Tidbits on October 19, 2010
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
This week I made a special photograph file
of Set 1 of my 2010 Summer Favorites
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/SummertimeFavorites/Set01/2010Set01.htm
Scroll down
in the above file to view the von Trapp family on Hunger Mountain, Vermont
Foliage Favorites ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Foliage/FoliageFavorites.htm
More
photographs and history of this (White Mountains) area ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
My featured academic file in this October
19, 2010 edition
History
of Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
For the Boogie Woogie Generation (Sylvan Zingg on the piano is awesome)!
My Favorite Dance
Video (this couple is terrific) ---
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=26579077
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on October 19,
2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations101910.htm
Deficit tops $1 trillion second year in a row ($1.29 trillion
before November and December) ---
http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/15/news/economy/treasury_fy2010_deficit/index.htm
Long-term problem:
There has been a lot of political hysteria expressed over the annual
deficits of the past two years.
Fiscal experts note, however, that the abnormally
large deficits incurred in the wake of the financial crisis are not the
primary source of the country's biggest fiscal problems.
The biggest source of fiscal concern remains the
so-called structural deficit, which is made up primarily of spending on the
big three entitlement programs. That structural deficit will continue to
balloon faster than the economy grows long after the current downturn has
ended.
Indeed, the Government Accountability Office
projects that by the end of this decade, the vast majority of all federal
tax revenue will be swallowed up by just four things: Interest payments on
the country's debt, and the payment of Medicare, Medicaid and Social
Security benefits.
The president's bipartisan fiscal commission,
charged with recommending ways to get U.S. debt under control, will issue a
report in December.
Peter G.
Peterson Website on Deficit/Debt Solutions ---
http://www.pgpf.org/
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Tidbits on October 19, 2010
Bob Jensen
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/.
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
CPA
Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
World Clock and World Facts ---
http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf
Facts Clock ---
http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf
U.S. Debt/Deficit Clock ---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Free Residential and Business Telephone Directory (you must listen to an
opening advertisement) --- dial 800-FREE411 or 800-373-3411
Free Online Telephone Directory ---
http://snipurl.com/411directory [www_public-records-now_com]
Free online 800 telephone numbers ---
http://www.tollfree.att.net/tf.html
Google Free Business Phone Directory --- 800-goog411
To find names addresses from listed phone numbers, go to
www.google.com and read in the phone number without spaces, dashes, or
parens
Find a College
College Atlas ---
http://www.collegeatlas.org/
Among other things the above site provides acceptance rate percentages
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Daily News Sites for Accountancy, Tax, Fraud, IFRS, XBRL, Accounting
History, and More ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Education Technology Search ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Distance Education Search ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Microsoft's Bing ---
http://www.bing.com/
Computational Search With Wolfram Alpha ---
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
Search for Listservs, Blogs, and Social Networks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
Bob Jensen's essay on the financial crisis bailout's aftermath and an alphabet soup of
appendices can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
The Master List of Free
Online College Courses ---
http://universitiesandcolleges.org/
149 Interesting People to Follow on Twitter (but I don't have time to follow
them) ---
http://ow.ly/1sj5q
-
- I see from my house by the side of the road
- By the side of the highway of life,
- The men who press with the ardor of hope,
- The men who are faint with the strife,
- But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,
- Both parts of an infinite plan-
- Let me live in a house by the side of the road
- And be a friend to man.
Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911)
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbitsdirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New
Bookmarks go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
On May 14, 2006 I retired from Trinity University after a long
and wonderful career as an accounting professor in four universities. I was
generously granted "Emeritus" status by the Trustees of Trinity University. My
wife and I now live in a cottage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm
Bob Jensen's blogs and various threads on many topics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
(Also scroll down to the table at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ )
Global Incident Map ---
http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php
If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops ---
http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
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
Video:
SQUARE REVIEW! Credit card payments on your iPhone (from mom, dad, Uncle Ed, or
customers) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0BwYz1P0BE&feature=youtu.be
Inspiration from Scott Stratten
Fill Your Bucket Well ---
http://www.TheBucketMovie.com
The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906 ---
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/nychome.html
The Rat Pack Singing the Birth of the
Blues (supposedly the only time Carson sang in public) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=VPH0-g25Vl8
Johnny Carson and Betty White in the
Garden of Eden ---
http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/164409/detail/
I would like a 700-train set for XMAS ---
http://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/exhibit/video/4-minutes-wunderland/
If we had an Italian President from New
Jersey ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avw0n9b2o9U
Couple's Radio Flyer turns heads on streets ---
http://www.ktuu.com/news/ktuu-radio-flyer-car-092910,0,1784245.story
Old Cleavages and Movie Stars ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/OldMovies.pps
'Action!' Student-Generated Video Web Site Teaches Visual
Communications Skills ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/10/06/action-student-generated-video-web-site-teaches-visual-communications-skills.aspx
Carnegie Institution for Science: Multimedia Content [Real Player, iTunes]
http://carnegiescience.edu/multimedia_content
Stray Dogs: Danijel Zezelj [art history] ---
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/straydogs/index.asp
Career Video from the Texas Society of CPAs ---
http://www.tscpa.org/Content/Students/CareerInAcct.aspx
Bob Jensen's threads on careers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
For the Boogie Woogie
Generation (Sylvan Zingg on the piano is awesome)!
My
Favorite Dance Video (this couple is terrific) ---
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=26579077
Little Boy and His Dog ---
http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/boy_dog.html
Fantastic Machines
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&playlist=29571216&pt=1&i=1&videoid=64149281
Dancing in the Atlanta Airport ---
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/11/news/la-trb-flash-mobs-20101006
Waking Up is Hard to Do by Five Minnesota
anesthetists ---
http://nottotallyrad.blogspot.com/2009/11/waking-up-is-hard-to-do.html
Remembering 'La Stupenda': Opera Singer Joan
Sutherland ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130512423
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
Great Migrations: National Geographic (animals)
---
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/great-migrations/
The Cosmos in Miniature: The Remarkable Star Map
of Simeon De Witt
http://americanhistory.si.edu/documentsgallery/exhibitions/dewitt_1.html
Illuminated Manuscripts from Belgium and the
Netherlands (Getty Museum) ---
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/flemish_manuscripts/
Shared History: Fayetteville and the University
of Arkansas ---
http://scipio.uark.edu/cdm4/index_HappyHollow.php?CISOROOT=/HappyHollow
FSU Historical Images (Florida State University)
---
http://purl.fcla.edu/fsu/lib/digcoll/speccoll/historicalphotos
Stray Dogs: Danijel Zezelj [art history] ---
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/straydogs/index.asp
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
Illuminated Manuscripts from Belgium and the Netherlands
(Getty Museum) ---
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/flemish_manuscripts/
Portsmouth and Macclesfield Collections (Isaac Newton,
Gravity, Calculus, Physics) ---
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/portsmouth_and_macclesfield/
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 19,
2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations101910.htm
Peter G.
Peterson Website on Deficit/Debt Solutions ---
http://www.pgpf.org/
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
White did President Obama turn down IBM's offer to, for free, to detect
medical fraud?
Video: Did White House Snub Fraud Fighter?
http://news.yahoo.com/video/politics-15749652/did-white-house-snub-fraud-fighter-22352314
Teachers Who Made A Difference: Joyce DiDonato's Seeds Of Confidence ---
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2010/09/29/130214129/joyce-didonato-seeds-confidence
The AAA Commons has a site for professors to comment on persons/events that
made them better professors ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/cbc2c5f922
AAA members may want to read some of the commentaries and/or contribute their
own stories.
"Check Out EDUCAUSE 2010 Resources," by Tanya Roscorla, Converge
Magazine, October 18, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/training/Check-Out-EDUCAUSE-2010-Resources.html
Bob Jensen's threads on resources are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
It's Beginning to Look Like Second Life Pulled a Fast One
"Second Life To Drop Educational Discount," by Paige Chapman,
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 5, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Second-Life-To-Drop/27458/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Bob Jensen's threads on Second Life are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
"Academics Discuss Mass Migration From Second Life," by Jeff Young,
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 14, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/academics-discuss-mass-migration-from-second-life/27672?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
October 14, 2010 reply from Steve Hornik
First, yes I suppose pulling a fast one is is good
explanation of the sudden announcement of the price increase. However as
usual the Chronicle and at least the authors who write articles on SL are to
be kind somewhat biased with little actual experience with the company or
the platform.
So this is what happened, LL has decided to no longer offer 50% discounts on
land purchases (ie. server space) and the accompanying monthly maintenance
fees. The edu and non-profit community was pretty upset as they were
accustomed to this and some were using grants funds for their work in Second
Life. Linden Labs has never understood academics and our different time
frames based on semesters, quarters and annual grant budgeting. However, and
this is important and of course not reported, once LL understood this they
reached out and have offered anyone who wishes to renew their land
purchase/maintenance for an additional 24 months at the same rates. I can
tell you with first hand experience that they (LL) have gone out of the way
to accommodate me and my project and have agreed to allow me to pay for
continuing maintenance every 6 months as my grant funding comes in. I'm sure
I'm not a special case.
The bigger issue is why LL decided to do this now. One reason is that the
edu market is actually pretty small in Second Life (despite what edu
people's usually overblown egos tend to think). Another speculation is that
they are getting their ducks in order for some type of acquisition. I've
heard companies from Microsoft to Google. It's always a bit tenuous being a
pioneer with new platforms and isn't always for the weak of heart but it is
still my opinion that virtual worlds/environments will be a tool in most
educators toolbox in the years to come.
_________________________
Dr. Steven Hornik
University of Central Florida
Dixon School of Accounting
407-823-5739
Second Life: Robins Hermano
Twitter: shornik
http://mydebitcredit.com
yahoo ID: shornik
Bob Jensen's threads on Second Life ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
New version of Camtasia v7.1
Closed Captioning for Camtasia Videos
October 12, 2010 message from Richard Campbell
The primary new feature is speech-to-text
recognition for closed captioning.
This facilitates section 508 compliance for the
hearing impaired.
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/
Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu
Bob Jensen's threads on Camtasia are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Video
Bob Jensen's threads on technology for the hearing disabled are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
The Alternative Model: Partnerships Between Not-for-Profit and
For-Profit Education Distance Education Ventures
The model is not new but it may become much more common as for-profit
stand-alones become more stressed by regulations and drying up markets
"Outsourcing Plus," by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, October 12,
2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/12/azstate
With budgets tight and the
commercial market flush with companies willing to take on various tasks that
come with running a university, it has become relatively common for
institutions to outsource parts of their operations to outside companies.
It is less common for a
public university to entrust an outsider with such a wide swath of duties
that it calls that private company an equal partner in online education. But
Arizona State University
announced on Monday that it is doing just that
with Pearson, the education and media company.
Under the agreement, the
Arizona State faculty will teach online courses through Pearson’s learning
management platform, LearningStudio, using the tools embedded in that
platform to collect and analyze data in hopes of improving student
performance and retention. Pearson will also help with enrollment management
and “prospect generation," while providing more "customer-friendly" support
services for students, the university says.
Arizona State, meanwhile,
says it will retain control over all things academic, including instruction
and curriculum development.
Universities often strike
deals with private companies to manage parts of their online operations,
particularly when they are trying to quickly
grow their online enrollments, which is Arizona
State’s stated goal in this case (now serving 3,000 online students, it
hopes to grow to somewhere between 17,000 and 30,000 within five years).
Companies such as Embanet, 2Tor, SunGard Higher Education, Bisk Education,
Colloquy, and Compass Knowledge Group have, to varying degrees, taken over
online program management at other name-brand universities in exchange for a
cut of the tuition revenue.
