Tidbits on August 20, 2010
Bob Jensen

This is the view of the Three graces (Cannon Balls)
Between Mt. Kinsman and Cannon Mountain
as Viewed From Our Front Lawn
This view becomes much better in foliage season

Debbie Bowling forwarded this link to
"A Ride Through New Hampshire"
http://www.mysanantonio.com/life/travel/A_ride_through_New_Hampshire_100715689.html?showFullArticle=y
I've featured Bath NH, (just down the road), the covered bridge, and the Singing Rage Patti Page previously at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2008/tidbits080715.htm
And I look directly out at  Franconia Notch whenever I'm at my computer ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconia_Notch
More pictures of Franconia Notch at
http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/tidbits/2007/tidbits071226.htm

Some Wild Turkeys in our Front Lawn

The Notch appears just like a "notch" below between Cannon and Lafayette mountains alongside Echo Lake

In February 2010 my good friend Will Yancey passed away
Below is his morning shot of Franconia Notch alongside Echo Lake
He stayed with us after attending a Dartmouth homecoming football game

More of Will Yancey's Pictures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2009/tidbits091117.htm

In this edition of Tidbits I'm devoting some of the photographic space to San Antonio
Erika and I lived there for 24 years and are returning September 2-7 for a visit
San Antonio:  Crape (Crepe) Myrtle City

Bob, I'm attaching my Crape Myrtle pictures - I couldn't photograph the most beautiful arrangement because it's at BAMC and photos are not allowed on the base without apparently going through some kind of security check... The parking situation at BAMC right now is unbelievably horrible and frustrating, so I drive John to and from work every day.  Millions of dollars worth of buildings are being constructed, including an enormous parking garage, but when all those additional 11,000 or 12,000 employees arrive, the traffic and parking problem...well...it boggles the mind trying to even imagine it.  Some people are retiring early because they just can't take the stress.  John plans to retire on December 31, 1011.  I bought a count-down clock for him!  
Paula

We're returning to San Antonio for a visit in the first week of September

 

Gene and Joan called my attention to this bit of history
Mr. Allen Swift ( Springfield , MA.) received this 1928 Rolls-Royce Piccadilly P1 Roadster from his father, brand new -
as a graduation gift in 1928. He drove it up until his death last year.....at the age of 102 !!! He was the
oldest living owner of a car from new. Just thought you'd like to see it. He donated
it to a Springfield museum after his death. It has 170,000 miles on it, still runs like a
Swiss watch, dead silent at any speed and is in perfect cosmetic condition. (82 years) ...
That's approximately 2000 miles per year...
This guy even like an accountant..

 

Come to think of it, an accountant would never own a ragtop. I once tooled
around in a 1955 Oldsmobile convertible, but I didn’t buy it new, and
I was still a college student (definitely not fitting the profile of an accountant).
This was the car
It always seemed to run out of gas late at night
if I was up on Lookout Mountain west of Denver

 

A friend at James Madison University, Professor David Fordham, sent me some beautiful pictures on a DVD disk that he took on a three-day, 25-mle hike in the back country of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. I am serving them up in his PowerPoint file (that takes 15-30 minutes to download) ---
 http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/FordamRockyMountainNationalPark.ppt
Maybe you can download this file while at lunch or download it in background while doing other things on your computer.

My August 15, 2010 reply to David Fordham

Hi David,

Yes I liked the music.

By the way, I have two degrees from the University of Denver and also had my first accounting job in Denver (Ernst & Ernst). As a matter of fact, I decided to become an accounting professor so I could have more time for skiing and hiking and chasing wild women --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/academ01.wav 
This may take over a minute to download.

My three years in Colorado and my youth allowed me to both ski and hike all over Colorado, and I really liked Rocky Mountain National Park and the Big Thompson Trails. Your photographs brought back a lot of memories.

I think many people will download a 15-minute file since they can do it in background while doing other things on their computer.

Bob Jensen

 

Debbie is still my secretary (now part-time) on the campus of Trinity University in Texas even though I’m now retired in New Hampshire.

