Tidbits on October 5, 2010
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
The most popular tourist season in the
mountains of New England is the foliage season
For three weeks or more the country inns and hotels are booked to near capacity
Too much rain and too little cold weather prevented this season from being the
best color that I've seen up here
But it still dazzles both visitors and the home crowd with a rainbow of colors
across in the trees and on the ground
This week I made a special
photo page on my favorite autumn foliage photographs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Foliage/FoliageFavorites.htm
FRIENDSHIP OR LOVE ♥ PRIJATELJSTVO ILI LJUBAV ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfbchq0xQmQ I
This is unbelievable
Take a Laughter Break ---
http://www.thelaughtermovie.com/?cm_mmc=CheetahMail-_-MO-_-9.06.10-_-LVACMovie
Tidbits on October 5, 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/.
NEW!
Bob Jensen's threads on Annuities With Unequal Compounding and Payment
Periods: The CFA Deconstruction Analysis
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryAnnuity01.htm
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
FRIENDSHIP OR LOVE ♥ PRIJATELJSTVO ILI LJUBAV ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfbchq0xQmQ
This is unbelievable
Take a Laughter Break ---
http://www.thelaughtermovie.com/?cm_mmc=CheetahMail-_-MO-_-9.06.10-_-LVACMovie
Tim Hawkins- Old Rock Star Songs ---
Click Here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnPINGavPP0&feature=PlayList&p=92312574A1E6459C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=47
Digital UMass (multimedia campus history) ---
http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/umarmot/?page_id=697
Illinois State Museum: Audio-Video Barn ---
http://avbarn.museum.state.il.us/
New Perspectives: The Cleveland Museum of Art [Flash Player] ---
http://www.clevelandart.org/collections/New Perspectives.aspx
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archive (includes comedy
and music) ---
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~djsa/
Those Old 45s ---
http://oldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheFifties.htm
Puccini's 'La Boheme' From The Vienna State Opera
(Clips from the Introduction) ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130239317
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
Illinois State Museum: Audio-Video Barn ---
http://avbarn.museum.state.il.us/
Fort Ticonderoga ---
http://www.fort-ticonderoga.org/index.htm
The Center for Cartoon Studies ---
http://www.cartoonstudies.org/
The Hale Scrapbook (cartoon history) ---
http://cartoons.osu.edu/hale/Hale.php
The Stuart McDonald Cartoon
Collection
http://www.library.und.edu/digital/McDonald.htm
Bill Mauldin's Military Cartoons ---
Click Here
The Opper Project (editorial cartoons) ---
http://hti.osu.edu/opper/index.cfm
University of Nebraska Libraries Digital Collections: Government Comics
Collection ---
http://contentdm.unl.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/comics
Digital Comic Museum ---
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/
New Perspectives: The Cleveland Museum of
Art [Flash Player] ---
http://www.clevelandart.org/collections/New Perspectives.aspx
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various
types electronic literature available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
The Red Brush (writings from Imperial China) ---
http://digital.wustl.edu/r/red/
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 October 5,
2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations100510.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
4G (fourth generation wireless) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G
"The state of 4G wireless at a glance," MIT's Technology Review,
September 21, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/wire/26335/?nlid=3540&a=f
This is a summary of how U.S. wireless carriers are
dealing with the transition to fourth-generation, or 4G, network technology,
which promises faster data speeds:
-- Sprint Nextel Corp. subsidiary Clearwire Corp.
already has a 4G network up and running, and Sprint started selling the
first compatible phone this summer. But Clearwire is using WiMax, a
technology that's imcompatible with LTE, which everyone else is using or
plans to use.
-- Verizon Wireless plans to bring LTE to 25 to 30
cities later this year, mainly for PC modems. Phones will come next year.
-- AT&T Inc. plans to launch commercial LTE service
in the middle of next year. In the meantime, it's upgrading the speeds on
its 3G network.
-- T-Mobile USA hasn't made any specific plans
public. It's focusing on upgrading its 3G network for now.
-- LightSquared is a dark-horse entrant funded by a
private equity firm. It plans to build an independent LTE network, with
service starting next year, but financial and regulatory hurdles remain.
-- MetroPCS Communications Inc. turned on LTE in
Las Vegas on Tuesday, and plans to expand it to the rest of its coverage
area by January.
Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm
Listings of U.S. University Endowments (including a table on endowments
per student) 2005-2009 ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment
Surprising things happen in tables for endowments per student. Number 1 is
Princeton University and Number 2 is Bryn Athyn College (never heard of it until
now). However, the table below is only for years 2005 and 2006.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment
A more current listing of many university data tables is provided in the
"Almanac Issue 2010-2011" from the Chronicle of Higher Education. August
27, 2010I got my booklet in hard copy in late August 2010. None subscribers can
get the booklet at a cover price of $15. Most online links to this Almanac data
are only available to subscribers, although students and faculty on campus may
be able to use their library's subscription ---
http://chronicle.com/section/Almanac-of-Higher-Education/463/
Ignobel Prize ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize
I think the panel that awards these prizes annually have overlooked hundreds,
maybe thousands, of great accountics research candidates
List of Ignoble Prize Winners ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners
2010 Winners ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners#2010
- Engineering: Karina
Acevedo-Whitehouse and others for perfecting a method to collect
whale snot, using a remote-control helicopter.
- Medicine: Simon Rietveld
and Ilja van Beest for discovering that symptoms of asthma can
be treated with a roller-coaster ride.
- Transportation Planning:
Toshiyuki Nakagaki and others for using slime mold to determine
the optimal routes for railroad tracks.
- Physics: Lianne Parkin,
Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest of the
University of Otago, for demonstrating that, on icy
footpaths in wintertime, people slip and fall less often if they
wear socks on the outside of their shoes.
- Peace: Richard Stephens,
John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston for confirming the widely held
belief that swearing relieves pain.
- Public Health: Manuel
Barbeito, Charles Mathews, and Larry Taylor of the Industrial
Health and Safety Office, for determining by experiment that
microbes cling to bearded scientists.
- Economic: The executives
and directors of
Goldman Sachs,
AIG,
Lehman Brothers,
Bear Stearns,
Merrill Lynch, and
Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money
— ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk
for the world economy, or for a portion thereof.
- Chemistry: Eric Adams,
Scott Socolofsky, Stephen Masutani and
British Petroleum, for disproving the old belief that oil
and water don't mix.
- Management: Alessandro
Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo, for
demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become
more efficient if they promoted people at random.
- Biology: Libiao Zhang
and others, for scientifically documenting fellatio in fruit
bats.
Academics Win Prestigious MacArthur Fellowships: It helps to be
employed by a prestigious university ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/28/qt#239254
Academics are well-represented among the 23
winners, named today by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
as new
MacArthur Fellows for 2010. The awardees receive
$500,000, no strings attached, and they didn't even have to apply. The
winners include professors at the California Institute of Technology;
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Cornell, Harvard, Oregon State and
Stanford Universities; the University of California campuses at Berkeley,
Davis, and San Diego; and the Universities of Chicago and Minnesota.
"Really Engaging Accounting: Second LifeTM as a Learning Platform," by
Steven Hornik and Steven Thornburg, Issues in Accounting Education 25(3),
361 (August 2010) (Not Free) ---
Click Here
ABSTRACT: This position paper argues that the
eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) be integrated across the
accounting curriculum, in a manner relevant to the temporal stage and
content of particular courses within the curriculum. XBRL is a metadata
representation language for the Internet, based on the World Wide Web
consortium's eXtensible Markup Language (XML). XBRL provides an important
foundation for the automated transfer of accounting information and
associated metadata. The design of XBRL is fine-tuned to meet the particular
needs of accounting and related disclosures. Several countries have adopted
XBRL in a variety of information value chains, notably in the USA context
the Securities and Exchange Commission's interactive data program. XBRL has
implications for the totality of the accounting curriculum and pedagogy. A
program for the integration of XBRL across a typical accounting curriculum
is developed. The proposed XBRL assignments, as part of this program, are
aligned with Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Objectives. Recommendations are
made for faculty, case and textbook writers, and the leadership of the XBRL
and academic accounting communities
PS
The entire August 2010 issue of IAE is a special issue devoted to AIS, XBRL, and
related topics.
Bob Jensen's threads on Second Life and Other Virtual Worlds ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
Hate may be too strong a verb, but this article does raise some good points
"Why Do They Hate Us?" by Thomas H. Benton, Chronicle of Higher
Education, September 26, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Do-They-Hate-Us-/124608/
I am only a decade out of graduate school—and
I suppose it's possible that I am a disagreeable person—but I have had more
than a few unpleasant conversations with complete strangers, and even some
friends, in which they have expressed their anger about professors while
knowing that I am one.
• "What you teach is worthless—I mean, who
needs more measurements of Walt Whitman's beard when the economy and the
environment are collapsing?"
• "Being a professor is good money for, like,
six hours of work per week. What do you do with all that free time?"
• "Oh, I can't talk to you, since I'm not
politically correct or anything."