Jensen Comment
There is obviously a spectrum of partnerships that will probably emerge. At one
end the courses are totally managed by a not-for-profit university that only
uses the for-profit partner's media delivery services. Then there might be a
move up where selected for-profit's courses are selectively brought into the
curriculum. Then there might be entire specialized programs that are brought
into the curriculum such as executive programs (non-degree) or undergraduate
pharmacy or even accounting degree programs.
The next move up the ladder would be for-profit graduate degree programs
where assessment is controlled by the not-for-profit partner. For example,
Western Governor's University now has over 10,000 students in competency-based
programs. One might imagine partnering of WGU with a for-profit distance
education MBA program where the competency assessments and degrees are
administered by WGU.
Lastly, one might envision doctoral programs, although these might come last
because they are typically money losers if they have respectability in the
market such as AACSB respectability. For example, Capella now has an online
accounting doctoral program that I view as a fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm#CommercialPrograms
One might envision a partnering with some respected state university, such as
ASU, that greatly alters the curriculum and the assessment process and the
dissertation advising to bring Cpaella's accounting doctoral program more in
line with ASU's onsite accounting doctoral program. This off course is probably
way, way down the road.
"Where For-Profit and Nonprofit Meet," by David Moltz, Inside
Higher Ed, October 13, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/13/princeton
Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of accounting doctoral programs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
Questions
Do your students know the difference between mutual funds and hedge funds?
Do your students really understand how Ponzi schemes work?
Start with (gasp) Wikipedia.
The Worst Sack Ever on John Elway (former All-Pro Quarterback in the
Mile-High City)
Elway Got Schemered!
Stanford Graduates Should Know Better
"John Elway Invested $15 Million With Alleged Ponzi Schemer,"
Huffington Post, October 14, 2010 ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/14/john-elway-invested-15-mi_n_762663.html
John Elway Invested $15 MILLION With Alleged Ponzi
Schemer
diggfacebook Twitter stumble reddit del.ico.us
What's Your Reaction? .Amazing Inspiring Funny Scary Hot Crazy Important
Weird Read More: Elway 15 Million, John Elway, Mitchell Pierce, Ponzi
Scheme, Sean Michael Mueller, Sean Mueller, Denver News 10 views Get Denver
Alerts Email Comments 17 DENVER — Former Denver Broncos quarterback John
Elway and his business partner gave $15 million to a hedge-fund manager now
accused of running a Ponzi scheme.
The Denver Post reported Thursday that Elway and
Mitchell Pierce filed a motion saying they wired the money to Sean Michael
Mueller in March. They said Mueller agreed to hold the money in trust until
they agreed on where it would be invested.
A state investigator says 65 people invested $71
million with Mueller's company over 10 years and it only had $9.5 million in
assets in April and $45 million in liabilities.
Elway's filing asks that the court put their claims
ahead of others so they can collect their money first. His lawyer declined
to comment.
Jensen Comment
It's hard to feel sorry for rich people who play in games without rules (hedge
funds)
Better to play in games with rules and stand behind 325 lb linemen with missing
teeth, BO, and noses that look like corkscrews.
Bob Jensen's fraud updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on Hedge Funds are under the H-term at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133glosf.htm
Note that hedge funds may have nothing to do with hedging.
Bob Jensen's threads on Ponzi schemes are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#Ponzi
"Using TripIt to Organize Travel," by Erin E. Templeton,
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 8, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/using-tripit-to-organize-travel/27488
One of the perks of academia is the opportunity for
occasional travel to conferences, archives, or field-work. But keeping
travel plans organized can be difficult amidst writing deadlines, grading,
and the blizzard of email that we all sort through on a daily basis. If you
have a Smartphone, there several apps out there that might help simplify
things for you. I recently discovered
TripIt,
and it was love at first use.
TripIt is a free program for
BlackBerry, Droid, or iPhone that organizes all of your travel information
(flights, hotel reservations, rental cars, etc.) into a single itinerary.
It is easy to use from the get-go and does not require account numbers for
your reservations. You will, however, need a map application on your
Smartphone (if you do not have one pre-installed on your phone, GoogleMaps
is a free option). Once you have installed TripIt, all you need to do to
get started is forward your confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com, and it
does the rest almost instantaneously.
The cell phone interface is impressive. Not only
does it provide full flight information including flight numbers, departure
and arrival times, confirmation codes, and seat assignments, but it also has
links to maps of your destination and a website that provides seating advice
for the specific kind of plane in which you will be traveling. Travelers
familiar with SeatGuru
will recognize the interface, but the added benefit to
TripIt is that you no longer have to guess which plane you’ll be on–TripIt
takes you to the right model automatically. If you check your itinerary
from the website (instead from the mobile app), you can also see the weather
forecast for your destination.
If you have forwarded a hotel reservation
confirmation, it will also provide you with a link to turn-by-turn
directions from the airport to your hotel. Rental car reservations are no
less thorough; you not only have access to your confirmation number, but you
also have details about the reservation including pick-up time and car type
as well as contact information for the rental agency and instructions on
where to go from the airport terminal. Users can also import reservations
from Evite, Facebook events, OpenTable, TicketMaster, Amtrak, and many other
sites. In addition, the application will import all of your travel
arrangements directly to your calendar, and you can email your itinerary to
family and friends. TripIt will also let you save people as contacts so
that you don’t need to re-enter their email addresses for future trips.
There is an upgrade available.
TripIt Pro
costs $49 per year (there is a free 30 day trial
membership). This version includes all the features of the free app and
then some. It provides instant alerts when your flight is changed, whether
your departure is delayed or the gate is changed; if you miss a connection
or your flight is canceled, you have access to rebooking options including
information on available seating; and if the cost of your flight changes so
that you are eligible for a refund, you will be notified of that also.
Lastly, it also allows users to travel frequent flier miles/points. If you
are a frequent traveler, such features might be beneficial.
TripIt really impressed me with
its wealth of information and ease of use, and I appreciate not having to
carry around print-outs of my reservations and confirmations. It has also
won numerous awards and acclaim from various online and print publications
such as
TechCrunch and
PC Magazine as well
as from individual users at the iTunes App Store and BlackBerry AppWorld.
Do you have a favorite Travel App to help you stay
organized when you are on the road or flying the friendly skies? Please
share in the comments section.
Bob Jensen's travel helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Travel
"Free to Good Homes: U. of Miami Law Grads," by Don Troop,
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 12, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Free-to-Good-Homes-U-of/124899/
Jensen Comment
The flies in the face of the U.S. Labor Department's new ruling that bans unpaid
internships.. Unpaid internships enable students with lower grade averages to
both get on-the-job experience and to prove their employment merits beyond their
grade records.
"I Have Been Invited to Retire," Anonymous, Chronicle of Higher
Education, October 17, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/I-Have-Been-Invited-to-Retire/124912/
In late spring, the tide of articles on academic
topics began to shift from the woeful hiring conditions for those in the
humanities to the pleasure and pain of retirement. Reading the news and the
three (too cheerful, it seemed) e-mails from my college inviting me to
consider early retirement, I was reminded of a Woody Allen joke in Annie
Hall. Two women at a Catskills resort are talking, and one says: "Boy, the
food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know.
And such small portions."
In this case, the portions are indeed small: The
payout is far less than the two years' salary offered by some institutions
or even the one year's worth at many others, and it comes with only six
months' continuance of a costly health-care plan.
Furthermore, the paperwork includes a lengthy
confidentiality clause. An applicant must pledge not only never to disclose
the terms of the agreement but also never to discuss anything negative,
whether "facts, opinions, or beliefs," about the college. The clause, I've
been told, resembles those in corporate agreements. Presumably, then, along
with my keys, I'd be relinquishing my academic freedom. If I were to sign
the release, I could not write this essay (clearly not the case for those at
some larger institutions, who have disclosed such information in interviews
with The Chronicle).
So here is another argument for not pursuing the
dream of college teaching in the humanities: After five to 10 years spent
acquiring an advanced degree or two, and, for many, subsequent years spent
as adjuncts, the time between receiving the first contract for a full-time
position and opening that invitation to retire early isn't very long.
In my case, it was 14 years. In the week of the
first anniversary of my promotion to full professor, I received the first
invitation to consider leaving. I told myself that it wasn't personal; the
mailing went out to everyone who would be 55 as of this summer and who had
served the college for at least 10 years. But it felt personal. As one of
the staff members who left said, "It feels as though no one values what I
did."
It's not as though I haven't considered leaving.
The workload is sometimes overwhelming, and the politics are abysmal. And I
have plenty of other things to keep me busy until my mid-90s (the age of a
few professors of my oldest child at her university, and the age I'd
originally targeted for my retirement).
I could write full time, instead of storing up my
notes for summer and winter breaks. I could devote many more hours to the
gardens at my house and my parents'. I could join either of the two women
who have invited me to form business partnerships, one in education, the
other in retail. I could return to doing volunteer service, which my
full-time professorship has left no time for. I could devote even more time
to my parents, who are in their late 80s, and to my new granddaughter, who
is approaching 8 months.
There are several reasons, however, that I don't
feel quite ready to leave. One practical reason is that our youngest child
still isn't settled in her own life. A recent graduate, she has cobbled
together two part-time jobs and is still finding her way, partly with my
husband's and my support. Far bigger reasons are my attachment to the
students and to several courses and programs that I've developed.
I didn't plan to fall in love with the students at
my small college, but I have, over and over again. Some of them have been
classic good students, hardworking and an easy pleasure to work with. Others
have been tougher, and tougher to love, but with them I have accomplished
some of my most rewarding work. As for courses, a former provost once
reminded me rather sharply that "we don't own courses here." Aside from the
practical aspect of needing to have, at the least, a dependable subset of
regularly recurring classes when one is teaching eight to 10 courses per
year, I believe that good teachers do, in fact, "own" at least a few of
their courses—those they have created out of need or desire, certainly out
of expertise, and have honed over time.
When I was hired, I was expected not only to pick
up where two retiring professors had left off and to carry their classes,
but also to create new courses in two areas. Eventually I created over a
dozen classes, in three areas. At my tenure ceremony, a provost (not the one
mentioned above) cited my "course creation" in her introduction.
Subsequently hired faculty members—full-time, part-time, and adjunct—have
since taught many of those courses, without knowing that I started them. And
that's fine with me. There were areas where the humanities program was weak.
I don't have to teach classes in all of them; I just need to know that
students are getting them. I would very much like to own two particular
courses, but even those have occasionally been taught by others—and I hope
that they will be taught long after I finally do decide to leave.
Sometimes I think of the metaphor of the stone and
the pond—how if you drop a stone in the water, there are ripples for a bit
and then there is once again just the smooth surface. I am concerned about
the two programs I helped create, one a minor and one a concentration. While
we still list both under the departmental offerings, the courses that count
toward them have been drastically cut. I've been told this is temporary, and
I'd like to stay long enough to see those programs fully re-established and
running well. You might call it my legacy. I'd like to know that I
accomplished something, even as I reflect that, ironically, such a fervent
wish must be a sign of getting older.
Older, not old. I am 59, soon to be 60. Thanks to
good genes from both sides of my family, I don't look my age; I can easily
"pass" for 45—the age I was when I started teaching at my college.
There's the rub. At some point, I began thinking of
this place as "my college." But it isn't, and there have been signs of that
for over a year. When I mentioned to a colleague that I had been passed over
for several ad hoc committees, he told me that a member of the new
administration had dismissively referred to the two of us as members of the
"old"—and presumably obsolete?—"guard," this despite our work in course
creation, our teaching awards, our experience on committees, our
publications and conferences, and our dedication to—our belief in—the
institution.
Here's one more aspect of my education, then—a
lesson in humility. That isn't necessarily a bad lesson, although in this
instance it seems somewhat unjust. In my earliest dream scenarios, I never
envisioned that my brilliant career would end quite like this.
