of doing
well in any particular quarter of introductory physics may be linear with
SAT-M, but the probability of having a high cumulative GPA in physics
or math is very non-linear in SAT-M. See figure below: the red line is the
upper bound at 95% confidence level on the probability of getting an A in a
particular quarter of introductory physics, and the blue line is the
probability of earning a cumulative GPA of at least 3.5 or so.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Question
Note that a major part of financial auditing is external verification of
accounts and notes receivables.
I wonder how many CPA audits are also test checking eligibility for benefits in
business firms?
"Ensuring Insurance," by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, May 24, 2010
---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/24/insurance
With their revenues
declining and prospects for replacing them fading, colleges and universities
around the country are embracing
a series of tactics aimed at lowering their costs,
such as
redesigning entry-level courses and
pruning unproductive research institutes. The
measures aren't always popular, especially when they are perceived as taking
cherished benefits away from employees.
That's the case in Georgia,
where the state's public college system has
undertaken an audit designed to ensure that health
insurance coverage goes only to those who are qualified to receive it -- and
to shave as much as $4.6 million off the $290 million that the University
System of Georgia spends each year on employer-provided benefits. The
so-called dependent eligibility audit, after an "amnesty period," requires
all employees whose dependents are covered under the health insurance policy
to submit documents (such as marriage licenses, birth certificates and tax
returns) proving that their spouses and children warrant such coverage.
Similar audits are underway or planned at the
University of Michigan, the University of Kentucky, and the University of
Colorado System.
Employee groups in the Georgia system have not
taken kindly to the audit. Viewed in isolation, said Hugh Hudson Jr., a
Georgia State University historian who heads the state chapter of the
American Association of University Professors, the idea of requiring faculty
and staff members to prove that they're following the system's current
policy may seem like no big deal.
But much else is happening in Georgia, Hudson said.
State political leaders are imposing major budget cuts on public colleges,
promising furloughs and threatening layoffs of tenured faculty members (a
threat from which the university has since backed off), and legislators have
taken aim at what they perceive to be the inappropriate research interests
of some professors.
In that context, "we're told, 'Prove to me that you
haven't been cheating.' This is the proverbial straw breaking the camel’s
back." It's hard not to view the current review of benefits, Hudson said, as
"part of a larger sense of growing hostility toward the value of higher
education and the faculty."
Officials of the Georgia system insist that such a
view seriously misreads their intent. While such audits typically find that
between 5 and 10 percent of enrolled dependents should not be covered, the
overwhelming majority are enrolled because of mistakes or incomplete
understanding, not ill intent.
And it is just good fiduciary practice to limit
health insurance to those who are actually qualified to receive it, they say
-- a point of view shared by the increasing numbers of colleges and
universities that are undertaking such audits.
“Many colleges and universities have recently
conducted similar audits and are realizing significant annual cost savings
-- some in the millions of dollars per year," Andy Brantley, president and
chief executive officer of the College and University Professional
Association for Human Resources, said via e-mail. "These kinds of audits are
not meant to be an invasion of privacy and are only conducted to verify
information previously submitted by the employee.... All institutions should
regularly conduct these types of audits as a standard business practice.“
The university system's Board of Regents approved
the audit in March, as one of a series of changes it had undertaken in the
preceding months (at large part at the direction of its new chairman, Robert
F. Hatcher) to shave costs from its health care programs.
"What we're trying to do is to preserve our health
care plan for the people on the plan," said Wayne Guthrie, vice chancellor
for human resources for the Georgia system. The dependent care audit is one
way to do that, system officials said in documents explaining the plan,
since "[covering individuals who are not eligible dependents raises our cost
for health coverage which is reflected in the annual premiums."
The audit is being conducted by Chapman Kelly, an
Indiana-based firm to which the regents agreed to pay about $300,000. (The
expenditure of funds to an outside company given the state's tight budgets
has also raised faculty hackles, said Hudson of the AAUP. "Is there no
agency in the state that could do this work?") The review includes a
weeks-long “amnesty period ... in which employees may voluntarily remove
ineligible dependents with no penalties," the system told employees in its
communications to them. (Employees were
notified of the amnesty phase on March 29 and
given until April 21.)
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
"A New Humanities Ph.D.," by Paula Krebs, Inside Higher Ed, May
24, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/05/24/krebs
Jensen Comment
I wonder how much of the above article can be extrapolated to accounting
doctoral programs?
Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of accounting doctoral programs are
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
Gina is not amused by the cartoon cover of the May 24, 2010 edition of The
New Yorker
"Is There a Doctorate in the House?" by Gina Barreca, Chronicle of
Higher Education, May 21, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Is-There-a-Doctorate-in-the/24202/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Graveyard for Websites
Cyber Cemetery ---
http://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/collections/GDCC/
Team Learning versus Lecture Learning
May 22, 2010 message from J. S. Gangolly
[gangolly@CSC.ALBANY.EDU]
Bob,
Team-based learning is an alternative to lecturing.
However, the students are tested individually as well as teams.
As I understand, each session starts with an individual quizz and
then the team discussion of problems (usually cases) and their solution.
Some references:
http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/postings/750.html
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1546479
http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/pdfs/Team_problem.pdf
http://www.ecampus.com/bk_searchresult.asp?qtype=ISBN&qsearch=9781579220860
Jagdish
May 22, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Jagdish,
As you describe it, your vision of "team based learning" it sounds an
awful lot like the BAM pedagogy that entails virtually all self learning and
no lecturing or even assigned textbooks. BAM is much like the real world
where individuals or teams of individuals must problem solve assigned tasks.