• "I wish I had tenure and didn't have to worry
about being fired for not doing my job."
• "Why don't you English profs just teach
people how to write?"
• "I still owe more than $50,000 for my
undergraduate degree, and it's never done me any good."
• "My job [pharmaceutical sales] saves lives;
your so-called work is a waste of other people's time and money."
I seldom admit or discuss my primary occupation
with nonacademics nowadays, if I can avoid it. It's safer to say that I'm a
program administrator.
By now, most academics are inoculated against
attacks from the right, the conversational relics of the culture war of a
generation ago: Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind
(1987), Charles Sykes's ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher
Education (1988), and Martin Anderson's Impostors in the Temple
(1992), to name just a few. I almost feel nostalgia for that time, since the
conversation was about what professors should teach. There was no doubt, as
yet, whether higher education would continue in some recognizable form.
Over the last 20 years, the positions on both sides
have hardened. But now the criticisms of academe are also coming from the
left, and not just from the think tanks and journalists, but increasingly
from within academe. Some of those works include Marc Bousquet's How the
University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation (2008); Cary
Nelson's No University Is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom
(2010); and, most recently, Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting
Our Money and Failing Our Kids—And What We Can Do About It
(2010), by Andrew Hacker and Claudia C. Dreifus; and Mark Taylor's
Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities
(2010).
For the past several months, The Chronicle's
forums
and the comment section of its articles—and the larger
blogosphere—have been abuzz with discussions of a string of seemingly
anti-faculty articles with titles like "Goodbye
to Those Overpaid Professors and Their Cushy Jobs"
(July 25) and "Do
All Faculty Members Really Need Private Offices?"
(July 30). The majority feeling seems to be that the present model of higher
education is no longer sustainable, and that the necessary changes will
focus—for good or ill—on the working lives of professors.
I can't remember a time when professors,
particularly in the humanities and social sciences—already the survivors of
a 40-year depression in the academic job market—had a stronger feeling of
being under siege. At some institutions, there is something aggressive and
visceral about the recent rounds of cutbacks and accountability measures.
They go beyond mere economic justifications.
So "hate" is not too strong a word, I think, for
how nonacademics feel about us. Some of the reasons should flatter us, some
are the result of economic and institutional forces beyond our control, and
a few should cause us to wonder whether we deserve to be the last generation
of traditional academics.
Anti-intellectualism and populism.
Those tendencies in American life are not new, but they have become more
virulent (see parts
one and
two of my column "On
Stupidity"). Traditionally, professors have countered the tendency toward
simplistic, slogan-based thinking—and manipulation—by teaching students to
evaluate sources and reach their own conclusions on the basis of evidence
derived from painstaking research.
The notion that knowledge is always political, and
that perspectives are always relative, has eroded the belief in expertise
and earned authority. If everyone's biased, including professors, why not
just "go with your gut"? It's much easier, and it empowers you against the
academics whose admonitions—as we have lost influence—have become
increasingly condescending, sanctimonious, and shrill.
Market-based values. Academics, as
a group, are among the last people who question the market as the sole
determiner of value. We continue to hold out against the idea that our
students are customers who must be pleased even at the cost of their own
development. I think most professors still believe, privately, that our role
is to liberate students and prepare them for lives of leadership in a
relatively democratic society.
A generation ago, we could still defend the belief
that our courses in literature, art, history, philosophy—the liberal arts,
broadly defined, and always self-critical—were enriching in ways that could
not be deposited in a bank or measured by outcomes assessment. In the
intervening years, that consensus has fragmented, and we are no longer able
to articulate a coherent vision of why others should value what we teach.
And with that, I think, we have lost any remaining justification for our
autonomy.
The rising cost of higher education.
The price of a college degree has risen faster than the cost of health care.
Anxiety about those costs crowds out the mental space that might be given to
contemplating subjects without direct, practical applications.
The cost increase is driven not by faculty
salaries, primarily, but by the rapid growth of administration, massive
athletics programs, and the amenities arms race—not who has the most
full-time faculty members so much as who has the most successful football
team and the fanciest dorm rooms. Some institutions have astronomical
endowments and tax-exempt status, asking a mostly excluded population to
support what looks like country-club indulgences for elites.
But it is the faculty members who are held
accountable for the cost of education, even while a growing majority of them
are adjuncts and graduate students who receive no benefits and earn less
than the minimum wage.
The changing job market. For a
long time, college has been marketed as a requirement for entry into
middle-class occupations. A lot of students—surely the majority—now attend
college for reasons that have little to do with education for its own sake.
Even so, when higher education was a reasonably secure pathway to
employment, professors were worthy of some respect: We were gatekeepers, and
we could help you. But in today's economic climate, a college degree is
expensive, time-consuming, coercive, and does not necessarily lead to
employment.
If institutions can't respond to that situation,
why shouldn't students, who are not wealthy or devoted to the life of the
mind, invest their money and time in something else, like starting a
business?
Ignorance about what professors do.
Highly paid academic stars make it politically possible to paint faculty
members as pampered elites. A few weeks ago, I heard Andrew Hacker say, in
an NPR interview, that a major problem with higher education is that "you
have professors drawing six-figure salaries for two hours in the classroom
each week."
That's a common claim, most often made by
politicians looking to slash education budgets. But academic superstars are
rare. They are limited to elite research universities, where professors are
not paid, primarily, for their teaching.
For all of us, time in the classroom is just the
tip of the iceberg. In addition to published research (now required of
faculty members at most levels of higher education), courses must be
prepared, papers graded, students advised and supported, and administrative
work conducted. Many tenure-track faculty members spend more time on
administrative work than they do on teaching or research, because there are
relatively few of us left to conduct the business of our institutions.
Professors are not a leisure class. Most of us work
more than 50 hours a week, and whatever free time we have is generally spent
thinking about work or answering e-mail and texts from colleagues and
students. We are never off the clock.
Overproduction of scholarly research.
Specialized research is inherently difficult to understand, yet we often
hear demands that work outside of the sciences should be immediately
accessible to the general public. There is no question that more work can be
done to publicize the value of scholarship in many fields, but there is also
no doubt that a lot of scholarly productivity is a result of the increasing
competitiveness of the academic job system.
The pressure to publish, at every level, arguably
at the expense of our students, is not something that most academics have
chosen, and it has led to a collapse of the university-press system,
skyrocketing publishing costs, unsustainable pressures on library budgets,
and, ironically, declining engagement with our larger disciplines—a loss of
a common scholarly culture—since it's a challenge simply to keep up with a
few subfields.
Another result is that many courses reflect
specialized research interests rather than broader topics that might be more
useful to our students.
Tenure. In a period of extreme
anxiety about economic security, when millions of people are losing their
jobs, and their lives are unraveling, the appearance of a professor with a
job for life and no accountability seems as offensive as a portly aristocrat
being carried in a sedan chair through the streets of Paris during the
hungry summer of 1789.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Can you think of other reasons to "hate us?" For example, many employees in the
private and public sectors give up their returns from work-related consulting
and book royalties. Top professors six-figure salaries and keep additional
consulting fees and book royalties that, in many instances, are enhanced by the
reputations of their employers. For example, a MIT professor who consults or
obtains successful textbook royalties greatly benefits by being affiliated with
one of the great universities of the world. Sounds like a cushy deal to me!
The counter argument of course is that professors would do less consulting
and textbook writing if they did not get huge rewards for their added efforts.
The public, however, does not always see it this way, especially when they are
taxpayers helping to pay the salaries of the professors.
Bob Jensen's threads on controversies in higher education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Humanities Versus Business --- That is the
Question
Undergraduate business degrees -- the go-to
“employment friendly” major -- has increased from 1970-71, with 115,400 degrees
conferred, to 2007-08, with 335,250 conferred. In a parallel development,
institutions graduated seven times more communications and journalism majors in
2007-08 than in 1970-71. And while numbers are small, there has been exponential
growth in “parks, recreation, leisure, and fitness studies,” “security and
protective services,” and “transportation and materials moving” degrees.
Computer science, on the other hand, peaked in the mid-80s, dropped in the
mid-90s, peaked again in the mid-2000s, and dropped again in the last five
years.
"Liberal Arts I: They Keep Chugging Along," by W. Robert Connor and
Cheryl Ching Inside Higher Ed, October 1, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/10/01/connor
When the economy goes down, one expects the liberal
arts -- especially the humanities -- to wither, and laments about their
death to go up. That’s no surprise since these fields have often defined
themselves as unsullied by practical application. This notion provides
little comfort to students -- and parents -- who are anxious about their
post-college prospects; getting a good job -- in dire times, any job -- is
of utmost importance. (According to CIRP’s 2009 Freshman Survey, 56.5
percent of students -- the highest since 1983 -- said that “graduates
getting good jobs” was an important factor when choosing where to go to
college.)