Jensen Comment
There are really several reasons for generous early retirement deals. I've seen
almost all of these in operation. One is to selectively eliminate dead wood
tenured professors who are considered to be more dysfunctional than effective in
classrooms for whatever reason. The second is to reduce the size of a department
that has experienced a severe decline in majors for whatever reason. The third
is general agreement that the college is just too top heavy with tenured faculty
and not experiencing enough new blood transfusions of new faculty. A fourth is
general agreement that the tenured faculty lacks racial, gender, and/or
political diversity. A fifth is to lower budgets in times of financial exigency.
There are other reasons such as to put a carrot in front of a 88-year old
popular teacher who last read a scholarly journal/book at age 60.
From a personal advice standpoint, faculty considering early retirement
should consider some things in their severance negotiations in addition to
future losses in salary.. First and foremost apart from salary loss are medical
coverages of themselves and their spouses. Some 76-year old professors who want
desperately to retire cannot do so because they took on trophy (much younger)
spouses for whom new medical coverage is very expensive. It's not yet clear how
much relief will be granted by the new health care bill requiring insurance
companies never to deny coverage for preconditions. It's still uncertain what
the costs of these private policies are going to become after such preconditions
are factored into premiums.
Especially note that you or your spouse may have to be at least 65 before
being eligible for Medicare coverage unless declared disabled.
Second, consideration should be given to the creeping age requirements for
full social security benefits. My father was eligible for full coverage at age
65 (although he waited until he was 70). In an earlier message I mistakenly
claimed my full benefits age was 67. It was actually not that high but it was
over 65 ---
http://www.ssa.gov/retire2/agereduction.htm
Also note that if you delay receiving early or full social security benefits
you can increase your ultimate benefits, especially if you wait until 70 years
of age like my father elected to do so he could increase his monthly benefits
for the rest of his life.
You should also consider the explosion in life expectancies:
http://www.efmoody.com/estate/lifeexpectancy.html
Third you should note that the amount of social security benefits received
varies with average monthly earnings such that consideration should be give to
expected increases in salary before retirement ---
http://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/handbook/handbook.07/handbook-0701.html
Fourth you should carefully consider the timing of retirement plans you might
cash in on if you retire early. For example, the 2008 collapse of the stock
market forced many TIAA-CREF holders to delay retirements due to considerable
losses in their retirement accounts. I benefited by retiring in 2006 while the
retirement accounts were doing quite well in what turned out to be a price
bubble. I elected to retire on fixed life annuities for most of my accounts. If
you changed universities, you will discover that you most likely have more than
one TIAA-CREF account that factor retirement options differently. I taught at
four universities across 40 years and discovered that I had six accounts when I
retired. I now get six separate IRS 1099 forms each January. Sometimes a given
university even changes the rules for retirement such that TIAA-CREF creates an
account before and after a rule change. For example, the university may change
the rules on how much a retiree can obtain in cash settlement of an account on
the date of retirement. Some universities are paternalistic and put up barriers
for retirees to become Lotus Eaters ---
http://maugham.classicauthors.net/lotuseater/
Fifth you also have to consider your personal portfolio of mutual funds, real
estate, spousal earnings, etc. Your real estate investments probably declined
and will recover very, very slowly. This is not always the case. I inherited an
Iowa farm in 2001 that I sold when I retired in 2006. This farm is worth much
more today due largely to absurd government subsidies on corn ethanol combined
with absurd import duties on cheaper ethanol that could otherwise be imported
from cheap, high-quality ethanol producers like Brazil. Thank you for that
Senator Harkin. I underestimated your power in the Senate.
Your stock investments have recovered pretty well since 2008 if you were
sufficiently diversified. Bonds may go down in value if interest rates rise
above their current all-time lows. However, TIAA retirement deals do not
fluctuate as wildly as daily bond prices.
Sixth there are all sorts of tax considerations, and I ceased being a tax
accountant in 1961 when I resigned from Ernst & Ernst and entered Stanford's
doctoral program. I offer no tax advice but do provide some helper links
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation
I will offer practicing accountants some great advice. Consider becoming a tax
accounting professor. There's an immense shortage of PhD tax professors such
that you may be the highest paid professor in a university while also making a
fortune in tax consulting. Not all universities have tax accounting PhD
programs. Don't go to Stanford for tax accounting. The best choices are probably
flagship state universities with "relatively large" accounting doctoral
programs. I say "relatively large" because there are no longer any large North
American accounting doctoral programs ---
http://www.jrhasselback.com/AtgDoct/XDocChrt.pdf
Lastly, you must consider how much you truly continue to enjoy your career. I
know some retired professors who just grew weary of what they viewed, perhaps
mistakenly, as lower quality students or more plagiarizing students. I know of
some faculty who retired because they grew weary of ungrateful students who used
teaching evaluations to extort higher grades in grade-inflated colleges.
I know of some professors who could've retired years ago who just love
teaching more than any alternative they can think of to occupy their time in
retirement. Faculty greatly vary as to how much they continue to enjoy their
careers as the years pile on.
I will say that if I had to choose all over again, I would still become an
accounting professor relative to any other imagined career. Being a professor is
the closest thing to really being your own boss of your time and boss of what
tasks that engage your brain. Both students and other faculty do provide
exciting temptations of where to put your brain to work. Long before I retired I
discovered that leisure is boring!
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Accountics Worshippers Please Take Note
"A Nobel Lesson: Economics is Getting Messier," by Justin Fox, Harvard
Business Review Blog, October 11, 2010 ---
Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/fox/2010/10/nobel-lesson-economics-messier.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
When Peter Diamond was a graduate student at MIT in
the early 1960s, he spent much of his time studying the elegant new models
of perfectly functioning markets that were all the rage in those days. Most
important of all was the
general equilibrium model assembled in the 1950s
by Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu, often referred to as the mathematical
proof of the existence of Adam Smith's "invisible hand." Working through the
Arrow-Debreu proofs was a major part of the MIT grad student experience. At
least, that's what Diamond told me a few years ago. (If I ever find the
notes of that conversation, I'll offer up some quotes.)
Diamond certainly learned well. In a long career
spent almost entirely at MIT, he became known for
work of staggering theoretical sophistication. As
economist Steven Levitt put it today:
He wrote the kind of papers that I would have to
read four or five times to get a handle on what he was doing, and even then,
I couldn't understand it all.
But Diamond wasn't out to further prove the
perfection of markets. He was trying instead to show how, with the injection
of the tiniest bit of reality, the perfect-market models he'd learned so
well in grad school began to break down. Today he won a third of the
Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory
of Alfred Nobel (it's not technically a "Nobel
Prize"), mainly for a paper he wrote in 1971 that explored how the injection
of friction between buyers and sellers, in the form of what he called
"search costs," prices would end up at a level far removed from what a
perfect competition model would predict. The two economists who shared the
prize with him, Dale Mortensen of Northwestern University and Christopher
Pissarides of the London School of Economics, later elaborated on this
insight with regard to job markets (as did Diamond).
The exact practical implications of this work can be a little hard to
define — although Catherine Rampell makes a
valiant and mostly successful effort in The New
York Times. What this year's prize does clearly indicate is that the Nobel
committee believes economic theory is messy and getting messier (no, I
didn't come up with this insight on my own; my colleague Tim Sullivan had to
nudge me). The last Nobel awarded for an all-encompassing mathematical
theory of how the economic world fits together was to
Robert Lucas in 1995 for his work on rational
expectations. Since then (with the arguable exceptions of the prizes awarded
to
Robert Merton and Myron Scholes in 1997 for options-pricing
and to Fynn Kydland and Edward Prescott in 2004 for
real-business-cycle theory) the Nobel crew has chosen to honor either
interesting economic side projects or work that muddies the elegance of
those grand postwar theories of rational actors buying and selling under
conditions of perfect competition.
The 2001 prize for work exploring the impact on
markets of asymmetric information, awarded to George Akerlof, Michael Spence
and Joseph Stiglitz, was probably most similar to this year's model (and,
not coincidentally, Akerlof and Stiglitz were also MIT grad students in the
1960s).
The implications of messier economics are
interesting to contemplate. The core insight of mainstream economics — that
incentives matter — continues to hold up well. And on the whole, markets
appear to do a better job of channeling those incentives to useful ends than
any other form of economic organization. But beyond that, the answers one
can derive from economic theory — especially answers that address the
functioning of the entire economy — are complicated and often contradictory.
Meaning that sometimes we non-economists are just going to have to figure
things out for ourselves.
Jensen Comment
Not mentioned but certainly implied is the increased complexity of replicating
and validating empirical models in terms of assumptions, missing variables, and
data error. Increasing complexity will affect accountics researchers less since
replicating and validating is of less concern among accountics researchers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
"Blackboard to Sell Online Courses Through New Partnership," by Jeff
Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 13, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/blackboard-to-sell-online-courses-through-new-partnership/27638?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Blackboard announced today that it is teaming up
with a for-profit education provider, K12 Inc., to sell online courses to
colleges that want to outsource their remedial offerings.
The companies say their plan will offer a new way
for students who lack basic skills to get caught up. Blackboard would sell
online courses that are designed and taught by employees of K12. The courses
would be delivered on the Blackboard course-management system. It is the
first time that the company has sold full courses, rather than just software
to deliver them.
Exactly what courses will be offered and other
details have not yet been decided, and officials say they are in the
earliest stages of designing the actual product.
“We’re putting together a focus group of existing
community college e-learning thinkers and deans and provosts who are very
interested in solving this issue, and we’re going to work with them to
figure out what this offering is,” said Matthew Small, Blackboard’s chief
business officer, in an interview.
He said he hoped that the online courses would be
available by next fall.
Continued in article
Blackboard is not my favorite monopoly wanabes
Bob Jensen's threads on the Blackboard saga ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on distance education and training alternatives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
Sometimes it takes lemons to get best "lemonade"
"Chile's Spirit Sunlight at the end of the tunnel," The Wall Street
Journal, October 14, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703673604575550212143815030.html
It long ago became standard practice across the
modern world to treat every disaster or near-disaster as an occasion for
examining the lessons learned. The accident in a remote Chilean mine that
left 33 men trapped a half-mile underground for 69 days will be no
exception. We will learn soon enough about what steps could have been taken
to prevent the accident, how the miners survived those precarious early days
before they were reached by the world above, and how the relief effort—on
the cusp of complete success as we went to press—was organized.
All such lessons have their value. But what the
saga of the San Jose Mine is ultimately about is the power of the human
spirit. That is most obviously true of the trapped miners, and of the
example they set for resilience, cohesion and resourcefulness. But it is no
less true of the people above-ground who believed (when the belief seemed
improbable) that the miners had survived the accident, that their rescue was
a matter of top national priority, and that the ingenuity of the world could
be enlisted to make it happen.
And we do mean the world: Jeff Hart, the
40-year-old drill operator who broke through to the miners last weekend, is
an American from Denver. NASA provided design requirements for the
extraction capsule, while Japan, Germany and other nations provided crucial
technology.
Particular credit belongs to Chilean President
Sebastián Piñera. It was Mr. Piñera who insisted on an all-out rescue
effort, ultimately involving three separate extraction methods, when a more
cautious (or fatalistic) politician might have feared raising expectations
that could easily have been dashed.
Commentators have described his decision as a
calculated political gamble, but to us it seems more like genuine
statesmanship. Chile has historically depended on mining for much of its
wealth. To keep faith with the men who go deep down into the earth to
extract that wealth, as Mr. Piñera has, can no more be subject to a
cost-benefit analysis than an army's decision to rescue its wounded or
fallen soldiers from the battlefield. Deeper things are at stake.
Coincidentally—or providentially—the rescue at the
mine takes place almost exactly on Chile's bicentennial. We try not to abuse
metaphors, but it does seem as if it is Chile itself that has risen into
sunlight.
Jensen Comment
In the past decade, Chile has been a model of how capitalism (free capital
markets and free trade) and democracy can lift a developing nation out of
poverty relative to its more socialist and totalitarian nations of the world.
