"Freakonomics Movie Trailer Released," by Stephen J. Dubner, The
New York Times, August 13. 2010 ---
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/freakonomics-movie-trailer-released/
The trailer ---
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/freakonomics/
Freeman Dyson ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson
When I was assigned to teach some of the many sections of "First-Year
Seminar" (not a business or accounting course) at Trinity University, one of the
key readings I chose for the course were the Phi Beta Kappa tour lectures of
Freeman Dyson.
Now Freeman Dyson has a new history book that suggests that there was a very
major factor, aside from the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, that
motivated the Japanese to surrender and accept the Potsdam Conditions.
Question
What was that "very major factor?
Hint:
After the defeat of Hitler, very serious and very mean annihilating forces could
be brought to bear on Japan.
"Dyson, the bomb, and the Japanese surrender," by Stephen Hsu, MIT's
Technology Review, August 14, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/post.aspx?bid=354&bpid=25618&nlid=3390
"Blackboard Earns Certification
for Accessibility to Blind Students," Inside Higher Ed, August 13,
2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/13/qt#235367
The National Federation of the Blind Thursday gave
Blackboard, the e-learning giant, its top accessibility certification.
Blackboard is the first learning-management company to earn the
certification, although federation spokesman Chris Danielsen says the group
had not tested all of Blackboard's competitors. Given that
learning-management systems are so critical to modern education, it started
working with Blackboard; the company was able to make a number of
accessibility improvements in its latest version, released in the spring.
Since Blackboard is by far the biggest player in the learning-management
market, the federation's stamp of approval represents a big step for the
visually impaired in an age when such online tools have become crucial even
to brick-and-mortar institutions, Danielsen says.
Bob Jensen's threads on technology aids for
handicapped learners ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
Bob Jensen's threads on Blackboard ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm
"Immersed In Too Much Information, We Can Sometimes Miss The Big Picture,"
by Dave Pell, NPR, August 11, 2010 ---
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2010/08/11/129127690/too-much-information-can-sometimes-mean-we-miss-the-big-picture
Even in the era of Facebook, this was not a face I
expected to see.
A few weeks ago, I might have argued that it’s
almost impossible to shock members of Generation TMI. I would have been
wrong. I was shocked by a recent Time cover that featured a photo of Aisha,
an 18 year-old Afghan woman who had her nose and ears cut off by the
Taliban.
My first reaction was to look away from the photo.
My second was frustration toward the Time editors who decided to
run the image. But after some reflection, I realized that in order to
understand and form an opinion about the Taliban and the broader issues in
Afghanistan, it was an image I needed to see. As a fellow human being —
especially one living in an environment where my iPhone coverage is
considered a critical issue — isn’t taking a long, hard look at this photo
the very least I owe Aisha?
[Time Cover Picture of an Afghan woman
with her nose chopped off]
Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel
explained his decision to run the cover shot:
Bad things do happen to people, and it is part
of our job to confront and explain them. In the end, I felt that the
image is a window into the reality of what is happening — and what can
happen — in a war that affects and involves all of us. I would rather
confront readers with the Taliban’s treatment of women than ignore it.
While thinking about this issue and its
relationship to social media, I reached out to the cadre of folks who often
advise and assist me before I press the publish button.
None of them had seen the image.
This is in part a statement on the significance (or
lack thereof) of magazine covers in today’s media.
I could imagine folks missing even an image this
arresting in the past. But who would've thought we could collectively avert
our eyes in an age when random videos can get millions of views and we all
know about a Jet Blue flight attendant's creative slide to retirement within
a few hours of it happening.
But that these folks — all of them heavily
plugged-in — missed this portrait of Aisha is also a statement on how we
can collectively repress data that we don’t want to think about. Even though
we are immersed in shared words and images, it’s still pretty easy to miss
the big picture.
In his New Yorker piece, Letting Go, Atul
Gawande laments the fact that doctors and patients have extremely poor
communication when it comes to the difficult topic of end-of-life care.
Two-thirds of the terminal-cancer patients in
the Coping with Cancer study reported having had no discussion with
their doctors about their goals for end-of-life care, despite being, on
average, just four months from death.
Although we find ourselves as travelers in the age
of over sharing, it turns out we remain quite adept at avoiding the really
tough topics.
Google’s Eric Schmidt recently stated that every
two days we create as much information as we did from the beginning of
civilization through 2003. Perhaps the sheer bulk of data makes it easier to
suppress that information which we find overly unpleasant. Who’s got time
for a victim in Afghanistan or end-of-life issues with all these Tweets
coming in?
Between reality TV, 24-hour news, and the constant
hammering of the stream, I am less likely to tackle seriously uncomfortable
topics. I can bury myself in a mountain of incoming information. And if my
stream is any indication, I’m not alone. For me, repression used to be a one
man show. Now I am part of a broader movement — mass avoidance through
social media.
Eric Schmidt followed up his comment about the
piles of information being created with this: “I spend most of my time
assuming the world is not ready for the technology revolution that will be
happening to them soon.”
But in reality, we’re a lot more ready for the
technology revolution than we are for Aisha.
Jensen Comment
With 500 million people using just one social network (Facebook) plus the
millions of others on other social networks and addicted (like me) to blogs,
there is most certainly information overload. In fact, one of the services I
provide to accounting educators is to distill a vast amount of news to find
accounting tidbits that I think will be on interest to accounting educators. But
with so many social networks I cannot begin to cover the waterfront and don't
even try on Facebook. I also only cover a microscopic part of Twitter where I
have only a few selected sources that mostly are like me --- distilling the
ocean of information for accounting tidbits.
What I discovered in the AAA Annual Meetings in San Francisco is that there
are top-name accounting educators and researchers who are lurkers on the AECM.
At least a dozen of them revealed to me for the first time that they've been
lurking for years. We can't seem to motivate them to share their expertise with
us on the AECM or the AAA Commons. I suspect that one of the main reasons is
that they fear having to take too much time engaging in threads that they either
commence or join on the AECM or AAA Commons. They are extremely paranoid
about their time commitments.
Perhaps this is part of the overall information overload syndrome. It
takes some time to lurk over tidbit nuggets, but it takes an even greater amount
of time to engage in conversations about those nuggets.
When you think about it, information overload is probably a job saver for
educators. Our students would be totally lost amongst the trees of the forests
if educators were not handing out Google-type satellite maps of hidden mazes in
each forest. The problem for us is that the forests are becoming so immense in
size and so overlapping between disciplines that map construction is becoming
more and more difficult.
Roles of ListServs, Blogs, and Social Networks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on data visualization (no chopped off noses) are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm
Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral
Deal: Yeah Right!
Although I admire Professor Fish, I don't quite share his views on plagiarism.
And even if you share his views, this may not protect you or your students from
the thunderbolts of wrath that sometimes strike plagiarists --- such
thunderbolts as loss of job, loss of a degree (yes your prized college degree
can be withdrawn), your publications may be withdrawn, you can be sued for your
life savings, and you may face a lifetime of disgrace.
The scarlet letter "P" around your neck is serious business and becomes even
worse with a record of addiction. Of course there are examples of plagiarists
who are highly regarded in spite of their plagiarism, including Martin Luther
King, Jr. and Vladimir Putin ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#Celebrities
"Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal," by Stanley Fish, The New York
Times, August 9, 2010 ---
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/plagiarism-is-not-a-big-moral-deal/?scp=1&sq=Plagiarism&st=cse
During my tenure as the dean of a college, I
determined that an underperforming program should be closed. My wife asked
me if I had ever set foot on the premises, and when I answered “no,” she
said that I really should do that before wielding the axe.
And so I did, in the company of my senior associate
dean. We toured the offices and spoke to students and staff. In the course
of a conversation, one of the program’s co-directors pressed on me his
latest book. I opened it to the concluding chapter, read the first two
pages, and remarked to my associate dean, “This is really good.”
But on the way back to the administration building,
I suddenly flashed on the pages I admired and began to suspect that the
reason I liked them so much was that I had written them. And sure enough,
when I got back to my office and pulled one of my books off the shelf, there
the pages were, practically word for word. I telephoned the co-director, and
told him that I had been looking at his book, and wanted to talk about it.
He replied eagerly that he would come right over, but when he came in I
pointed him to the two books — his and mine — set out next to each other
with the relevant passages outlined by a marker.
He turned white and said that he and his co-author
had divided the responsibilities for the book’s chapters and that he had not
written (perhaps “written” should be in quotes) this one. I contacted the
co-author and he wrote back to me something about graduate student
researchers who had given him material that was not properly identified. I
made a few half-hearted efforts to contact the book’s publisher, but I
didn’t persist and I pretty much forgot about it, although the memory
returns whenever I read yet another piece (like one that appeared recently
in The Times) about
the ubiquity of plagiarism, the failure of
students to understand what it is, the suspicion that they know what it is
but don’t care, and the outdatedness of notions like originality and single
authorship on which the intelligibility of plagiarism as a concept depends.
Whenever it comes up plagiarism is a hot button
topic and essays about it tend to be philosophically and morally inflated.
But there are really only two points to make. (1) Plagiarism is a learned
sin. (2) Plagiarism is not a philosophical issue.
Of course every sin is learned. Very young children
do not distinguish between themselves and the world; they assume that
everything belongs to them; only in time and through the conditioning of
experience do they learn the distinction between mine and thine and so come
to acquire the concept of stealing. The concept of plagiarism, however, is
learned in more specialized contexts of practice entered into only by a few;
it’s hard to get from the notion that you shouldn’t appropriate your
neighbor’s car to the notion that you should not repeat his words without
citing him.
The rule that you not use words that were first
uttered or written by another without due attribution is less like the rule
against stealing, which is at least culturally universal, than it is like
the rules of golf. I choose golf because its rules are so much more severe
and therefore so much odder than the rules of other sports. In baseball you
can (and should) steal bases and hide the ball. In football you can (and
should) fake a pass or throw your opponent to the ground. In basketball you
will be praised for obstructing an opposing player’s view of the court by
waving your hands in front of his face. In hockey … well let’s not go there.
But in golf, if you so much as move the ball accidentally while breathing on
it far away from anyone who might have seen what you did, you must
immediately report yourself and incur the penalty. (Think of what would
happen to the base-runner called safe at home-plate who said to the umpire,
“Excuse me, sir, but although you missed it, I failed to touch third base.”)