I’m certain the picture below reminds her of when I still had an office on campus. In retirement I have two offices --- one in the main house that Erika insists that I keep neat and free of clutter and a second office in a studio beside the house that I’m too embarrassed to take a picture of at the moment.

 

At one time Debbie was puzzled by the mouse hole at the bottom of my Trinity office door.

I cut that so I could run an extra power cord into the office back in the days when all my electronics on one circuit kept blowing the circuit breaker.

 

William F. Buckley, Jr. --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley

 

Robert E. (Bob) Jensen

Trinity University Accounting Professor (Emeritus)
190 Sunset Hill Road

Sugar Hill, NH 03586

Tel. 603-823-8482
www.trinity.edu/rjensen

 

From: Bowling, Deborah D
Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 10:01 AM
To: Jensen, Robert
Subject: Picture

 

Here’s a picture of the desk of William F. Buckley…he wins! Like mind for sure.

 

Deborah Bowling
Business Administration Department
dbowling@trinity.edu


My outside Office:

A woodchuck lives under my outside office. When I shovel out the mess inside I will forward a picture of the interior.

Some  Jensen History
On August 2, 2010 in San Francisco I was invited to make a short speech at the Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Section Breakfast. Afterwards a couple of you questioned some of the dates I gave to events in my life. The events I mentioned were true, but the dates were way off --- something I can only attribute to old age and extemporaneous speaking.

For some unknown reason I decided to divert from my prepared remarks while approaching the podium on August 2. I had not planned to talk about the "game changer" in my professional life, but suddenly I was talking about the big game changer in my life. Between 1966 and 1990 I was a lousy teacher focused only on three performance scores for my work --- the number of accountics research working papers (over 200 by 1990), the number of invited out-of-town research presentations, and the number of refereed publications (about 50 by 1990) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm#Published

My research rather than my teaching paid off handsomely when I became the Nicolas M. Salgo Professor of Accounting at the University of Maine in 1968, received a Guggenheim Fellowship for two think tank years (1971/72 and 1973/74) at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford University), became the the KPMG Professor of Accounting at Florida State University in 1978, and ultimately became the Jesse H. Jones Professor of Business at Trinity University in 1982. My purpose here is not to brag. My purpose is to point out that research and publication outweighed every other criterion to my "success" prior to 1990 and made me what I think was overpaid between 1966 and 1990.

It was in the April 1990 (corrected date) when the game changer took place in my life. I was invited, along with about 40 other accounting professors in the State of Texas, by Prentice-Hall to attend an expense-paid seminar in Dallas on "How to Improve Your Teaching." The presentations on how to improve my teaching were uninspiring for nearly a day and a half until the very last presentation of the seminar --- the game changer in my life that instantly changed my entire focus from accountics research game playing to teaching, learning, and technology.

The game changer in my life was a presentation by Darrell Ward.---
http://www.einstruction.com/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.display&menu=news&content=showArticle&id=202 
Darrell resigned from the Computer Science Department at the University of North Texas  in the late 1980s to form HyperGraphics Corporation, HyperGraphics first built upon the old HyperCard seminal slide presentation software for the Apple II computers and added an entire non-linear navigation system and course management system for learning and assessment of learning. I don't think the Apple II version was all that successful, but when Darrill developed Hypergraphics for the DOS-based PC, HyperGraphics had considerable success.

I think my mouth was open during Darrell's entire presentation. Afterwards I went down and asked how I could buy the DOS-based HyperGraphics software. Darrill said that I could buy the stack of floppy disks and an instruction manual for $850 on the spot. I took out a check (my wife only allows me to carry one check) from my bill fold and wrote out a check for $850.

During the flight home from Dallas it then dawned on me that I did not own a PC. So instead of taking a taxi home from the San Antonio Airport, I took cab to a store called CompuAdd. There I paid over $2,000 for my first PC and projection panel. Until then I was always a snobby main frame guy (having taught FORTRAN, COBAL, and SPSS for the main frame) who, like IBM, thought that the the PC was simply a child's toy. After arriving home from the CompuAdd store I had to explain to my wife how I spent $3,000 on my way home from Dallas. Since I used my only check to buy the HyperGraphics software, I had to use a Visa card to buy the PC and an overhead panel.