There are still poor people in Chile but most of the poor are faring much better
than the poor in other South American and Latin American nations.
The capitalism experiment was instigated by some of Milton Friedman's
Chilean followers (inspired while at the University of Chicago) who put
Friedman's theories to the test after returning home to Chile. Chile rose to
Rank 44 among 182 nations in terms of economic and human equality criteria ---
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/161.html
Chile: The "Chicago Boys" Experiment in Real Life
It is widely known that the Chicago School (in economics, finance, accounting,
and business in general) was profoundly influenced by the free market/low
taxation scholarship of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman (along with some other
offshoots such as the University of Virginia and George Mason University) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman
On December 9, 2009
ABC News
did a feature on the amazing successes of Chile vis-à-vis the rest of the
Western Hemisphere. Chile became a laboratory study for the Chicago School
theory of free markets. Unfortunately in some respects, the experiment was
based, for a short but crucial period, on the brutal and vicious dictatorship of
Augusto Pinochet
But now Dictator Pinochet is history and the current economic Chilean success
in economic growth coupled with reducing unemployment and poverty has made the
"Chicago Boys" more credible ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys
"Accounting Jobs Get Stamp of Approval from CNN/Money: Best Jobs in
America Ranking," by Caleb Newquist, Going Concern, October 14,
2010 ---
http://goingconcern.com/2010/10/accounting-jobs-get-stamp-of-approval-from-cnnmoney-best-jobs-in-america/
Good news for accountants of all stripes –
CNN/Money reports that jobs you currently or could
possibly hold down are some of the best in all the land!
The bad news is that,
compared to last year, the number of accounting
jobs in the Top 100 is considerably less. Jobs not making this year’s cut
include: Senior Financial Analyst; Finance Director; Senior Internal
Auditor; Senior Tax Accountant; Financial Analysis Manager; Financial
Controller.
You could chalk this up to semantics (we
don’t trust CNN on much when it comes to anything
accounting-related) but it’s entirely possible that there was an
overwhelming outcry from people in those positions that are completely
miserable.
But that’s neither her nor there. Let’s get to this
year’s goods, shall we?
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on how the Big Four are consistently among the top five
employers of college graduates. Google squeezed into the Top Five this year, but
the Big Four share the other four slots ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
Why the Big Four accounting firms are in the world's Top 5 student picks
for places to work (according to Bloomberg and Business Week)
And why Google became the Number 1 choice
"Google Tops Grad Picks for Top Employers: The Big Four accounting
firms round out the top spots and Apple and GM make the list for the first time
in the latest Universum ranking by business students," Business Week,
September 28, 2010 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/sep2010/bs20100928_433243.htm?link_position=link1
Having captured the hearts and minds of
undergraduate business students, Google is still No. 1 in the latest
Universum ranking of the most popular employers rated by young people. But
it shouldn't get too cocky: The competition is getting fiercer.
Google (GOOG), along with the Big Four accounting
firms—KPMG, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Deloitte—respectively
make up the top five on the 2010 ranking compiled by Universum, a research
firm in Stockholm. The list is based on the responses of more than 130,000
business and engineering students in 12 major global markets who told
Universum where they dream of working.
The accounting firms fared well among business
students in the ranking because their training programs are highly regarded
and they have been on a hiring tear when jobs for college grads have
otherwise been difficult to come by. Google, which took the top spot among
both business and engineering students, benefited from a unique corporate
culture that includes free food and haircuts and lets employees bring their
dogs to work. Kyle Ewing, talent and outreach programs manager for Google in
Mountain View, Calif., said in an interview that many are attracted to the
company because of its sense of mission.
"Google is a place where you can tackle big
problems," she said. "For all employees, there's a real sense that people
are working on things that could change the world."
Procter & Gamble (PG), Microsoft (MSFT), Coca-Cola
(KO), J.P. Morgan (JPM), and Goldman Sachs (GS) respectively round out the
top 10. Finance firms in the banking and investing sectors, management
consulting, and oil and gas companies have become less appealing to
students, according to the list.
Standouts during the economic crisis HSBC (HBC),
which ranked 22 in 2009, dropped out of the top 50 in 2010. And Intel (INTC),
Nokia (NOK), and ExxonMobil (XOM) fell out of the upper 30 to the bottom of
the list. Among companies new to the list, Apple (AAPL), Bank of America (BAC),
IKEA, and Adidas (ADS:GR) broke into the top 30.
Universum asked students to select the five
employers for which they would most like to work from a list of more than
120 that was based on Universum's 2009 top employers ranking. Respondents
could write in employers that were not on the list. A company's ranking is
based on the percentage of business students who designated it among their
top five. Of the top 50, eight are Universum consulting clients.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on careers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
There are a number of life's lessons here: It often pains accountants
to record the decisions made by eroneous umpires
"Accountability Behind the Plate," by John Rosenthal and Kirk Victor,
The New York Times, October 14, 2010 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/opinion/15umpires.html?_r=1&hpw
It took six umpires during Game 1 of the American
League Division Series to decide whether Yankees right fielder Greg Golson
had caught a line drive by the Twins’ Delmon Young — and they still got it
wrong. Anyone with access to a television could see that Golson had caught
the ball fairly.
But because baseball stubbornly refuses to allow
its umpires to consult video on anything but home run calls, the blunder
stood. Even though umpires now routinely consult each other in an effort to
get calls right, there has been an unusually large number of mistakes on
critical plays in this year’s postseason, which resumes with the American
League Championship Series Friday night.
Fans deserve better. Baseball should install an
additional umpire in the broadcast booth, one with the authority and respect
of his colleagues to use instant replay to review (and overturn) calls.
The process would take far less time than an umpire
meeting, and it would greatly reduce the number of bad calls. An eye in the
sky could, for example, have given Detroit pitcher Armando Gallaraga the
perfect game denied him after umpire Jim Joyce mistakenly called a runner
safe at first.
Continued in article
Teaching Case: PwC's Top 60 Accounting Programs
From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on October 8, 2010
PwC Pays for
Priority
by: Joe Walker
Oct 04, 2010
Click here to view
the full article on
WSJ.com
TOPICS: Accounting,
Big Four, Public
Accounting, Public
Accounting Firms
SUMMARY: "...PricewaterhouseCoopers
is paying millions
of dollars to
sponsor a new
feature on
career-networking
site LinkedIn...The
feature, dubbed
Career
Explorer...initially...is
only available to
students at 60
colleges-which PwC
chose....Eventually,
the feature will be
available to all
LinkedIn users, say
the companies."
According to the
author, PwC "...has
lagged its
competitors in using
social media to
recruit. It launched
its first Facebook
and Twitter career
pages in January
2010. Meanwhile,
Ernst & Young has
had a Facebook
career page since
2006, where
recruiters interact
with students and
answer questions
about jobs. KPMG
launched a Twitter
account in 2009
managed by its
recruiting team."
The Career Explorer
begins with a pop up
box which asks
LinkedIn users to
enter a page
"...where they enter
information about
their college, major
and desired industry
A drop-down menu
shows the top six
jobs that LinkedIn
users with similar
backgrounds took as
their first job. If
a student selects on
of those six jobs,
more results pop up
showing possible
second jobs based on
what similar
LinkedIn users took
as their next job."
The process
continues to repeat
itself. One thing
added in the process
of developing this
site was information
on salaries in these
jobs; student focus
groups asked for
this information
which neither PwC
nor LinkedIn had
available. The PwC
U.S. recruiting
leader, Holly Paul,
"lobbied to have the
[salary] information
provided by an
outside company."
CLASSROOM
APPLICATION: The
article is useful to
discuss recruiting
practices and the
market for
accounting
graduates.
QUESTIONS:
1. (Introductory)
Who are the Big Four
public accounting
firms? How many
graduating students
will these firms
hire this year?
2. (Advanced)
How have these Big
Four weathered the
economic downturn?
3. (Introductory)
Why is PwC incurring
the cost to develop
a new component of
the LinkedIn
professional
networking site? How
does the firm hope
to benefit from this
investment?
4. (Introductory)
What specific
benefit does PwC get
from its investment
when students from
the 60 top schools
at which PwC
recruits log in to
the LinkedIn site?
5. (Advanced)
Do these recruiting
activities surprise
you? Explain your
answer.
Reviewed By: Judy
Beckman, University
of Rhode Island
|
|
|
|
|
"PwC Pays for Priority," by: Joe Walker, The Wall Street Journal,
October 4, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704029304575526641294699972.html?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid
In an unusual college-recruiting tactic,
PricewaterhouseCoopers is paying millions of dollars to sponsor a new
feature on career-networking site LinkedIn.
In a new section of LinkedIn's site, college
students enter the name of their school, their major and the industry in
which they want to work. LinkedIn then lists relevant job openings based
on jobs that similar LinkedIn users pursued.
The feature, dubbed Career Explorer, came out
of talks between LinkedIn Corp. and PwC. Initially, Career Explorer is
only available to students at 60 colleges—which PwC chose. They're the
campuses where it recruits the majority of its students, and include New
York University, Michigan State University and the University of
California at Berkeley. Eventually, the feature will be available to all
LinkedIn users, say the companies.
For those 60 schools, PwC gets top billing in
job listings, in a box labeled "featured job." It also gets a large
space to promote careers at its company that will include biographical
videos of employees and tips on resumé writing.
Otherwise, the results aren't influenced by
PwC's sponsorship, say LinkedIn and PwC. Some pages of the sub-section
will say that it is sponsored by PwC.
Despite overall high unemployement, the Big
Four accounting firms are still competing to hire lots of college
students. "They recruit at the same schools and they all want the top
students," says Brad Karsh, president of JobBound, a career coaching
firm. Accounting has weathered the economic crisis relatively well, he
adds.
PwC says it plans to recruit about 5,500
undergraduates and graduate students from U.S. campuses for the year
ending June 30, 2011, for internships and full-time jobs. That's up from
4,600 the prior year, and 4,800 the year before that.
Global revenue for PwC was $26.57 billion in
the year ending June 30, up 1.5% from the year earlier, but down 5.7%
from the year ending June 30, 2008. The North America and Caribbean
region, the second-biggest source of revenue for PwC after Western
Europe, was roughly flat at $8.9 billion.
Competitor Ernst & Young says it plans to hire
6,450 U.S. college students for full-time jobs and internships in the
year ending June 30, 2011, while Deloitte LLP says it will hire 5,000 in
the year ending May 31, 2011. KPMG plans to hire 3,400 in 2010, and
3,900 next year.
PwC has lagged its competitors in using social
media to recruit. It launched its first Facebook and Twitter career
pages in January 2010. Meanwhile, Ernst & Young has had a Facebook
career page since 2006, where recruiters interact with students and
answer questions about jobs. KPMG launched a Twitter account in 2009
managed by its recruiting team.
Starting Monday, when students at any of the 60
schools go to LinkedIn's site, they'll see a box asking them to try
Career Explorer. Clicking the box takes them to a page where they enter
information about their college, major and desired industry. A drop-down
menu shows the top six jobs that LinkedIn users with similar backgrounds
took as their first job. If a student selects one of those jobs, more
results pop up showing possible second jobs based on what similar
LinkedIn users took as their next job. The process repeats for more
next-step jobs.
Career Explorer is owned by LinkedIn; the
algorithms used to determine the career path results are based on the
profile data of millions of its users.
When the feature becomes available to all
LinkedIn users—at a not-yet-decided date—the PwC material won't be on
the pages of users outside those 60 schools, says LinkedIn.
Holly Paul, PwC's U.S. recruiting leader, says
that she hopes the partnership will strengthen the company's
relationship with young recruits who are increasingly forming their
first impression of employers on the Web.
In June 2009, PwC contacted LinkedIn and said
that it wanted to do something innovative in social media and
recruiting. LinkedIn told the firm about an early version of Career
Explorer.