Although the BAM approach can be individual self learning, BAM
instructors often encourage team learning.
In the end, however, BAM requires that individuals take their own
examinations that are not team examinations. If teams are graded it becomes
very difficult to grade the free riders or the team player that learned a
great deal about a specialty team assignment but is ignorant of the
specialties contributed by other members of the team.
I discuss the BAM at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
It turns out that the easiest pedagogy for teachers and students is
usually lecturing. The hardest is self learning. In between there is team
learning which can be a great help to a free rider if team partners are very
talented and hard working. Of course, the opposite is the case if everybody
on the team wants to be a free rider.
A drawback of the BAM and of team learning is that instructors often take
a hit on teaching evaluations that contain comments like: "Everything I
learned in this course I had to learn by myself or from my partners."
What students don't appreciate is that self-learning is the best kind of
learning (although not the most efficient from a time standpoint vis-a-vis
spoon-fed learning).
Bob Jensen
May 20, 2010 message from Richard Campbell
[campbell@RIO.EDU]
Respondus is a very powerful test generator and most
publishers provide test banks in that format.
http://www.screencast.com/t/NTdlNzAw
Richard J. Campbell
School of Business
218 N. College Ave.
University of Rio Grande
Rio Grande, OH 45674
Voice:740-245-7288
http://faculty.rio.edu/campbell
How to Create 3-D Popup Books
May 21, 2010 message from Steven Hornik
[shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]
Fun for the weekend? I just
came across an interesting site that enables creations of short (up to 10
pages currently) pop-up books. Whether or not this is useful for delivering
basic concepts to our students is debatable but is certainly another
technique to try. It also has the added fun of being an augmented reality
book, so you can use the website to read your 3-D pop book as if its resting
on your hand - neat in a very geeky way, but pedagogically I'm not so sure.
The website is at:
http://alpha.zooburst.com/index.php and is
currently in Alpha stage testing, I wrote up a blog article on it replete
with pictures, a video and of course an accounting pop-up book:
http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2010/05/21/zooburst-3d-augmented-reality-story-telling/
Let me know what you think,
Dr. Steven Hornik
University of Central Florida
Dixon School of Accounting
407-823-5739
Second Life: Robins Hermano
Twitter: shornik
http://mydebitcredit.com
yahoo ID: shornik
Jensen Comment
Steve Hornik is a pioneer in the use of Second Life in his accounting courses
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Digital Animators ---
http://animators.digitalmedianet.com/
Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
"Replay Telecorder for Skype: Unique way to bring guest speakers to class,"
by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside of the Box Blog, May 21, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/replay-telecorder-for-skype-unique-way-to-bring-guest-speakers-to-class/
Watch the Video showing how easy it works
I use
Skype with all of my classes
(i.e., face-2-face, blended, and online). At the beginning of each term, I
ask students to set up a Skype account and add me to their contacts list.
I then add them to my Skype contacts list. Using Skype changes the nature
of how I connect with students. We audio and video conference.
Skype messaging archives all messages
received and sent throughout a course. I subscribe to
Skype Voicemail which allows me to send
voicemail message to students. Likewise, students can send me a voicemail
message. Skype recently added a new
screen sharing featuring, which works
great for one-on-one tutoring sessions. All of these Skype features (and
more) changes the nature of instructor-student interaction.
Now,
Applian Technologies has created a
software tool that takes Skype to a whole new level.
Replay
Telecorder for Skype makes it
possible to record Skype audio and video calls. This provides a unique way
to bring “guest speakers” to the teaching-learning experience, especially to
the blended and online learning environment. Click the picture below to
view a short You Tube recording that demonstrates how to record a Skype call
that displays in a side-by-side format. The presentation is a little silly,
but illustrates what you can do with the program.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
"Johns Hopkins Builds a B-School from Scratch: The elite research
university launches a new Global MBA program in August. On the to-do list: AACSB
accreditation, faculty, and money," by Allison Damasi, Business Week,
May 10, 2010 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/may2010/bs20100510_439397.htm?link_position=link2
For years, Johns Hopkins' business offerings—mostly
part-time degree and certificate programs—lingered in the shadow of the
university's internationally renowned medical and public health schools.
That all changed in 2006 when the university received a $50 million gift
from banker William Polk Carey, leading to the founding of the Johns Hopkins
Carey Business School in 2007 and a new lofty mission to become one of the
world's leading business schools. That vision will be put to the test this
August when the school launches its new Global MBA program, with a
curriculum that the school's inaugural dean, Yash Gupta, says seeks to
reinvent the modern MBA.
"Since we are the new kids, we don't have to change
culture; we are building a culture," Gupta says. "We are trying to change
the mold."
All eyes in the management education world will be
on the new B-school in the coming year, as Gupta essentially builds a new
MBA program from scratch, a daunting task that few universities have been
eager to take on in the last decades. The Carey School is seeking to
distinguish itself by designing a curriculum that will capitalize on Johns
Hopkins' strength in fields like medicine and public health, have a focus on
emerging markets and ethics, and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship.