In the summer of 1990 (corrected date) I worked about 15 hours a day programming my first course (a managerial accounting course) in HyperGraphics. In September of 1990 I unveiled my course to some of my Trinity University colleagues in a totally dark room using one of those terrible projection panels sitting on top of an overhead projector. The early panels converted all the color pictures to gray scale and were dim to read. But I could still demo what I thought was really cool --- nonlinear navigation for asynchronous learning and graphics/equation building in stages for student learning of complex details asynchronously. My colleagues departed shaking their heads and whispering that Jensen must be nuts.

It was October 4-5, 1990 (corrected date) when I made my first away-from-home dog and pony show on featuring HyperGraphics technology --- at the University of Wisconsin. HyperGraphics software pretty much died after Windows replaced the DOS operating system in PCs. I then shifted my managerial accounting and accounting theory courses to ToolBooks for the PC. My out-of-town dog and pony shows really commenced to roll when my university hosts invested in those old three-barrel color projectors that predated LCD projectors. I eventually made hundreds of presentations of HyperGraphics and then ToolBooks on college campuses in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Holland, and the United Kingdom (where I lugged my full PC and LCD projector between five campuses as the European Accounting Association Visiting Professor). Many of my campus visits and topics are listed at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm#Presentations

Today I would probably rely more on video for asynchronous learning ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

You can read about the history of HyperGraphics, ToolBook, Authorware, and the many other course authoring and management software systems (most of which died either early or prolonged deaths) at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

The important game changer for me in April 1990 is that I belatedly commenced to think about how students learn and more importantly how I could become a better teacher (or rather learning manager)  by helping students study complicated material on their own asynchronously with the ability to keep replaying at their own learning paces. I even wrote an early 1994 book on learning technology with the aid of Petrea Sandlin as my editor ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245cont.htm

My thoughts about how students learn are summarized in two evolving papers at:

My evolving education technology threads are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

My life seems to have taken on more meaning since I focused more on my students and how they learn.

The Crucial Role of Passion in Teaching and Learning --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Passion

 

 

Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on August 20, 2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations082010.htm         

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

 

Tidbits on August 20, 2010
Bob Jensen

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

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


Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations   


Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

CPA Examination --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination

Cool Search Engines That Are Not Google --- http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines

World Clock and World Facts --- http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf

Facts Clock --- http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf

U.S. Debt/Deficit Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Free Residential and Business Telephone Directory (you must listen to an opening advertisement) --- dial 800-FREE411 or 800-373-3411
 Free Online Telephone Directory --- http://snipurl.com/411directory       [www_public-records-now_com] 
 Free online 800 telephone numbers --- http://www.tollfree.att.net/tf.html
 Google Free Business Phone Directory --- 800-goog411
To find names addresses from listed phone numbers, go to www.google.com and read in the phone number without spaces, dashes, or parens

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

Daily News Sites for Accountancy, Tax, Fraud, IFRS, XBRL, Accounting History, and More ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm

Cool Search Engines That Are Not Google --- http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
Bob Jensen's search helpers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Education Technology Search --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Distance Education Search --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Microsoft's Bing --- http://www.bing.com/
Computational Search With Wolfram Alpha --- http://www.wolframalpha.com/
Search for Listservs, Blogs, and Social Networks --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

Bob Jensen's essay on the financial crisis bailout's aftermath and an alphabet soup of appendices can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm

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

149 Interesting People to Follow on Twitter (but I don't have time to follow them) ---
http://ow.ly/1sj5q
 
I see from my house by the side of the road
By the side of the highway of life,
The men who press with the ardor of hope,
The men who are faint with the strife,
But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,
Both parts of an infinite plan-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911)

For earlier editions of Tidbits go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbitsdirectory.htm

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

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.