Over the next year and a half, PwC worked with
LinkedIn to help develop the look of the feature. PwC organized several
focus groups where college students looked at early versions of Career
Explorer. Students said, for instance, that they wanted to know what
their potential career options paid—information that neither LinkedIn
nor PwC had. So Ms. Paul lobbied to have the information provided by an
outside company.
This is the first deal of its kind for LinkedIn
with a corporate partner. LinkedIn says that over time it will aim to
acquire more corporate sponsors, though it wouldn't say whether any such
deals were in the works. For now, PwC hopes its relationship with
LinkedIn will help it seem like a more innovative and "edgy" employer,
says Ms. Paul.
Corrections & Amplifications
Deloitte LLP says it will hire 5,000 U.S.
college students for full-time jobs and internships in the year ending
May 31, 2011. A previous version of this article incorrectly identified
the company as Deloitte & Touche. Also, PricewaterhouseCoopers had
revenue of $26.57 billion for the year ending June 30. A previous
version of this article incorrectly said it was $26.5 billion.
Bob Jensen's threads on accountancy careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
"Review: A better Apple TV doesn't beat competition," MIT's Technology
Review, October 8, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/wire/26475/?nlid=3603&a=f
Bridges to Student Parties?
"Are College Students Scamming Michigan Welfare Program?" Inside
Higher Ed, October 14, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/15/qt#240953
Michigan's Department of Human Services has heard
enough rumors that college students are abusing its equivalent of a food
stamp program that it
has deemed the idea "Myth No. 5" on its list of
welfare program myths. But the Lansing State Journal, in
an article published Thursday, quotes numerous
store clerks complaining that local college students are using their "Bridge
Cards" -- which are supposed to be used only for essentials -- on mixes for
liquor and junk food. "They fill their carts with Red Bull, jerky, Doritos,"
one clerk told the newspaper. "They tell their friends, ‘Throw in whatever
you want … the government’s paying for it.' ” While state officials said
that as many as 18,000 college and university students were receiving food
assistance at any given point in 2009-10, they called the notion of
widespread abuse of Bridge Cards by students an urban legend.
People who live in glass houses should resist throwing rocks
This gets more interesting as you read the last half of the tidbit
"Alan Sokal, the 1996 Hoaxer, Takes Aim at an Accused Plagiarist at Rutgers,"
by Tom Bartlett, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 14, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Alan-Sokal-the-1996-Hoaxer/124969/
The bright outlook for Outlook on a Mac
"Mac Users Are Getting New Outlook From Rival," by Walter S. Mossberg,
The Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703673604575550201474088146.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_RIGHTTopCarousel_1
A new, faster, better version of Microsoft Office
is coming out Oct. 26. But it isn't for Microsoft's own Windows operating
system. It is for the Macintosh computers made by the software giant's
archrival, Apple. And, among other things, it will bestow upon the Mac a
benefit heretofore available only on Windows: Outlook. The popular email,
calendar and contacts program is finally arriving on the Mac in a version
that looks and works very much like the Windows version.
The advent of a robust, full-featured Outlook for
the Mac isn't all that's new in Office for Mac 2011, but it's a big deal,
especially for Mac users, or those wishing to switch to the Mac, who work in
companies where Outlook is the standard. These folks already have been able
to use the Windows version of Outlook on their machines, using special
software that lets the Mac run Windows. But now, they can use a native Mac
version of the program that can import data directly from Windows Outlook.
I've been testing this new version of Mac Office—in
fact, I'm writing this column in its new edition of Word—and I like it a
lot. While it isn't an exact clone of Office for Windows, I found in my
tests that each of its key components—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—has been
significantly improved and made more compatible with its Windows sibling.
So, even Mac Office users who don't use Outlook
will be pleased by the changes. And, while there are some features in the
Windows version still missing in the Mac edition, there are also some new
Mac-only features. In general, there's now more parity between the two.
Like the prior Mac version, Office 2008, released
nearly three years ago, the new Office 2011 uses the same file formats as
the Windows version. It can read and write Office files without any
conversion or translation, so a document produced in, say, Word for the Mac,
can be read by a user of Windows Word without the latter even knowing it was
created on a Mac—and vice versa.
Unlike the 2008 version, the new Mac Office can
seamlessly interact with Microsoft's new stripped-down, free, online version
of Office, called Office Web Apps. And it can save to, and open documents
from, Microsoft's free online SkyDrive file repository, or its SharePoint
online service for businesses.
The first thing Mac Office users will notice about
the new 2011 version is its speed. While the 2008 version was faster than
its predecessors, this latest version is dramatically snappier. In my tests,
all the components launched much, much faster than their 2008 counterparts,
and opened even large documents much more quickly.
High Fidelity Another big plus is fidelity with
Windows documents. Because the Windows and Mac operating systems are
different, fidelity isn't perfect, but, in my tests, it was much better in
this new version. For instance, some fancy Word layouts and font treatments
created in Windows that formerly looked wrong when opened on a Mac now look
the same. This is especially noticeable in Excel, where charts and layouts
on complex spreadsheets sometimes didn't carry over. In my tests, I found
that many of these incompatibles have been banished.
These fidelity improvements, however, are much
better with documents created in the latest Windows version, called Office
2010, and are weaker with those created in older Windows versions. Also, the
new Mac version has restored the same macro system present in the Windows
version, so automated actions created by power users and companies in
Windows documents can now be used in the Mac version.
Continued in article
"FBI says cyber-thieves stole $70 million," MIT's Technology Review,
October 1, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/wire/26454/?nlid=3583&a=f
The FBI and law enforcement agencies in
Ukraine, the Netherlands and Britain are tracking down international cyber
criminals who stole $70 million by using malware that captured passwords and
account numbers to log onto online bank accounts.
At a press briefing Friday, the FBI said
Operation Trident Breach began in May 2009 when agents in Omaha, Neb., were
alerted to some of the stolen money, which was flowing in bulk payments to
46 bank accounts around the United States.
Ukrainian authorities have detained five
people thought to have participated in some of the thefts and Ukraine has
executed eight search warrants in the ongoing investigation.
Gordon Snow, the FBI's assistant director in
charge of the cyber division, said police agencies overseas were
instrumental in finding criminals who designed the malicious software,
others who used it and still others called "money mules," who transferred
the stolen funds to havens as distant as Hong Kong, Singapore and Cyprus.
Many of the victims were small- and
medium-sized businesses that don't have the money to invest in high-level
computer security.
On Thursday, 37 people were charged in papers
unsealed in federal court in Manhattan with conspiracy to commit bank fraud,
money laundering, false identification use and passport fraud for their
roles in the invasion of dozens of victims' accounts. Fifty-five have been
charged in state court in Manhattan.
The FBI said the software was known as an
Internet banking Trojan, which can steal computer access data including
usernames and passwords for bank accounts, e-mail accounts and
social-networking websites. The program would gain access to the computer
when a victim clicked on a link or opened a file attached to a seemingly
legitimate e-mail message.
History of Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Bob Jensen's fraud updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on computer and network security ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection
Villanova University's VuFind: The Library
Search Engine of the Future at a More Affordable Price
"Villanova Liberates Library Search By Tanya Roscorla, Converge Magazine,
August 16, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/infrastructure/Villanova-Library-Search.html
As
search engines around the Web change with the times,
library search engines have stayed the same.
If
you go to a university library page, you can't search
for keywords by just hitting the "enter" key. You can't
narrow your search results easily. And you can't see
similar items.
But with open-source software developed by Villanova
University, you can. The Pennsylvania university has
helped bring library search up to date with the rest of
the computer science world, without the hefty price tags
of commercial search engines.
After going through
beta for two years, the university released its 1.0
version of
VuFind in July. And
libraries around the globe have adopted VuFind, including
Georgia Tech, London School of Economics, National
Library of Ireland, University of Southern Queensland
and the University of Michigan. Others have entered
public beta, including Yale and Auburn universities.
Free library search
When you search with
VuFind,
you'll see an
interface that looks like Google's search engine. You
can search by keyword, see suggested searches, narrow
the results with a variety of filters and look at
related items. And you'll find the same technology that
Netflix uses, as Villanova's lead VuFind developer
Demian Katz likes to say.
“I think the biggest thing here is that it’s using more
contemporary technologies found elsewhere on the Web.”
If
you're looking for a book, you can see whether it's
available in real-time and what it looks like. If you
need to cite it in APA or MLA style, the engine will
give you the citation with a warning that it may not be
100 percent accurate.
And with the click of a mouse, you can favorite a search
result, save it, send it to your phone, e-mail it, tag
it or comment on it.
These technologies allow users to step outside of the
traditional containers that hold library catalogs
hostage, Lucia said. “We wanted to basically liberate
library search."
Typical catalogs center around pre-defined search
headings and types, such as author, title and subject.
VuFind still includes those features — they're just
inside a more flexible search experience.
In Yale University's
case, its
Orbis online public access catalog
often returned zero
results, said Katie Bauer, director of usability and
assessment for the library. Many people selected "search
title" as the search field, but were actually trying to
do a basic keyword search. That didn't work.
Unless you knew exactly what you wanted, you couldn't
find it.
But with VuFind, you can.
Yale modified VuFind,
branded it as YuFind and started using it in its beta
form in 2008. This year, YuFind became widely available
at the university and shown more prominently on the
library homepage
alongside Orbis.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on search engines are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Video:
SQUARE REVIEW! Credit card payments on your iPhone (from mom, dad, Uncle Ed,
or customers) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0BwYz1P0BE&feature=youtu.be
Federal Bureau of Investigation: White Collar Crime and Fraud (FBI,
History) ---
http://www.fbi.gov/whitecollarcrime.htm
Also see the FBI Complaint Center ---
http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx
History of Fraud in America --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on fraud reporting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm
Cutting-Edge Social Media Approaches to Business Education: Teaching with
LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, and Blogs, by Charles Wankel ---
http://management-education.net/rmed9/
"Kravis Pledges $100 Million for Columbia University Business School," by Jason
Kelly and Oliver Staley, Business Week, October 5, 2010 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-10-05/kravis-pledges-100-million-for-columbia-business-school-campus.html?link_position=link2
Henry Kravis, the billionaire co- founder of
private-equity firm KKR & Co., pledged $100 million to fund expansion of
Columbia Business School, the largest gift in its history.
The donation will go toward construction of the
business school’s new site in the Manhattanville section of New York City,
where Columbia University is developing a second campus. One of the school’s
two new buildings will be named for Kravis, Columbia Business School said
today in a statement.
Kravis, 66, earned a master’s in business
administration from Columbia in 1969 and has previously supported the
university and other educational and New York-related organizations. He and
his cousin George Roberts formed KKR more than three decades ago and
continue to run it.
“We’re not just constructing a building, we’re
building a community of entrepreneurs,” Kravis said in an interview. “If we
don’t get our education system right, we’re going to be going backwards. I
want to make sure this campus gets built. I think it will be phenomenal.”
Kravis helped pioneer the leveraged-buyout
industry, which uses cash committed by investors and borrowed money to buy
companies and sell them later for a profit. New York-based KKR’s 2007 LBO of
power producer TXU Corp. for $43.2 billion including assumed debt is the
largest on record. That deal topped transactions including KKR’s 1989
takeover of RJR Nabisco Inc., the subject of the bestselling book
“Barbarians at the Gate.”
Claremont McKenna
KKR is moving into new areas such as securities
underwriting and debt investing as the buyout business recovers from the
bust that followed the 2007 credit crisis, when funding for deals dried up.
The firm made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this year
after merging with a European affiliate. It canceled a 2007 plan to go
public after the global credit crisis seized markets.
Kravis earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from
Claremont McKenna College, and in 2006 he established the Kravis Prize in
Leadership, awarded in conjunction with Claremont McKenna, which also houses
the Kravis Leadership Institute.