One expects students, then, to rush to courses and
majors that promise plenty of entry-level jobs. Anticipating this, college
administrators would cut back or eliminate programs that are not “employment
friendly,” as well as those that generate little research revenue. Exit
fields like classics, comparative literature, foreign languages and
literatures, philosophy, religion, and enter only those that are
preprofessional in orientation. Colleges preserving a commitment to the
liberal arts would see a decline in enrollment; in some cases, the
institution itself would disappear.
So runs the widespread narrative of decline and
fall. Everyone has an anecdote or two to support this story, but does it
hold in general and can we learn something from a closer examination of the
facts?
The National Center for Education Statistics
reports that the number of bachelor's degrees in “employment friendly”
fields has been on the rise since 1970. Undergraduate business degrees --
the go-to “employment friendly” major -- has increased from 1970-71, with
115,400 degrees conferred, to 2007-08, with 335,250 conferred. In a parallel
development, institutions graduated seven times more communications and
journalism majors in 2007-08 than in 1970-71. And while numbers are small,
there has been exponential growth in “parks, recreation, leisure, and
fitness studies,” “security and protective services,” and “transportation
and materials moving” degrees. Computer science, on the other hand, peaked
in the mid-80s, dropped in the mid-90s, peaked again in the mid-2000s, and
dropped again in the last five years.
What has students’ turn to such degrees meant for
the humanities and social sciences? A mapping of bachelor degrees conferred
in the humanities from 1966 to 2007 by the Humanities Indicator Project
shows that the percentage of such majors was highest in the late 1960s
(17-18 percent of all degrees conferred), low in the mid-1980s (6-7
percent), and more or less level since the early 1990s (8-9 percent).
Trends, of course, vary from discipline to discipline.
Degrees awarded in English dropped from a high of
64,627 in 1970-71 to half that number in the early 1980s, before rising to
55,000 in the early 1990s and staying at that level since then. The social
sciences and history were hit with a similar decline in majors in 1970s and
1980s, but then recovered nicely in the years since then and now have more
than they did in 1970. The numbers of foreign language, philosophy,
religious studies, and area studies majors have been stable since 1970.
IPEDS data pick up where the Humanities Indicator Project leaves off and
tell that in 2008 and 2009, the number of students who graduated with
bachelor's degrees in English, foreign language and literatures, history,
and philosophy and religion have remained at the same level.
What’s surprising about this bird’s-eye view of
undergraduate education is not the increase in the number of majors in
programs that should lead directly to a job after graduation, but that the
number of degrees earned in the humanities and related fields have not been
adversely affected by the financial troubles that have come and gone over
the last two decades.
Of course, macro-level statistics reveal only part
of the story. What do things look like at the ground level? How are
departments faring? Course enrollments? Majors? Since the study of the Greek
and Roman classics tends to be a bellwether for trends in the humanities and
related fields (with departments that are small and often vulnerable), it
seemed reasonable to ask Adam Blistein of the American Philological
Association whether classics departments were being dropped at a significant
number of places. “Not really” was his answer; while the classics major at
Michigan State was cut, and a few other departments were in difficulty,
there was no widespread damage to the field -- at least not yet.
Big declines in classics enrollments? Again, the
answer seems to be, “Not really.” Many institutions report a steady gain in
the number of majors over the past decade. Princeton’s classics department,
for example, announced this past spring 17 graduating seniors, roughly twice
what the number had been three decades ago. And the strength is not just in
elite institutions. Charles Pazdernik at Grand Valley State University in
hard-hit Michigan reported that his department has 50+ majors on the books
and strong enrollments in language courses.
If classics seems to be faring surprisingly well,
what about the modern languages? There are dire reports about German and
Russian, and the Romance languages seem increasingly to be programs in
Spanish, with a little French and Italian tossed in. The Modern Language
Association reported in fall 2006 -- well before the current downturn -- a
12.9 percent gain in language study since 2002. This translates into 180,557
more enrollments. Every language except Biblical Hebrew showed increases,
some exponential -- Arabic (126.5 percent), Chinese (51 percent), and Korean
(37.1 percent) -- while others less so -- French (2.2 percent), German (3.5
percent), and Russian (3.9 percent). (Back to the ancient world for a
moment: Latin saw a 7.9 percent increase, and ancient Greek 12.1 percent).
The study of foreign languages, in other words, seems not to be
disappearing; the mix is simply changing.
Theoretical and ideological issues have troubled
and fragmented literature departments in recent years, but a spring 2010
conference on literary studies at the National Humanities Center suggests
that the field is enjoying a revitalization. The mood was eloquent, upbeat,
innovative; no doom and gloom, even though many participants were from
institutions where painful budget cuts had recently been made.
A similar mood was evident at National Forum on the
Future of Liberal Education, a gathering of some highly regarded assistant
professors in the humanities and social sciences this past February. They
were well aware that times were tough, the job market for Ph.D.s miserable,
and tenure prospects uncertain. Yet their response was to get on with the
work of strengthening liberal education, rather than bemoan its decline and
fall. Energy was high, and with it the conviction that the best way to move
liberal education forward was to achieve demonstrable improvements in
student learning.
It’s true that these young faculty members are from
top-flight universities. What about smaller, less well-endowed institutions?
Richard Ekman of the Council of Independent Colleges reports that while a
few of the colleges in his consortium are indeed in trouble, most were doing
quite well, increasing enrollments and becoming more selective. And what
about state universities and land grant institutions, where most students go
to college? Were they scuttling the liberal arts and sciences because of
fierce cutbacks? David Shulenburger of the Association of Public and
Land-grant Universities says that while budget cuts have resulted in
strategic “consolidation of programs and sometimes the elimination of
low-enrollment majors,” he does not “know of any public universities
weakening their liberal education requirements.”
Mark Twain once remarked that reports of his death
were greatly exaggerated. The liberal arts disciplines, it seems, can say
the same thing. The on-the-ground stories back up the statistics and
reinforce the idea that the liberal arts are not dying, despite the soft job
market and the recent recession. Majors are steady, enrollments are up in
particular fields, and students -- and institutions -- aren’t turning their
backs on disciplines that don’t have obvious utility for the workplace. The
liberal arts seem to have a particular endurance and resilience, even when
we expect them to decline and fall.
One could imagine any number of reasons why this is
the case -- the inherent conservatism of colleges and universities is one --
but maybe something much more dynamic is at work. Perhaps the stamina of the
liberal arts in today’s environment draws in part from the vital role they
play in providing students with a robust liberal education, that is, a kind
of education that develops their knowledge in a range of disciplinary
fields, and importantly, their cognitive skills and personal competencies.
The liberal arts continue -- and likely will always -- give students an
education that delves into the intricate language of Shakespeare or Woolf,
or the complex historical details of the Peloponnesian War or the French
Revolution. That is a given.
But what the liberal arts also provide is a rich
site for students to think critically, to write analytically and
expressively, to consider questions of moral and ethical importance (as well
as those of meaning and value), and to construct a framework for
understanding the infinite complexities and uncertainties of human life.
This is, as many have argued before, a powerful form of education, a point
that students, the statistics and anecdotes show, agree with.
W. Robert Connor is the former president of the Teagle Foundation, to
which he is now a senior adviser. Cheryl Ching is a program officer at
Teagle.
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
"Introducing “Kno” — Unique approach to computer design," by Rick
Lillie, Thinking Outside the Box Blog, September 27, 2010 —
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/introducing-kno-unique-approach-to-computer-design/
Here’s a technology change that is worth looking
into. Late last week, I read a blog comment about
Kno, a
computer designed to be a digital textbook, with touch screen interaction in
a single or dual screen format. It’s a tablet computer that you can write
on, highlight, watch video, and read. It includes a pen stylus with inking
technology like full-blown tablet computers. Kno can include a student’s
textbooks, course materials, notes, web links, and more. It’s a complete
tablet computer. Click the picture below to view the Kno
website. View the video and listen to reactions from students who use Kno.
I have used an
IBM (Lenovo) ThinkPad X61 for sometime
now. It’s an incredible machine that in my opinion goes way beyond the
capabilities of Apple’s
iPad. I can hardly wait to see the Kno
tablet computer. This is exciting technology.
Enjoy.
Rick Lillie
Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm
Chris Deeley in Australia and I have been corresponding regarding an antique
learning curve paper that I published nearly 20 years ago. You can read some of
our correspondence at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theorylearningcurves.htm
In that correspondence I discuss the good and evil of the Wolfram Alpha
computational search engine.
Instructors might want to consider adding this to their teaching modules on
time value of money and annuity mathematics of finance.
Working Paper 440
Annuities With Unequal Compounding and Payment Periods: The
CFA Deconstruction Analysis
Bob Jensen at
Trinity University
Financial calculators and Excel financial formulas for computing present
value, interim payments, and rates of return assume that p=m where p is the
number of equally-spaced payments per year and m is the number equally-spaced
interest compoundings per year. Complications introduced by p not being equal to
m are not trivial problems. These complications are
overlooked in many (probably almost all) mathematics of finance modules in both
high school and college courses.