On May 14, 2006 I retired from Trinity University after a long and wonderful career as an accounting professor in four universities. I was generously granted "Emeritus" status by the Trustees of Trinity University. My wife and I now live in a cottage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm

Bob Jensen's blogs and various threads on many topics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
       (Also scroll down to the table at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ )

Global Incident Map --- http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php

If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops  --- http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/




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

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

Gaming for Tenure as an Accounting Professor ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm
(with a reply about tenure publication point systems from Linda Kidwell)

"So you want to get a Ph.D.?" by David Wood, BYU ---
http://www.byuaccounting.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=So_you_want_to_get_a_Ph.D.%3F

Do You Want to Teach? ---
http://financialexecutives.blogspot.com/2009/05/do-you-want-to-teach.html

Jensen Comment
Here are some added positives and negatives to consider, especially if you are currently a practicing accountant considering becoming a professor.

Accountancy Doctoral Program Information from Jim Hasselback ---
http://www.jrhasselback.com/AtgDoctInfo.html 

Why must all accounting doctoral programs be social science (particularly econometrics) "accountics" doctoral programs?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

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

 

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

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

 




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

From National Geographic (videos and phots)
the USS Ronald Reagan Supercarrier --- Click Here
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/supercarrier-uss-ronald-reagan-4030/Overview?source=link_tw_02#tab-Videos/05201_00

I Fought for You --- http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=KTb6qdPu8JE

Eating Forbidden (alcoholic) fruit
Happy Hour in Africa --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9lKT07dmG0

National Museums Northern Ireland [Flash Player] http://www.nmni.com/uftm/Collections

Georgia Tech Research Institute [Flash Player] http://www.gtri.gatech.edu/

A Gallery of Ray Tracing for Geometers [QuickTime] http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/23/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=3350
Great math tutorials

These Crocs Are Made for Biting! [Flash Player] http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/crocs/

National Portrait Gallery: Echoes of Elvis [Flash Player] http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/elvis/

Those of you teaching managerial and cost accounting may find some value in this video of the Model T production line ---
http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?video_id=S4KrIMZpwCY
 

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

 

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/


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

National Portrait Gallery: Echoes of Elvis [Flash Player] http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/elvis/

Dale Warland's Transcendent Choral Sound ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129106308

Midori's Far-Reaching Message Of Music (Violin, Classical) ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129231865

Bach, Ballet And 1-Bit Symphonies: New Classical CDs --- 
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129035593

Domingo The Baritone In Verdi's 'Simon Boccanegra' (Introduction) ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129156159

Web outfits like Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2

TheRadio (my favorite commercial-free online music site) --- http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) --- http://www.slacker.com/

Gerald Trites likes this international radio site --- http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:  Search for a song or band and play the selection --- http://songza.com/
Also try Jango --- http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let it play through) --- http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live --- http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note
U.S. Army Band recordings --- http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp

Bob Jensen listens to music free online (and no commercials) --- http://www.slacker.com/ 


Photographs and Art

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/

National Museums Northern Ireland [Flash Player] http://www.nmni.com/uftm/Collections

Repeat Photography Site for The James J. Hanks Photographs, 1927-1928 http://www6.nau.edu/library/sca/exhibits/hanks/index.cfm

Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy --- http://www.mcachicago.org/calder/

Blue Heron Press Collection: Artists' Book --- http://contentdm.unl.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/bhp

Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943 --- http://extras.denverpost.com/archive/captured.html

Victorian History: The tailors and the Lady http://vichist.blogspot.com/2009/05/tailor-and-lady.html

From National Geographic (videos and phots)
the USS Ronald Reagan Supercarrier --- Click Here
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/supercarrier-uss-ronald-reagan-4030/Overview?source=link_tw_02#tab-Videos/05201_00

Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History


Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

University of Oklahoma Libraries: Bass Business Oral Histories (multimedia)--- http://libraries.ou.edu/media/basshist/

Pitts Theology Library: Digital Image Archive --- http://www.pitts.emory.edu/dia/woodcuts.htm

Reader's Almanac --- http://blog.loa.org/

Medieval Library: Hesburgh Libraries: Introduction to Medieval Seals --- http://medieval.library.nd.edu/seals/index.shtml