Golf’s rules have been called arcane and it is not
unusual to see play stopped while a P.G.A. official arrives with rule book
in hand and pronounces in the manner of an I.R.S. official. Both fans and
players are aware of how peculiar and “in-house” the rules are; knowledge of
them is what links the members of a small community, and those outside the
community (most people in the world) can be excused if they just don’t see
what the fuss is about.
Plagiarism is like that; it’s an insider’s
obsession. If you’re a professional journalist, or an academic historian, or
a philosopher, or a social scientist or a scientist, the game you play for a
living is underwritten by the assumed value of originality and failure
properly to credit the work of others is a big and obvious no-no. But if
you’re a musician or a novelist, the boundary lines are less clear (although
there certainly are some) and if you’re a politician it may not occur to
you, as it did not at one time to Joe Biden, that you’re doing anything
wrong when you appropriate the speech of a revered statesman.
And if you’re a student, plagiarism will seem to be
an annoying guild imposition without a persuasive rationale (who cares?);
for students, learning the rules of plagiarism is worse than learning the
irregular conjugations of a foreign language. It takes years, and while a
knowledge of irregular verbs might conceivably come in handy if you travel,
knowledge of what is and is not plagiarism in this or that professional
practice is not something that will be of very much use to you unless you
end up becoming a member of the profession yourself. It follows that
students who never quite get the concept right are by and large not
committing a crime; they are just failing to become acclimated to the
conventions of the little insular world they have, often through no choice
of their own, wandered into. It’s no big moral deal; which doesn’t mean, I
hasten to add, that plagiarism shouldn’t be punished — if you’re in our
house, you’ve got to play by our rules — just that what you’re punishing is
a breach of disciplinary decorum, not a breach of the moral universe.
Now if plagiarism is an idea that makes sense only
in the precincts of certain specialized practices and is not a normative
philosophical notion, inquiries into its philosophical underpinnings are of
no practical interest or import. In recent years there have been a number of
assaults on the notion of originality, issuing from fields as diverse as
literary theory, history, cultural studies, philosophy, anthropology,
Internet studies. Single authorship, we have been told, is a recent
invention of a bourgeois culture obsessed with individualism, individual
rights and the myth of progress. All texts are palimpsests of earlier texts;
there’s been nothing new under the sun since Plato and Aristotle and they
weren’t new either; everything belongs to everybody. In earlier periods
works of art were produced in workshops by teams; the master artisan may
have signed them, but they were communal products. In some cultures, even
contemporary ones, the imitation of standard models is valued more than work
that sets out to be path-breaking. (This was one of the positions in the
famous quarrel between the ancients and the moderns in England and France in
the 17th and 18th centuries.)
Arguments like these (which I am reporting, not
endorsing) have been so successful in academic circles that the very word
“originality” often appears in quotation marks, and it has seemed to many
that there is a direct path from this line of reasoning to the conclusion
that plagiarism is an incoherent, even impossible, concept and that a writer
or artist accused of plagiarism is being faulted for doing something that
cannot be avoided. R.M. Howard makes the point succinctly “If there is no
originality and no literary property, there is no basis for the notion of
plagiarism” (“College English,” 1995).
That might be true or at least plausible if, in
order to have a basis, plagiarism would have to stand on some philosophical
ground. But the ground plagiarism stands on is more mundane and firm; it is
the ground of disciplinary practices and of the histories that have
conferred on those practices a strong, even undoubted (though revisable)
sense of what kind of work can be appropriately done and what kind of
behavior cannot be tolerated. If it is wrong to plagiarize in some context
of practice, it is not because the idea of originality has been affirmed by
deep philosophical reasoning, but because the ensemble of activities that
take place in the practice would be unintelligible if the possibility of
being original were not presupposed.
And if there should emerge a powerful philosophical
argument saying there’s no such thing as originality, its emergence needn’t
alter or even bother for a second a practice that can only get started if
originality is assumed as a baseline. It may be (to offer another example),
as I have argued elsewhere, that there’s no such thing as free speech, but
if you want to have a free speech regime because you believe that it is
essential to the maintenance of democracy, just forget what Stanley Fish
said — after all it’s just a theoretical argument — and get down to it as
lawyers and judges in fact do all the time without the benefit or hindrance
of any metaphysical rap. Everyday disciplinary practices do not rest on a
foundation of philosophy or theory; they rest on a foundation of themselves;
no theory or philosophy can either prop them up or topple them. As long as
the practice is ongoing and flourishing its conventions will command respect
and allegiance and flouting them will have negative consequences.
This brings me back to the (true) story I began
with. Whether there is something called originality or not, the two scholars
who began their concluding chapter by reproducing two of my pages are
professionally culpable. They took something from me without asking and
without acknowledgment, and they profited — if only in the currency of
academic reputation — from work that I had done and signed. That’s the
bottom line and no fancy philosophical argument can erase it.
Jensen Comment
The really sad fact about professors who plagiarize or otherwise cheat is that
their employers may be tougher on student plagiarists than on faculty
plagiarists ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
Bob Jensen's threads on cheating and plagiarism are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
NelNet ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelnet
"Nelnet to Pay $55-Million to Resolve Whistle-Blower Lawsuit," by
Kelly Field, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 15, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Nelnet-to-Pay-55-Million-to/123912/
Nelnet will pay $55-million to settle its share of
a whistle-blower lawsuit that accuses it and several other lenders of
defrauding taxpayers of more than a billion dollars in student-loan
subsidies.
The
settlement, which
Nelnet announced late Friday, is the latest to result from a lawsuit brought
by Jon H. Oberg, a former Education Department researcher, on behalf of the
federal government. A federal judge ordered Nelnet and seven other
student-loan companies to participate in a settlement conference last week
after two of the other defendants in the case, Brazos Higher Education
Service Corporation and Brazos Higher Education Authority, reached a
tentative settlement agreement with Mr. Oberg.
Among the other defendants in the case is
Sallie Mae, the nation's largest student-loan
company. A year ago, the Education Department's inspector general
issued an audit concluding that Sallie Mae
overbilled the Education Department for $22.3-million in student-loan
subsidies and should be required to return the money to the department.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
In the wild west it was easier for bandits to cover their tracks than it is
today in these Tor(rible) times
"The Hunt for the Wikileaks: Whistle-blower Digital encoding could
catch future informants," by David Talbot, MIT's Technology Review,
July 28, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/25892/?nlid=3307
Attorney General Eric Holder's new probe into
Wikileaks's
posting of 91,000 war documents will likely find that
tracing the path of the documents back through the Internet is next to
impossible. But watermarks--if they were embedded in the files--could reveal
the whistle-blower.
Wikileaks relies on a networking technology called
Tor,
which
obscures the
source of uploaded data. While Tor doesn't encrypt
the underlying data--that's up to the user--it does bounce the data through
multiple nodes. At each step, it encrypts the network address. The source of
data can be traced to the last node (the so-called "exit node"), but that
node won't bear any relationship to the original sender.
Ethan Zuckerman, cofounder of the blogging advocacy
organization
Global Voices, says he doubts investigators can
crack Tor to find the computer from which the documents were originally
sent. "There's been an enormous amount of research done on the security of
the Tor network and on the basic security of encryption protocols," he says.
"There are theoretical attacks on Tor that have been demonstrated to work in
the lab, but no credible field reports of Tor being broken."
And while Tor's profile has been raised by its
association with Wikileaks, Andrew Lewman, Tor's executive director, says he
has no insights into the source of the purloined documents. "I don't know
how Wikileaks got any of the information," he says. While Wikileaks gets
technical help from Tor staffers, "they don't tell us anything, other than
'Did we set up the hidden service correctly?' which we'd answer for anyone,"
Lewman adds.
"People assume that Wikileaks is a Tor project, but
I can tell you definitely there is no official relationship."
Lewman points out that many law-enforcement
agencies, such as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, also use Tor to protect
their operations.
Jensen Comment
I wonder if Wikileaks, in the name of peace, would post whistleblower messages
that name names of Taliban fighters and informants. Somehow I doubt it since
vengeance is the master policy of the Taliban. Wikileaks will probably only pick
on combatants that won't send suicide bombers in search of Wikileaks employees.
Tor also makes it difficult to trace thieves of credit card numbers, social
security numbers, child pornography, and malicious rumors.
Three-Year Wonders from Business Executive Doctoral Programs
Nearly all accounting doctoral programs in North America (other than what I
think is a fraudulent online program) take five to six years to complete (beyond
a masters degree) and are tantamount to social science accountics doctoral
programs with very little in the way of accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
Question
Will the new quickie "business executive doctoral programs" in North America be
game changers for the accountics doctoral programs as well?
Jensen Comment
Here's one way to play the game. Rather than spend 5-6 years full time in a
traditional accounting doctoral program in North America, become the CEO of your
own lemonade stand (read that software development lemonade) and then enroll in
a quickie (three-year) executive doctoral program. However, I seriously doubt
whether it's possible to concentrate in accounting in these new "business"
doctoral programs and become an accounting professor unless you were a CPA
before entering the program.
Also, it's unlikely that the accountics professors guarding the Pearly Gates
of Tenure will let you pass through unless you've published two or three
articles in TAR, JAR, or JAE during your short tenure probation period, and
you've most likely not had sufficient mathematics, econometrics, psychometrics,
and statistics education to publish in TAR, JAR, or JAE. ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
"PhD Programs for Executives Gain Traction New doctoral programs in
business geared to working executives help many develop on-the-job research
skills or a shift into teaching," by Allison Damast, Business Week,
August 16, 2010 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/aug2010/bs20100816_081076.htm
Business schools are seeking to take executive
education to the next level, with a growing number offering niche doctoral
programs aimed at senior-level managers either looking to shift to academia
or to bring high-level research skills into the workplace.
Georgia State University's Robinson College of
Business in Atlanta introduced a new Executive Doctorate in Business program
in 2009 aimed at chief executives and other high-ranking corporate managers,
while neighboring Kennesaw State University's Coles College of Business in
Kennesaw, Ga., created a Doctorate of Business Administration program in
2008. Oklahoma State University's Spears School of Business in Stillwater is
planning to launch a management doctoral program in the next 12 months, the
school said.
Less than a dozen accredited business schools offer
these types of business professional doctorates in the U.S., according to
the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), one of
the leading accreditation agencies for business schools, which tracks
doctoral degrees programs. In the past few years, interest in programs like
these has grown as high-level managers seek a more rigorous academic
experience than the typical executive education classes or executive
roundtables offered at business schools, says Andy Policano, chairman of
AACSB's board and dean of the University of California-Irvine's Paul Merage
School of Business.