This note will demonstrate how to deal with complications when the number of
payments per year is unequal to the number in times interest is compounded per
year. This is not a purely academic problem. Companies buying and selling
annuities often do not want to change the number of times interest is compounded
every time they change the number of payments per year in a contract such as
semi-annual payments versus quarterly payments versus monthly payments.
The paper was inspired by the following working paper sent to me by an
Australian professor named Chris Deeley. Chris subsequently allowed me to put
his paper on one of my Web servers:
"IDENTIFICATION AND CORRECTION OF A COMMON ERROR
IN GENERAL ANNUITY CALCULATIONS"
by Chris Deeley
cdeeley@csu.edu.au
Working Paper, Charles Sturt University, Australia, September 22, 2010
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeeleyAnnuityCorrections.pdf
For illustrative purposes I will focus on the following example on Page 11 of
Professor Deeley's working paper:
Example 2
A loan of $1million is to be repaid in equal monthly installments over four
years. If the annual interest rate is 10% compounded semi-annually, how much is
the monthly repayment?
The two solutions given by Professor Deeley for p=12 payments per year and
m=2 interest compoundings per year are as follows:
Deeley Solution 1 PMT = $25,265.60 per month which Professor
Deeley claims the "conventional solution"
Deeley Solution 2 PMT = $25,260.70 per month which Professor
Deeley claims is his "proposed better solution"
I contend that there is a CFA Deconstruction and Rate Equivalence solution
that I offer as an "alternate conventional solution" used of Certified Financial
Analyst (CFA) examinations.
CFA Deconstruction PMT = $25,483 per month which conforms to David
Frick's solution tutorial
I show how to calculate this $25,483 using both Wolfram
Alpha and Excel in my Working Paper 440 ---
Bob Jensen's analysis of Annuities With Unequal Compounding and Payment
Periods: The CFA Deconstruction Analysis
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryAnnuity01.htm
The Insignificance of Testing the Null
October 1, 2010 message from Amy Dunbar
Nick Cox posted a link to a statistics paper on
statalist:
2009. Statistics: reasoning on uncertainty, and the
insignificance of testing null. Annales Zoologici Fennici 46: 138-157.
http://www.sekj.org/PDF/anz46-free/anz46-138.pdf
Cox commented that the paper touches provocatively
on several topics often aired on statalist including the uselessness of
dynamite or detonator plots, displays for comparing group means and
especially the over-use of null hypothesis testing. The main target audience
is ecologists but most of the issues cut across statistical science.
Dunbar comment: The paper would be a great addition
to any PhD research seminar. The author also has some suggestions for
journal editors. I included some responses to Nick's original post below.
Jensen Comment
And to think Alpha (Type 1) error is the easy part. Does anybody ever test for
the more important Beta (Type 2) error? I think some engineers test for Type 2
error with Operating Characteristic (OC) curves, but these are generally applied
where controlled experiments are super controlled such as in quality control
testing.
Beta Error ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_error#Type_II_error
Kind of Great Video: Visualization of Multivariate Data
In countless applications analysts are finding that visualization of data may be
more rewarding than traditional statistical analyses.
Watch the Entire Video
"Journalism in the Age of Data, a Visually Stunning Documentary," Good Topics,
September 28, 2010 ---
Click Here
http://www.good.is/post/journalism-in-the-age-of-data-a-visually-stunning-documentary/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+good%2Flbvp+%28GOOD+Main+RSS+Feed%29
I watched the entire video. It was great on why to explore clever ways to
visualize data, but the video was weak on how to create data visualizations. The
message is that the state of the art today is still incredibly complicated for
animated visualization --- not the kind of thing most accounting/journalism
professors can tackle on their own. But the day will come when software will be
more user friendly for accounting and journalism professors.
As usual Google is on the leading edge of bringing visualization to the Web.
For me, one type of graphic of great interest is a stream graphic that often
depicts temporal data over time. An early application not mentioned in the video
is Minard's historic graphic of Napoleon's disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia
---
"The Visual Display of Data," by Phillip
D. Long, Syllabus, December 2002, pp. 6-8 ---
http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=6987
The computer has
provided a revolutionary tool to represent information visually. Its power
is clearly demonstrated by the captivating power of today's video games.
While usually describing a narrative of mayhem and destruction, the
stunningly seductive rendering of 3D imagery in video games draws the gamer
into new visual worlds. It also has the power to bring forward data from
multiple dimensions to render information.
One of the most
stunning multidimensional graphical representations of human folly was
created 141 years ago by Charles Joseph Minard, a French engineer and
general inspector of bridges and roads. Sometimes called the "best
statistical graphic ever produced," and a work that "defies the pen of the
historian," Minard drew a flow-map depicting the tragic fate of Napoleon's
Grand Army in the disastrous 1812 Russian campaign. Using pen and ink,
Minard captured on the two-dimensional page no fewer than six dimensions of
descriptive data.
Edward Tufte, an
information designer who, for over three decades, has cultivated the art and
science of making sense of data, has eloquently described Minard's map.
The thick band in
the middle describes the size of Napoleon's army, 422,000 men strong, when
he began the invasion of Russia in June of 1812 from the Polish-Russian
border near the Niemen River. As the army advances, the line's thickness
reflects its size, narrowing to reflect the attrition suffered during the
advance on Moscow. By the time the army reached Moscow (right most side of
the drawing), it had been reduced to 100,000 men, one-quarter of its initial
size. The lower black line depicts the retreat of Napoleon's army, and the
catastrophic effect of the bleak Russian winter. The line of retreat is
linked to both dates and temperature at the bottom of the graphic. The harsh
cold reduced the army to a mere 10,000 men by the time it re-crossed into
Poland. In addition to the main army, Minard characterizes the actions of
auxiliary troops who move to protect the advancing army's main flanks.
Minard's map is a
tour de force of data representation, an escape from flatland. He conveys a
central reality about the world: Things that are interesting are
multidimensional. Minard captures and plots six variables: the size of the
army (1); the army's location on a two-dimensional surface (2, 3); direction
of the army's movement (4); the temperature on various dates during the
retreat from Moscow (5, 6).
The truth is nearly
everything is multidimensional. Consider giving directions. Telling someone
how to get from Logan airport to Cambridge at different times of the day
requires the traveler to juggle information in four dimensions.
Continued at
http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=6987
For earlier history on data visualization see
Bob Jensen's threads on multivariate data visualization
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm
Two thirds of those who have mobile
communicating apps use any of them
The Rise of Apps Culture ---
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/The-Rise-of-Apps-Culture.aspx
Jensen Comment
It's a bit like having exercise equipment gathering dust.
Wave Goodbye to this nation's top
economic advisor
"Lawrence Summers Will Leave White House Post and Return to Harvard,"
Chronicle of Higher Education, September 21, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Lawrence-Summers-Will-Leave/27092/
"The Universal Law of Wealth," by James Martin, MAAW Blog, September
30, 2010 ---
http://maaw.blogspot.com/2010/09/universal-law-of-wealth.html
Although the following article was published eight
years ago, it is relevant to some current political-economic issues.
Buchanan, M. 2002. Wealth happens. Harvard
Business Review (April): 49-54.
The purpose of the article is to describe a
universal law of wealth based on a network effect that appears to have some
important implications for economic policy.
According to Buchanan, the universal law of wealth
is simply stated in the following way. Each time you double the amount of
wealth, the number of people involved falls by a constant factor to form a
Pareto curve, e.g., in the U.S. approximately 80% of the wealth is held by
20% of the people. In some other countries it might be 90% of the wealth
held by 20%, or 95% held by 10%, but the point is that in any society a
small percentage of the people always own a large proportion of the wealth.
This Pareto curve distribution of wealth appears to be based on a network
effect that is applicable across societies and has little to do with
differences in backgrounds, talents, and the education of an area's
citizens.
For what this has to do with economic policy see my
note at
http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumBuchanan2002.htm
October 1, 2010 reply from Les Livingstone
[jlivingstone@UMUC.EDU]
The article on wealth is very
good. But we need to bear two more factors clearly in mind.
1.
Although a small percentage of the population consistently enjoys a
large share of the wealth, the entire population continues to be wealthier
in absolute terms. On the average, we are all better off than our parents,
and on the average we hope our children will be better off than we are
2.
The people in each decile of the wealth distribution do not
necessarily stay long in the same decile. Some migrate up into higher
deciles, and some migrate down to lower deciles. For example, young people
lack work experience, and so they start out in a lower decile. But as they
gain experience they tend to earn more, and over their careers move up to
higher deciles.
In
brief, wealth distribution should not be considered only in the single
dimension of percentage distribution, such as deciles, but should also take
into account the overall level of wealth, and the migration of individuals
over time from one decile to another.