A native of Oklahoma, Kravis has long worked to
promote job creation and investment in New York. He is the co-chairman of
the New York City Investment Fund, which he created in 1996.
He’s also on the board of directors of the
Partnership for New York City, a network of the city’s executives who
promote its economy.
Keeping Focus
At Columbia, Kravis serves as co-chair of the Board
of Overseers and has been active in discussions about the new campus, said
Columbia Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard.
“He’s the one who’s kept me most focused on how
teaching and research space happens,” Hubbard said in an interview.
Continued in article
Every Breath You Take featuring how the Dean of the Columbia School
despises Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke
The video is a anti-Bernanke
musical performance by the Dean of Columbia Business School ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u2qRXb4xCU
Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Federal Reserve and a great friend of big banks)
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Bernanke
R. Glenn Hubbard (Dean of the Columbia Business School) is an economist ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Hubbard_(economics)
Question
Does putting up more rigorous research hurdles for tenure (such as having more
outside reviewers and new policies for choosing reviewers) make it harder or
easier for outstanding teachers to get tenure?
"Standing Their Ground," Inside Higher Ed, October 7, 2010
---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/07/brown
Gaming for Tenure as an Accounting Professor ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm
(with a reply about tenure publication point systems from Linda Kidwell)
Obsolete and Dysfunctional System of Tenure ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Tenure
"Obama signs technology access bill for disabled," MIT's Technology
Review, October 8, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/wire/26500/?nlid=3614&a=f
Blind and deaf people will be able to more easily
use smart phones, the Internet and other technologies that are staples of
life and work under a bill signed into law on Friday.
Such a step has been a priority of advocates for the millions of people who
cannot see or hear.
In the East Room of the White House, where he was flanked on stage by
lawmakers and Stevie Wonder, President Barack Obama portrayed the occasion
as another step in guaranteeing equal access, opportunity and respect for
all Americans.
He recalled celebrating this year's 20th anniversary of the Americans with
Disabilities Act, banning workplace discrimination against qualified people
with disabilities and requiring improved access to public places and
transportation.
"We've come a long way but even today, after all the progress that we've
made, too many Americans with disabilities are still measured by what folks
think they can't do, instead of what we know they can do," Obama said.
The new law "will make it easier for people who are deaf, blind or live with
a visual impairment to do what many of us take for granted," he said, from
navigating a TV or DVD menu to sending an e-mail on a smart phone.
"It sets new standards so that Americans with disabilities can take
advantage of the technology our economy depends on, and that's especially
important in today's economy when every worker needs the necessary skills to
compete for the jobs of the future," Obama said.
In one corner of the East Room, sign language interpreters translated
Obama's remarks as he spoke. Across the room, his words scrolled on a large
video monitor with help from a stenographer who transcribed them.
Under the law, the quality of life will improve for 25 million people who
are blind or have difficulty seeing, along with the estimated 36 million
people who are deaf or hard of hearing, advocacy groups say.
Nondisabled people stand to benefit, too. They may find the devices and
screens easier to use.
The law sets federal guidelines that require the telecommunications industry
to:
--Make getting to the Internet easier by
improving the user interfaces on smart phones.
--Provide audible descriptions of on-screen action to help the blind
more fully enjoy television.
--Add captions to online TV programming to help the deaf.
--Make the equipment used for Internet telephone calls compatible with
hearing aids.
--Add a button or other switch to television remote controls for simpler
access to closed captioning on television.
Paul Schroeder, a vice president at the American
Foundation for the Blind, said many blind or deaf people have had to spend
hundreds of dollars on costly accessories or software to make their cell
phones and other devices easier to use.
"We hope that companies will start working immediately on making solutions
available and affordable for people with disabilities," he said.
Blind since childhood, Schroeder described the bill as "life changing."
"As a person who is blind, it will bring some of the new technologies that
are changing the workplace, education and leisure into my hands," he said.
Bob Jensen's threads on technology aids for disabled people ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
Larry Summers and the Subversion of Economics
Aside from political issues of regulation, the article in the Chronicle of
Higher Education below deals with conflicts of interest in the academy and among
other paid government advisors collecting huge fees on the outside.
Also there’s an issue of professors serving in government having highly paid
tenured faculty positions waiting for them on any given day. Most CEOs and
generals who resign to serve government in paid advisory/executive positions,
such as the President’s Cabinet, must resign and cannot return to their former
jobs when stepping down from their paid advisory positions.
Let’s all welcome Larry Summers back to Harvard. Now he can once again work
behind the scenes to have that “f**king Professor Harvey Mansfield” fired.
Bob Jensen
From: Robert Bruce Walker
Sent: Monday, October 04, 2010
Subject: regulation
http://chronicle.com/article/Larry-Summersthe/124790/
An interesting article in a publication called the
Chronicle of Higher Education. It is highly critical of Larry Summers,
amongst other economists, for their role in deregulation and the significant
conflicts of interest many of them have.
"Billions and billions" of IRS 1099 Forms must be filed after 2010,
possibly more than all the stars in the universe.
Carl Sagan paraphrase
Questions
Are tax cuts overrated in terms of stimulating startup businesses?
Will the true accounting cost (such as onerous barriers to startup businesses)
to business of complying with regulations exceed the benefits to the government?
And finally, the Incentive Myth: it’s necessary to
keep tax rates low, so entrepreneurs can reap huge rewards for their time,
sweat, and money. Well, this may be true, but it misses a parallel truth:
government disincentives to entrepreneurship. Panner, a registered Democrat,
criticizes complex accounting, employment and
health-care regulations imposed by federal and state agencies
that consume scarce investment funds and time. There’s a bureaucratic bias,
unintended perhaps, against startups.
"The Real Jobs Machine Without startups, we’re sunk," by Richard J.
Samuelson, Newsweek Magazine, October 11, 2010. Page26 ---
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/02/samuelson-startups-create-most-new-jobs.html
If you’re interested in job creation—and who isn’t
these days?—you should talk to someone like Morris Panner. In 1999, Panner
and some others started a Boston software company called OpenAir. By 2008
they sold it for $31 million. The firm had then grown to about 50 workers.
It turns out that entrepreneurship (essentially, the founding of new
companies) is crucial to job creation. But as Panner’s experience suggests,
success is often a slog.
What’s frustrating and perplexing about the present
job dearth is that the U.S. economy has long been a phenomenal employment
machine. Here’s the record: 83 million jobs added from 1960 to 2007, with
only six years of declines (1961, 1975, 1982, 1991, 2002, 2003).
Conventional analysis blames today’s poor performance (jobs are 7.6 million
below their pre-recession peak) on weak demand. Because people aren’t
buying, businesses aren’t hiring. Though true, this omits the vital role of
entrepreneurship.
In any given year, employment may reflect the ups
and downs of the business cycle. But over longer periods, almost all job
growth comes from new businesses. The reason: high death rates among
existing firms. Even successful firms succumb to threats: new competition or
technologies; mature markets; the death of founders; shifting consumer
tastes; poor management and unprofitability. A company founded today has an
80 percent chance of disappearing over the next quarter century, reports a
study by Dane Stangler and Paul Kedrosky of the Kauffman Foundation.
True, some blue-chip firms—the Exxons and Procter &
Gambles—endure. Four fifths of the Fortune 500 were founded before 1970. But
they are exceptions, and many blue chips have died: Pan Am (once the premier
international airline), Digital Equipment (once the second-largest computer
maker), and Circuit City (once a leading consumer-electronics chain).
The debate over whether small or big firms create
more jobs is misleading. The real distinction is between new and old.
American workers are roughly split between firms with fewer or more than 500
employees. In healthy times, older companies of all sizes do create lots of
jobs. But they also lose jobs, as some businesses shrink or vanish. On
balance, job creation and destruction cancel. All the net job increases
occur among startups, finds a study of the 1992–2005 period by economists
John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland and Ron Jarmin and Javier
Miranda of the Census Bureau.
To be sure, entrepreneurship has a downside: booms
and busts. Remember the dotcom “bubble.” But more damaging, says Panner, are
widespread popular misconceptions about what it is and isn’t.
Start with the Blockbuster Myth: successful
entrepreneurship creates huge enterprises à la Google that transform how we
live. In reality, “most ventures don’t change the world,” says Panner.
They’re unknown companies providing highly specialized goods and services,
plus restaurants, auto-repair shops, and many other unromantic businesses.
There are more than 500,000 startups annually. The number must be large to
make an impact on the 155 million–person labor force.
Second is the Inspiration Myth: most startups
spring from some epiphany suggesting a new product or technology. Wrong.
Gee-whiz moments are few. Companies constantly change plans. OpenAir ditched
its original idea, which didn’t draw customers. “You can’t do anything until
you meet someone’s needs,” says Panner. Failure rates are high; half of new
firms die within five years.
And finally, the Incentive Myth: it’s necessary to
keep tax rates low, so entrepreneurs can reap huge rewards for their time,
sweat, and money. Well, this may be true, but it misses a parallel truth:
government disincentives to entrepreneurship. Panner, a registered Democrat,
criticizes complex accounting, employment and health-care regulations
imposed by federal and state agencies that consume scarce investment funds
and time. There’s a bureaucratic bias, unintended perhaps, against startups.
It’s all about risk taking. The good news is that
the entrepreneurial instinct seems powerful. Americans like to create;
they’re ambitious; many want to be their “own bosses”; many crave fame and
fortune. (Panner is already involved with a new startup; it has five
employees.) The bad news is that venture capital for startups is scarce and
that political leaders seem largely oblivious to burdensome government
policies. This needs to be addressed. Entrepreneurship won’t instantly cure
America’s job deficit, but without it, there will be no strong recovery.
Small businesses, meanwhile, have discovered that
their tax preparation costs just went way up.
The PPACA will require small business owners and the self-employed to fill out
1099s for every company they do more than $600 worth of business with.
That means any freelancer who buys a mid-range laptop from Best Buy will
technically be required to fill out a 1099, no matter if the retailer is an
indifferent chain giant. As with the drug subsidy modification, the idea is to
beef up compliance and raise additional revenue—about $17 billion worth. Yet if
it works, it will drive up compliance costs—how many home-based freelancers are
likely to generate a docket of 1099s, complete with tax identification numbers,
for big corporate suppliers all by themselves? And if, as seems likely, the
requirement is widely ignored, it will have the exact opposite of its intended
effect, pushing more and more taxable transactions into illegal, unrecorded
territory.
"Is the Cure Worse than the Disease? A month after passage, ObamaCare is already
failing," by Peter Suderman, Reason Magazine, May 14, 2010 --- http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/14/the-cure-is-worse-than-the-dis
"Revolt of the Accountants: Washington is turning America into
Paperwork Nation," by Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, October
8, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704696304575538502008810226.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t
"Where's All the Free Wi-Fi We Were Promised?" by MIT's Technology
Review, October 5, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/25819/?nlid=3598
Municipal WiFi was supposed to bridge the digital
divide. Here's why it failed.
Municipal WiFi was the free, ubiquitous mesh of
wireless internet access that was supposed to carpet bomb the
digital divide back to the stone age.
So
what happened?
Eric Fraser, author of the superlative new guide to what went wrong with the
dream of Municipal WiFi,
A Postmortem Look at Citywide WiFi,
has the answer. The short version is, no technology happens in a vacuum, and
where the laws of the land abut the laws of nature, physics will carve your
best-laid plans into a heap of sundered limbs every time.
Case in point: the 2010 Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) plan, Connecting America, doesn't even mention
municipal WiFi. Contrast that with the Federal Trade Commission's 2006
report, Municipal Provision of Wireless Internet, "which listed
WiFi first in its list of major technologies used to provide citywide
wireless internet access," Fraser notes.