"The main reason these programs are springing up in
the U.S. is there seems to be a market," Policano says. "There are more and
more executives willing to pay a fairly high tuition to take this kind of
program on, so now it becomes a legitimate business model for schools to
offer."
For Experienced Senior Execs Most of these
professional doctoral programs differ from traditional PhD programs in that
they are part-time, can usually be completed in three years, and are aimed
at working senior executives with advanced degrees and at least 15 years of
work experience, Policano says. Typically, he adds, they encourage research
that executives can apply directly back to the business world.
At Georgia State, students in the school's new
executive doctoral program, which costs about $100,000 for three years, are
required to come to the school's Atlanta campus for a three-day residency at
the school, says Maury Kalnitz, the program's director. He reports that so
far the school has been able to attract executives from IBM (IBM), Google
(GOOG), and Citigroup (C) who are, on average, 45 years old and have 16
years of management experience. The program has about 38 students enrolled
so far, Kalnitz says.
Students take classes that teach them how to
conduct formal academic research, and later the school pairs them with a
faculty adviser who works with students on their 100-page dissertation,
which they are expected to submit to an academic journal for publication.
Unlike typical doctoral programs, where students look for jobs in academia
after graduating, almost all of the participants in the Robinson program
plan to go back into the business world, says Lars Mathiassen, the program's
academic director.
"The primary purpose of the program is to develop
better executives," Mathiassen says. "It hits the sweet spot between
business schools and the business world."
As a Kind of "Personal Quest" The program has
attracted such students as Jeanette Miller, 43, of Marietta, Ga., an
executive with 17 years' experience who is a consultant with 360°td, an
international consulting firm that works in emerging markets in Central Asia
and Southeast Europe. She started the program last fall and now spends 30 to
40 hours a week reviewing academic papers, working on research projects with
classmates, and planning her dissertation, which she says will examine
sustainability and corporate social responsibility at multinational
companies. She says she hopes eventually to translate her research findings
to her job and implement change in her field.
People don't go into a program like this at 45 or
50 years old to make another $100,000 on their base salary. It seems like
we're all doing this more for a personal quest and the desire to make a
difference somehow in the world at large," says Miller, who is paying for
the program herself. "I feel like the doctorate gives you entrée into a
realm where you can actually do that."
Kennesaw State's business school is seeking to
attract a different type of student than Georgia State, primarily executives
who want to have a second career as a professor at the university level,
says Joe Hair, executive director of the school's Doctorate of Business
Administration program.
Kennesaw's program, which costs $83,475 for three
years, has strict admission standards; to apply, students must first attend
a research workshop and later complete and submit a research proposal.
Students who are admitted attend weekend residencies on campus, learning
about research methods and academic theory, and eventually they produce a
dissertation. Forty-two students are currently enrolled, and the school is
in the process of recruiting its third cohort of students, Hair says.
An Avenue into Teaching About one-third of the
executives, who average around 50 years old, are already teaching at
business schools, and many others plan to shift into academia after
graduation or later in their careers, he said. Students are attracted to the
program because it will allow them to become "academically qualified," a
designation by the AACSB that will allow them to land better-paying and more
secure jobs at universities when they graduate, says Hair.
"There is a huge demand for this program because it
is a step beyond executive education," Hair explains, noting that more than
250 students have showed up at the program's information sessions in each of
the past two years.
Jerry Kudlats, 59, joined Kennesaw as a student
last fall. He was ready for a second career as a university professor but
was unable to commit to a full-time PhD program, he says. He has been
working for 35 years and has owned his own business, JK Consulting Services,
for the past 16 years. The Kennesaw program was an ideal fit for him,
Kudlats says, because it was close to his home and he could do it part-time.
"The traditional PhD program just wasn't going to work, because I couldn't
afford to stop working and go to school full-time," he says. "When the
Kennesaw program came out, it was the perfect match for me."
Catching on Elsewhere Professional doctoral
programs are more prevalent in Europe and Australia than in the U.S., says
T. Grandon Gill, a professor at the University of South Florida's College of
Business in Tampa. The U.K. has at least 16 doctorate of business
administration programs, and at least 20 such programs were created in
Australia from 1993 to 2005, says Gill, who co-wrote a journal article on
the programs last year. The programs are also popular in Germany, where an
estimated 58.5 percent of executives hold doctoral degrees, compared with
just 5.6 percent of CEOs in the U.S., according to a study cited in Gill's
article.
The programs have not caught on to the same extent
in the U.S. because of widespread faculty resistance to starting these
programs. Many worry that starting an alternative professional doctoral
program would taint the reputation of their traditional PhD programs, Gill
says. That could be starting to change, he adds, especially as financially
strapped business schools look for additional sources of revenue in the next
few years.
Says Gill: "Schools may find these to be very
attractive types of programs because they can be real revenue generators."
More U.S. Schools Join the Trend Oklahoma State
University's Spears School of Business plans on launching a professional
doctorate of management program for executives, which should be up and
running within the next 12 months, says Larry Crosby, the school's dean. The
program would have two tracks, one for students interested in becoming
professors and another for those who want to remain in the business world,
he says.
"There is a very strong groundswell of interest in
starting such a program at our school," says Crosby, who has formed a
committee at his school to design the program. "I think this is one of those
areas that is still in the early stages in management education. Schools
that get on this bandwagon in the next two to three years will be the
innovators in this field, and we intend to be on that trajectory."
Schools in the U.S. and abroad are trying to
capitalize on the growing interest in executive doctorates by starting an
association of business schools that offer these programs, says Georgia
State's Mathiassen. Founding members include Georgia State, Case Western
Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management, Paris-Dauphine
University in France, the Cranfield School of Management in Britain, and
Hong Kong's Polytechnic University. The group plans to organize an annual
conference for schools that run these programs, as well as serve as a
resource for students, Mathiassen says.
"We see this as a growing trend," he says, "so we
want to help develop the brand and increase the quality of the programs, as
well as get more schools involved."
Jensen Comment
If you do graduate as a Three-Year Wonder from a Business Executive Doctoral
Program and become an Assistant Professor of Accounting you will
definitely have to learn about
Gaming for Tenure as an Accounting Professor ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm
You stand a chance if you judiciously choose your 43
coauthors on 43 working papers.
Why Even Renowned Scientists Need to Have Their Research Independently
Replicated
"Author on leave after Harvard inquiry Investigation of scientist’s work
finds evidence of misconduct, prompts retraction by journal," by Carolyn Y.
Johnson, The Boston Globe, August 10, 2010 ---
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2010/08/10/author_on_leave_after_harvard_inquiry/
Harvard University psychologist Marc Hauser — a
well-known scientist and author of the book “Moral Minds’’ — is taking a
year-long leave after a lengthy internal investigation found evidence of
scientific misconduct in his laboratory.
The findings have resulted in the retraction of an
influential study that he led. “MH accepts responsibility for the error,’’
says the retraction of the study on whether monkeys learn rules, which was
published in 2002 in the journal Cognition.
Two other journals say they have been notified of
concerns in papers on which Hauser is listed as one of the main authors.
It is unusual for a scientist as prominent as
Hauser — a popular professor and eloquent communicator of science whose work
has often been featured on television and in newspapers — to be named in an
investigation of scientific misconduct. His research focuses on the
evolutionary roots of the human mind.
In a letter Hauser wrote this year to some Harvard
colleagues, he described the inquiry as painful. The letter, which was shown
to the Globe, said that his lab has been under investigation for three years
by a Harvard committee, and that evidence of misconduct was found. He
alluded to unspecified mistakes and oversights that he had made, and said he
will be on leave for the upcoming academic year.
In an e-mail yesterday, Hauser, 50, referred
questions to Harvard. Harvard spokesman Jeff Neal declined to comment on
Hauser’s case, saying in an e-mail, “Reviews of faculty conduct are
considered confidential.’’
“Speaking in general,’’ he wrote, “we follow a well
defined and extensive review process. In cases where we find misconduct has
occurred, we report, as appropriate, to external agencies (e.g., government
funding agencies) and correct any affected scholarly record.’’
Much remains unclear, including why the
investigation took so long, the specifics of the misconduct, and whether
Hauser’s leave is a punishment for his actions.
The retraction, submitted by Hauser and two
co-authors, is to be published in a future issue of Cognition, according to
the editor. It says that, “An internal examination at Harvard University . .
. found that the data do not support the reported findings. We therefore are
retracting this article.’’
The paper tested cotton-top tamarin monkeys’
ability to learn generalized patterns, an ability that human infants had
been found to have, and that may be critical for learning language. The
paper found that the monkeys were able to learn patterns, suggesting that
this was not the critical cognitive building block that explains humans’
ability to learn language. In doing such experiments, researchers videotape
the animals to analyze each trial and provide a record of their raw data.
The work was funded by Harvard’s Mind, Brain, and
Behavior program, the National Science Foundation, and the National
Institutes of Health. Government spokeswomen said they could not confirm or
deny whether an investigation was underway.
The findings have resulted in the retraction of an
influential study that he led. “MH accepts responsibility for the error,’’
says the retraction of the study on whether monkeys learn rules, which was
published in 2002 in the journal Cognition.
Two other journals say they have been notified of
concerns in papers on which Hauser is listed as one of the main authors.
It is unusual for a scientist as prominent as
Hauser — a popular professor and eloquent communicator of science whose work
has often been featured on television and in newspapers — to be named in an
investigation of scientific misconduct. His research focuses on the
evolutionary roots of the human mind.
In a letter Hauser wrote this year to some Harvard
colleagues, he described the inquiry as painful. The letter, which was shown
to the Globe, said that his lab has been under investigation for three years
by a Harvard committee, and that evidence of misconduct was found. He
alluded to unspecified mistakes and oversights that he had made, and said he
will be on leave for the upcoming academic year.
In an e-mail yesterday, Hauser, 50, referred
questions to Harvard. Harvard spokesman Jeff Neal declined to comment on
Hauser’s case, saying in an e-mail, “Reviews of faculty conduct are
considered confidential.’’
“Speaking in general,’’ he wrote, “we follow a well
defined and extensive review process. In cases where we find misconduct has
occurred, we report, as appropriate, to external agencies (e.g., government
funding agencies) and correct any affected scholarly record.’’
Much remains unclear, including why the
investigation took so long, the specifics of the misconduct, and whether
Hauser’s leave is a punishment for his actions.
The retraction, submitted by Hauser and two
co-authors, is to be published in a future issue of Cognition, according to
the editor. It says that, “An internal examination at Harvard University . .
. found that the data do not support the reported findings. We therefore are
retracting this article.’’