Les Livingstone
A Bit of History for all You Many Feynman Fans
"Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine," by by W. Daniel Hillis,
Physics Today ---
http://www.longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/
"Two Cheers for the New Bank Capital Standards: Why do we still rely
on the rating agencies, and why are we still allowing Lehman Brothers levels of
leverage," by Alan S. Blinder, The Wall Street Journal, September 30,
2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704523604575511813933977160.html#mod=djemEditorialPage_t
On Sept. 12 the heads of the world's major central
banks and bank-supervisory agencies met to bless what is called "Basel III,"
the latest international agreement on bank capital requirements. Should we
be applauding or frowning upon this agreement? A little of each.
The first big achievement, and it is a big
achievement, is that 27 countries, each with its own disparate views and
parochial interests, were able to agree at all—just 18 months after many of
them were still fighting the last acute phase of the financial crisis.
But what about the substance of the agreement? What
was it supposed to fix, and did it?
Remember, the essence of the Basel accords is
establishing a minimum ratio—of capital to risk-weighted assets—and ratios
have both numerators and denominators. It turns out that defining the
numerator, a bank's capital, is fraught with difficulties: What counts and
what doesn't? Most of the changes from Basel II to Basel III are about the
numerator: raising the amount of capital required and stiffening the
definition of what counts. Measuring assets is more straightforward, but
risk-weighting them is not, which is the essence of the denominator problem.
Before the crisis, at least three major
shortcomings of Basel II were apparent:
• Once you cut through the complexities, Basel II
actually reduced capital requirements relative to Basel I. Even before the
financial wreckage of 2007-2009, that looked like a mistake. After the
crisis, it looked absurd.
• In determining risk weights for the denominator,
Basel II assigned a major role to risk assessments by credit rating agencies
like Moody's and Standard & Poor's. Once again, that looked dubious before
the crisis and ludicrous thereafter.
• Basel II allowed the largest—did someone say, the
"most sophisticated"?—banks to use their own internal models to measure
risk. Let me repeat that: The biggest foxes were allowed to assess the
safety of the chicken coops—another serious risk-weighting (denominator)
problem.
Then along came the crisis, revealing two more
glaring weaknesses:
• One was the startling extent to which some banks
had used structured investment vehicles (SIVs) and similar arrangements to
avoid capital requirements by shifting assets off balance sheet. This
loophole cried out for plugging.
• The Basel Accords have always focused on minimum
capital requirements. But the crisis demonstrated that, in a crunch,
shortages of liquidity can be just as hazardous as shortages of capital.
Indeed, it was often hard to tell one from the other. That made the need for
minimum liquidity requirements apparent.
Those five issues should have formed the core of
the Basel III agenda. What was actually accomplished? Let's go down the
list.
First the good news: Capital requirements will be
raised substantially. Right now so-called Tier 1 capital must be at least 4%
of risk-weighted assets and Tier 2 capital must be at least 8%. The Basel II
definition of Tier 1 capital includes some things that are not common
equity, such as some types of preferred stock; and Tier 2 includes many more
things, such as certain types of reserves and subordinated debt. Basel III
places the focus squarely where it belongs: on common equity, which is
undoubtedly real capital. And, after a long phase-in period, it will raise
the minimum common-equity requirement to 7%. Hooray for both. But, folks,
couldn't we have asked the world's bankers to comply with the higher
standard before 2019? Maybe if we said, "pretty please"?
Because of demonstrable problems in assigning
appropriate risk weights, Basel III also resurrects, as a kind of backstop,
the old-fashioned leverage ratio: Tier 1 capital divided by total assets,
with no risk weighting. Good idea. But, once again, why must we wait until
2018 for full implementation? Furthermore, the chosen capital requirement is
only 3%—which you may know by its other name: 33-to-1 leverage. Isn't that
about what Lehman Brothers had?
Second, while the Dodd-Frank Act wisely removed
most provisions in U.S. law that gave the rating agencies special exalted
status, Basel III did not. So the agencies that did so poorly in rating
mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations will continue
to play major roles in the risk-weighting process.
It gets worse. Didn't the Basel Committee notice
that the internal risk models of most of the world's leading financial
institutions led to disaster? Whether it was gross-but-honest errors in
assessing risk or self-serving behavior is an important moral question,
though not an important operational one. Either way, letting banks grade
themselves worked out about as well as letting students grade themselves.
Yet this grotesque shortcoming of Basel II remains in place.
Fourth on the list is the off-balance-sheet
entities that caused the world so much grief. Here, some technical
improvements were made, thank goodness. For example, SIVs and the like will
be put back on banks' balance sheets for purposes of computing the leverage
ratio. But unfortunately not for the main risk-weighted capital
requirements.
Last, but not least, genuine progress was made
toward new minimum liquidity requirements. The technical problems and
novelty in defining liquidity proved to be formidable, as did the opposition
from the banking industry. So this job is not finished. But the Basel
Committee did at least institute a new liquidity requirement that will
become effective in 2015.
Beyond that, the committee kicked most of the novel
ideas down the road. For example, imposing higher capital requirements on
systemically-important institutions is left for the future.
So let's applaud Basel III, though one-handedly.
More capital, better capital, a leverage ratio, and a liquidity requirement
are all important steps forward. But the unwarranted reliance on rating
agencies, the disgraceful internal risk models of banks, and the disastrous
SIVs should have been easy marks for reformers.
Should the U.S. adopt the Basel III changes?
Absolutely, with no hesitation. But work on Basel IV should begin
immediately.
Mr. Blinder, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton
University and vice chairman of the Promontory Interfinancial Network, is a
former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
Bob Jensen's threads on the recent banking scandals ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
Rotten to the Core ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#InvestmentBanking
"Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's Governors: 2010," Cato
Institute, September 30, 2010
Download the
PDF of Policy Analysis no. 668 (493 KB) ---
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/PA668.pdf
View this Policy Analysis in HTML ---
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/html/PA668/PA668index.html
"College Employees Give Millions to Federal Campaigns, Especially to
Democrats," by Kevin Kiley, Chronicle of Higher Education, September
22, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/College-Employees-Give/124572/
Employees of colleges and other educational
entities have donated a total of about $13.5-million to candidates for
federal offices this election cycle, with most of that money going to
Democrats, says a report released on Wednesday by the Center for Responsive
Politics.
The center, a Washington-based research group that
compiles and analyzes federal campaign contributions, explored the donations
made by employees of educational institutions through July 31. While
nonprofit colleges cannot contribute directly to political campaigns,
administrators, faculty members, and other employees are allowed to make
individual contributions.
The University of California, which employs more
than 180,000 faculty and staff members, topped the list of colleges whose
employees contributed the most. They gave a total of $483,981 to various
campaigns, 86 percent of which went to Democrats.
The list of the top-10 college contributors, based
on employee donations, includes other large and selective universities,
including Harvard University in second place, Stanford University in third,
and the University of Texas in sixth. Some for-profit education companies
and groups also ranked in the top 10, including the Apollo Group, which owns
the University of Phoenix and ranked fourth, and the Association of
Private-Sector Colleges and Universities, formerly the Career College
Association, which represents for-profit colleges and ranked fifth.
Royall & Company, a marketing company for
for-profit universities, topped the list of education entities whose
employees gave the most to Republican candidates, but it was not ranked
among the top 20 institutions for overall contributions. Company employees
gave $80,367 to Republican campaigns.
The report also mentions individual employees who
made large contributions to political campaigns. Carol H. Winograd, an
associate professor emerita of medicine and human biology at Stanford,
topped the list, contributing $136,300 to various Democratic campaigns this
election cycle.
The top three recipients in the Senate were all
Democrats. Barbara Boxer of California, who received $175,019, Charles E.
Schumer of New York, who took in $170,175, and Harry M. Reid of Nevada, who
took in $143,700. In the House, the top three recipients were also
Democrats. Bill Foster of Illinois took in $126,945, George Miller of
California took in $115,961, and Paul W. Hodes of New Hampshire received
$93,700.
Liberal Bias in the Media and Academe ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#LiberalBias
"Gmail Has Won Me Over," by Brad Feld, MIT's Technology Review,
September 26, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/post.aspx?bid=358&bpid=25804&nlid=3560
Jensen Comment
I'm about to find out. I've been on Outlook forever. This week Trinity
University is migrating my files from Outlook to a Gmail system known on campus
as Tmail. It seems like the whole world is moving more and more from Microsoft
to Google's Gmail, Google Docs, and on and on and on. One wonders if Bill
Gates one day will sell used cars for a living.
My point here is that neither
private sector auditors nor public sector auditors are going to be truly
independent as long as their plumbs are ripening when they leave their auditing
posts and still maintain their old “friends” and “contacts” in the auditing
firms or the government auditing agencies.
This a topic that students might address
in ethics and auditing classes.
Recently on the AECM there was
a thread running on whether a government audit agency could be more effective
than the private sector in auditing corporations selling securities to the
public.
One topic this thread seemed
to avoid is a problem that neither the public or the private sector deals well
with in regard to auditing firm/agency plum trees. I define “plumb picking” as
the tendency of the audit clients to hire away the top auditors at huge salaries
that are like plumbs waiting to be picked.