Blue Heron Press Collection: Artists' Book --- http://contentdm.unl.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/bhp

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




Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on August 20, 2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations082010.htm         

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

Quotations in a recent email message from Mike Groomer

If everything is under control, you're going too slow. 
Mario Andretti

Don’t ever mistake activity for achievement.
John Wooden

 




Stanford University confronts the graying of academia

"Stop Admitting Ph.D. Students," by Monica J. Harris, Inside Higher Ed, August 18, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2010/08/18/harris

After a few years of watching the academic job market collapse into a seeming death spiral, I also started to wonder whether my "full disclosure" strategy of trying to scare off prospective graduate students was adequate. I started to entertain the possibility that if the problem was too many qualified applicants for too few jobs, then perhaps the responsible – even ethical – course of action would be for me to stop contributing to the oversupply of applicants.

So, a few weeks ago I revised my departmental web page to include the following statement: "Notice to prospective graduate students: I will not be accepting new students in my lab for the indefinite future."

Some of my colleagues voiced private support; others vigorously disputed the idea that there was an oversupply of psychology Ph.D.s. As one friend told me over coffee at Starbucks, "Sure, the market is bad, but our students always find jobs." While that was true, it was also true that their searches had grown increasingly desperate over the past couple of years and that our success was driven in part because graduate training in psychology opens up a large number of applied options – options that are also drying up disconcertingly in the current recession.

Continued in article

August 17, 2010 AECM message from Bob Jensen

Hi Bill,

It is interesting to see how my alma mater, Stanford, is facing up to what it views as a serious problem with professors who refuse to retire long after they crossed over customary retirement ages.
”Stanford has tried different approaches to gently encourage departures.”

Stanford University confronts the graying of academia ---
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15480908?nclick_check=1

I think Stanford and most other universities are seeing a broader spectrum of problems with faculty who are well past customary retirement age. Privately ask the President of MSU if this is viewed as a university-wide problem to be “gently addressed” at MSU.

Accounting is an outlier where there are shortages of doctoral graduates in the wings waiting to take the place of retirement-age professors. This is most certainly not the case in most other disciplines where there may be over 200 highly viable applicants for each opening that becomes available. Thus we should not judge retirement incentives and policies just on one outlier discipline in the entire university. The NYT link forwarded by Denny Beresford certainly had the entire university in mind and not the outlier accounting department within that university.
The Professors Who Won't Retire
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/08/15/aging-professors-who-wont-retire?hp

I certainly agree with many of your points and was not advocating, at least not on a case-by-case basis, that old professors be forced into the pasture just because they’re old.

However, there are more complicated things to consider. If a critical mass of your old professors do not retire, you are depriving your department the transfusion of as much new blood as needed and may create a crisis when if the oldster turnover becomes a crisis all of a sudden in some year. I know it must be really tough when an accounting firm like Grant Thornton has to put a very youngish and experienced Bob Colson out to pasture because he reached a 55-year or thereabouts age limit. I suspect that one of the main reasons for age limits in large accounting firms is the need to make more and more openings for younger professionals. There are also other reasons that do not necessarily carry over into the academy such as to a desire to get rid of the most expensive employees. In accounting academe the accountant senior professors may be the lowest paid faculty members, but this is probably not true in philosophy, art history, music, chemistry, and physics.

I know you’re an exception, but in the macro scheme of things the oldsters that are still strong in the classroom have probably faded in the science labs where new knowledge is created and germinated. It would be interesting to see a chart of the age distributions of accounting research journal authors over the past two decades. I think it will be skewed to the left of 55 years of age, especially if we discard the refereed or invited papers that did not claim to contribute new research, i.e., those that are merely scholarly papers. My hypothesis is that publishing in research journals fades fast after professors, on average, are awarded promotions to full professor. Once again, Bill, you are certainly an exception.

It is interesting to see how my alma mater, Stanford, is facing up to what it views as a serious problem with professors who refuse to retire long after they crossed over customary retirement ages.
”Stanford has tried different approaches to gently encourage departures.”