The paper tested cotton-top tamarin monkeys’
ability to learn generalized patterns, an ability that human infants had
been found to have, and that may be critical for learning language. The
paper found that the monkeys were able to learn patterns, suggesting that
this was not the critical cognitive building block that explains humans’
ability to learn language. In doing such experiments, researchers videotape
the animals to analyze each trial and provide a record of their raw data.
The work was funded by Harvard’s Mind, Brain, and
Behavior program, the National Science Foundation, and the National
Institutes of Health. Government spokeswomen said they could not confirm or
deny whether an investigation was underway.
Gary Marcus, a psychology professor at New York
University and one of the co-authors of the paper, said he drafted the
introduction and conclusions of the paper, based on data that Hauser
collected and analyzed.
“Professor Hauser alerted me that he was concerned
about the nature of the data, and suggested that there were problems with
the videotape record of the study,’’ Marcus wrote in an e-mail. “I never
actually saw the raw data, just his summaries, so I can’t speak to the exact
nature of what went wrong.’’
The investigation also raised questions about two
other papers co-authored by Hauser. The journal Proceedings of the Royal
Society B published a correction last month to a 2007 study. The correction,
published after the British journal was notified of the Harvard
investigation, said video records and field notes of one of the co-authors
were incomplete. Hauser and a colleague redid the three main experiments and
the new findings were the same as in the original paper.
Science, a top journal, was notified of the Harvard
investigation in late June and told that questions about record-keeping had
been raised about a 2007 paper in which Hauser is the senior author,
according to Ginger Pinholster, a journal spokeswoman. She said Science has
requested Harvard’s report of its investigation and will “move with utmost
efficiency in light of the seriousness of issues of this type.’’
Colleagues of Hauser’s at Harvard and other
universities have been aware for some time that questions had been raised
about some of his research, and they say they are troubled by the
investigation and forthcoming retraction in Cognition.
“This retraction creates a quandary for those of us
in the field about whether other results are to be trusted as well,
especially since there are other papers currently being reconsidered by
other journals as well,’’ Michael Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said in an
e-mail. “If scientists can’t trust published papers, the whole process
breaks down.’’
This isn’t the first time Hauser’s work has been
challenged.
In 1995, he was the lead author of a paper in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that looked at whether
cotton-top tamarins are able to recognize themselves in a mirror.
Self-recognition was something that set humans and other primates, such as
chimpanzees and orangutans, apart from other animals, and no one had shown
that monkeys had this ability.
Gordon G. Gallup Jr., a professor of psychology at
State University of New York at Albany, questioned the results and requested
videotapes that Hauser had made of the experiment.
“When I played the videotapes, there was not a
thread of compelling evidence — scientific or otherwise — that any of the
tamarins had learned to correctly decipher mirrored information about
themselves,’’ Gallup said in an interview.
In 1997, he co-authored a critique of the original
paper, and Hauser and a co-author responded with a defense of the work.
In 2001, in a study in the American Journal of
Primatology, Hauser and colleagues reported that they had failed to
replicate the results of the previous study. The original paper has never
been retracted or corrected.
Continued in article
August 10, 2010 reply from Jagdish Gangolly
[gangolly@CSC.ALBANY.EDU]
Bob,
This is a classic example that shows how difficult
it is to escape accountability in science. First, when Gordon Gallup, a
colleague in our Bio-Psychology in Albany questioned the results, at first
Hauser tried to get away with a reply because Albany is not Harvard. But
then when Hauser could not replicate the experiment he had no choice but to
confess, unless he was willing to be caught some time in the future with his
pants down.
However, in a sneaky way, the confession was sent
by Hauser to a different journal. But Hauser at least had the gumption to
confess.
The lesson I learn from this episode is to do
something like what lawyers always do in research. They call it Shepardizing.
It is important not to take any journal article at its face value, even if
the thing is in a journal as well known as PNAS and by a person from a
school as well known as Harvard. The other lesson is not to ignore a work or
criticism even if it appears in a lesser known journal and is by an author
from a lesser known school (as in Albany in this case).
Jagdish -- J
Jagdish Gangolly (gangolly@albany.edu)
Department of Informatics College of Computing &
Information
State University of New York at Albany 7A, Harriman Campus Road, Suite 220
Albany, NY 12206
Why did Harvard take three years on this one?
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/HauserHarvard/26308/
August 10, 2010 message from Paul Williams
[Paul_Williams@NCSU.EDU]
Bob and Jagdish,
This also illustrates the necessity of keeping records of experiments. How
odd that accounting researchers cannot see the necessity of "keeping a
journal!!!"
"Document Sheds Light on Investigation at Harvard," by Tom Bartlett,
Chronicle of Higher Education, August 19, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Document-Sheds-Light-on/123988/
Ever since word got out that a prominent Harvard
University researcher was on leave after an investigation into academic
wrongdoing, a key question has remained unanswered: What, exactly, did he
do?
The researcher himself, Marc D. Hauser, isn't
talking. The usually quotable Mr. Hauser, a psychology professor and
director of Harvard's Cognitive Evolution Laboratory, is the author of Moral
Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (Ecco,
2006) and is at work on a forthcoming book titled "Evilicious: Why We
Evolved a Taste for Being Bad." He has been voted one of the university's
most popular professors.
Harvard has also been taciturn. The public-affairs
office did issue a brief written statement last week saying that the
university "has taken steps to ensure that the scientific record is
corrected in relation to three articles co-authored by Dr. Hauser." So far,
Harvard officials haven't provided details about the problems with those
papers. Were they merely errors or something worse?
An internal document, however, sheds light on what
was going on in Mr. Hauser's lab. It tells the story of how research
assistants became convinced that the professor was reporting bogus data and
how he aggressively pushed back against those who questioned his findings or
asked for verification.
A copy of the document was provided to The
Chronicle by a former research assistant in the lab who has since left
psychology. The document is the statement he gave to Harvard investigators
in 2007.
The former research assistant, who provided the
document on condition of anonymity, said his motivation in coming forward
was to make it clear that it was solely Mr. Hauser who was responsible for
the problems he observed. The former research assistant also hoped that more
information might help other researchers make sense of the allegations.
It was one experiment in particular that led
members of Mr. Hauser's lab to become suspicious of his research and, in the
end, to report their concerns about the professor to Harvard administrators.
The experiment tested the ability of rhesus monkeys
to recognize sound patterns. Researchers played a series of three tones (in
a pattern like A-B-A) over a sound system. After establishing the pattern,
they would vary it (for instance, A-B-B) and see whether the monkeys were
aware of the change. If a monkey looked at the speaker, this was taken as an
indication that a difference was noticed.
The method has been used in experiments on primates
and human infants. Mr. Hauser has long worked on studies that seemed to show
that primates, like rhesus monkeys or cotton-top tamarins, can recognize
patterns as well as human infants do. Such pattern recognition is thought to
be a component of language acquisition.
Researchers watched videotapes of the experiments
and "coded" the results, meaning that they wrote down how the monkeys
reacted. As was common practice, two researchers independently coded the
results so that their findings could later be compared to eliminate errors
or bias.
According to the document that was provided to The
Chronicle, the experiment in question was coded by Mr. Hauser and a research
assistant in his laboratory. A second research assistant was asked by Mr.
Hauser to analyze the results. When the second research assistant analyzed
the first research assistant's codes, he found that the monkeys didn't seem
to notice the change in pattern. In fact, they looked at the speaker more
often when the pattern was the same. In other words, the experiment was a
bust.
But Mr. Hauser's coding showed something else
entirely: He found that the monkeys did notice the change in pattern—and,
according to his numbers, the results were statistically significant. If his
coding was right, the experiment was a big success.
The second research assistant was bothered by the
discrepancy. How could two researchers watching the same videotapes arrive
at such different conclusions? He suggested to Mr. Hauser that a third
researcher should code the results. In an e-mail message to Mr. Hauser, a
copy of which was provided to The Chronicle, the research assistant who
analyzed the numbers explained his concern. "I don't feel comfortable
analyzing results/publishing data with that kind of skew until we can verify
that with a third coder," he wrote.
A graduate student agreed with the research
assistant and joined him in pressing Mr. Hauser to allow the results to be
checked, the document given to The Chronicle indicates. But Mr. Hauser
resisted, repeatedly arguing against having a third researcher code the
videotapes and writing that they should simply go with the data as he had
already coded it. After several back-and-forths, it became plain that the
professor was annoyed.
"i am getting a bit pissed here," Mr. Hauser wrote
in an e-mail to one research assistant. "there were no inconsistencies! let
me repeat what happened. i coded everything. then [a research assistant]
coded all the trials highlighted in yellow. we only had one trial that
didn't agree. i then mistakenly told [another research assistant] to look at
column B when he should have looked at column D. ... we need to resolve this
because i am not sure why we are going in circles."
The research assistant who analyzed the data and
the graduate student decided to review the tapes themselves, without Mr.
Hauser's permission, the document says. They each coded the results
independently. Their findings concurred with the conclusion that the
experiment had failed: The monkeys didn't appear to react to the change in
patterns.
They then reviewed Mr. Hauser's coding and,
according to the research assistant's statement, discovered that what he had
written down bore little relation to what they had actually observed on the
videotapes. He would, for instance, mark that a monkey had turned its head
when the monkey didn't so much as flinch. It wasn't simply a case of
differing interpretations, they believed: His data were just completely
wrong.
As word of the problem with the experiment spread,
several other lab members revealed they had had similar run-ins with Mr.
Hauser, the former research assistant says. This wasn't the first time
something like this had happened. There was, several researchers in the lab
believed, a pattern in which Mr. Hauser reported false data and then
insisted that it be used.
They brought their evidence to the university's
ombudsman and, later, to the dean's office. This set in motion an
investigation that would lead to Mr. Hauser's lab being raided by the
university in the fall of 2007 to collect evidence. It wasn't until this
year, however, that the investigation was completed. It found problems with
at least three papers. Because Mr. Hauser has received federal grant money,
the report has most likely been turned over to the Office of Research
Integrity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The research that was the catalyst for the inquiry
ended up being tabled, but only after additional problems were found with
the data. In a statement to Harvard officials in 2007, the research
assistant who instigated what became a revolt among junior members of the
lab, outlined his larger concerns: "The most disconcerting part of the whole
experience to me was the feeling that Marc was using his position of
authority to force us to accept sloppy (at best) science."