For example, the CFO at Lehman
who engineered what I think was bad Ernst & Young auditing of Repo 105 and 108
contracts was a former auditor from E&Y in charge of auditing the Lehman
account. This is not an exception. Rather it is more like the rule that the
auditors in charge will eventually pick the plumbs by being offered executive
level (CEO, CFO, or CAO) jobs with audit clients.
But having government agencies
may compound this plumb picking problem.
See below were SEC Agent
Barasch picked the plum offered by Ponzi crook R. Allen Stanford
Kotz also reported that
Barasch, who left the SEC in 2005, later represented Stanford before the SEC
despite ethics laws against doing so. An SEC spokesman confirmed that the
agency's ethics office referred the matter to the State Bar of Texas to consider
whether Barasch committed any professional misconduct.
Barasch may have gone over the
edge, but it is extremely common for FDA agents to go to work for drug and
agribusiness companies, Defense Department workers and generals to go to work
for defense contractors, FPA agents to go to work for power companies, EPA
workers to go to work for polluting industries, SEC and FBI and IRS agents to go
to work for accounting firms and business corporations, and on and on and on and
on.
How do industries leverage the regulatory agencies?
The primary control mechanism is to have high paying jobs waiting in industry
for regulators who play ball while they are still employed by the government. It
happens time and time again in the FPC, EPA, FDA, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc. Because so
many people work for the FBI and IRS, it's a little harder for industry to
manage those bureaucrats. Also the FBI and the IRS tend to focus on the worst of
the worst offenders whereas other agencies often deal with top management of the
largest companies in America.
My point here is that neither
private sector auditors nor public sector auditors are going to be truly
independent as long as their plumbs are ripening when they leave their auditing
posts and still maintain their old “friends” and “contacts” in the auditing
firms or the government auditing agencies.
This a topic that students might address
in ethics and auditing classes.
The SEC’s failure to prevent
the Madoff Ponzi fraud may have been a little different. In that instance the
plum was a woman rather than a high salary --- Plum = a Madoff family member
who eventually became the wife of the SEC agent who repeatedly forestalled
investigation of tips sent to the SEC that Madoff was running a Ponzi theft.
Our Main Financial Regulating
Agency: The SEC Screw Everybody Commission
The Great Ponzi Crooks (R. Allen Stanford and Bernie Madoff) Who Allegedly
Manipulated the SEC
"Ex-SEC Official May Be Prosecuted for Role in Stanford Inquiries,"
SmartPros, September 23, 2010 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x70500.xml
Sept. 23 (The Dallas Morning News) — WASHINGTON --
Federal authorities are considering whether to prosecute a former securities
regulator in Fort Worth who repeatedly quashed investigations into whether
R. Allen Stanford was running a Ponzi scheme.
Under questioning at a hearing of the Senate
Banking Committee on Wednesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission's
inspector general told lawmakers that he's "had discussions with criminal
authorities about whether there would be any criminal action arising because
of that."
In a report issued earlier this year, Inspector
General David Kotz wrote that Spencer C. Barasch had "a significant role" in
decisions over the years not to formally investigate Stanford, who is
accused of bilking investors out of $8 billion. The Houston businessman has
pleaded not guilty.
The report said that some SEC examiners thought as
early as 1997 that Stanford's financial empire was built on a Ponzi scheme.
"If you don't get the Justice Department involved
in this, shame on you as the inspector general," said Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky.
"That, to me, is criminal negligence. And the sooner they get him before a
U.S. court, the better I will like it."
Barasch remains a partner in the Dallas office of
Andrews Kurth. Bob Jewell, the firm's managing partner, said Wednesday that
Kotz's testimony was "disappointing" and that Barasch "served the SEC with
honor, integrity and distinction."
"We disagree with the characterization of Mr.
Barasch's involvement put forth by the inspector general," Jewell said in a
prepared statement. "We believe he acted properly during his contacts with
the Stanford Financial Group and the Securities and Exchange Commission. He
did not violate conflicts of interest."
Kotz also reported that Barasch, who left the SEC
in 2005, later represented Stanford before the SEC despite ethics laws
against doing so. An SEC spokesman confirmed that the agency's ethics office
referred the matter to the State Bar of Texas to consider whether Barasch
committed any professional misconduct.
A spokeswoman for the State Bar said such
grievances remain confidential unless a district court or grievance panel
sanctions the lawyer.
Many senators at Wednesday's hearing appeared to be
grappling with Kotz's report for the first time.
The SEC made the report public on the same day in
April that it charged Goldman Sachs with fraud, a case that got far more
attention in the media. Several senators questioned whether the timing was
an attempt to reduce public attention to the inspector general's
embarrassing report.
The report said that SEC examiners in Fort Worth
thought as early as 1997 that Stanford might be operating a Ponzi scheme and
referred the matter to the enforcement staff. A manager who was leaving the
agency told her boss that year that Stanford's business "looks like a Ponzi
scheme to me, and someday it's going to blow up," according to Kotz's
report.
However, the enforcement staff opened and closed
its case after Stanford refused to voluntarily produce any records. Led by
Barasch, the enforcement staff didn't open investigations after three other
examinations in 1998, 2002, and 2004 all concluded that Stanford's
certificates of deposit were probably a Ponzi scheme or other type of fraud.
"Any way you look at it, this is a colossal failure
of the SEC," said Sen. Richard Shelby, D-Ala.
The SEC charged Stanford and three of his firms
with fraud and other securities violations in February 2009. Rose Romero,
the regional director of the SEC in Fort Worth, told lawmakers Wednesday
that the SEC has notified other former Stanford employees that it intends to
seek fraud charges against them. The group includes "former high level
executives and financial advisers," Romero said.
Kotz said that Barasch and other enforcement
attorneys believed the Stanford case was too complex and would absorb too
many resources. The group believed that Washington judged regional offices
based on how many cases they brought, which led them to pursue easier cases,
Kotz said.
SEC officials generally conceded that they'd missed
opportunities to cut off Stanford's alleged fraud.
The officials said they were implementing several
changes to their enforcement priorities, including placing more emphasis on
cases that affect a substantial number of investors. The SEC also said it
has increased coordination between its examiners -- who originally suspected
the Stanford fraud -- and its enforcement staff.
Robert Khuzami, the SEC's director of enforcement,
told the panel that his staff has focused on complex accounting and
securities cases, particularly since the credit crisis of 2008.
"If you look at the course of cases that we have
brought in the last 18 months, particularly across the credit crisis -- New
Century, Countrywide, Goldman, Dell, State Street, Evergreen, ICP,
Citigroup, Bank of America -- these are hugely complicated accounting fraud,
structured product cases," Khuzami said.
"We're not getting quick stats on those cases, I
assure you."
From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on September 10,
2009
Madoff Report Reveals Extent of Bungling
by Kara
Scannell and Jenny Strasburg
Sep 05, 2009
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com
TOPICS: Auditing,
Ponzi Schemes
SUMMARY: "The
SEC's inspector general released the full 477-page version of his report on
how the SEC missed red flags on [Bernard Madoff]....and details just how
many opportunities there were for examiners to find the fraud and how
bungled their efforts were." For example, "one anonymous complaint directed
the SEC to a 'scandal of major proportion' by the Madoff firm and said
assets of a specific investor 'have been 'co-mingled' with funds controlled
by the Madoff firm. The SEC called Mr. Madoff's lawyer and had him ask Mr.
Madoff if he managed money for that investor. When the lawyer said Madoff
didn't, the complaint wasn't pursued further. The IG report concludes that
'accepting the word of a registrant who is alleged to be engaged in a
specific instance of fraud is an inadequate investigation'....SEC Chairman
Mary Schapiro said, 'In the coming weeks, we will continue to closely review
the full report and learn every lesson we can to help build upon the many
reforms we have already put into place since January.'"
CLASSROOM APPLICATION: The
article makes clear the need for auditing roles at the SEC as well as in
public accounting firms auditing general purpose financial statements.
QUESTIONS:
1. (Introductory)
What is a "Ponzi Scheme"? When was Mr. Madoff convicted of running such a
scheme? How did this scheme impact Madoff's investors?
2. (Introductory)
Who issued the report on the SEC's failure to uncover the Madoff scheme
before it collapsed and he himself admitted to the crime?
3. (Advanced)
What did "an unnamed hedge-fund manager" say in an email to the SEC? Explain
how each of the points listed in the email indicate the possibility of a
Ponzi scheme in operation.
4. (Introductory)
What is "front-running" in trading? How did a senior examiner explain this
trading activity as his choice of action to investigate in Mr. Madoff's
operations?
5. (Advanced)
How do you think a choice of action in examination should be determined if
the SEC receives a credible indication of possible fraud in operating an
investment firm such as Mr. Madoff's? How should this choice drive the
determination of expertise needed on an investigatory team?
6. (Advanced)
What audit step failure was evident in the SEC investigatory actions
undertaken between December 2003 and March 2004, as described in the
article?
7. (Introductory)
What expertise do you think was needed on the investigative teams handling
the Madoff case, at least as described in this article?
Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island
RELATED ARTICLES:
Ex-SEC Lawyer: Madoff Report Misses Point
by Suzanne Barlyn
Sep 04, 2009
Online Exclusive
'Evil' Madoff Gets 150 Years in Epic Fraud
by Robert Frank and Amir Efrati
Jun 30, 2009
Online Exclusive
New Hints at Why the SEC Failed to Seriously Investigate Madoff's Hedge
Fund
After being repeatedly warned for six years that this was a criminal scam
It's beginning to look like a family "affair"
(The SEC's) Swanson later married Madoff's niece,
and their relationship is now under review by the SEC inspector general, who is
examining the agency's handling of the Madoff case, the Post reported. Swanson,
no longer with the agency, declined to comment, the Post said.
"SEC lawyer raised alarm about Madoff: report," Reuters, July 2, 2009 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090702/bs_nm/us_madoff_sec
The Washington Post account is at ---
Click Here
A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer
warned about irregularities at Bernard Madoff's financial management firm as
far back as 2004, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing agency
documents and sources familiar with the investigation.
Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the
SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent emails to a
supervisor saying information provided by Madoff during her review didn't
add up and suggesting a set of questions to ask his firm, the report said.
Several of the questions directly challenged Madoff
activities that turned out to be elements of his massive fraud, the
newspaper said.
Madoff, 71, was sentenced to a prison term of 150
years on Monday after he pleaded guilty in March to a decades-long fraud
that U.S. prosecutors said drew in as much as $65 billion.
The Washington Post reported that when
Walker-Lightfoot reviewed the paper documents and electronic data supplied
to the SEC by Madoff, she found it full of inconsistencies, according to
documents, a former SEC official and another person knowledgeable about the
2004 investigation.
The newspaper said the SEC staffer raised concerns
about Madoff but, at the time, the SEC was under pressure to look for
wrongdoing in the mutual fund industry. Walker-Lightfoot was told to focus
on a separate probe into mutual funds, the report said.
One of Walker-Lightfoot's supervisors on the case
was Eric Swanson, an assistant director of her department, the Post
reported, citing two people familiar with the investigation.
Swanson later married Madoff's niece, and their
relationship is now under review by the SEC inspector general, who is
examining the agency's handling of the Madoff case, the Post reported.
Swanson, no longer with the agency, declined to
comment, the Post said.
SEC spokesman John Nester also declined to comment,
citing the ongoing investigation by the agency's inspector general, the
newspaper said.
Our Main Financial Regulating Agency: The SEC Screw
Everybody Commission
One of the biggest regulation failures in history is the way the SEC failed to
seriously investigate Bernie Madoff's fund even after being warned by Wall
Street experts across six years before Bernie himself disclosed that he was
running a $65 billion Ponzi fund.
CBS Sixty Minutes on June 14, 2009 ran a rerun that is
devastatingly critical of the SEC. If you’ve not seen it, it may still be
available for free (for a short time only) at
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5088137n&tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
The title of the video is “The Man Who Would Be King.”
Also see
http://www.fraud-magazine.com/FeatureArticle.aspx
Between 2002 and 2008 Harry Markopolos repeatedly told
(with indisputable proof) the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bernie
Madoff's investment fund was a fraud. Markopolos was ignored and, as a result,
investors lost more and more billions of dollars. Steve Kroft reports.
Markoplos makes the SEC look truly incompetent or
outright conspiratorial in fraud.
I'm really surprised that the SEC survived after Chris
Cox messed it up so many things so badly.
As Far as Regulations Go
An annual report issued by
the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) shows that the U.S. government
imposed $1.17 trillion in new regulatory costs in 2008. That almost equals the
$1.2 trillion generated by individual income taxes, and amounts to $3,849 for
every American citizen. According the 2009 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments:
An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State, the government issued 3,830
new rules last year, and The Federal Register, where such rules are listed,
ballooned to a record 79,435 pages. “The costs of federal regulations too often
exceed the benefits, yet these regulations receive little official scrutiny from
Congress,” said CEI Vice President Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr., who wrote the report.
“The U.S. economy lost value in 2008 for the first time since 1990,” Crews said.
“Meanwhile, our federal government imposed a $1.17 trillion ‘hidden tax’ on
Americans beyond the $3 trillion officially budgeted” through the regulations.
Adam Brickley,
"Government Implemented Thousands of New Regulations Costing $1.17 Trillion in
2008," CNS News, June 12, 2009 ---
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49487
Jensen Comment
I’m a long-time believer that industries being regulated end up controlling the
regulating agencies. The records of Alan Greenspan (FED) and the SEC from Arthur
Levitt to Chris Cox do absolutely nothing to change my belief ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
How do industries leverage the regulatory agencies?
The primary control mechanism is to have high paying jobs waiting in industry
for regulators who play ball while they are still employed by the government. It
happens time and time again in the FPC, EPA, FDA, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc. Because so
many people work for the FBI and IRS, it's a little harder for industry to
manage those bureaucrats. Also the FBI and the IRS tend to focus on the worst of
the worst offenders whereas other agencies often deal with top management of the
largest companies in America.
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on Ponzi crooks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#Ponzi
Auditors Work for Banking Clients, Not Investors: Resistance to
Disclosing Subprime Poison Repurchase Risk
"Auditors Aren’t Forcing Full Repurchase Risk Exposure Disclosure," by Francine
McKenna, re:TheAuditors, September 27, 2010 ---
http://retheauditors.com/2010/09/27/auditors-arent-forcing-full-repurchase-risk-exposure-disclosure/
Bob Jensen's threads on where the where the poison originated and where it
ended up ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
Where were the auditors?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#AuditFirms
From the Scout Report on September 24, 2010
PRTG Network Monitor 8.1.0.1607 ---
http://www.paessler.com/prtg/download
This application is designed for users who wish to
keep tabs of their entire network with ease and efficiency. With this
application, users can take advantage of traffic and usage monitoring,
packet sniffing, and concise reporting. The web-based interface for the
application makes configuring the network devices and sensors quite simple.
This version is compatible with computers running Windows XP and newer.
Free Video Catcher 1.2 ---
http://www.geeksofts.com/
Visitors with an interest in capturing videos and
other materials from the Internet will find this application most useful.
Free Video Catcher 1.2 can be configured to capture only audio from a video
file, and it can be used with popular sites such as YouTube, Google Videos,
and many others. This version is compatible with computers running Windows
2000 and newer.
Jonathan Franzen ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Franzen
Nine years later, Oprah Winfrey and Jonathan Franzen meet again Oprah
Winfrey and Jonathan Franzen make up over Freedom
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/16/oprah-winfrey-jonathan-franzen-freedom
Franzen On The Book, The Backlash, His Background
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129747555
A touch of Franzenfreude
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/19/books-franzen-gender-wars-reviews
Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner Speak Out On Franzen Feud
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-pinter/jodi-picoult-jennifer-weiner-franzen_b_693143.html
Publishers Weekly
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/home/index.html
Arts & Letters Daily
http://www.aldaily.com/
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
The Center for Cartoon Studies ---
http://www.cartoonstudies.org/
The Hale Scrapbook (cartoon history) ---
http://cartoons.osu.edu/hale/Hale.php
The Stuart McDonald Cartoon
Collection
http://www.library.und.edu/digital/McDonald.htm
Bill Mauldin's Military Cartoons ---
Click Here
The Opper Project (editorial cartoons) ---
http://hti.osu.edu/opper/index.cfm
University of Nebraska Libraries Digital Collections: Government Comics
Collection ---
http://contentdm.unl.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/comics
Digital Comic Museum ---
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/
Two thirds of those who have mobile
communicating apps use any of them
The Rise of Apps Culture ---
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/The-Rise-of-Apps-Culture.aspx
Jensen Comment
It's a bit like having exercise equipment gathering dust.
"Podcast: The Google Generation — Myth or Reality?" by Rick Lillie,
Thinking Outside the Box Blog, September 17, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/podcast-the-google-generation-myth-or-reality/
JISC is an advisory committee to
higher education in the UK. Periodically, JISC issues research reports
about higher education. Click the icon below to access one of JISC’s latest
reports dealing with “The Google Generation.“
We have all heard about “Millennial”
students and how tech savvy they are supposed to be. From my experience, I
am not at all certain that what we hear is true. I find that Millennial
(Google Generation) students have the fastest thumbs in the west
and can answer a cell phone call at the speed of light.
Beyond this, their technology related skills, from an academic perspective,
seem quite limited.
This JISC podcast talks about characteristics of
Millennial (Google Generation) students. It runs about 22 minutes. Click
the icon below to access the JISC website. Click the start button (>) to
listen to the podcast.
Enjoy.
Bob Jensen's technology updates are at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/podcast-the-google-generation-myth-or-reality/
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
New York Sea Grant ---
http://www.seagrant.sunysb.edu/default.asp
National Design Triennial ---
http://exhibitions.cooperhewitt.org/Why-Design-Now/
Two thirds of those who have mobile
communicating apps use any of them
The Rise of Apps Culture ---
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/The-Rise-of-Apps-Culture.aspx
Jensen Comment
It's a bit like having exercise equipment gathering dust.