Stanford University confronts the graying of academia ---
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15480908?nclick_check=1

One of the positive externalities of oldsters preventing new openings in the most prestigious universities is that the best and brightest doctoral graduates of those prestigious universities may tend to get dispersed around the nation more so than if the Ivy League universities are simply trading each others’ new doctoral students.

Bob Jensen

Denny Beresford called my attention to the following NYT article:
The Professors Who Won't Retire
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/08/15/aging-professors-who-wont-retire?hp 

Happily for me, I was not one of those who carried on beyond normal retirement age, and as a result my TIAA-CREF retirement income (commencing in 2006) was not impacted by the economic crash of 2008-2009.

Now I fear some professors are not retiring because their retirement funds went south.

However, I’ve found many, many instances (I can name names) where older professors are trapped into continued employment because they took on younger trophy spouses. These professors are eligible for Medicare but their younger spouses must cling to an employer’s group health plan. I’m still married to an older biscuit (love Erika dearly) and have no younger trophy wife --- that made earlier retirement much easier for me.

I wonder in the great macro scheme of things, how much Medicare has benefitted from younger trophy spouses --- especially when the older working stiff kicks the bucket before sending any claims to Medicare.

Of course there are other reasons for not retiring. In San Francisco on August 3 I overhead one old guy (well over 70) claim that he doesn’t plan to retire because he can’t think of anything he’s rather do in life. One of the record holders was a philosophy professor (formerly from Princeton University) that Catholic University finally sued to force him to retire --- he was over 90 years of age and did not want to retire from his second tenured post in life.


"Reader Poll: Tech Tool You're Most Excited to Take into the Classroom," by Julie Meloni, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 10, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Reader-Poll-Tech-Tool-Youre/26127/

I'm not sure I've ever said this out loud, but ReadWriteWeb is my absolute favorite blog in all the blogosphere, and has been since they began covering all things technology-related in 2003 or so—it's the emphasis on critical thinking and analysis rather than knee-jerk "first!" responses to news and events that makes me respect them so.

Recently, my most favorite RWW author (Audrey Watters) asked educators for input via Twitter: what's the tech tool you're most excited to take into the classroom with you this fall?. Audrey is collecting responses for use in an upcoming RWW story, so between now and August 15th feel free to help her out.

However, I'm interested in your answers as well. No, I don't aim to write a similar story as Audrey, but I do wonder about the different answers based on the different audiences. Audrey's readership comes from the already highly-technologically-inclined, often found on Twitter. The ProfHacker audience in the CHE is not necessarily so. In fact, I think it is safe to say that the majority of the ProfHacker readership is not on Twitter and is more technology-curious than technology-embedded (or invested).

So, I'd like to hear from you as well. In the comments, please let us know what's the tech tool you're most excited to take into the classroom with you this fall? (anything hardware or software "counts," and I'll even accept analog technologies as valid answers)

Hopefully, given your responses and Audrey's own article from (predominantly) her own audience, there will be some interesting food for thought on the state of technology in higher ed.

Jensen Comment
“Taking into the classroom” is a rather ambiguous phrase that should probably read “taking into the course.” In the latter case, something Camtasia is still on my list of important priorities for things to add to virtually any course whether onsite or online ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

Camtasia --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camtasia
Camtasia can be used by students as well as instructors.

"The Emerging List of Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010 as at 11 August 2010 based on 362 contributions so far The list will be closed and finalised on 17 October 2010," C4LPT, August 11, 2010 ---
http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100-2010.html
Thanks to Rick LIllie for the heads up.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Reader-Poll-Tech-Tool-Youre/26127/


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.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


One of the problems older professors have is keeping up with the mindsets of their new young students

Beloit College Mindset List --- http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/

Beethoven 1992 Hollywood Comedy --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beethoven_(film)

"Most US students think Beethoven is a dog (remember the comedy movie with a St. Bernard named Beethoven)," Yahoo News, August 17, 2010 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100818/od_afp/lifestyleuschildrenoffbeat

Most young Americans entering university this year can't write in cursive, think email is too slow, that Beethoven's a dog and Michelangelo a computer virus, according to an annual list compiled by two academics at a US college.