Also see
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Harvard-Confirms-Hausergate/26198/
Bob Jensen's threads on the need for replication are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
Featuring the Engineering Library in the New Engineering Building at Stanford
University
"The End of Books," by Paul Greenberg, Townhall, July 8, 2010 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulGreenberg/2010/08/17/the_end_of_books
"The periodical shelves at Stanford University are
nearly bare. Library chief Helen Josephine says that in the past five years,
more engineering periodicals have been moved online, making their print
versions pretty obsolete -- and books aren't doing much better. ... In 2005,
when the university realized it was running out of space for its growing
collection of 80,000 engineering books, administrators decided to build a
new library. But instead of creating more space for books, they chose to
create less. The new library is set to open in August with 10,000
engineering books off the shelves -- a decrease of more than 85 percent from
the old library ... eventually, there won't be any books on the shelves at
all."
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them."
--Ray Bradbury
The robotic voice, recorded on an endless loop,
droned on in the C Level cafetorium, explaining the dangers represented by
that dangerous artifact of an earlier civilization, the book.
The bored work crews filtered in and out of the
bare hall for their prefabricated rations, pausing now and then to use their
OCDs, or Online Communications Devices. Each of the small accessories, just
the right size to fit into a pocket of their government-issue coveralls, was
licensed, limited, and certified to have no more links than necessary to
barracks, work station, National Public Agitprop and the current Top Ten
beatmusiks.
Jaws masticated, thumbs clicked keyboards, knees
jerked in time with the rap. There was no melody. It had been proscribed by
the Prole Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2041, Title XI, Subsection
A. The same clause mandated continuous lectures on the danger of preserving
any "shards, pottery, ornaments, and/or books, scrolls, inscriptions or
fragments thereof which archaeologists, geologists, sewer workers and
affiliated trades might encounter" in their excavations.
The crew at lunch was working on the next big
transmission tower in the vicinity. The towers by now had largely replaced
the forests that had once stood across the countryside, for trees were
suspect, too, being possible sources of paper. More towers were constantly
being built to keep the public uninformed.
The masses (it was no longer permitted to refer to
them as the people) demanded more towers, more Breaking News and broken
musik. Anything but silence. Silence was frightening. It might leave them
with no recourse but to think. Or just see, and even perceive.
In the background Frequency 24/7 never ceased.
"Remember the three As," it was saying. "Beware of keeping any Artifacts,
Antiques, and/or Adornments, or anything else, you might come across in your
dig.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
Professors Who Cheat
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
Protocol Analysis
"Can thinking aloud make you smarter?"
Barking Up the Wrong Tree, August 12, 2010 ---
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/can-thinking-aloud-make-you-smarter
Few studies
have examined the impact of age on reactivity to
concurrent think-aloud (TA) verbal reports.
An initial study with
30 younger and 31 older adults revealed that thinking
aloud improves older adult performance on a short form
of the Raven's Matrices (Bors & Stokes, 1998,
Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58, p. 382)
but did not affect other tasks. In the
replication experiment, 30 older adults (mean age =
73.0) performed the Raven's Matrices and three other
tasks to replicate and extend the findings of the
initial study. Once again older adults performed
significantly better only on the Raven's Matrices while
thinking aloud.
Performance gains on this task were substantial (d =
0.73 and 0.92 in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively),
corresponding to a fluid intelligence increase of nearly
one standard deviation.
Source: "How to Gain Eleven
IQ Points in Ten Minutes: Thinking Aloud Improves
Raven's Matrices Performance in Older Adults" from
Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, Volume 17, Issue
2 March 2010 , pages 191 - 204
Here's an explanation of what
Raven's Matrices are.
Speaking of smarts and genius, if you haven't read it,
Dave Eggers' book
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering
Genius
is a lot of fun. I highly
recommend the introduction, oddly enough.
Jensen Comment
Protocol Analysis ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_analysis
This takes me back to long ago to "Protocol Analysis" when having subjects
think aloud was documented in an effort to examine what information was used and
how it was used in decision making. One of the first Protocol Analysis studies
that I can recall was at Carnegie-Mellon when Geoffrey Clarkson wrote a doctoral
thesis on a bank's portfolio manager thinking aloud while making portfolio
investment decisions for clients. Although there were belated questions about
the integrity of Jeff's study, one thing that stuck out in my mind is how
accounting choices (LIFO vs. FIFO, straight-line vs. accelerated depreciation)
were ignored entirely when the decision maker analyzed financial statements.
This is one of those now rare books that I still have in some pile in my studio:
Geoffrey Clarkson,
Portfolio Selection-A Simulation of. Trust
Investment (Englewood
Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall,. Inc., 1962)
Clarkson reached a controversial conclusion that his model could choose the same
portfolios as the live decision maker. That was the part that was later
questioned by researchers.
Another application of Protocol Analysis was the doctoral thesis of Stan
Biggs.
As cited in The Accounting Review in January, 1988 ---
http://www.jstor.org/pss/247685
By the way, this one one of those former years when TAR had a section for "Small
Sample Studies" (those fell by the board in later years)
Also see
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bdm.3960060303/abstract
Does time really fly when you're having great fun rather than thinking about
accounting?
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/does-time-fly-when-youre-reading-about-sex
"Google and the Search for the Future: The Web icon's CEO on the
mobile computing revolution, the future of newspapers, and privacy in the
digital age," by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., The Wall Street Journal,
August 14, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704901104575423294099527212.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t
To some, Google has been looking a bit sallow
lately. The stock is down. Where once everything seemed to go the company's
way, along came Apple's iPhone, launching a new wave of Web growth on a
platform that largely bypassed the browser and Google's search box. The
"app" revolution was going to spell an end to Google's dominance of Web
advertising.
But that's all so six-months-ago. When a group of
Journal editors sat down with Eric Schmidt on a recent Friday, Google's CEO
sounded nothing like a man whose company was facing a midlife crisis, let
alone intimations of mortality.
For one thing, just a couple days earlier, Google
had publicly estimated that 200,000 Android smartphones were being activated
daily by cell carriers on behalf of customers. That's a doubling in just
three months. Since the beginning of the year, Android phones have been
outselling iPhones by an increasing clip and seem destined soon to outstrip
Apple in global market share.
True, Apple sells its phones for luscious margins,
while Google gives away Android to handset makers for free. But not to
worry, says Mr. Schmidt: "You get a billion people doing something, there's
lots of ways to make money. Absolutely, trust me. We'll get lots of money
for it."
"In general in technology," he says, "if you own a
platform that's valuable, you can monetize it." Example: Google is obliged
to share with Apple search revenue generated by iPhone users. On Android,
Google gets to keep 100%. That difference alone, says Mr. Schmidt, is more
than enough to foot the bill for Android's continued development.
And coming soon is Chrome OS, which Google hopes
will do in tablets and netbooks what Android is doing in smartphones, i.e.,
give Google a commanding share of the future and leave, in this case,
Microsoft in the dust.
Can it all be so easy? Google's stock price has
fallen nearly $250 since the beginning of the year. Financial pundits have
started to ask skeptical questions, wondering why it doesn't give more of
its ample cash back to shareholders in the form of buybacks and dividends.
Some suspect that all that temptation merely encourages Mr. Schmidt, along
with founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page—the triumvirate running the
company—to splurge on gimmicky ideas that never pay off. Fortune magazine
recently called Google a "cash cow" and suggested more attention be paid to
milking it rather than running off in search of the next big thing.
But to hear Mr. Schmidt tell it, the real challenge
is one not yet on most investors' minds: how to preserve Google's franchise
in Web advertising, the source of almost all its profits, when "search" is
outmoded.
The day is coming when the Google search box—and
the activity known as Googling—no longer will be at the center of our online
lives. Then what? "We're trying to figure out what the future of search is,"
Mr. Schmidt acknowledges. "I mean that in a positive way. We're still happy
to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are
done on your behalf without you needing to type."
"I actually think most people don't want Google to
answer their questions," he elaborates. "They want Google to tell them what
they should be doing next."
Let's say you're walking down the street. Because
of the info Google has collected about you, "we know roughly who you are,
roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are." Google also
knows, to within a foot, where you are. Mr. Schmidt leaves it to a listener
to imagine the possibilities: If you need milk and there's a place nearby to
get milk, Google will remind you to get milk. It will tell you a store ahead
has a collection of horse-racing posters, that a 19th-century murder you've
been reading about took place on the next block.
Says Mr. Schmidt, a generation of powerful handheld
devices is just around the corner that will be adept at surprising you with
information that you didn't know you wanted to know. "The thing that makes
newspapers so fundamentally fascinating—that serendipity—can be calculated
now. We can actually produce it electronically," Mr. Schmidt says.
Mr. Schmidt obviously has an eye to his audience,
which this day consists of folks with an abiding devotion to the newspaper
business. He speaks in sorrowful tones about the "economic disaster that is
the American newspaper." He assures us that in the coming deluge trusted
"brands" will be more important than ever. Just as quickly, though, he adds
that whether the winners will be new brands or existing brands remains to be
seen. On one thing, however, Google is willing to bet: "The only way the
problem [of insufficient revenue for news gathering] is going to be solved
is by increasing monetization, and the only way I know of to increase
monetization is through targeted ads. That's our business."
Mr. Schmidt is a believer in targeted advertising
because, simply, he's a believer in targeted everything: "The power of
individual targeting—the technology will be so good it will be very hard for
people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been
tailored for them."
That's a bit scary when you think about it. But for
investors and executives the big question, of course, is which companies
will control these opportunities. Google may see itself as friend and helper
to the media business, but it also clearly sees itself in control of the
targeting information. Says Mr. Schmidt: "As you go from the search box [to
the next phase of Google], you really want to go from syntax to semantics,
from what you typed to what you meant. And that's basically the role of
[Artificial Intelligence]. I think we will be the world leader in that for a
long time."
Between here and there, though, the company faces
ever-growing legal, political and regulatory obstacles. The net neutrality
debate, which Google has led, has taken a sudden turn that has many of its
former allies in the "public interest" sector shouting "treason."
What was most striking about the set of net neut
"principles" Google produced this week with former antagonist Verizon was
that they didn't apply to wireless. "The issues of wireless versus wireline
gets very messy," Mr. Schmidt told one news site. "And that's really an FCC
issue, not a Google issue."
Wait. Isn't the future of the Internet wireless
these days? Isn't wireless the very basis of the new partnership between
Google and Verizon, built on promoting Google's Android software? But Google
has now broken ranks with its allies and dared to speak about the sheer
impracticality of net neutrality on mobile networks where demand is likely
to outstrip capacity for the foreseeable future.