That was before cities realized that the problems
with municipal WiFi, which are a natural consequence of economic realities
dictated by physical limits that should have been apparent from the
parameters in which WiFi is forced to operate by the FCC's 1985 rule-making
dictating the nature of the power envelope and spectrum range for this and
other unlicensed wireless technologies.
In other words, the failure of municipal WiFi is an
object lesson in the dangers of techno-utopianism. It's a failure of
intuition - the sort of mistake we make when we want something to be right.
Listen as Fraser leads us down the same primrose
path that, like that
guy who
sold Springfield a monorail, early advocates of
municipal WiFi enticed more than 100 cities and towns to tread:
Public WiFi was supposed to be a "wireless
fantasy land." Independent market research firms, expressly claiming to
be free of "a simple 'me-too' mentality," predicted that citywide WiFi
would generate value for "citizens, government, and local businesses."
In the race to get broadband to America's millions
of households, the idea was that using WiFi to get connections "the
last mile" to the home would be cheaper
than physically hooking them up. It's not completely illogical - witness
the problems Verizon has had in getting high speed
fiber optic connections to the home.
But WiFi has a number of problems, and none of them
are due to the technology itself which, by now, is quite mature. The real
problems started in 1985 - that's when the FCC issued rules that made
certain parts of the wireless spectrum, namely 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, and 5 GHz,
available for use by unlicensed wireless transmitters.
The first problem is that because this spectrum is
free for anyone to use, everyone does use it. That includes cordless phones,
baby monitors, you name it. Worse, this high frequency portion of the
spectrum is absorbed by just about everything: trees, walls, cars, so it
can't travel very far.
In addition, the FCC guaranteed that WiFi would
forever be unsuitable for wide area use by limiting the strength of any
transmitter to 1 measly watt. (For perspective, that's about the same amount
of power used by an old-school christmas light.)
As a result, anything with the characteristics of
WiFi, deployed in the real world, which is full of obstacles that absorb,
reflect, diffract and scatter a signal already attenuated by interference
from countless other wireless devices, would require a very dense
installation.
The day proponents of municipal WiFi heard from
customers that they could only get signal from the WiFi base station when
they were sitting next to the one room in their house with a window facing
the pole with the transmitter - a common occurrence in those days - they
should have realized that without widespread indoor deployment, which would
have been impossibly expensive, municipal WiFi would be unworkable.
They should have given up on their Quixotic quest
to turn internet access into a utility on par with water and electricity.
(As a regional monopoly, you could argue that today's private-enterprise
alternatives, DSL and cable internet, aren't so different from the regulated
monopolies that deliver these basic services, but
that's another story.)
Even private enterprise couldn't turn WiFi, a
technology that, unlike 3G and 4G cell networks, is fundamentally unsuited
to covering large areas, into a workable solution. Witness the fate of
Meraki,
which once promised to bring wireless to the next billion people without
Internet access, but is now a
provider
of enterprise WLAN hardware to businesses
with the cash for indoor deployment of their gear.
This is not to say that municipal WiFi will forever
be impossible. Some day, as airspace is freed up at lower end of the
spectrum, now occupied by television and radio transmissions, WiFi operating
at wavelengths long enough to penetrate obstacles and cover wide areas
might be possible.
From the Scout Report on October 1, 2010
EduBlogs ---
http://edublogs.org/
Started in 2005, Edublogs has grown to include
almost 60,000 blogs started by people all over the world. The Edublogs site
can be used by anyone to create blogs with education content, and most
school filters will allow their software to run correctly. The site includes
a video introduction on how to get started, and teachers will appreciate
that Edublogs includes discussion tools, video embedding, and social media
options. Visitors can customize their blog by using over 100 different
themes to give each one the personal touch. EduBlogs is compatible with all
operating systems, and their site also includes a FAQ section and training
guides.
Bob Jensen's threads on blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
Instacalc ---
http://instacalc.com/
Designed by Kalid Azad, the Instacalc Online
Calculator offers an elegant solution to those who need a variety of
calculations and conversions done simultaneously. With Instacalc, visitors
just need to type in a calculation or operation and the answer will appear.
The application also includes some programming tools and advanced math
functionality, and the application can be embedded or linked, depending on
the user's preference. This version is compatible with all operating
systems.
As privatization of libraries continues, some grow concerned As L.S.S.I.
Takes Over Libraries, Patron's Can't Keep Quiet [Free registration may be
required]
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html?_r=1&=dbk
San Joaquin County to consider privatizing libraries
http://www.lodinews.com/news/article_14f6af7a-9175-549a-bb11-bb28778d8252.html
Should public libraries be put in private hands?
http://www.scpr.org/programs/patt-morrison/2010/09/27/privatization-of-libraries/
Library Systems & Services
http://www.lssi.com/
Carnegie Libraries: The Future Made Bright
http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/50carnegie/50carnegie.htm
Boston Athenaeum
http://www.bostonathenaeum.org/
From the Scout Report on October 8, 2010
Zotero 2.0.8 ---
http://www.zotero.org/
Zotero is a helpful Firefox extension that can be
used to help interested parties collect, manage, cite, and share research
sources. With just a single click, visitors can browse research sources from
their mobile phones, share their resources with other scholars, and also use
the built-in citation styles. This latest version is compatible with
computers running any operating system and the Firefox browser.
Ipadio ---
http://www.ipadio.com
So you are at the Spanish Steps in Rome and you
want to tell people about your journey? And you want to do it right away?
You'll need to look no further than Ipadio, which allows you to broadcast
directly from any phone to the Internet. The program makes it easy to
collect audio data, and send it out to the world quickly. Visitors to the
site will note that this program is compatible with a variety of smart
phones, including the Android and the iPhone.
Deep below, a vibrant world is documented by the first comprehensive
marine census Marine Census Yields Plenitude of Wonders
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/in-first-marine-census-a-plenitude-of-wonders/?hpw
Marine Census Shows Vast Diversity of Sea Life
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704847104575532031662747228.html
Biggest Marine Census Complete
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/10/101004-coml-complete-census-vin-video/
New Map Charts Troubled Status of Ocean Life
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2010/10/ocean_map.html
Census of Marine Life
http://www.coml.org/
NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries
http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Carnegie Institution for Science: Multimedia Content [Real Player, iTunes]
http://carnegiescience.edu/multimedia_content
'Action!' Student-Generated Video Web Site Teaches Visual Communications
Skills ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/10/06/action-student-generated-video-web-site-teaches-visual-communications-skills.aspx
Cutting-Edge Social Media Approaches to Business Education: Teaching with
LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, and Blogs, by Charles Wankel ---
http://management-education.net/rmed9/
"Check Out EDUCAUSE 2010 Resources," by Tanya Roscorla, Converge
Magazine, October 18, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/training/Check-Out-EDUCAUSE-2010-Resources.html
Bob Jensen's threads on resources are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Find a College
College Atlas ---
http://www.collegeatlas.org/
Among other things the above site provides acceptance rate percentages
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Carnegie Institution for Science: Multimedia Content [Real Player, iTunes]
http://carnegiescience.edu/multimedia_content
Center for History of Physics --- http://www.aip.org/history/index.html
Portsmouth and Macclesfield Collections (Isaac Newton, Gravity, Calculus,
Physics) ---
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/portsmouth_and_macclesfield/
"Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery," by Kirk Johnson, The
New York Times, October 7, 2010 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/science/07bees.html?_r=1&hpw
North Carolina Cooperative Extension ---
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/
University of Kentucky Agricultural Information Center ---
http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/lib.php?lib_id=1
National Resources Inventory Map Room ---
http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/NRI/maps/
Illinois State Geological Survey ---
http://www.isgs.uiuc.edu/
From the Scout Report on October 8, 2010
Deep below, a vibrant world is documented by the first comprehensive
marine census Marine Census Yields Plenitude of Wonders
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/in-first-marine-census-a-plenitude-of-wonders/?hpw
Marine Census Shows Vast Diversity of Sea Life
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704847104575532031662747228.html
Biggest Marine Census Complete
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/10/101004-coml-complete-census-vin-video/
New Map Charts Troubled Status of Ocean Life
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2010/10/ocean_map.html
Census of Marine Life
http://www.coml.org/
NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries
http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/
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
Videos for Behavioral Finance
Jim Mahar (a huge fan of Ayn Rand) uses some interesting behavioral
finance videos in his finance class ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/some-videos-we-will-be-using-in.html
We are covering the idea of charity or
altruism as rational or irrational. Now
clearly this idea of helping others is irrational is well established in
some circles. To start what is altruism? Let's
ask Google.
Now many economists have argued for years that it
is bad. For instance,
Ayn Rand in her writings and more recently
from the
Ayn Rand Institute.
Last week we ended class talking about
this video where the monkeys shared their
gains and acted in a manner that would be seen as uneconomic (giving
away nuts, caring about "fairness" etc). If you have not seen that
video, I highly recommend it. (oh and
please give me a juicy grape
:) ) So
cooperation
may be useful for the species.
Here is an
example not in an artificial setting.
The videos can be seen at
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/some-videos-we-will-be-using-in.html
European Economic and Social Committee ---
http://www.eesc.europa.eu/?i=portal.en.home
Mackinac Center (public policy, government) ---
http://www.mackinac.org/
Hoover Daily Report (Economics, Political Science, Social Science) ---
http://www.hoover.org/news/daily-report
U.S. Census: Facts for Features & Special Editions ---
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/
Historical Census Browser ---
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/
"Once You Enter, You Never Leave": Deinstitutionalization of Persons with
Intellectual or Mental Disabilities in Croatia [pdf]
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2010/09/23/once-you-enter-you-never-leave-0
International Day of Non-Violence ---
http://www.un.org/en/events/nonviolenceday/
The Next Economy: Economic Recovery and Transformation in the Great Lakes
Region ---
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2010/0927_great_lakes.aspx
NOAA: Ocean, Great Lakes and Coastal Research ---
http://www.research.noaa.gov/oceans/
NOAA's Office of Coast Survey [pdf] ---
http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/
Video: The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906 ---
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/nychome.html
Aboriginal Documentary Heritage ---
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/aboriginal-heritage/index-e.html
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Law and Legal Studies
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
Portsmouth and Macclesfield Collections (Isaac Newton, Gravity, Calculus,
Physics) ---
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/portsmouth_and_macclesfield/
Mathematics papers have a reputation for being poorly written on top of
dealing with topics not easily understood
Here are some examples of award-winning writing
Mathematical Association of America Writing Awards ---
http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/22/
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
Illuminated Manuscripts from Belgium and the Netherlands (Getty Museum) ---
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/flemish_manuscripts/
Aboriginal Documentary Heritage ---
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/aboriginal-heritage/index-e.html
The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906 ---
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/nychome.html
Electronic New Jersey (history for teachers and students) ---
http://www2.scc.rutgers.edu/njh/
State of Delaware-Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs ---
http://history.delaware.gov/
Great Migrations: National Geographic (animals) ---
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/great-migrations/
The Warner Map Collection at the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library ---
http://www.lib.ua.edu/content/libraries/hoole/digital/warner/index.html
Lafayette Park: First Amendment Rights on the President's Doorstep (1917
Women, Feminism) ---
http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/139LafayettePark/139Lafayette_Park.htm
A Daring Experiment: Harvard and Business Education for Women, 1937-1970 ---
http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/daring/
Shared History: Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas ---
http://scipio.uark.edu/cdm4/index_HappyHollow.php?CISOROOT=/HappyHollow
'As Far As Possible from Forgetfulness': The Trinity College Historical
Society ---
http://exhibits.library.duke.edu/exhibits/show/tchs
From Trinity College
The Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in
Public Life ---
http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/
Stray Dogs: Danijel Zezelj [art history] ---
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/straydogs/index.asp
Center for History of Physics --- http://www.aip.org/history/index.html
Portsmouth and Macclesfield Collections (Isaac Newton, Gravity, Calculus,
Physics) ---
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/portsmouth_and_macclesfield/
Federal Bureau of Investigation: White Collar Crime and Fraud ---
http://www.fbi.gov/whitecollarcrime.htm
Montana Place Names Companion ---
http://mtplacenames.org/
FSU Historical Images (Florida State University) ---
http://purl.fcla.edu/fsu/lib/digcoll/speccoll/historicalphotos
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Language Tutorials
The Cosmos in Miniature: The Remarkable Star Map of Simeon De Witt
http://americanhistory.si.edu/documentsgallery/exhibitions/dewitt_1.html
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
Historic Sheet Music ---
http://oregondigital.org/digcol/sheetmusic/
Sheet Music from Canada's Past ---
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/sheetmusic/index-e.html
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music
Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Writing Tutorials
Mathematics papers have a reputation for being poorly written on top of
dealing with topics not easily understood
Here are some examples of award-winning writing
Mathematical Association of America Writing Awards ---
http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/22/
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
October 5, 2010
October 6, 2010
October 7, 2010
October 8, 2010
October 9, 2010
October 10, 2010
October 11, 2010
October 12, 2010
October 13, 2010
October 14, 2010
October 15, 2010
October 18, 2010
October 19, 2010
I found it interesting how high life expectancy has increased in the U.S.
among all ethic groups. When Social Security actuarial tables were established,
life expectancies were around 65 years of age or less for all ethnic groups. .