To students who will get their bachelor's degrees in 2014, Czechoslovakia has never existed, Fergie is a pop singer, not a duchess; Clint Eastwood is a sensitive movie director, not Dirty Harry; and John McEnroe stars in TV ads, not on the tennis court, Beloit College's "Mindset" list says.

The Mindset list was first compiled in 1998, for the class of 2002, by Beloit humanities professor Tom McBride and former public affairs director Ron Nief.

It was intended as a reminder to faculty at the university that references quickly become dated, but quickly evolved to become a hugely popular annual list that gives a snapshot of how things have changed, and chronicles key cultural and political events that have shaped a generation.

In the first Mindset list, McBride and Nief found that youngsters born in 1980 had ever known only one pope - Polish-born John Paul II, who was elected to the papacy in 1978 and died in 2008.

For the class of 2003 -- born in 1981 and featured on the 1999 Mindset list -- Yugoslavia never existed and they were puzzled why Solidarity was sometimes spelled with a capital S.

Solidarity with a capital S was the first and only independent trade union in the Soviet bloc. It was created in 1980 and went on to negotiate in 1989 a peaceful end to communism in Poland, making the country the first to escape Moscow's grip.

Nief and McBride take a year to put the list together, gathering outside contributions and poring over journals, literary works, and the popular media from the year of the incoming university students' birth.

"Then we present the ideas to every 18-year-old whose attention we can get and we wait for the 'mindset moment' -- the blank stare that comes back at you that makes you realize they have no idea what you're talking about," Nief told AFP.

Those moments make it onto the list, alongside interesting historical snippets like the fact that since the class of 2004 was born in 1982, all but one national election in the United States has had a candidate in it named George Bush.

The list also chronicles geopolitical changes, and sometimes depressingly highlights how little progress has been made on key issues, such as the fight against AIDS.

The class of 2004, for instance, "never referred to Russia and China as 'the Reds'", and in the year they were born, 1982, "AIDS was found to have killed 164 people and finding a cure for the new disease was designated a 'top priority' for government-sponsored research."

The class of 2005 -- born in 1983 -- thought of Sarajevo as a war zone, not an Olympic host, and had no idea what carbon paper was.

Apartheid never existed in South Africa for the class of 2006, and for the class of 2007, "Banana Republic has always been a store, not a puppet government in Latin America."

The list is a mirror of how rapidly perceptions can change: to the class of 2013, boxer Mike Tyson was "always a felon" but to students who graduated five years earlier, Tyson was "always a contender."

The list makes some people feel old, like those who remember what Michael Jackson looked like when he was singing in the Jackson Five or recall the days when there were only a handful of channels on television.

But they're not the only ones who get the blues over the list.

"There are 25- and 26-year-olds that tell us they feel old when they read the list," Nief said.

"Just two years ago, there were some students who learned to type on a typewriter," but others in the graduating class of 2012 didn't know that IBM had ever made typewriters, said Nief.

Few students in the class of 2009 knew how to tie a tie and most thought Iran and Iraq had never been at war with each other.

And for US students who got their bachelor's degrees this year, Germany was never divided, professional athletes have always competed in the Olympics, there have always been reality shows on television and smoking has never been allowed on US airlines.


Why did Rick Lillie's mouse begin to freeze up like a rodent under my barn in February? ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/sometimes-the-solution-is-to-just-buy-a-new-mouse/


"High-Tech Cheating Abounds, and Professors Bear Some Blame," by Jeffrey Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 28, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/High-Tech-Cheating-on-Homew/64857/

Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm


Enormous Alternatives for Free Education
Open Courseware's Free Online Lectures and Courses --- http://ocwconsortium.org/courses

An OpenCourseWare(OCW) is a free and open digital publication of high quality university‐level educational materials.  These materials are organized as courses, and often include course planning materials and evaluation tools as well as thematic content.

OCW Consortium members from all over the world are publishing OCW in a variety of formats, subjects, and languages.  Here are some ways to find OCW.