If that weren't about to become a sticky political
wicket for the company, it also faces growing antitrust, privacy and patent
scrutiny, fanned by a growing phalanx of Beltway opponents, the latest being
Larry Ellison and Oracle. "There's a set of people who are intrinsic
oppositionists to everything Google does," Mr. Schmidt acknowledges
resignedly. "The first opponent will be Microsoft."
Mr. Schmidt is familiar with the game—as chief
technology officer of Sun Microsystems in the 1990s, he was a chief fomenter
of the antitrust assault on Bill Gates & Co. Now that the tables are turned,
he says, Google will persevere and prevail by doing what he says Microsoft
failed to do—make sure its every move is "good for consumers" and "fair" to
competitors.
Uh huh. Google takes a similarly generous view of
its own motives on the politically vexed issue of privacy. Mr. Schmidt says
regulation is unnecessary because Google faces such strong incentives to
treat its users right, since they will walk away the minute Google does
anything with their personal information they find "creepy."
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's search helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
"Gambling on grades online," SkunkPost.com ---
http://skunkpost.com/news.sp?newsId=2966
Think you're going to ace freshman year? Want to
put money on that?
A website called Ultrinsic is taking wagers on
grades from students at 36 colleges nationwide starting this month.
Just as Las Vegas sports books set odds on football
games, Ultrinsic will pay you top dollar for A's, a little less for the more
likely outcome of a B average or better, and so on. You can also wager
you'll fail a class by buying what Ultrinsic calls "grade insurance."
CEO Steven Wolf insists this is not online
gambling, which is technically illegal in the United States, because wagers
with Ultrinsic involve skill.
"The students have 100 percent control over it,
over how they do. Other people's stuff you bet on — your own stuff you
invest in," Wolf says. "Everything's true about it, I'm just trying to say
that the underlying concept is a little bit more than just making a bet —
it's actually an incentive."
Your mother may disagree, however, that it's a
smart way to spend money — never mind that it's legal. And a California
gambling law expert says she may be right, once you take into account the
factors besides skill that contribute to academic performance.
Here's how Wolf says the website works: A student
registers, uploads his or her schedule and gives Ultrinsic access to
official school records. The New York-based site then calculates odds based
on the student's college history and any information it can dig up on the
difficulty of each class, the topic and other factors. The student decides
how much to wager up to a cap that starts at $25 and increases with use.
Alex Winter, a 20-year-old about to start his
junior year majoring in economics at the University of Pennsylvania, says he
placed wagers through Ultrinsic after getting a flier on campus.
"I said, 'OK, that sounds like an easy way to make
money,' so I signed up," says Winter, who bet $20 to $50 each on six of the
10 classes he took last year and cleared $150 overall.
Students at Penn and New York University could play
at Ultrinsic last year. Its expansion this month to 34 more campuses comes
with new funding, Wolf says. He wouldn't name the investors or say how much
they put in.
Ultrinsic saves its longest shots for fresh-faced
high school graduates: If you wager $20 that you'll finish college with a
4.0 GPA and follow through, you'll get $2,000 when you graduate. At 100-1
odds, that's about like a typical seven-team football parlay bet in Sin
City. Instead of picking the right side in seven games, though, a student
has to win in every class over an entire college career.
Continued in article
Jensen Question
Is there just a bit of moral hazard if you bet on getting an F?
David Gauntlett: Making is Connecting ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF4OBfVQmCI
At the AAA Commons, Rick Lillie wrote the following ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home
This 9 minute presentation by David Gauntlett
titled Making is Connecting is an excellent
example of a slide presentation
with supporting soundtrack.
Overall, the author:
- used zoom-in/zoom-out to add
motion or
movement
to the presentation which creates a movie-like feeling.
- recorded a great soundtrack
(i.e., excellent sound quality).
- emphasized
pictures and images supported by
text rather than text (i.e., like
most PowerPoint type presentations).
- made pictures/images/text flow along smoothly
with the voice narration.
Gauntlett used several software tools to create the
presentation file. The slides could be created with (e.g.,
PowerPoint,
Creately,
Capture Wiz Pro, or
SnagIt). The soundtrack could be added with
PowerPoint or an authoring tools like
Camtasia. He could also use an inexpensive but
powerful tool like
Replay Video Capture to capture the slides on a
screen and add the soundtrack. There are a lot of technology tools
available to create this type of presentation.
Gauntlett used YouTube to share
the video presentation with viewers. The YouTube video could be public or
it could be made private but shareable by using YouTube's new
unlisted sharing option. YouTube's new
unlisted sharing option
provides a great way to create and share audio/video presentations in a
teaching-learning experience.
Gauntlett created a streaming video
presentation that is a dynamic, enjoyable viewing experience.
Rick Lillie (CalState, San Bernardino)
On Another Topic
Rick laments the loss of his beloved TokBox Video Messaging, which like Google
Wave, is now on the trash heap of has-been technology ---
Click Here
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/bye-bye-tokbox-video-messaging-great-loss-for-distance-teaching-and-learning/
Rick also provides a video at this link.
Jensen Comment
To be honest, I considered TokBox a bit of a waste of band width if all that
was shown were videos of two talking heads communicating with one another. But
when I think about it some more, there can be some advantages of looking into
the face of the person you're communicating with since a face often reveals
important visual cues apart from the voice sounds.
One possible research idea would be to examine the differences between visual
cues in speakers' faces when talking in front of a video camera (or Webcam)
versus when talking in front of a live person. Also asymmetric visual cues might
be examined. There may only be small differences when each person sees the face
of the other person (live versus on camera), but if only one person is on camera
there may be greater differences due to the loss of visual cues of the other
person.
Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
"Hedge-Fund Manager Pleads Guilty to Multimillion-Dollar Swindle of 4
Universities," by Paul Fain, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 29, 2010
--- "
http://chronicle.com/article/Hedge-Fund-Manager-Pleads/123713/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
A former hedge-fund manager has pleaded guilty to
criminal charges in an
investment scam in which he bilked as much as
$900-million from investors, including four university endowments.
In his plea, Paul R. Greenwood said on Wednesday
that he and his partner, Steven Walsh, had spent money from the investment
accounts on themselves and their family members. According to investigators,
the two spent at least $160-million on mansions, horses, rare books, and an
$80,000 collectible teddy bear. Mr. Walsh has pleaded not guilty, and Mr.
Greenwood will testify against him at trial.
The two promised low risks and high returns to
investors in what was essentially a Ponzi scheme. Their 16 institutional
investors included the University of Pittsburgh ($65-million invested),
Carnegie Mellon University ($49-million),
Bowling Green State University ($15-million), and
Ohio Northern University ($10-million).
The universities realized something was wrong last
year, when they discovered that much of their assets had been signed out as
promissory notes attributed to Mr. Walsh and Mr. Greenwood. Carnegie
Mellon's treasurer traveled to the firm's offices in New Jersey and
Connecticut in an unsuccessful quest to find out what had happened to the
university's investment.
After the two money managers were arrested, an
investment adviser who works with university endowments said that background
checks should have spotted problems with the fund, and that he had advised
colleges to pull out of it.
A court-appointed receiver is pursuing the pair's
assets in an attempt to recoup some of the losses for investors. Mr.
Greenwood's assets will be auctioned off, including, presumably, his
collection of rare stuffed animals. He faces a prison sentence of as long as
85 years and hundreds of millions of dollars in fines at his December
sentencing, according to news reports.
Jensen Comment
Some of you might recall my earlier tidbits on how this case also involved
Deloitte.
Question
Why would four universities (Carnegie-Mellon, Pittsburgh, Bowling
Green, and Ohio Northern) invest hundreds of millions dollars in a
fraudulent investment fund and what makes this fraud different from
the Madoff and Stanford fund scandals?
One of the reasons is that the fraudulent Westridge Capital
Management Fund was audited by the reputable Big Four firm of
Deloitte.
It seems to be Auditing 101 to verify that securities investments
actually exist and have not be siphoned off illegally. Purportedly,
Paul R. Greenwood and Stephen Walsh siphoned off hundreds of
millions to fund their lavish personal lifestyles
Koch recently told state lawmakers that Iowa officials believed they
had "covered the bases" but that "obviously, something went wrong."
He and Cochrane, in an interview, said that there was no apparent
problem with Westridge that would raise concerns. Numerous
government regulatory agencies had audited the company and the
venerable
Deloitte and Touche
firm was Westridge's auditor. The
company's investment returns did not raise suspicion because they
generally followed market trends: The firm gained and lost money
when the rest of the market did.
Stephen C. Fehr, "Iowa, N.D. victims of investment fraud,"
McClatchy-Tribune News Service, March 16, 2009 ---
http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=97917687
As with the investors who lost $65 billion in the Madoff Fund, word
of mouth from respected people and institutions seem to weigh more
than factual analysis for countless investors? Rabbi Ragan says a
good man runs this fund? If Carnegie-Mellon's investing in it it
most be safe? Yeah Right!
Various other investors and investment funds allegedly lost millions
in the Greenwood-Walsh Fund Fraud ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/business/26scam.html?scp=1&sq=paul
greenwood&st=cse
The Pennsylvania Employees’ Retirement System was saved in the nick
of time from investing nearly a billion dollars in the fund upon
discovering that the National Futures Association began an
investigation of the Greenwood-Walsh Fund. For other duped investors
it was too late.
But in some cases the auditing firm is reputable and has deep
pockets.
"A 4th University Is Missing Money in Alleged
$554-Million Swindle," by Paul Fain, Chronicle of Higher
Education, March 19, 2009 ---
Click Here
Ohio Northern University is the fourth higher-education institution
to announce that it is seeking to recoup money in an alleged
$554-million investment fraud, university officials
said today. Ohio
Northern’s endowment had $10-million invested with two Wall Street
veterans who face criminal charges for allegedly using investors’
money as a “personal piggy bank,” spending at least $160-million on
mansions, horses, rare books, and collectible toys.
Also tied up in the
apparent swindle
is $65-million from the University of Pittsburgh, $49-million from
Carnegie Mellon University, and
$15-million
from Bowling Green State University.
Securities lawyers say little value from the original investments
will be recovered. Officials from all of the universities say the
potential losses will have no immediate impact on their operations.
Most college endowments rely on outside investment consultants to
help direct their money. Hartland & Company, a financial firm in
Cleveland, steered the now-missing investments by Ohio Northern and
Bowling Green to the firm running the allegedly-fraudulent scheme.
Pitt and Carnegie Mellon relied on the advice of Wilshire
Associates, a major California-based consulting firm.
