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: 

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

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