Search Courses

Using our specialized search engine, you can search for courses amongst all OCW Consortium members who are currently publishing a course feed.  You can begin by using the quick search form in the left side of the page, or go directly to the Advanced Course Search page.

Browse Courses by Language

We have also organized courses by the language in which they are published.  You can choose from available languages here.

Browse Courses by Source

You can also explore courses from each source, or publishing institution.  You can choose from a list of members here.

OpenCourseWare Websites

Not all OCW sites are publishing courses in a format compatible with our search index.  To see the entire list of OCW sites of members, visit this directory.

For example, search on the term "accounting" without the quote marks at
http://ocwconsortium.org/courses/search
You will get some false positives, but most are right on!
Accounting educators are not noted for being the most open sharing members of the academy.

Hundreds of colleges have set up channels on YouTube --- http://www.youtube.com/edu
Many universities offer over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers over 500
Also just go to YouTube itself and search on the such words as "Intermediate Accounting" or "XBRL" to find individual courses and tutorials.

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Bob Jensen's threads on free textbooks and videos ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks


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


Some Yugo Humor Extended to Higher Ed ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning  


Industrial Quick Search --- http://www.iqsdirectory.com/

Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm


Question
What has the academy provided that's truly relevant to equity asset management in practice?

"Economists’ Hubris – The Case of Equity Asset Management," Shahin Shojai, George Feiger, and Rajesh Kumar, SSRN, April 29, 2010 ---
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1597685

Abstract:
In this, the fourth article in the economists’ hubris paper series we look at the contributions of academic thought to the field of asset management. We find that while the theoretical aspects of the modern portfolio theory are valuable they offer little insight into how the asset management industry actually operates, how its executives are compensated, and how their performances are measured. We find that very few, if any, portfolio managers look for the efficiency frontier in their asset allocation processes, mainly because it is almost impossible to locate in reality, and base their decisions on a combination of gut feelings and analyst recommendations. We also find that the performance evaluation methodologies used are simply unable to provide investors with the necessary tools to compare portfolio managers’ performances in any meaningful way. We suggest a novel way of evaluating manager performance which compares a manager against himself, as suggested by Lord Myners. Using the concept of inertia, an asset manager’s end of period performance is compared to the performance of their portfolio assuming their initial portfolio had been held, without transactions, during this period. We believe that this will provide clients with a more reliable performance comparison tool and might prevent unnecessary trading of portfolios. Finally, given that the performance evaluation models simply fail in practice, we suggest that accusing investors who look for raw returns when deciding who to invest their assets with is simply unfair.

Jensen Comment
I repeatedly contend that if accountics research added any value to practice then there would be more efforts to validate/replicate accountics research ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
At least in the economics academy, there are a greater number of validation studies, especially validation studies of the Efficient Market Hypothesis ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#EMH


US News ranking formulas of universities are "rejiggered" (Yawn)
Yield fails to make it back into the formula

"The Rankings, Rejiggered," by Eric Hoover , Chronicle of Higher Education, August 17, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/The-Rankings-Rejiggered/26253/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on the controversial media rankings of colleges and universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings

The Top Party School is the University of ______________________? 

The Most Sober School is ________________ University?

Answers --- Click Here
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-02/top-party-school-is-university-of-georgia-mit-best-for-studies.html?link_position=link1

"While the World Implodes, Let’s Bicker About Accounting Program Rankings," by Caleb Newquist, Going Concern, May 6, 2010 ---
http://goingconcern.com/2010/05/while-the-world-implodes-lets-bicker-about-accounting-program-rankings/


Learn Excel
There are thousands of YouTube videos on how to improve your skills using Excel. When answering an inquiry from a professor in New Zealand, I discovered the "MrExcel's Learn Excel" videos. These seem to be quite helpful on many topics.

Example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nndXEeaArBA


"How to Start Tweeting (and Why You Might Want To)," by Ryan Cordell, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 11, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/How-to-Start-Tweeting-and-Why/26065/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on Twitter and Social Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm


  • "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 CamtasiaHe 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