Paul R. Greenwood and Stephen Walsh, the two Wall Street traders who
owned the suspect firm, face charges of securities fraud, wire
fraud, and conspiracy. Federal regulators have also sued the men,
and are pursuing their assets.
"Pitt, CMU money managers arrested in fraud FBI says they
misappropriated $500 million for lavish lifestyles," by Jonathon
Silver, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 26, 2009 ---
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09057/951834-85.stm
Two East Coast investment managers sued for fraud by the University
of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University misappropriated more
than $500 million of investors' money to hide losses and fund a
lavish lifestyle that included purchases of $80,000 collectible
teddy bears, horses and rare books, federal authorities said
yesterday.
As Pitt and Carnegie Mellon were busy trying to learn whether they
will be able to recover any of their combined $114 million in
investments through Westridge Capital Management, the FBI yesterday
arrested the corporations' managers.
Paul Greenwood, 61, of North Salem, N.Y., and Stephen Walsh, 64, of
Sands Point, N.Y., were charged in Manhattan -- by the same office
prosecuting the Bernard L. Madoff fraud case -- with securities
fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy.
Both men also were sued in civil court by the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission,
which alleged that the partners misappropriated more than $553
million and "fraudulently solicited" $1.3 billion from investors
since 1996.
The Accused
Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh are accused of misappropriating
millions from investors. Here is a look at some of their biggest
personal purchases:
• HOME: Mr. Greenwood, a horse breeder, owned a horse farm in North
Salem, N.Y., an affluent community that counts David Letterman as a
resident.
• BEARS: Mr. Greenwood owns as many as 1,350 Steiff toys, including
teddy bears costing as much as $80,000.
• DIVORCE: Mr. Walsh bought his ex-wife a $3 million condominium as
part of their divorce settlement.
"This is huge," said David Rosenfeld, associate regional director of
the SEC's New York Regional Office. "This is a truly egregious fraud
of immense proportions."
Lawyers for the defendants either could not be reached or had no
comment.
Mr. Greenwood and Mr. Walsh, longtime associates and former
co-owners of the New York Islanders hockey team, ran Westridge
Capital Management and a number of affiliated funds and entities.
As late as this month, the partners appeared to be doing well. Mr.
Greenwood told Pitt's assistant treasurer Jan. 21 that they had $2.8
billion under management -- though that number is now in question.
And on Feb. 2, Pitt sent $5 million to be invested.
But in the course of less than three weeks, Westridge's mammoth
portfolio imploded in what federal authorities called an investment
scam meant to cover up trading losses and fund extravagant purchases
by the partners.
An audit launched Feb. 5 by the National Futures Association proved
key to uncovering the alleged deceit and apparently became the
linchpin of the case federal prosecutors are building.
That audit came about in an indirect way. The association, a
self-policing membership body, had taken action against a New York
financier. That led to a man named Jack Reynolds, a manager of the
Westridge Capital Management Fund in which CMU invested $49 million;
and Mr. Reynolds led to Westridge.
"We just said we better take a look at Jack Reynolds and see what's
happening, and that led us to Westridge and WCM, so it was a domino
effect," said Larry Dyekman, an association spokesman. "We're just
not sure we have the full picture yet."
Mr. Reynolds has not been charged by federal authorities, but he is
named as a defendant in the lawsuit that was filed last week by Pitt
and CMU.
"Greenwood and Walsh refused to answer any of our questions about
where the money was or how much there was," Mr. Dyekman continued.
"This is still an ongoing investigation, and we can't really say at
this point with any finality how much has been lost."
The federal criminal complaint traces the alleged illegal activity
to at least 1996.
FBI Special Agent James C. Barnacle Jr. said Mr. Greenwood and Mr.
Walsh used "manipulative and deceptive devices," lied and withheld
information as part of a scheme to defraud investors and enrich
themselves.
The complaint refers to a public state-sponsored university called
"Investor 1" whose details match those given by Pitt in its lawsuit.
The SEC's Mr. Rosenfeld said the fraud hinged not so much on the
partners' investment strategy but on the fact that they are believed
to have simply spent other people's money on themselves.
"They took it. They promised the investors it would be invested. And
instead of doing that they misappropriated it for their own use,"
Mr. Rosenfeld said.
Not only do federal authorities believe Mr. Greenwood and Mr. Walsh
used new investors' funds to cover up prior losses in a classic
Ponzi scheme, they used more than $160 million for personal expenses
including:
• Rare books bought at auction;
• Steiff teddy bears purchased for up to $80,000 at auction houses
including Sotheby's;
• A horse farm;
• Cars;
• A residence for Mr. Walsh's ex-wife, Janet Walsh, 53, of Florida,
for at least $3 million;
• Money for Ms. Walsh and Mr. Greenwood's wife, Robin Greenwood, 57,
both of whom are defendants in the SEC suit. More than $2 million
was allegedly wired to their personal accounts by an unnamed
employee of the partners.
"Defendants treated investor money -- some of which came from a
public pension fund -- as their own piggy bank to lavish themselves
with expensive gifts," said Stephen J. Obie, the Commodity Futures
Trading Commission's acting director of enforcement.
It is not clear how Pitt and CMU got involved with Mr. Greenwood and
Mr. Walsh. But there is at least one connection involving academia.
The commission suit said Mr. Walsh represented to potential
investors that he was a member of the University at Buffalo
Foundation board and served on its investment committee.
Mr. Walsh is a 1966 graduate of the State University of New York at
Buffalo where he majored in political science.
He was a trustee of the University at Buffalo Foundation, but the
foundation did not have any investments in Westridge or related
firms.
Universities, charitable organizations, retirement and pension funds
are among the investors who have done business with Mr. Greenwood
and Mr. Walsh.
Among those investors are the Sacramento County Employees'
Retirement System, the Iowa Public Employees' Retirement System and
the North Dakota Retirement and Investment Office, which handles $4
billion in investments for teachers and public employees.
The North Dakota fund received about $20 million back from Westridge
Capital Management, but has an undetermined amount still out in the
market, said Steve Cochrane, executive director.
Mr. Cochrane said Westridge Capital was cooperative in returning
what money it could by closing out their position and sending them
the money.
"I dealt with them exclusively all these years," Mr. Cochrane said.
"They always seemed to be upfront and honest. I think they're as
stunned and as victimized as we are, is my guess."
He said Westridge Capital had done an excellent job over the years.
The November financial statement indicated that the one-year return
from Westridge Capital was a negative 11.87 percent, but the
five-year annualized rate of return was a positive 8.36 percent.
According to Bloomberg, Carnegie-Mellon University received audited
financial statements and relied heavily on the certification from
Deloitte ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=abOuQYqKtndc&refer=home
Actually, CMU’s consulting firm (Wilshire) claims it relied on that
Deloitte certification:
******Begin Quotation
“It said all clients received audited financial results from
Deloitte & Touche, and custodial statements from trustee banks
showing Westridge’s trading. Carnegie Mellon hires consultants to
provide expertise and perform substantial due diligence, said Ken
Walters a spokesman for the school. “In this case, this investment
was “highly recommended” to the university by Wilshire, he said. He
declined to comment further on the consultant.”
******End Quotation
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Bob Jensen's Rotten to the Core threads are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
|
Bob Jensen's threads on Deloitte are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm
Humor is an important but sensitive issue in education and learning and
politics and everyday life
Psychology of Humor: I never thought the Three Stooges Were Funny
(What does that say about me?)
I'm not sending the following out as a political message. It does, however,
discuss some serious research on the psychology of humor
"Political Stooges: A new study of humor could spell trouble for Rand
Paul," by James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704901104575423422292357524.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t
Two lonely "psychological scientists"
have been hard at work trying to understand this peculiar human phenomenon
called "humor," the
Association for Psychological Science tells us in
a press release.
It turns out, for example, that the idea
of the late Jimmy Dean hiring a rabbi as a spokesman for a new line of pork
products is "more likely to make the reader laugh" than the idea of Dean
hiring a farmer for the same job. That's because "having a rabbi promote
pork" is a "moral violation," per
Leviticus 11:7:
And the pig, though it has a split hoof completely
divided, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you.
Haha, get it?! The other characteristic that makes
humor "funny" is benignity, which explains the Three Stooges. From the press
release:
"We laugh when Moe hits Larry because we know that
Larry's not really being hurt," says [the University of Colorado's A.
Peter] McGraw, referring to humorous slapstick. "It's a violation of
social norms. You don't hit people, especially a friend. But it's okay
because it's not real."
One should not underestimate the
importance of this scientific advance, which builds on earlier work by "a
research team led by Dr. Allan L. Reiss of the Stanford University School of
Medicine," which was reported by the
Associated Press in 2005:
They were surprised when their studies of how the
male and female brains react to humor showed that women were more
analytical in their response, and felt more pleasure when they decided
something really was funny.
"Women appeared to have less expectation of a
reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon," said
Reiss. "So when they got to the joke's punch line, they were more
pleased about it."
Women were subjecting humor to more analysis with
the aim of determining if it was indeed funny, Reiss said in a telephone
interview.
Men are using the same network in the brain, but
less so, he said, men are less discriminating.
"It doesn't take a lot of analytical machinery to
think someone getting poked in the eye is funny," he commented when
asked about humor like the Three Stooges.
And of course it's a commonplace that women don't
get the Stooges. But imagine a DVD release of their greatest hits,
accompanied by analysis from A. Peter McGraw. The ladies would love it, and
the gents would be grateful for the chance to find common ground with the
opposite sex.
Continued in article
Reference
"People Think Immoral Behavior Is Funny -- But Only If
It Also Seems Benign," ScienceDaily (Aug. 9, 2010) ---
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100809142042.htm
August 12, 2010 reply from Zane Swanson
[ZSwanson@UCO.EDU]
As I am preparing syllabi for the fall, I am
reviewing the WSJ accounting subject cartoons that are placed on the
projector before class starts. When the cartoon is removed, it is the signal
that serious learning is to begin. Unless I missed them, there were no funny
WSJ accounting cartoons during this summer or the year for that matter. If
anyone has some recent accounting cartoons to share, I would appreciate it.
Zane Swanson
August 12, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Zane,
I prefer cartoons from
The New Yorker, but there are serious copyright issues with cartoons in
general and especially The New Yorker’s cartoons. Some of them are
really funny ---
http://www.cartoonbank.com/?affiliate=ny-cbanimation
Enter the word
“accounting” in the search box.