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
Bracero History Archive (Mexican Guest Workers) ---
http://braceroarchive.org/
Three Proposed Initiatives for Improving Mobility, Quality of Life, and
Economic Growth in the West Bank [pdf]
http://www.rand.org/pubs/corporate_pubs/2010/RAND_CP610.pdf
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
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
Chris Deeley in Australia and I have been corresponding regarding an antique
learning curve paper that I published nearly 20 years ago. You can read some of
our correspondence at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theorylearningcurves.htm
In that correspondence I discuss the good and evil of the Wolfram Alpha
computational search engine.
Chris also sent me his latest working paper on an entirely different topic
(which I've not yet found time to delve into). I asked if I could serve up the
paper to my AECM friends and others. When I find time I would like to test some
of his formulas in Wolfram Alpha. Chris is skeptical.
September 23, 2010 message from
Bob
Yes, by all means post my working paper on general annuities on the AECM
website. I suspect that Wolfram Alpha may not be able to handle this sort of
thing. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the application of standard maths
has created and entrenched the error. Chris
Chris Deeley
Senior Lecturer in Accounting & Finance
School of Accounting,
Faculty of Business
Charles Sturt University,
Locked Mail Bag 588
Wagga Wagga, NSW 2678
Ph: +612 69332694 Fax: +612 69332790
Email: cdeeley@csu.edu.au
Web:www.csu.edu.a u
I put his paper on one of my Web servers. I'm sure that Chris will appreciate
any comments that you have regarding this technical topic. It may be a good
exercise for accounting and finance students to study this paper.
"IDENTIFICATION AND CORRECTION OF A COMMON ERROR IN GENERAL ANNUITY
CALCULATIONS," by Chris Deeley, Charles Sturt University, Australia., September
23, 2010 Working Draft ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeeleyAnnuityCorrections.pdf
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
Digital UMass (multimedia campus history) ---
http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/umarmot/?page_id=697
The Red Brush (writings from Imperial China) ---
http://digital.wustl.edu/r/red/
Illinois State Museum: Audio-Video Barn ---
http://avbarn.museum.state.il.us/
Fort Ticonderoga ---
http://www.fort-ticonderoga.org/index.htm
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society ---
http://dig.lib.niu.edu/ISHS/index.html
History: The Colonial Williamsburg Official History Site ---
http://www.history.org/history/index.cfm
Caroline Bartlett Crane: Everyman's House ---
http://www.wmich.edu/library/digi/collections/everyman/
Regional History Project: UC-Santa Cruz ---
http://library.ucsc.edu/regional-history-project
New Perspectives: The Cleveland Museum of Art [Flash Player] ---
http://www.clevelandart.org/collections/New Perspectives.aspx
Bracero History Archive (Mexican Guest Workers) ---
http://braceroarchive.org/
New York Sea Grant ---
http://www.seagrant.sunysb.edu/default.asp
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
Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archive (includes comedy and music) ---
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~djsa/
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archive (includes comedy and music) ---
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~djsa/
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music
Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
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/
September 22, 2010
September 23, 2010
September 25, 2010
September 26, 2010
September 27, 2010
September 28, 2010
September 29, 2010
September 30, 2010
October 1, 2010
October 2, 2010
"The Many Forms of Melanoma," The New York Times, September 22,
2010 ---
http://consults.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/the-many-forms-of-melanoma/?hpw
Ignobel Prize ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize
I think the panel that awards these prizes annually have overlooked hundreds,
maybe thousands, of great accountics research candidates
List of Ignoble Prize Winners ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners
2010 Winners ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners#2010
- Engineering: Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and others for
perfecting a method to collect whale snot, using a
remote-control helicopter.
- Medicine: Simon Rietveld and Ilja van Beest for
discovering that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a
roller-coaster ride.
- Transportation Planning: Toshiyuki Nakagaki and
others for using slime mold to determine the optimal routes for
railroad tracks.
- Physics: Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams, and Patricia
Priest of the
University of Otago, for demonstrating that, on icy
footpaths in wintertime, people slip and fall less often if they
wear socks on the outside of their shoes.
- Peace: Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew
Kingston for confirming the widely held belief that swearing
relieves pain.
- Public Health: Manuel Barbeito, Charles Mathews, and
Larry Taylor of the Industrial Health and Safety Office, for
determining by experiment that microbes cling to bearded
scientists.
- Economic: The executives and directors of
Goldman Sachs,
AIG,
Lehman Brothers,
Bear Stearns,
Merrill Lynch, and
Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money
— ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk
for the world economy, or for a portion thereof.
- Chemistry: Eric Adams, Scott Socolofsky, Stephen
Masutani and
British Petroleum, for disproving the old belief that oil
and water don't mix.
- Management: Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda,
and Cesare Garofalo, for demonstrating mathematically that
organizations would become more efficient if they promoted
people at random.
- Biology: Libiao Zhang and others, for scientifically
documenting fellatio in fruit bats.
Forwarded by Paula (oldies but goodies)
Comprehending Accountants - Take One
Two accountancy students were walking across campus when one said, "Where did
you get such a great bike?"
The second student replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own
business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike.
She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what
you want."
The first student nodded approvingly, "Good choice; the clothes probably
wouldn't have fit."
Comprehending Accountants - Take Two
An architect, an artist and an accountant were discussing whether it was better
to spend time with the wife or a mistress.
The architect said he enjoyed time with his wife, building a solid foundation
for an enduring relationship.
The artist said he enjoyed time with his mistress, because of the passion and
mystery he found there.
The accountant said, "I like both."
"Both?"
The accountant replied "Yeah. If you
have a wife and a mistress, they will each assume you are spending time with
the other woman, and you can go to the office and get some work done."
Comprehending Accountants - Take Three
To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the accountant, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
Comprehending Accountants - Take Four
"An Accountant and His Frog"
An accountant was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and
said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess".
He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket.
The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a
beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week". The accountant took the
frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket.
The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into princess,
I'll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want." Again the accountant took the
frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket.
Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful
princess, that I'll stay with you and do anything you want.
Why won't you kiss me?"
The accountant said, "Look I'm an accountant. I don't have time for a
girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool."
Comprehending Accountants - Take Five
A businessman was interviewing applicants for the position of Divisional
Manager. He devised a simple test to select the most suitable person for the
job. He asked each applicant the question, "What is two and two"?
The first interviewee was a journalist. His answer was "twenty-two."
The second applicant was an engineer. He
pulled out a calculator and showed the answer to be between 3.999999 and
4.000001.
The next person was a lawyer. He stated
that in the case of Jenkins v. Commr of Stamp Duties (Qld), two and two was
proven to be four.
The last applicant was an accountant.
The business man asked him, "How much is two and two?" The accountant got up
from his chair, went over to the door, closed it then came back and sat down.
He leaned across the desk and said in a low voice, "How much do you want it to
be?" He got the job.
--------------
What's the definition of an accountant?
Someone who solves a problem you didn't know you had in a way you don't
understand.
-------------
What's the definition of a good tax accountant?
Someone who has a loophole named after him.
------------
When does a person decide to become an accountant?
When he realizes he doesn't have the charisma to succeed as an undertaker.
-------------
What does an accountant use for birth control?
His personality.
-------------
What's an extroverted accountant?
One who looks at your shoes while he's talking to you instead of his own.
-------------
What's an auditor?
Someone who arrives after the battle and bayonets all the wounded.
-------------
Why did the auditor cross the road?
Because he looked in the file and that's what they did last year.
-------------
There are three kinds of accountants in the world.
Those who can count, and those who can't.
-------------
How do you drive an accountant completely insane?
Tie him to a chair, stand in front of him and fold up a roadmap the wrong
way.
-------------
What's the most wicked thing a group of young accountants can do?
Go into town and gang-audit someone.
-------------
What do accountants suffer from that ordinary people don't?
Depreciation.
-------------
An accountant is having a hard time sleeping and goes to see his doctor.
"Doctor, I just can't get to sleep at night."
"Have you tried counting sheep?"
"That's the problem - I make a mistake and then spend three hours trying to
find it."
Forwarded by Gene and Joan
Absolutely Brilliant!
The
European Commission has just announced an agreement
whereby English will be the official language of the
European Union rather than German, which was the other
possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government
conceded that English spelling had some room for
improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan
that would become known as "Euro-English".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c"..
Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with
joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This
should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one
less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm
in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be
replaced with "f".. This will make words like fotograf
20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated
changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters
which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e"
in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as
replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from
vords kontaining "ou" and
after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl
riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil
find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united
urop vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like
zey vunted in ze forst plas.
If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl. |
|
|
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/
I recommend that you watch the video of Joe Hoyle's "Last Lecture"
Last Lecture Series: Joe Hoyle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjwHxVbZq1o&feature=grec_index
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