To accomplish this, the school has recruited Gupta,
a B-school dean with a proven fundraising track record and 14 years of
experience, and installed him in leased office space in Baltimore's Harbor
East area that Carey now calls home. Gupta's most recent deanship was at the
University of Southern California's
Marshall School of Business (Marshall
Full-Time MBA Profile), where he helped raise $55
million. Since his arrival at Johns Hopkins, Gupta has spent much of his
time recruiting students, designing courses, and hiring a new cohort of top
research faculty, with the ultimate goal of putting the Carey School in a
position where it can compete with the world's top B-schools. The school is
in the process of obtaining accreditation from the Association to Advance
Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), an essential credential that the
school will need to get students and the business school community to take
it seriously. Says Gupta: "We want to play in that sandbox."
Challenges Ahead
It's an ambitious goal for a fledgling business
school, which still faces a number of significant challenges ahead, says
John Fernandes, the AACSB president. The school already has a number of
things working in its favor, perhaps the most important being the
world-renowned Johns Hopkins brand, which will help the school establish
itself as a serious player early on, and what appears to be a unique niche
focus for its MBA program, Fernandes says. But in the next few years, the
school will have to obtain accreditation, launch a major fundraising
campaign, build up its alumni network, ramp up its career services
offerings, and continue to attract top-rate faculty. Says Fernandes: "It's
not an easy task to go from nothing to a top school in a very short period
of time."
The last large university to open a new B-school
was the University of California, San Diego, which opened the Rady School of
Management (Rady
Full-Time MBA Profile) in 2003 after receiving a
$30 million gift from businessman Ernest Rady. Robert Sullivan, the school's
inaugural and current dean, says he faced numerous challenges: hiring
faculty for a school with no track record; launching an executive education
program to help pay the bills; and raising $110 million for a new building
and other expenses, no small feat when you have no highly placed MBA alumni
to tap for cash. He even had to borrow faculty from other schools. Says
Sullivan: "It was really kind of Band-Aids for the first year."
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
This begs the question of what comparative advantage Johns Hopkins brings to the
business school world at this point in time. The main advantage of business
schools in most private colleges and universities is student recruiting. Those
that dropped or commenced to starve their business studies options for students,
like Colorado College did for a while, discover that many student applicants
really want an option to major in a quality business school or college within
the university. It would seem that because of its graduate school stellar
reputations in science, medicine, law, and political science that Johns Hopkins
is not hurting for applicants to its graduate schools.
Because so many students want to major in business, colleges of business are
often cash cows for a university. In addition, it is allegedly easier in many
instances for colleges of business to raise endowment funds from the private
sector. Somehow I just don't see this as being the case for Johns Hopkins where
medicine is king.
It may well be that Johns Hopkins just wants to become more of a
"university." In that case it is less like Brown and Princeton than it will be
like Stanford, Northwestern, Chicago, Duke, Harvard, Emory, Penn, and Dartmouth.
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/may2010/bs20100510_439397.htm?link_position=link2
Some elite schools like Brown University that do not have business schools
are bringing European business schools to their U.S. campuses
European business schools are planting their flags on American soil.
"Entering the U.S. Market," by Jennifer Epstein, Inside Higher Ed, May
25, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/25/business
The law of supply and demand drove SKEMA, a French
business school, to open campuses in the emerging markets of China and
Morocco, and to start planning for expansion into India, Brazil and possibly
Russia.
But the decision to set up shop in the United
States was driven by something a bit more emotional. “For European students,
this is a dream; America is a dream for them,” says Alice Guilhon, the
school’s dean. “And it is a dream for us, to be known in the U.S.”
While Harvard Business School, the Wharton School
and the Stanford Graduate School of Business might not be the kind of
competition that most institutions would willingly seek out, well-regarded
European business schools like SKEMA have in the last few years ratcheted up
their efforts to be known and respected in the United States.
SKEMA -- created last year by the merger of ESC
Lille School of Management and CERAM Business School – is hoping to build
its global reputation by situating its new campuses near hubs of the
technology industry, and saw a venture in the United States as key to that
strategy. “To be in America is to be close to the headquarters of all the
big firms, to be where the story began,” Guilhon says. “To be well-known in
America, it is leverage for the visibility of the school in the world.”
In plans announced last week, SKEMA will begin
offering classes in English to about 300 of its own students on the Raleigh
campus of North Carolina State University, beginning in January 2011. The
school hopes to have its own 40,000 square foot building open by 2013. As
time goes on, the school may become more distinctly American, but at least
for the first few years its faculty, administrators and students will
primarily come from France and elsewhere in Europe. “It’s very important
that we build the Skema culture in the U.S.,” Guilhon said. “We need to show
it works there.”
Skema's decision to build a campus in the United
States is an unusual one, says Juliane Iannarelli, director of global
research for the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.
"Most programs are partnerships, collaborations," she stays. "The
establishment of a campus -- constructing a building -- is pretty rare."
At least three other major European business
schools have taken recent steps that go beyond partnerships, if stopping
short of Skema's dramatic step. These new efforts are more than student and
faculty exchanges, offering substantial instruction in the United States,
and in some cases competing to attract American students from the start.
Robert F. Bruner, dean of the Darden School of
Business at the University of Virginia and chair of the AACSB's
Globalization of Management Education Task Force, says it is "an interesting
choice" to see foreign business schools enter the U.S. market. "We have an
abundance of schools here and usually the idea is to go where the
competition isn't."
The schools are driven, he says, by "a desire to
establish and succeed in the U.S. as a basis for validating their models."
Aiming to have a successful business school in the United States “is like
wanting to have your plays produced on Broadway -- the audiences are most
discerning."
After three years of planning and renovations,
Spain’s IESE Business School will open a North American facility just a
block off Broadway. An opening ceremony for
the school’s six-story New York Center, just
across 57th Street from Carnegie Hall, is set for June 3, and is intended to
be a big splash into the U.S. market.
Luis Cabral, the center’s academic director and an
economics professor who was hired away from New York University, says
expansion into the United States was a logical step in IESE’s efforts to
become known worldwide. “We’ve been in South America, Asia, Africa for quite
some time now,” he says. “But if we have the goal of being truly global,
then we have to be in the United States.”
Despite being ranked as one of Europe’s top
business schools, “we’re not as well-known in the United States as we would
like to be,” he says. “There are elements of branding here, in making
ourselves known on this side of the Atlantic.”
IESE already has reciprocity agreements in place
with a few U.S. business schools, including NYU’s Stern School of Business
and Columbia Business School. “The problem with those agreements is that
they tend to be a relatively small number of students. If they send half a
dozen, we send half a dozen,” Cabral says. But offering its own courses in
its own facilities gives IESE a chance to send a far greater number of
students to the United States. “We’re estimating 70 to 80, at least -- a
different scale altogether.”
Full-time and part-time M.B.A. students will have
the option of spending a few weeks in New York for elective courses in
industries like media, entertainment and finance. “The advantage of taking
these courses in New York is that you have a lot of guest speakers that can
just walk up to the building,” he says. “They don’t even need to take a cab.
That’s not something that most European business schools can say.”
For at least the next few years, though, the New
York Center will be an outpost of the main school in Barcelona and won’t
offer degrees. “This is just our first step,” Cabral says. “We’ll see what
we do next.”
Another Spanish school beginning its foray into the
United States is Instituto de Empresa Business School, which has campuses in
Madrid and Segovia. Though the U.S. market is saturated with business
schools and executive education programs, IE sees room to build its own
programs that will largely be offered in the United States, says David Bach,
dean of programs. “You could look at this and say you have very
sophisticated customers. You could say, if you’re a foreign school, stay
away from the U.S. market. But we want to show that we can have success in
such a competitive, difficult market.”
In March,
IE
launched a joint program with Brown University
– one of the few elite U.S. universities that doesn’t
have its own business school – to offer an executive M.B.A. program that
aims to infuse the humanities and social sciences into the typical business
curriculum. The program will include five in-person sessions, four of which
will be at Brown’s campus in Providence, R.I., and the fifth in Spain.
“We’re expecting to attract Americans,” Bach says. “A European M.B.A. is
increasingly attractive to U.S. employers who want to know they’re hiring
people who understand the world, but not everybody can come to Europe for a
year.” The degree will be awarded by IE.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
New undergraduate business or finance certificate programs added on to arts
colleges at Princeton, Northwestern, and Columbia
New undergraduate courses (but not degrees) are being offered at colleges
like Dartmouth
Some like the University of Pennsylvania have long-standing undergraduate
business degree programs
"Business: The New Liberal Art: Interest in business is surging at
elite liberal arts colleges, and schools that once shunned the business major
are now offering coursework," Business Week, October 22, 2009 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/oct2009/bs20091022_146227.htm?link_position=link1
Ever since fleeing Europe's tyranny for the New
World, Americans have established a collegiate system which emphasizes a
broad, liberal arts education. Even as larger state schools mimicked
European universities and offered undergraduate majors in vocational fields,
the Ivy League schools and their peers, for the most part, resisted. "In
America, we think more in terms of a broad undergraduate education," says
Paul Danos, dean of Dartmouth's
Tuck School of Business (Tuck
Full-Time MBA Profile). "Other parts of the world
are much more specific. They believe in the benefit of students going
directly into their major and taking several years of very narrow, technical
work. We don't think of it that way."
But as the financial industry becomes an
increasingly sought-after destination for talented undergraduates, some
top schools are reconsidering that age-old bias.
In the last three years, liberal arts
colleges that once shunned the business major have begun making business
courses available to undergrads. And with
the job market in turmoil, interest in these programs has surged. At Tuck,
growing demand has led the school to triple the number of business classes
it offers. Columbia, which has seen increased interest among undergrads for
the business courses in its catalog, is considering a program similar to one
at Northwestern's
Kellogg School of Management that yields a
business certificate upon completion. That program itself has been so
popular that it expanded just a year after its inception.
Once wholly committed to their vision of students
well-versed in philosophy, history, and science, these schools appear to be
changing course. According to Amir Ziv, vice-dean at
Columbia
Business School (Columbia
Full-Time MBA Profile), behind this shift in
attitude is "a lot of demand from the undergrads to know something about
business."
For liberal arts students, a little bit of business
knowhow is a powerful thing, giving them the confidence they need to work in
a business setting. "It's hard for students coming from a liberal arts
education not to feel disadvantaged when they're up against students from,
say, the
Wharton
(Wharton
Undergraduate Business Profile) undergraduate
program," says Charles Friedland, a senior majoring in economics at
Dartmouth. Friedland, 21, accepted a summer internship offer last spring
from Bank of America (BAC)
without a single credit in business to his name. But as one of the students
to enroll in financial accounting, the first Tuck business class ever
offered to undergraduate students, he had the credit by his first day of
work. "After the first or second day of the internship, it was already
evident how much taking the class helped in terms of being comfortable in
the atmosphere of a large finance firm," he says.
The last thing highly ranked schools want is for a
large number of students to be at a perceived disadvantage when vying for
full-time jobs. "Students realize that when they go to their first job they
want to know something about business," says Ziv. "If you've had an
accounting class, that gives you an advantage. You understand what
profit-and-loss sheets are and what balance sheets are. And that helps."
The overwhelming popularity and growing necessity
of the finance offerings is forcing schools to expand their assortment of
classes. Dartmouth initially introduced just two sections of accounting to
undergraduates and already has plans to add two more sections of marketing
and eventually two sections of management. Meanwhile, Columbia is
considering parlaying its selection of undergraduate courses into a more
formalized concentration that upon completion would be recognized on
students' transcripts, a program similar to one already offered by Kellogg.
Northwestern Succumbs In 2007, 41 years after it
terminated its once well-regarded undergraduate program to focus on building
a prestigious graduate business school, Kellogg responded to the unyielding
demand for its business classes on the undergraduate level by reopening its
doors to college-age students. Many undergrads wanted something formal,
perhaps a major to put on their résumés. Kellogg compromised. It began
offering an undergraduate certificate to students who fulfill a set of
business pre-requisites and earn a B average in four advanced-level business
classes.
"We wanted to build on the breadth of the
undergraduate program," says Janice Eberly, a Kellogg professor with a hand
in establishing the business certificate. "So we made the decision to layer
business skills, in the form of a certificate program, on that existing,
strong educational foundation that Northwestern students already have." As
the economy collapsed, interest in the program has surged—not only are
applications up sharply, but a second certificate in engineering and
business has been added.
At Kellogg, undergraduate students can access the
certificate program classes only via an extensive application process. Once
accepted, undergrads have access to many of the same resources that their
graduate counterparts do. Classes are taught by Kellogg professors, and a
career services counselor is dedicated solely to the undergraduate job
search. Among top private schools now offering some business education, it's
the closest any have come to an actual business major.
Holding the Line The new and expanding business
programs like those at Columbia and Kellogg are valuable for students like
Tom Evans. A senior at Kellogg's certificate program, Evans entered
Northwestern with a fleeting interest in physics, but within a year came to
realize that finance was his calling. He majored in mathematical methods in
social science & economics, and applied for the certificate program during
the first year of its existence, hoping to get a grounding in the way
economic theories play out in the world of business. His only regret: not
being able to major in business. "It's very limiting and restricting for
schools to stay stuck in their ways," he says. "They should be more
conscious of the necessity to accommodate people of varying interests."
While undergraduate business offerings at liberal
arts schools are gaining traction, no one expects them to morph into
full-blown business majors any time soon. Danos believes that a basic
understanding of finance is crucial to any learned young man or woman; from
the English majors who aspire to law to the future doctors sitting in an
organic chemistry class. And in spite of the steadily rising interest in
business at these schools, the intellectual breadth that liberal arts
schools aim to offer is as dear to them now as it was when Harvard was
founded in 1636.
"The trend is to get some exposure of business,"
Danos says. "But I don't think that we're going to go the route of the big
schools with full, two year majors in business—certainly Dartmouth won't."
Jensen Comment
One of the prestige-university holdouts that resisted a cash cow MBA program
(unlike Harvard, Yale, MIT, Penn, Cornell, Dartmouth, Columbia, Stanford, Rice,
and others) is Princeton University. However, I found that
Princeton now offers and undergraduate certificate program in finance ---
http://www.princeton.edu/bcf/undergraduate/
The certificate program in finance has four major requirements at
Princeton University:
- First, there are prerequisites in mathematics,
economics, and probability and statistics, as necessary for the study of
finance at a sophisticated level. Advance planning is essential as these
courses should be completed prior to the junior year.
- Second, two required core courses provide an
integrated overview and background in modern finance.
- Third, students are required to take three
elective courses.
- Fourth, a significant piece of independent
work must relate to issues or methods of finance. This takes the form of
a senior thesis, or for non-ECO or ORF majors only, if there is no
possibility of finance content in their senior thesis or junior paper, a
separate, shorter piece of independent work is required instead.
Brown University offers a wide range of finance courses coupled with the
ability to customized undergraduate majors at Brown ---
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/undergraduate.php
In 2006, several
finance related course underwent renumbering. The following list
shows you the old and current numbers of the courses in this area.
Current Course Number.
Name |
Pre-1996 Course
Number. Name |
1710. Investments |
1770. Financial Markets I
|
1720. Corporate Finance
|
1790. Corporate Finance
|
1750. Options and Derivatives
(Investments II) |
1780. Financial Markets II
|
1760. Financial Institutions
|
1760. Financial Institutions
|
1770. Fixed Income Securities
|
1710. Fixed Income Securities
|
1780. Corporate Strategy
|
1330. Econ. Competitive Strategy
|
1790. Corp. Govern. and Manag. |
1340. Econ. Corp. Governance |
|
October 31, 2009 reply from David Albrecht
[albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]
This view is not universally held. At my previous
school, I suggested in an e-mail to university faculty, that exposure to
business classes in the gen ed core might prove to be a good thing for
several reasons. One of those reasons is that students might get an exposure
to another field of study and would broaden their academic experience. I was
panned and mocked by everyone including business faculty, but my idea was
received well by music faculty.
November 1, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi David,
The new financial certificate undergraduate programs such as those at
Princeton and Columbia will not solve a basic societal problem about
ignorance in personal finance and taxation, because these programs reach so
few students. The same may be said about colleges having one or more
elective finance courses in the general education core.
The overwhelming majority of college graduates (including most PhD
graduates, medical school graduates, and law school graduates) is that they
do not have a clue about personal finance, investing, personal accounting,
financial risk and insurance, business law, and most importantly tax
planning. I’ve encountered attorneys that, in my viewpoint, are financially
ignorant even though they are advising clients about estate planning and
real estate investing.
This ignorance among most of our college graduates has huge societal
externalities. The fundamental cause of divorce in society is rooted in
personal financial disasters and spending fights between spouses that often
carries over into life-long behavioral destruction of children. How much of
this could be avoided by requiring that all college graduates have the
rudiments of personal financial responsibility?
Many of our graduates do not realize that personal bankruptcy laws have
changed. They still believe it is relatively simple to accumulate huge debts
and repeatedly declare bankruptcy over and over when needed to clear out
their unpaid debts.
I’ve got news for them about Chapter 7 changes that took place in 2005
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Abuse_Prevention_and_Consumer_Protection_Act
Partly as a result of their financial ignorance, many college graduates
get themselves early-on in financial messes due to student loans they can’t
afford, credit card balances they cannot afford, and vote for spending
legislation that messes up entire communities or the nation as a whole. They
do not understand the rudiments of time value of money and cannot make wise
choices about such things as investing in taxable versus tax-free
investments.
Unfortunately, the finance certificate undergraduate programs (such as
those at Princeton) reach less than one percent of the undergraduate. Even
our business and accounting undergraduate degree programs do not reach a
majority of the graduating class.
And so my rant for educating all college students about personal finances
and taxation goes on and on to deaf ears among higher education faculty and
administrators controlling the general education curricula. There may be
innovative ways to educate students along these lines. Firstly, I would try
to educate the faculty about personal finance and taxation since these
faculty members most likely advise students in ways that affect the lives of
those students. Secondly, it may be possible to require these items as
“training” requirements much like colleges require physical education by
whatever name.
Bob Jensen’s personal finance helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/BookBob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
Porn's Sleazy Internet Business Model
"How the Internet Porn Business Works: Researchers set up adult Web
sites to study how the industry makes its money and spreads malware," by
Christopher Mims, MIT's Technology Review, May 18, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/guest/25192/?nlid=3001
A first-of-its-kind analysis of the online porn
industry reveals the economics, and the vulnerabilities, of the shady world
of online adult media.
If you want to know how the online adult industry
works, you must become a part of that industry. That's what five security
researchers from The Technical University of Vienna, Sophia Antipolis and UC
Santa Barbara did in an attempt to get a handle on how the adult industry
makes money online. And they found that it's exposing everyone who consumes
its wares to previously unsuspected levels of malware.
Peddling Porn in the Name of Science
By setting up their own adult websites, the
researchers, who will present their paper on June 7, 2010 at The Ninth
Workshop on the Economics of Information Security at Harvard University,
discovered that 43% of the clicks that arrived at their own adult website
belonged to users whose browsers were vulnerable to a known exploit in
either Adobe Flash or handling of the Microsoft Office or Adobe PDF document
types.
Lead researcher Glibert Wondracek and his
colleagues spent a total of $160 to acquire 47,000 clicks from sellers of
adult traffic, known in the industry as traffic brokers, of which 20,000
could have been exploited to build a botnet, according to the researchers.
The researchers discovered that they easily could have leveraged their
investment for a hefty profit by serving as the vector for a Pay-Per Install
affiliate program, which in one instance offered $130 per 1,000 installs to
drop malicious code (malware, adware etc.) onto exploited machines.
To assess how much malicious code is being injected
into users' browsers by adult websites, Wondracek et al. custom-built an
automated web crawler to download the content of almost a half million URLs
spread across thousands of adult websites. Incredibly, 3.23% of those pages
"were found to trigger malicious behavior such as code execution, registry
changes, or executable downloads," five times the prevalence of malware
discovered by previous research on the subject.
In a back of the envelope calculation, multiplying
3.23% by the percentage of internet users who view porn (42.7%) or even just
the percentage of men who view porn while at work (20%), by the frequency
with which porn is accessed, suggests that internet porn is a major vector
for infection of vulnerable machines.
The Peculiar Economics of Online Porn
A likely explanation for the high rates of malware
on adult websites is the almost total lack of policing or enforcement by the
brokers who move traffic between adult websites. According to Wondracek et
al.'s analysis of the economy of online porn sites, 9 out of 10 are "free"
sites that host image or video galleries and make money by directing traffic
to pay sites or even to one another. This traffic is monetized through
traffic brokers - the majority of which do not even visit the sites in their
affiliate networks, according to experiments conducted by the researchers.
Unlike online ad placements by Google and affiliate
marketing schemes by Amazon, adult sites do not rely on code that resides on
the sites sending them traffic that could help verify that traffic is
generated by humans and not click bots. As a result, the researchers found
that it would potentially be quite easy to defraud not only users, but the
traffic brokers and for-pay porn sites that enable the vast ecosystem of
free adult media sites. (No users or brokers were actually harmed in the
course of this research, which was vetted by the legal department of the
Technical University of Vienna.)
The intricacies of the elaborate system of traffic
arbitrage that have grown up around the world of porn traffic direction on
the web are way beyond the scope of this blog post, but it's possible that
the rest of the media world could learn a thing or two from the way that
for-pay adult sites have created a seething ecosystem of traffic affiliates
constantly skimming clicks and pennies off of one another.
On the other hand, it's just as likely that these
techniques wouldn't work for traditional media, because users don't appear
to be as motivated to read news as to find porn. How else can we explain the
fact that in the course of the experiment, users clicked many times on
single links that were randomly directing them to anything but the media
they were apparently after - a practice widespread among free porn sites?
Jensen Comment
Porn seekers face a high risk of Malware infection. However, gambling addicts
probably face a higher risk unless they restrict their business to one or two
known safe gambling sites.
There are many products and services business models on a scale from sole
proprietorship cottage models (e.g., a single bedroom Webcam) to international
syndicates. The overwhelming volume of porn on the Web most likely is connected
in one way or the other to the Russian crime syndicates, although there is
considerable competition. Who in the world really wants to connect to Russian
crime syndicates? Apparently hundreds of millions of Internet users.
Years ago tax laws became a major deterrent of organized crime. As organized
crime became more global, tax laws are less effective since most of the porn,
gambling, and so-called security protection Web sites are outside the United
States.
I stopped using some favored sites where I've obtained malware in the past.
One loss is is one of my formerly favorite sites --- StumbleUpon.com. I also
stopped going to any security protection sites unless the site is recommended by
a very trusted source. Internet security sites in general are very, very
dangerous. Since I'm still running on Windows XP I do not yet have the added
protection of Windows 7, although I do keep up to date on Microsoft's daily
security patches ---
http://www.update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us
Parents should try to block porn and gambling sites of young children. It
becomes very hard to police teens, so it is best to continually warn teens about
malware and other great risks of porn, gambling, and security sites. We also
continually need to warn lawyers employed by the Securities and Exchange
Commission who were spending more time on porn than on trying to protect us from
securities fraud and a creep named Madoff.
Google Wave ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave
"Google Wave Has Officially Opened Its Doors," by Jill Laster,
Chronicle of Higher Education, May 19, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Google-Wave-Has-Officially/24092/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
From the Scout Report on May 21, 2010
Duplicate Cleaner 1.4.5 ---
http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk
If you have a number of unwanted files on your
computer, who might want to check out Duplicate Cleaner 1.4.5. With its
eminently sensible user interface, visitors can have the program search for
duplicate files across various drives and locations. After the application
is completed with this task, users will be asked what they would like to do
with these files. This version is compatible with computers running Windows
2000 and newer.
Scribus Portable 1.3.3.12 ---
http://www.scribus.net/index.php
For those whom might fashion themselves as the 21st
century equivalent of Woodward and Bernstein, Scribus Portable is well worth
a look. The program brings professional page layout to a variety of
operating systems, and it also support additional features such as pdf
creation and color management. Additionally, the website includes a number
of video tutorials and notes on installation troubleshooting and creating
effective text frames. This version is compatible with computers running
Linux, Mac OS X 10.3 and newer, and Windows 2000 and XP.
Can the manufacturing industry create jobs while 'greening' the
environment?
http://www.csmonitor.com/Money/Green-Economics/2010/0510/Can-the-manufacturing-industry-create-jobs-while-greening-the-environment
Investing in our Clean Energy Economy
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/05/seam_act.html
New England Economic Indicators
http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/neei/neei.htm
Factory Tours USA
http://www.factorytoursusa.com/
Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site
http://www.nps.gov/sair/index.htm
From the Scout Report on May 14, 2010
Shutterfly ---
http://www.shutterfly.com/
It's quite easy to create photo books and cards
with the Shutterfly program, and interested parties may also be glad to
learn that they do not have to download any cumbersome software. Visitors
just need to complete a short online membership form, and they can create
their own personalized photo websites. Visitors can customize their photos
and albums to their heart's content, and they also have the option of
sharing these albums with anyone else. This version of Shutterfly is
compatible with all operating systems.
Avast Free Antivirus 5.0.545 ---
http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download
Avast Free Antivirus has been around for sometime,
and this latest edition has some notable new features. Perhaps the most
significant change here is the very helpful user interface, which includes a
new tabbed section and a context sensitive help menu. Visitors can also use
the real-time shields to protect against spyware and viruses originating
from hundreds of sources. This version is compatible with computers running
Windows 2000 and newer.
Lena Horne, Chanteuse and Entertainer, Passes Away Lena Horne, Sultry
Singer and Actress, Dies at 92 [Free registration may be required]
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/arts/music/10horne.html?scp=2&sq=lena
horne&st=cse
Remembering Lena Horne: 1917-2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/05/10/GA2010051001867.html?hpid=moreheadlines
With Clipped Wings, Lena Horne Still Soared
http://www.npr.org/blogs/tellmemore/2010/05/10/126676224/with-clipped-wings-lena-horne-still-soared
Lena Horne: About the Performer
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/lena-horne/about-the-performer/487/
IBDB: Lena Horne
http://www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=6344
Till The Clouds Roll By
http://www.archive.org/details/till_the_clouds_roll_by
Lena Horne
http://www.lena-horne.com/
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
The Seattle Public Library: Podcasts [iTunes, multimedia]
http://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=collection_podcasts
Knowledge Weavers Project (multimedia tutorials)
http://library.med.utah.edu/km/digitalcollectkw.php
Wild and Scenic Rivers ---
http://www.rivers.gov/
From the Library of Commerce (History, Geography)
Rivers, Edens, Empires ---
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/lewisandclark/lewisandclark.html
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Amswer Applied Math and Science Education Repository ---
http://www.amser.org/
TeachEngineering ---
http://www.teachengineering.org/
American Association of Physics Teachers ---
http://www.aapt.org/index.cfm
Carl V. Hartman & The Costa Rica Collections ---
http://www.carnegiemnh.org/anthro/hartman/index.htm
NOAA's Ocean Service Office of Response and Restoration ---
http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/
The UVA Bay Game (Chesapeake
Bay Watershed )
http://www.virginia.edu/vpr/sustain/BayGame/
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Native American Liaison ---
http://www.fws.gov/nativeamerican/
National Geographic: Environment ---
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/?source=NavEnvHome
National Museums of Kenya [Flash Player]
http://www.museums.or.ke/
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
Let's Move ---
http://www.letsmove.gov/
Let's Move! is the U.S government website that supports First Lady Michelle
Obama's goal to "solve the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation."
USDA Food and Nutrition Information Center ---
http://fnic.nal.usda.gov/nal_display/index.php?info_center=4&tax_level=1
Five Keys to Safer Food Manual ---
http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/consumer/manual_keys.pdf
Mayo Clinic: Fitness Center ---
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fitness/SM99999
Amswer Applied Math and Science Education Repository ---
http://www.amser.org/
Especially note the AMSER Science Reader Monthly
John V. Lindsay ---
http://lindsay.mcny.org/
Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York ---
http://futureofny.org/home
Honor? Daumier Digitized Lithographs ---
http://ir.brandeis.edu/handle/10192/5
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Native American Liaison ---
http://www.fws.gov/nativeamerican/
North Carolina Health Info ---
http://www.nchealthinfo.org/
Factory Tours USA
http://www.factorytoursusa.com/
Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice ---
http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/campus_assault/
US Credit Conditions: Federal Reserve Bank of New York ---
http://data.newyorkfed.org/creditconditions/
Financial Education For All: Federal Reserve Bank of New York ---
http://www.newyorkfed.org/education/econ_eduforall.html
The Federal Reserve (a five part video series) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dmPchuXIXQ&feature=related
U.S. Monetary Policy: An Introduction ---
http://www.frbsf.org/publications/federalreserve/monetary/index.html
Financial Times: Podcasts ---
http://podcast.ft.com/
The William Penn Foundation ---
http://www.williampennfoundation.org/
Wild and Scenic Rivers ---
http://www.rivers.gov/
From the Library of Commerce (History, Geography)
Rivers, Edens, Empires ---
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/lewisandclark/lewisandclark.html
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Law and Legal Studies
Supreme Court Nominations ---
http://www.loc.gov/law/find/court-nominations.php
Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice ---
http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/campus_assault/
John V. Lindsay ---
http://lindsay.mcny.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
Amswer Applied Math and Science Education Repository ---
http://www.amser.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
Carl V. Hartman & The Costa Rica Collections (Natural History) ---
http://www.carnegiemnh.org/anthro/hartman/index.htm
The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire [Flash Player]
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/aztec/index.html
Barnard-Stockbridge Photograph Collection (Art History) ---
http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/Stockbridge/
John V. Lindsay ---
http://lindsay.mcny.org/
Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York ---
http://futureofny.org/home
The Stuart McDonald Cartoon
Collection
http://www.library.und.edu/digital/McDonald.htm
Masterpieces of European Painting from Dulwich Picture Gallery ---
http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/dulwich/index.htm
Honor? Daumier Digitized Lithographs ---
http://ir.brandeis.edu/handle/10192/5
The Seattle Public Library: Podcasts [iTunes]
http://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=collection_podcasts
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Native American Liaison ---
http://www.fws.gov/nativeamerican/
Factory Tours USA
http://www.factorytoursusa.com/
Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site
http://www.nps.gov/sair/index.htm
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society ---
http://dig.lib.niu.edu/ISHS/index.html
Chicago Amplified (Lyric Opera from the Chicago Public Library) ---
http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Program_AMP.aspx
The Stuart McDonald Cartoon
Collection
http://www.library.und.edu/digital/McDonald.htm
The Hale Scrapbook (cartoon history) ---
http://cartoons.osu.edu/hale/Hale.php
Textiles and Costumes: Henry Art Gallery [Flash Player]
http://dig.henryart.org/textiles/
All Sewn Up: Millinery, Dressmaking, Clothing, and Costume
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/HumanEcol/subcollections/MillineryBooksAbout.html
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
Chicago Amplified (Lyric Opera from the Chicago Public Library) ---
http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Program_AMP.aspx
OperaGlass (guide to arias) ---
http://opera.stanford.edu/
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music
Writing Tutorials
The Stuart McDonald Cartoon
Collection
http://www.library.und.edu/digital/McDonald.htm
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
May 20, 2010
May 21, 2010
May 22, 2010
May 23, 2010
May 24, 2010
May 25, 2010
May 26, 2010
The Stock Market Gets the Fast
Finger (Jon Stewart Comedy) ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/jon-stewart-takes-on-perfect-storms.html
Ellen listens
to Gladys ---
http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2007/ellen-gladys-hardy-p1.php?
WHERE DO RED-HEADED BABIES COME FROM?
After their baby was born, the panicked father went to see the Obstetrician.
'Doctor,' the man said, 'I don't mind telling you, but I'm a little upset
because my daughter has red hair. She can't possibly be mine!!'
'Nonsense,' the doctor said. 'Even though you and your wife both have black
hair, one of your ancestors may have contributed red hair to the gene pool.'
'It isn't possible,' the man insisted.’ This can't be, our families on both
sides had jet-black hair for generations.'
'Well,' said the doctor, 'let me ask you this. How often do you have sex??? '
The man seemed a bit ashamed. 'I've been working very hard for the past year.
We only made love once or twice every six months.'
'Well, there you have it!' The doctor said confidently.
'It's rust!!'
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