Bob Jensen's threads on humor are added to the bottom of every edition of
New Bookmarks
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookurl.htm
Accounting Humor ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm#Humor
From the Scout Report on July 29, 2010
Weebly ---
http://www.weebly.com/
If you're somewhat inexperienced with website
design, you may wish to check out Weebly. The program has received solid
marks, and it gives users the ability to create a free website and blog. The
program uses a drag and drop website editor, so users just need to move the
videos, pictures, maps, or text they want into place. Weebly provides the
hosting, and they also offer over seventy professional templates. There is
also a special version available for educators and schools. Visitors are
required to register online, and this version is compatible across all
operating systems.
Wordle ---
http://www.wordle.net/
If you've ever wanted to create a "word cloud",
this application is the perfect way to do it. With Wordle, visitors just
provide the text, and the application will generate these "clouds", which
give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently. Users can
tweak the clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. On the
website, visitors can look at samples that use the US Constitution and other
pieces of text. This version is compatible with all operating systems.
From the Scout Report on August 13, 2010
Glogster EDU ---
http://edu.glogster.com/
Glogster is known for giving members of the public
their own personal digital platforms, and now they have created an outlet
just for educators. With Glogster EDU, educators and others can use this
secure site to allow students to create and save workspaces online. Visitors
just need to register on the site, and they will be able create interactive
and multimedia learning environments that are both engaging and erudite.
This version is compatible with all operating systems. [KMG]
Pidgin 2.73 ---
http://www.pidgin.im/
If you want to stay in touch with friends, family,
and collaborators online, you might do well to give the latest version of
Pidgin a look. This multi- protocol instant messaging client integrates
multiple accounts across different services simultaneously. Visitors can
also use the application to sign up for updates when a particular friend
logs in or out, and they can also attach various sounds to different actions
and updates. This version of Pidgin is compatible with operating systems
running Windows 98 and newer and Mac OS X.
A Row in Savile Row Rogue Tailor Needles Savile Row
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704723604575378994073791142.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_lifestyle
Savile Row Artisan
http://thesavilerowartisan.com/
SavileRowBespoke
http://www.savilerowbespoke.com/Home/index.php
Tailor Made For History
http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/autumn05/tailor.cfm
The Tailor's Manual or Twenty Years A New England Tailor (By One Of The
Craft)
http://books.google.com/books?id=V63yrs3whqoC&dq=tailors&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=tailors&f=false
Victorian History: The tailors and the Lady
http://vichist.blogspot.com/2009/05/tailor-and-lady.html
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
An Absolute Must Read for Educators
One of the most exciting things I took away from the 2010 AAA Annual Meetings in
San Francisco is a hard copy handout entitled "Expanding Your Classroom with
Video Technology and Social Media," by Mark Holtzblatt and Norbert Tschakert.
Mark later sent me a copy of this handout and permission to serve it up to you
at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Video-Expanding_Your_Classroom_CTLA_2010.pdf
This is an exciting listing to over 100 video clips and full-feature videos
that might be excellent resources for your courses, for your research, and for
your scholarship in general. Included are videos on resources and useful tips
for video projects as well as free online communication tools.
My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of
work that they are now sharing with us.
MIT Media Lab ---
http://www.media.mit.edu/
Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Find a College
College Atlas ---
http://www.collegeatlas.org/
Among other things the above site provides acceptance rate percentages
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Video: Looking at 20th Century Art through the Eyes of a Physicist ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-looking-at-20th-century-art-through-the-eyes-of-a-physicist/
Center for History of Physics --- http://www.aip.org/history/index.html
Science & Technology Review ---
https://str.llnl.gov/
Georgia Tech Research Institute [pdf,
Flash Player]
http://www.gtri.gatech.edu/
The American Institute of Architects: Practicing Architecture ---
http://www.aia.org/practicing/index.htm
These Crocs Are Made for Biting! [Flash Player]
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/crocs/
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
How Metropolitan Areas Can Lead National Export Growth ---
http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2010/0726_exports_istrate_rothwell_katz.aspx
Student Victimization in U.S. Schools: Results From the 2007 School Crime
Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey ---
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010319.pdf
Sunlight Foundation's Party Time! (sunlight and transparency in government)
---
http://politicalpartytime.org/
John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center ---
http://www.volpe.dot.gov/
RAND Center on Quality Policing ---
http://www.rand.org/ise/centers/quality_policing/
Making History: The Changing Face of the Profession in Britain ---
http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/
Investor Protection Trust ---
http://www.investorprotection.org/
This site provides teaching materials.
The Investor Protection Trust provides independent,
objective information to help consumers make informed investment decisions.
Founded in 1993 as part of a multi-state settlement to resolve charges of
misconduct, IPT serves as an independent source of non-commercial investor
education materials. IPT operates programs under its own auspices and uses
grants to underwrite important initiatives carried out by other
organizations.
Bob Jensen's threads on fraud prevention and fraud reporting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm
Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
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
"Goldman's Settlement with the SEC, and the Fragile Future of the Fabulous
Fab," by Jim Peterson, Re:Balance, August 11, 2010 ---
Click Here
http://www.jamesrpeterson.com/home/2010/08/goldmans-setlement-with-the-sec-and-the-fragile-future-of-the-fabulous-fab.html
Bob Jensen's threads on Goldman are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
A Gallery of Ray Tracing for Geometers [QuickTime]
http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/23/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=3350
Great math tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
Video: Looking at 20th Century Art through the Eyes of a Physicist ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-looking-at-20th-century-art-through-the-eyes-of-a-physicist/
Center for History of Physics --- http://www.aip.org/history/index.html
University of Oklahoma Libraries: Bass Business Oral Histories
(multimedia)---
http://libraries.ou.edu/media/basshist/
Reader's Almanac ---
http://blog.loa.org/
Making History: The Changing Face of the Profession in Britain ---
http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/
Pitts Theology Library: Digital Image Archive ---
http://www.pitts.emory.edu/dia/woodcuts.htm
Medieval Library: Hesburgh Libraries: Introduction to Medieval Seals ---
http://medieval.library.nd.edu/seals/index.shtml
National Museums Northern Ireland [Flash Player]
http://www.nmni.com/uftm/Collections
Scotts Bluff: Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary ---
http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/scotts_bluff/
Repeat Photography Site for The James J. Hanks Photographs, 1927-1928
http://www6.nau.edu/library/sca/exhibits/hanks/index.cfm
Alaska's Digital Archive ---
http://vilda.alaska.edu/
Fairbanks House Historical Site ---
http://www.fairbankshouse.org/
Blue Heron Press Collection: Artists' Book ---
http://contentdm.unl.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/bhp
European Route of Industrial Heritage ---
http://www.erih.net/welcome.html
Wisconsin Public Land Survey Records: Original Field Notes and Plat Maps ---
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/SurveyNotes/
National Portrait Gallery: Echoes of Elvis [Flash Player]
http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/elvis/
Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy ---
http://www.mcachicago.org/calder/
Victorian History: The tailors and the Lady
http://vichist.blogspot.com/2009/05/tailor-and-lady.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
Sheet Music from Canada's Past ---
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/sheetmusic/index-e.html
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music
Writing Tutorials
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
August 12, 2010
August 13, 2010
August 14, 2010
August 16, 2010
August 17, 2010
August 18, 2010
August 19, 2010
August 20, 2010
Forwarded by Maureen
Courage
You're a 19 year old kid.
You're
critically wounded and dying in the jungle somewhere in the
Central
Highlands of Viet Nam .
It's November 11, 1967.
LZ
(landing zone) X-ray. Your unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so
intense, from 100
yards
away, that your CO (commanding officer) has ordered the MedEvac
helicopters to stop coming in.
You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you
know
you're not getting out.
Your
family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and
you'll
never see them again.
As
the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.
Then - over the machine gun noise - you faintly hear the sound of a
helicopter.
You
look up to see a Huey coming in. But ... It doesn't seem real
because
no MedEvac markings are on it.
Captain Ed Freeman is coming in for you.
He's not MedEvac so it's not his job, but he heard the radio call and
decided
he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire anyway.
Even
after the MedEvacs were ordered not to come.
He's
coming anyway.
And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load
3 of you
at a time on board.
Then he flies you
up and out through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses and safety.
And, he kept coming back!! 13 more times!!
Until
all the wounded were out. No one knew until the mission was over that the
Captain had been hit 4 times in the legs and left arm.
He took 29 of
you and your buddies out that day. Some would not
have
made it without the Captain and his Huey.
Medal of Honor Recipient, Captain Ed Freeman,
United States
Air Force, died last Wednesday at the age of
70, in Boise, Idaho .
May God Bless and Rest His Soul.
Forwarded by Paula
A TOUGH OLD COWBOY FROM TEXAS COUNSELED HIS GRANDSON
THAT IF HE WANTED TO LIVE A LONG LIFE, THE SECRET WAS TO SPRINKLE A PINCH OF
GUN POWDER ON HIS OATMEAL EVERY MORNING.
THE GRANDSON DID THIS RELIGIOUSLY TO THE AGE OF 103 WHEN HE DIED.
HE LEFT BEHIND 14 CHILDREN, 30 GRANDCHILDREN, 45 GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN, 25
GREAT-GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN,
AND A 15-FOOT HOLE WHERE THE CREMATORIUM USED TO BE.
Sort a brings a tear to your eye, don't it?
Forwarded by Paula
Old Sea Story
There's an old sea story in the Navy about a ship's Captain who inspected his
sailors, and afterward told the Chief Boatswain that his men smelled bad. The
Captain suggested perhaps it would help if the sailors would change underwear
occasionally. The Chief responded, "Aye, aye sir, I'll see to it immediately!"
The Chief went straight to the sailors berth deck and announced, "The Captain
thinks you guys smell bad and wants you to change your underwear." He continued,
"Pittman, you change with Jones, McCarthy, you change with Witkowski, and Brown,
you change with Schultz. Now, GET TO IT!"
THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS:
Someone may come along and promise "Change", but
don't count on things smelling any better.
Jensen Comment
I first heard this story (in the context of gold miners) in the Malamute Saloon
in Fairbanks, Alaska courtesy of our host Tom Robinson. In the Malamute Saloon
the sawdust and peanut shells on the floor are almost ankle deep. The
temperature outside the saloon can be as much as 20 degrees colder in winter
than at the top of the cliff above the saloon.
Some Yugo Humor Extended to Higher Ed ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning
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/
Find a College
College Atlas ---
http://www.collegeatlas.org/
Among other things the above site provides acceptance rate percentages
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
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