Those that now argue against extending the retirement ages and Medicare
eligibility ages to keep these systems more solvent seldom mention how life
expectancy increases are killing the systems because of failing to properly
build in increases in life expectancies in actuary calculations. David Walker
argues that perhaps the best way to reduce the deficit is to base retirement
ages on more realistic life expectancy forecasts. Most other suggestions, like
taking the cap off of contributions to Social Security, are insignificant in
comparison. .
Note that the tidbit below is focused on Hispanics, but this is only
incidental. What's more important is adjusting for the increased life
expectancies of all ethnic groupings.
"Hispanics Have Highest Life Expectancy in U.S.: Study Shows Life
Expectancy for Hispanics in U.S. is 80.6," Denise Mann, WebMD, October 14, 2010
---
http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/news/20101014/hispanics-have-highest-life-expectancy-in-u-s
Hispanics in the U.S. tend to live longer than
non-Hispanics, a study shows.
The study shows that life expectancy for Hispanics
is 80.6. Life expectancy is 78.1 for Non-Hispanic whites and 72.9 for
non-Hispanic blacks. Overall, the life expectancy at birth for all Americans
is 77.7.
The study, which appears in the October issue of
Vital and Health Statistics, marks the first time that this longevity
information has included reliable statistics for Hispanics living in the
U.S. Researchers analyzed 2006 data from death certificates in all 50
states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories.
Hispanic males' life expectancy at birth is 77.9,
but their life expectancy once they reach the age of 65 is 84. Hispanic
women's life expectancy at birth is 83.1 years, and this number reaches 86.7
if they live to 65, the study shows.
"The results show that the Hispanic population has
higher life expectancy at birth and at almost every subsequent age than
non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic black populations," conclude the
researchers who were led by Elizabeth Arias, PhD, of the National Center for
Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Md.
The phenomenon "seems paradoxical because on
average the Hispanic population has lower socioeconomic status than the
non-Hispanic white population," she says.
Why Hispanics Live Longer
Exactly why Hispanics live longer than other populations is not fully
understood, Hal Strelnick, MD, chief of the division of community health and
the director of Hispanic Center of Excellence at Montefiore Medical Center,
tells WebMD.
"Hispanics have birth outcomes that are better than
would be expected, and some of this has to do with the ‘healthy immigrant’
phenomenon, which states that people who immigrate are young and active and
tend to be healthier than those who don't," he says. Another possibility is
that Hispanic communities are often based around strong social support
networks, which can be "very protective."
Smoking and other risky behaviors may also be less
common among certain members of the Hispanic community. "We don't have a lot
of good studies to be able to say these are the risk factors that are more
common or less common in these groups," he says.
The next step is to further classify Hispanics
according to country of origin to see if any longevity trends emerge, the
researchers say.
Jensen Comment
When setting employee and employer premiums for social security and Medicare,
the explosion in life expectancy was greatly underestimated, thereby leaving
these entitlement funds greatly short of funding.
http://www.efmoody.com/estate/lifeexpectancy.html
"Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery," by Kirk Johnson, The
New York Times, October 7, 2010 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/science/07bees.html?_r=1&hpw
Jensen Comment
Overcoming the honeybee disappearance problem is vital to the future world food
supply as well as other major factors in nature's harmony. Solving the mystery,
however, is only part of the battle.
First recorded Helpdesk professional ---
Click Here
Forwarded by Bob Overn
Two medical students were walking along the street when they saw an old man
walking with his legs spread apart. He was stiff-legged and walking slowly. One
student said to his friend: "I'm sure that poor old man has Peltry Syndrome.
Those people walk just like that.
" The other student says: "No, I don't think so. The old man surely has
Zovitzki Syndrome. He walks slowly and his legs are apart, just as we learned in
class." Since they couldn't agree they decided to ask the old man. They
approached him and one of the students said to him, "We're medical students and
couldn't help but notice the way you walk, but we couldn't agree on the syndrome
you might have. Could you tell us what it is?"
The old man said, "I'll tell you, but first you tell me what you two fine
medical students think." The first student said, "I think it's Peltry Syndrome."
The old man said, "You thought - but you are wrong." The other student said, "I
think you have Zovitzki Syndrome." The old man said, "You thought - but you are
wrong." So they asked him, "Well, old timer, what do you have?"
The old man said, "I thought it was just GAS - but I was wrong, too!"
Billboard picture link forwarded by David Albrecht
Dr. Will Tickle, Chiropractor ---
http://cheezburger.com/View/4066217472
Forwarded by Auntie Bev
An old prospector shuffled into town leading an old tired mule. The old
man headed straight for the only saloon to clear his parched throat. He
walked up and tied his old mule to the hitch rail. As he stood there, brushing
some of the dust from his face and clothes, a young gunslinger stepped out of
the saloon with a gun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other.
The young gunslinger looked at the old man and laughed, saying, "Hey old man,
have you ever danced?"
The old man looked up at the gunslinger and said, "No, I never did dance...
never really wanted to."
A crowd had gathered as the gunslinger grinned and said, "Well, you old fool,
you're gonna dance now," and started shooting at the old man's feet.. The
old prospector --not wanting to get a toe blown off-- started hopping around
like a flea on a hot skillet. Everybody was laughing, fit to be tied.
When his last bullet had been fired, the young gunslinger, still laughing,
holstered his gun and turned around to go back into the saloon.
The old man turned to his pack mule, pulled out a double-barreled shotgun,
and cocked both hammers. The loud clicks carried clearly through the desert air.
The crowd stopped laughing immediately. The young gunslinger heard
the sounds too, and he turned around very slowly. The silence was almost
deafening. The crowd watched as the young gunman stared at the old
timer and the large gaping holes of those twin barrels. The barrels
of the shotgun never wavered in the old man's hands, as he quietly said,
"Son, have you ever licked a mule's ass?"
The gunslinger swallowed hard and said, "No sir..... but... I've always
wanted to."
There are a few lessons for us all here:
- Never be arrogant. Ø Don't waste ammunition.
- Whiskey makes you think you're smarter than you are.
- Always, always make sure you know who has the power.
- Don't mess with old men, they didn't get old by being stupid.
I just love a story with a happy ending, don't you?
Forwarded by Paula
BRITISH NEWSPAPERS
Commenting on a complaint from a Mr. Arthur Purdey about a large gas
bill, a spokesman for North West Gas said, 'We agree it was rather
high for the time of year. It's possible Mr. Purdey has been charged
for the gas used up during the explosion that destroyed his house.'
(The Daily Telegraph)
Police reveal that a woman arrested for shoplifting had a whole
salami in her underwear. When asked why, she said it was because she
was missing her Italian boyfriend.
(The Manchester Evening News)
Irish police are being handicapped in a search for a stolen van,
because they cannot issue a description. It's a Special Branch
vehicle and they don't want the public to know what it looks like.
(The Guardian)
A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth
was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coast guard
spokesman commented, 'This sort of thing is all too common'.
(The Times)
At the height of the gale, the harbourmaster radioed a coast guard
and asked him to estimate the wind speed. He replied he was sorry,
but he didn't have a gauge. However, if it was any help, the wind
had just blown his Land Rover off the cliff.
( Aberdeen Evening Express)
Mrs. Irene Graham of Thorpe Avenue , Boscombe, delighted the
audience with her reminiscence of the German prisoner of war who was
sent each week to do her garden. He was repatriated at the end of
1945, she recalled -
'He'd always seemed a nice friendly chap, but when the crocuses came
up in the middle of our lawn in February 1946, they spelt out 'Heil
Hitler.''
( Bournemouth Evening Echo)
HEARD ON THE LONDON UNDERGOUND
TUBE
A list of actual announcements that London Tube train drivers have
made to their passengers...
1) 'Ladies and Gentlemen, I do apologize for the delay to your
service. I know you're all dying to get home, unless, of course, you
happen to be married to my ex-wife, in which case you'll want to
cross over to the Westbound and go in the opposite direction.'
2) 'Your delay this evening is caused by the line controller
suffering from E & B syndrome: not knowing his elbow from his
backside. I'll let you know any further information as soon as I'm
given any.'
3) 'Do you want the good news first or the bad news? The good news
is that last Friday was my birthday and I hit the town and had a
great time. The bad news is that there is a points failure somewhere
between Stratford and East Ham, which means we probably won't reach
our destination.'
4) 'Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the delay, but there is a
security alert at Victoria station and we are therefore stuck here
for the foreseeable future, so let's take our minds off it and pass
some time together. All together now.... 'Ten green bottles, hanging
on a wall.....'.'
5) 'We are now travelling through Baker Street ... As you can see,
Baker Street is closed. It would have been nice if they had actually
told me, so I could tell you earlier, but no, they don't think about
things like that'.
6) 'Beggars are operating on this train. Please do NOT encourage
these professional beggars. If you have any spare change, please
give it to a registered charity. Failing that, give it to me.'
7) During an extremely hot rush hour on the Central Line, the driver
announced in a West Indian drawl: 'Step right this way for the
sauna, ladies and gentleman... Unfortunately, towels are not
provided.'
8) 'Let the passengers off the train FIRST!' (Pause ) 'Oh go on
then, stuff yourselves in like sardines, see if I care - I'm going
home....'
9) 'Please allow the doors to close. Try not to confuse this with
'Please hold the doors open.' The two are distinct and separate
instructions.'
10) 'Please note that the beeping noise coming from the doors means
that the doors are about to close. It does not mean throw yourself
or your bags into the doors.'
11) 'We can't move off because some idiot has their hand stuck in
the door.'
12) 'To the gentleman wearing the long grey coat trying to get on
the second carriage -- what part of 'stand clear of the doors' don't
you understand?'
13) 'Please move all baggage away from the doors.' (Pause..) 'Please
move ALL belongings away from the doors.' (Pause...) 'This is a
personal message to the man in the brown suit wearing glasses at the
rear of the train: Put the pie down, Four-eyes, and move your bloody
golf clubs away from the door before I come down there and shove
them up your arse sideways!'
14) 'May I remind all passengers that there is strictly no smoking
allowed on any part of the Underground. However, if you are smoking
a joint, it's only fair that you pass it round the rest of the
carriage.' |
Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
Find a College
College Atlas ---
http://www.collegeatlas.org/
Among other things the above site provides acceptance rate percentages
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accountancy Discussion ListServs:
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a
ListServ (usually for free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc
Roles of a ListServ ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
|
CPAS-L (Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo
(Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation
Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu