Tidbits on November 2, 2010
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

 

This week I made a special photograph file of Set 1 of my favorite pictures of clouds
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/CloudFavorites/Set01/Clouds01.htm 

Scroll down in the above file to view the Jensen Hillbillies --- my father and his brothers and mother


 

 

Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on November 2, 2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations110210.htm         

 

Tidbits on November 2, 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/ )




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

YouTube has come to define the era of online video, so let's take a look at their most popular videos of all time. We first did this list in August 2007, at which point Evolution of Dance by comedian Judson Laipply was number 1 with nearly 56 million views. The next update was September 2008, when Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend pop music video was number 1 with 103 million page views (although commenters argued that it may have gamed the system). In January 2010, Charlie bit my finger - again ! was number 1, with 148 million views.

Our latest update shows that Justin Bieber is still the only video over the 300 million views mark, after knocking Lady Gaga off the top spot in August. Bieber is adding over 1 million views every day! New to the top 10 this month is the video for Eminem's 'Love The Way You Lie,' featuring Rihanna. Here is the top 10, as of October 2010 ---  http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_youtube_videos_of_all_time.php

University of Minnesota Physics Demonstrations Page  --- http://groups.physics.umn.edu/demo/

World's largest model train railway --- http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e98_1237657552

CapitolHearings.org [Real Player, C-SPAN] --- http://www.capitolhearings.org/

What Makes Me [Flash Player, 3-D, Art] http://www.whatmakesme.com.au/

BBC: Democracy Live (video) --- http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/

WNYC Culture in New York City [iTunes] http://culture.wnyc.org/

Museum of Science and Industry: Simple Machines [Flash Player] --- http://www.msichicago.org/fileadmin/Activities/Games/simple_machines/

Factory Tours USA http://www.factorytoursusa.com/

That fly on the wall or the bird on in a tree
Video on the Future of M.A.V. Warfare and Intelligence Gathering ---
http://video.designworldonline.com/bugbots.html
The challenge will also be to adapt M.A.V.s to more peaceful and positive uses to better mankind

How baseballs are made --- http://www.reliableplant.com/view/25724/how-baseballs-are-manufactured

Amazing motorcycle show 1950 Italian Police Drill Team --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdIV-ZWi8GU

October 22, 2010 message from Richard Campbell (don't forget to turn the lights "Off" when requested to hit the switch:

This excellent elearning example was created by a psych professor in 3 days.

http://elearning-examples.s3.amazonaws.com/PsychedIn10/player.html 

Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu

Inspiring Video of the Week
The Cat and the Crow --- http://www.slide.com/r/hD6DvyAOxD9ClUhvUpVcUMABW9QzpGnQ

Viral Video of the Week
"So You Want to Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities?" Inside Higher Ed, October 27, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/27/qt#241873

Jensen Comment
I once had a history professor who quipped that only students living on large trust funds should consider earning a PhD in history. Now that so many wives are the chief bread winners, we can extend this to affording the luxury of a humanities PhD because of a high income spouse. When I was Chair of the Accounting Department I once interviewed (unsuccessfully) a woman getting her PhD from Colorado (as I dimly recall). I think she instead elected to become an assistant professor of accounting at the University of South Carolina.

A few years later I read a Civil War book review that became a top non-fiction seller. While his wife was working on campus and their kids were in school, her husband spent his days in the Columbia public library writing this book about the Civil War. It was successful enough to get a full page favorable review in Time Magazine (where I read the review). If he instead was the family bread winner he probably could not afford the luxury of spending his days in a public library. Perhaps more humanities PhD graduates should marry accounting professors.

I was also impressed that, after almost everything that could be known about the Civil War has been written, this guy could write a Civil War book that was successful in the non-fiction market.

 


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

Alice Dancing Under the Gallows --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlccsLr48Mw&sns=em 
The oldest survivor of the Holocaust

Videos:  What a Voice for Opera at Age 15 (Mark Vincent) --- http://charliephillips.net/videos/theater-9/mark-vincent.html

Dudamel Conducts The L.A. Philharmonic --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130381109

The Accountant Song (Rated R) --- http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=GeZF61Ts_Bs

Man in Black (Johnny Cash) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXRmJyIyJbM

The Hoagy Carmichael Collection --- http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/hoagy/

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

The Photographs of Francis Blake (19th Century History) --- http://www.masshist.org/photographs/blake.cfm

The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today --- http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/originalcopy/

Robert W. Krueger Collection (20th Century) --- http://www.chipublib.org/images/krueger/index.php

Currier Museum of Art --- http://www.currier.org/ 

The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy ---  http://www.themourners.org/

The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler (art, painting) ---  http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/

Beyond the Taj: Architectural Traditions and Landscape Experiences in South Asia --- http://beyondthetaj.library.cornell.edu/about.php

Making a Difference Through the Arts [Asian Society] --- http://www.asiasociety.org/files/pdf/as_making_difference_report.pdf

The Digital Atlas of Idaho --- http://imnh.isu.edu/digitalatlas/

Seeking Michigan --- http://seekingmichigan.org/

Kentucky Military Treasures --- http://history.ky.gov/military/

Marjory Stoneman Douglas Writer & Conservationist (Everglades) --- http://scholar.library.miami.edu/msdouglas/

Video:  Augmented 3-D Sketching ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/24253/?nlid=2446&a=f
Bob Jensen's threads on visualization of multivariate data ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm

The Mariners' Museum --- http://www.marinersmuseum.org/

Digital University Photographs: University of Dayton --- http://digital.udayton.edu/cdm-archives/

National Geographic Top 10 Photographs --- http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/top-10/photo-gallery/

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


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

University of Tennessee Libraries-Great Smoky Mountains Regional Collection --- http://www.lib.utk.edu/digitalcollections/gsm.html

Stony Brook Press (race, gender, poverty) --- http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/handle/1951/25510

The Civil Rights Digital Library --- http://crdl.usg.edu/voci/go/crdl/home/

What Makes Me [Flash Player, 3-D, Art] http://www.whatmakesme.com.au/

St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project --- http://www.stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu/

The Digital Atlas of Idaho --- http://imnh.isu.edu/digitalatlas/

Anarchism Pamphlets in the Labadie Collection (radical protests) ---  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/labadie/

The History of Vaccines (medicine) ---  http://www.historyofvaccines.org/

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 November 2, 2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations110210.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




Murder of a Female Accounting Professor from American University

October 25, 2010 message from Don Ramsey

The following story has appeared today on the American University radio station, WAMU-FM.

American University Professor Found Dead Meymo Lyons October 25, 2010 - Detectives in Montgomery County, Md., are investigating the death of an American University professor. The body of Sue Marcum, an A.U. accounting professor at the Kogod School of Business, was discovered in her home in the 6200 block of Massachusetts Avenue in Bethesda this morning.

A release from the Montgomery County Police Department says a preliminary investigation revealed signs of forced entry to the home and signs of struggle. Police say Marcum's boyfriend was concerned about her welfare and went this morning to check on her. He discovered her 1999 tan Jeep with Virginia tags YXE-1456 was missing. Police are looking for it. Marcum was active in the community and served on the boards of many non-profit organizations.

Sue Marcum, an accounting professor at American University, was found dead in her home this morning. Her death is currently under investigation. Courtesy of: American University

(A message from Pod L, 7L13, of the UDC temporary satellite station in the Intelsat Building) Donald D. Ramsey, CPA, Department of Accounting, Finance, and Economics, School of Business and Public Administration, University of the District of Columbia, 4200 Connecticut Ave., N. W., Washington, D. C. 20008. (202) 274-7054.


"SAT Prep on the Web: : A) a Game; B) Online Chat; C) All of the Above," by Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704462704575590383273883818.html

This Saturday, high-school students around the country will sit for hours of silent testing that will determine some portion of their future: That's right, it's SAT time. For both parents and kids, the preparation for taking the standardized test is stressful and expensive, often involving hours of studying and several hundreds of dollars spent on classes, workbooks and tutors. And many kids will take these tests more than once.

So this week I tried a Web-based form of test prep called Grockit that aims to make studying for the SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE or LSAT less expensive and more enjoyable. Grockit.com offers lessons, group study and solo practice, and does a nice job of feeling fun and educational, which isn't an easy combination to pull off.

A free portion of the site includes group study with a variety of questions and a limited number of solo test questions, which are customized to each student's study needs. The $100 Premium subscription includes full access to the online platform with unlimited solo practice questions and personalized performance analytics that track a student's progress. A new offering called Grockit TV (grockit.com/tv) offers free eight-week courses if students watch them streaming live twice a week. Otherwise, a course can be downloaded for $100 during the course or $150 afterward. Instructors hailing from the Princeton Review and Kaplan, among other places, teach test preparation for the GMAT business-school admissions test and SAT.

For the sake of testing, I focused on the SAT and plunged back into the depths of reading, writing and (gulp) math to get a sense of what students see and do on Grockit.com. In a short period of time, I found myself wanting to go back to the site to get better at certain sections or to earn more Experience Points, which result in badges and unlock new levels of study, both of which can be optionally posted to outside networks like Facebook or Twitter. By default, everyone can see one another's points, which invites healthy competition; these can also be hidden if you'd rather keep them private.

I tested both the free version of Grockit.com, which includes an SAT writing diagnostic test, and the extra offerings of a $100 Premium account, including diagnostic tests for writing, reading and math to evaluate my strengths and weaknesses in taking the SAT. The free version had too many messages that constantly notified me of what I could do with a paid account and prompted me to upgrade.

Along with completing practice questions with strangers and instructors, I got a friend of mine to also use Grockit.com so we could compete together in Grockit's Speed Challenge Games. These are included in the free portion and they reward the fastest person who answers a question correctly—but also display incorrect guesses, thus narrowing the possible answers for those who don't answer first. It was more fun for me to play against someone I knew, but I can imagine kids preferring the anonymity of competing with strangers when they don't answer questions correctly.

In an introductory video, Grockit founder and chief product officer Farb Nivi describes the site by saying, "It's like having a complete multimedia textbook and workbook online, at your fingertips." But for kids (and from my experience, adults), the computer isn't an easy place to concentrate. On any given PC, especially one used by a teenager, instant-message indicators are chiming, Facebook updates and Twitter tweets are waiting to be checked, music is playing in the background and emails are flowing into inboxes. Plus, the Grockit site is just a tab away from other websites and distractions. And the site has no way of working in a distraction-free mode, like how the new Microsoft Office for Mac offers Full Screen View, which quiets any alerts or pop-up distractions.

It also isn't necessarily comfortable for students to read extensive text (like in reading questions for the SAT) on a vertical computer screen. The site will run on the iPad, which can be held on a lap for more comfortable reading, but many students don't own one of these.

Part of the way Grockit is made more fun is by purposely incorporating social networking into the experience. As people work on questions, they can instant message with one another in a right-side panel about tips for answering questions or simply for commiserating about studying. These IMs don't make indicator sounds, so they aren't too intrusive, but they can't be fully closed. I saw several chats among teens about nothing in particular, as well as some test-taking tips from instructors and other students.

Grockit encourages users to "be nice" in chats because all conversations are logged; people can also flag one another for offensive remarks. Chats are also archived on your page so you can reread them for tips and study hints. If you find someone's tip helpful or if you simply like a person, you can award him or her with Grockit Points, which show up beside a name and profile photo. Users' ages or last names aren't displayed.

Grockit offers one-on-one tutoring for a fee of $50 an hour, and I tried one session for math. My instructor and I used Skype to audio chat throughout the session and he took advantage of a whiteboard in Grockit, where he could write out the steps in an algebra problem to demonstrate how to solve for X.

Around 40 instructors are employed for Grockit, but anyone can run a practice session, even other students. I signed up for a scheduled practice session at 8 p.m. that I assumed was run by an instructor, and later found out it was run by a student. Grockit instructors can also pop into sessions at any given time to help students, and one did during my session. Grockit works on a system of transparency so users can evaluate all teachers. My tutor had five-star rating and did a great job reminding me of algebra rules.

If you're looking for an inexpensive and more enjoyable way to study for big tests, Grockit is a viable and easily accessible option. But its proximity to the rest of the Web could prove much more distracting than the old SAT workbook.

—See a video with Katherine Boehret on Web-based test-prep software at WSJ.com/PersonalTech.
Email her at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

 


It's About Time
"Settlement Reached in Essay-Mill Lawsuit." by Paige Chapman, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 25, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/settlement-reached-in-essay-mill-lawsuit/27852?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads about academic cheating ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm

Questions
Should a doctoral student be allowed to hire an editor to help write her dissertation? 
If the answer is yes, should this also apply to any student writing a course project, take home exam, or term paper?

Answer
Forwarded by Aaron Konstam
"Academic Frauds," The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 3, 2003 --- http://chronicle.com/jobs/2003/11/2003110301c.htm 

Question (from "Honest John"): I'm a troubled member of a dissertation committee at Private U, where I'm not a regular faculty member (although I have a doctorate). "Bertha" is a "mature" student in chronological terms only. The scope of her dissertation research is ambiguous, and the quality of her proposal is substandard. The committee chair just told me that Bertha is hiring an editor to "assist" her in writing her dissertation. I'm outraged. I've complained to the chair and the director of doctoral studies, but if Bertha is allowed to continue having an "editor" to do her dissertation, shouldn't I report the university to an accreditation agency? This is too big a violation of integrity for me to walk away.

Answer: Ms. Mentor shares your outrage -- but first, on behalf of Bertha, who has been betrayed by her advisers.

In past generations, the model of a modern academician was a whiz-kid nerd, who zoomed through classes and degrees, never left school, and scored his Ph.D. at 28 or so. (Nietzsche was a full professor at 24.) Bertha is more typical today. She's had another life first.

Most likely she's been a mom and perhaps a blue-collar worker -- so she knows about economics, time management, and child development. Maybe she's been a musician, a technician, or a mogul -- and now wants to mentor others, pass on what she's known. Ms. Mentor hears from many Berthas.

Returning adult students are brave. "Phil" found that young students called him "the old dude" and snorted when he spoke in class. "Barbara" spent a semester feuding with three frat boys after she told them to "stop clowning around. I'm paying good money for this course." And "Millie's" sister couldn't understand her thirst for knowledge: "Isn't your husband rich enough so you can just stay home and enjoy yourself?"

Some tasks, Ms. Mentor admits, are easier for the young -- pole-vaulting, for instance, and pregnancy. Writing a memoir is easier when one is old. And no one under 35, she has come to suspect, should give anyone advice about anything. But Bertha's problem is more about academic skills than age.

Her dissertation plan may be too ambitious, and her writing may be rusty -- but it's her committee's job to help her. All dissertation writers have to learn to narrow and clarify their topics and pace themselves. That is part of the intellectual discipline. Dissertation writers learn that theirs needn't be the definitive word, just the completed one, for a Ph.D. is the equivalent of a union card -- an entree to the profession.

But instead of teaching Bertha what she needs to know, her committee (except for Honest John) seems willing to let her hire a ghost writer.

Ms. Mentor wonders why. Do they see themselves as judges and credential-granters, but not teachers? Ms. Mentor will concede that not everyone is a writing genius: Academic jargon and clunky sentences do give her twitching fits. But while not everyone has a flair, every academic must write correct, clear, serviceable prose for memos, syllabuses, e-mail messages, reports, grant proposals, articles, and books.

Being an academic means learning to be an academic writer -- but Bertha's committee is unloading her onto a hired editor, at her own expense. Instead of birthing her own dissertation, she's getting a surrogate. Ms. Mentor feels the whole process is fraudulent and shameful.

What to do?

Ms.Mentor suggests that Honest John talk with Bertha about what a dissertation truly involves. (He may include Ms. Mentor's column on "Should You Aim to Be a Professor?") No one seems to have told Bertha that it is an individual's search for a small corner of truth and that it should teach her how to organize and write up her findings.

Moreover, Bertha may not know the facts of the job market in her field. If she aims to be a professor but is a mediocre writer, her chances of being hired and tenured -- especially if there's age discrimination -- may be practically nil. There are better investments.

But if Bertha insists on keeping her editor, and her committee and the director of doctoral studies all collude in allowing this academic fraud to take place, what should Honest John do?

He should resign from the committee, Ms. Mentor believes: Why spend his energies with dishonest people? He will have exhausted "internal remedies" -- ways to complain within the university -- and it is a melancholy truth that most bureaucracies prefer coverups to confrontations. If there are no channels to go through, Honest John may as well create his own -- by contacting the accrediting agencies, professional organizations in the field, and anyone else who might be interested.

Continued in the article.

November 3, 2003 reply from David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU

Bob, there are two very different questions being addressed here.

The first deals with the revelation that “her dissertation research is ambiguous, and the quality of her proposal is substandard”.

The editing of a manuscript is a completely different issue.

The ambiguity of the research and the flaws with the proposal should be addressed far more forcefully than the editing issue!

Care should be used to ensure that the editor simply edits (corrects grammar, tense, case, person, etc.), and isn’t responsible for the creation of ideas. But if the editor is a professional editor who understands the scope of his/her job, I don’t see why editing should be an issue for anyone, unless the purpose of the dissertation exercise is to evaluate the person’s mastery of the minutiae of the English language (in which case the editor is indeed inappropriate).

Talk about picking your battles … I’d be a lot more upset about ambiguous research than whether someone corrected her sentence structure. I believe the whistle-blower needs to take a closer look at his/her priorities. A flag needs to be raised, but about the more important of the two issues.

David R. Fordham
PBGH Faculty Fellow
James Madison University

The changing definition of "authorship" and possibly even "scholarship" in the digital age
We haven't just opened up [Jane] Austen studies, we've pushed digital encoding further," Ms. Sutherland said. "I think we are giving good value because we're giving a resource that's [now] freely available online back to the public.
Jennifer Howard, "Jane Austen's Well-Known Style Owed Much to Her Editor, Scholar Argues," Chronicle of Higher Education, October 22, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Jane-Austens-Well-Known-Style/125078/

 

Bob Jensen's threads about assessment --- ,
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm


Lady Gaga --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gaga

"University of South Carolina Offers Course on Lady Gaga,: by Marlena Wilson, WJBF, October 29, 2010 ---
http://www2.wjbf.com/entertainment/2010/oct/29/2/university-south-carolina-offers-course-lady-gaga-ar-1028742/

She’s conquered music, makes a fashion statement, has influenced politics… now she’s a course subject at the University of South Carolina. I’m talking about Lady Gaga. Starting this spring the University will offer a course titled “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame”.

Longtime sociology professor – Mathiew Deflem – will be teaching the course. Normally his focus is on criminology, policing, and the sociology of law. But the professor admits that he is a huge fan of Lady Gaga. To his knowledge this is the only course of it’s kind in the country.

The “Lady Gaga course” will focus on examining exactly how the Grammy winner managed to become so famous so quickly. Like her or not there is no denying that she’s made an impact. Right now the star has more than ten million Facebook fans, six million Twitter followers, and is, yet again, the year’s most popular Halloween costumes. So how did she do it?

Deflem defends the course. “We’re going to look at Lady Gaga as a social event. So it’s not the person, and it’s not the music. It’s more this thing out there in society that has ten million followers on Facebook and six million on Twitter. I mean, that’s a social phenomenon. It’s a global social phenomenon. So the central question of the course is, this fame, which is ironically also the theme of her first records, how can it be accounted for? What are some of the mechanisms and some of the conditions of Lady Gaga’s rise to popularity? What does it mean, and how does a person become famous?”

The beginning of the course will deal with the sociology of popularity in general. Lady Gaga will be used as a real life example. Deflem doesn’t believe it is going to be a terribly difficult course, but it will be demanding in terms of workload. It will encompass multiple readings about music, pop culture, sex and gender, and many other topics.

More specific information about the course can be found at GaGaCourse.net – a website Deflem created for the class ---
http://www.gagacourse.net/

Bob Jensen has no threads on Lady Godawful. To me she depicts very little other than the silliness of media fads following the likes of Britney Spears ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany_Spears

Lady Gaga's most famous quotations are hardly value added to the academy ---
http://www.whosdatedwho.com/celebrity/quotes/lady-gaga-2.htm

Britney Spears Quotations --- http://www.quotelucy.com/quotes/britney-spears-quotes.html

Jensen Comment
I've no objection for a sociology department to offer a course on the study of the rise and fall of social popularity. Spears found the secret to revival of popularity was naked crotch photographs seen around the world. That's such an important part of social popularity that it should be good for at least one chapter in a sociology book. To my knowledge, Lady Gaga has not yet tried the naked crotch publicity stunt, but it's probably in her playbook for reviving her fame when and if she stops making headlines via her tactics used to date.
Paparazzi Video --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2smz_1L2_0

Accounting is dull, dull, and more dull compared to sociology!

 


Video:  Open Education for an Open World
45-minute Video from the Long-Time President of MIT --- http://18.9.60.136/video/816

Bob Jensen's threads on open source video and course materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology in general ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

THE COLLEGE OF 2020: STUDENTS  ---
https://www.chronicle-store.com/Store/ProductDetails.aspx?CO=CQ&ID=76319&PK=N1S1009

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm


You can now get free e-books on iTunes U. Apple announced today that Oxford, Rice, and the Open University have all added digital books to the lectures and other materials traditionally available on the popular educational-content platform.
"New at iTunes U: Free E-Books," by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 29, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-at-itunes-u-free-e-books/27957?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing videos and learning materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

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


"A Closer Look at Higher Education: Facts and figures expose the shortcomings of American higher education," by Jenna Ashley Robinson, The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, October 27, 2010 ---
http://popecenter.org/clarion_call/article.html?id=2428
I thank Dick Haar for pointing out the above link to me.
 

Jensen Caution:  Some facts and figures cited by the Pope Center need to be independently replicated and are somewhat controversial. The reported facts and figures do conform to my intuitions about higher education. Keep in mind that studying demands in higher education do vary both by college and by disciplines within a college. For example, since an extremely high proportion of pre-med majors in their first year of college change majors before the third year of college, it suggests that being a pre-med major may take more study time, effort, and ability than most other majors. Also at universities like BYU, only the cream of the crop lower-division students are allowed to major in accounting, thereby suggesting that it takes more time, effort, and ability to be an accounting major at BYU than in many other majors. There are various other disciplines that are so rigorous that they lose nearly half their majors before the third year.

In fairness, the report below does cite statistics from very credible sources such as the College Board, AAUP, and government agencies.

Also keep in mind that education serves a far greater purpose than landing a high paying job. A philosophy major, art major or accounting major graduating with a C average who's now flipping burgers learned much that is valuable in life that we just don't measure well or even talk about much. These range from little things (better grammar) to big things (interest in scholarly books and libraries in general).

The United States’ universities are the envy of the world! Attending college will make students smarter, happier, and more successful!

Such fawning statements have become so ubiquitous that few question their veracity.

But a quick review of the facts reveals that American universities often deliver easy, biased, or useless content—at great expense to students, parents and taxpayers. While college still helps many individual students achieve their financial and academic goals, looking at the “big picture” shows that college isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.

The Pope Center has compiled the following list of facts that readers may find surprising. (The list, with illustrations, is also available as a PDF here.) --- http://www.popecenter.org/download/Fast-Facts.pdf 

University students learn less than many people think.

• Only 29% of college graduates achieve a score of “proficient” on national literacytests. (National Assessment of Adult Literacy)

[Exhibit not shown here]

• Only 53% of students who begin college have graduated after six years. (The College Board)

• American colleges fail to significantly increase students’ civic knowledge; in a multiple-choice exam on America’s history and institutions, the average freshman scored 50.4% and the average senior scored 54.2%. (The Intercollegiate Studies Institute)

• Today’s students study only 14 hours per week outside of classes, compared to 24 hours in 1961. (Babcock, Philip and Marks, Mindy. “Leisure College USA” Review of Economics and Statistics.)

• Only 15 out of 70 leading colleges and universities require English majors to take a course in Shakespeare’s works. (The American Council of Trustees and Alumni)

Universities are expensive for students, parents, and taxpayers.

• In 2008-09, total federal, state, and institutional aid to students totaled $168 billion. (The College Board)

• On average, full-time faculty members at 4-year and 2-year universities in the United States make $80,368 per year. (American Association of University Professors)

• An average full-time staff member at a 4-year university in the United States makes $75,245 per year. (National Center for Education Statistics)

• Between 1993 and 2007, inflation-adjusted spending on administration per student increased by 61%. (The Goldwater Institute)

• States spend an average of $4.4 billion each per year on higher education. (U.S. Census Bureau, State and Local Government Finances by Level of Government and by State: 2007-08)

• In 2008, average debt of graduating seniors with student loans was $23,200—up 24 percent from $18,650 in 2004. (The Project on Student Debt)

[Exhibit not shown here]

The average price of one year of college—including tuition, fees, room, board, supplies, books, and transportation—is nearly $40,000 at private 4-year universities and more than $19,000 for in-state students at public 4-year universities. (The College Board)

A college degree is no guarantee of future success.

• 29% of college grads work in high school-level jobs, including ticket-taker, barista, and flight attendant. (Carnevale, Smith, and Strohl. “Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018”)

• 20% of individuals making less than $20,000 per year have bachelor’s or master’s degrees. (U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2009)

• After factoring in forgone wages and the cost of a college education, the average lifetime earnings advantage for college graduates ranges from $150,000 to $500,000—not the million dollar figure that is often cited. (The American Enterprise Institute)

Continued in article --- http://popecenter.org/clarion_call/article.html?id=2428

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm


Viral Video of the Week
"So You Want to Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities?" Inside Higher Ed, October 27, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/27/qt#241873

Jensen Comment
I once had a history professor who quipped that only students living on large trust funds should consider earning a PhD in history. Now that so many wives are the chief bread winners, we can extend this to affording the luxury of a humanities PhD because of a high income spouse. When I was Chair of the Accounting Department I once interviewed (unsuccessfully) a woman getting her PhD from Colorado (as I dimly recall). I think she instead elected to become an assistant professor of accounting at the University of South Carolina.

A few years later I read a Civil War book review that became a top non-fiction seller. While his wife was working on campus and their kids were in school, her husband spent his days in the Columbia public library writing this book about the Civil War. It was successful enough to get a full page favorable review in Time Magazine (where I read the review). If he instead was the family bread winner he probably could not afford the luxury of spending his days in a public library. Perhaps more humanities PhD graduates should marry accounting professors.

I was also impressed that, after almost everything that could be known about the Civil War, this guy could write a Civil War book that was successful in the market.


Re-engineering the Engine
"70 mpg, without a Hybrid," by Kevin Bullis, MIT's Technology Review, October 25, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/26613/?nlid=3676


Question
Do you access your files using a public wireless network in a library, cyber cafe, hotel, or wherever?

If so, here are some scary thoughts and advice about computing via wireless/public networks
For my LAN and Web server files at Trinity University, I'm only allowed to use Cisco VPN
And my computer must be specially configured by Trinity University technicians for use of VPN with Cisco's Sophos Security System ---
http://www.sophos.com/products/small-business/sophos-security-suite/

"How to Keep Your Public Web Use Secure and Private with a VPN," by Brain Croxall, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 1, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/how-to-keep-your-public-web-use-secure-and-private-with-a-vpn/28257?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Last week, Mark wrote twice about backing up your Twitter archives (on your own server and using ThinkUp). In the first of these posts he noted ProfHacker’s obsession with backup. Making sure that you have backed up your essential files is an important part of using a computer securely.

Regular backups aren’t the only important measure of computer security that you should consider. We all know that we need to be wary of emails from Nigerian officials, to use anti-virus and anti-malware tools, and to not trust attachments that come on those messages about particular pharmaceutical products. Equally important with these common-sense practices for behaving securely on the Internet is whether we connect securely to the Internet.

If you’re like the rest of the ProfHacker team and occasionally use a coffee shop as workspace (or even your public library), you will likely have had times when you connect your laptop, PDA, or iPod Touch to the public wifi that is offered in these locations. Even if you have a super smartphone, you might sometimes use the wifi since it will be faster than the 3G or 4G connection. Deep down, we probably all know that using public wifi might be risky, but most of us think that the chances of our information being stolen is low.

That might have been the case until October 24. That was the day that the Firesheep extension was released for the Firefox browser.* This simple add-on, which takes all of 15 seconds to install, “allows you to,” in the words of Peter Shankman, “see who’s connecting to various sites that don’t encrypt their HTTP login cookies, like Facebook, Evernote, Yahoo, Amazon, Dropbox, Gowalla, Twitter, WordPress, and others….” (See also this detailed explanation of Firesheep on TechCrunch.) It’s always been possible to spy on people’s activity when they were using public wifi, as this May 2010 article by Cory Bohon (friend of ProfHacker and occasional guest author) points out. But while it’s been possible to spy on others’ activity, Firesheep has made it ridiculously easy to do this. Not only does the add-on allow you to see people’s plain text passwords, but it allows you to login as this person by simply double-clicking on their information. Again, to quote Shankman, “This isn’t kid stuff. This is REAL, and this is DANGEROUS.

If deep down you knew that it wasn’t perfectly safe to use public wifi previously, now you must assume that any public wifi is compromised. This last Wednesday, only 3 days after Firesheep was released, a friend of mine had her Facebook and Twitter accounts hacked while in a coffee shop. Racist and otherwise offensive messages were posted on her friends’ Facebook walls and Twitter accounts. As annoying as this is to deal with, it’s better than the damage that could have been done in these circumstances.

There are a number of ways to protect yourself from Firesheep attacks. In the first place, you should recognize that computers that have a wired connection are safe. This means that your office computer is likely protected.

Second, if your campus’s wifi network requires you to login with a network ID and password before connection, you should be safe as well. The open network for campus guests, on the other hand, is not protected.

The third way to be safe is perhaps the most obvious: do not use any public wifi signal. Connecting to the Internet via a 3G card or a MiFi device will keep you safe. Unfortunately, these services cost $50+/month. If you don’t want to or cannot shell out that money (and let’s remember that most faculty members are graduate students, adjuncts, contingent, or otherwise off the tenure-track), there are a few other solutions.

A fourth method of protection has been reported on by both TechCrunch and ZDNetFirefox extensions such as HTTPS Everywhere and Force-TLS will improve security on sites that do not default to HTTPS logins by switching to the more secure protocol. But these only work in Firefox. And while Firesheep is a Firefox add-on, it works against any browser. This means that Safari, Chrome, IE, and Opera users are unprotected at the moment.

Perhaps the best way, then, for ProfHackers to be safe and still work as they like is to make use of their campus’s Virtual Private Network, or VPN. As the crowd puts it on Wikipedia, a VPN “is a computer network that uses a public telecommunication infrastructure such as the Internet to provide remote offices or individual users with secure access to their organization’s network” (my emphasis). Connecting to a VPN does not mean that you can’t access anything besides your university’s website. Instead, it takes advantage of your university’s Internet security to hide the data that you are sending and receiving from others’ eyes–including those who are using Firesheep. A VPN should work independent of which operating system or browser you use. And best of all, it will almost certainly be free!

I cannot speak about every university in the world, but I have had access to a VPN at both those where I have worked. When I have set up my computer to make use of the VPN, it has only taken a few minutes the first time. Subsequent VPN sessions can be started in under 30 seconds. Sure, it’s a hassle to have to take one more step before beginning to use the Internet, but it’s far better than having to apologize to all of your Facebook friends…or try to explain to your bank that you didn’t withdraw all that money.

To find out whether your campus provides access to a VPN and how to go about setting it up on your mobile devices, search for “vpn” or “virtual private network” on the university’s website. If that doesn’t get you the information you need or if it doesn’t make sense, then call someone in your IT department. I’m willing to bet you a latté that they will be more than happy to get you set up. Remember, this is not the time to be too proud to ask for help.

Even once you have a VPN up and running, you still must use common sense when handling sensitive computing tasks in public. The person next to you may no longer be able to Firesheep you, but they could still watch you type in your username and password.

What precautions do you take when computing in the wild?

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on computing and networking security are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection


Nearly 600 ballot questions that affected taxpayers in national, state, and municipal voting in 2010 ---
http://www.ntu.org/assets/pdf/policy-papers/2010-ballot-guide.pdf

Bob Jensen's tax helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation


Updates on Collaboration Software

October 19, 2010 message from Jagdish Gangolly

Over the years I have been frustrated with the lack of software support for collaborative research, especially for writing papers. Very often my coauthors are far from Albany (and out of the country), and we need a way to maintain version control for papers, annotation of document changes, facilities for rollback, and management of bibliographies with minimum effort.

At long last, I (and my collaborators) seem to have found the solution from a very unlikely source: the Eclipse IDE used widely for programming. In fact I had used it in my teaching of Java language in the past. In conjunction with texlipse (which works within Eclipse), it provides a superior authoring environment in addition to being able to use the same environment for programming of necessary. Best of all. it is FREE, so no tithing the Church of Bill.

It works exactly like any commercial database system with good access controls. It also is platform agnostic, and works on windows, linux/unix/mac as well as most IBM mid-range and mainframes.

I wonder if any one on AECM has worked with it.

 Jagdish Gangolly ( gangolly@albany.edu )
Department of Informatics College of Computing & Information State University of New York at Albany
7A, Harriman Campus Road, Suite 220 Albany, NY 12206
Phone: (518) 956-8251, Fax: (518) 956-824
7

October 20, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

Thank you Jagdish,

I will add your Tidbit to my threads on much simpler ways to collaborate such a Google Docs that Amy Dunbar and Rick Lillie passionately recommend for student collaboration projects.


My threads on alternatives for collaboration are at are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Collaboration


From Jensen's archives"

I’m certain there are others that are passionate in their own ways, and some of these passionate and innovative accounting educators are identified in the TLC Section Page at http://aaahq.org/TeachCurr/index.html

I also should’ve elaborated a bit about the passions of Amy Dunbar and Rick Lillie:
May 31, 2010 message from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

I just finished the first week of a 12-week MSA online tax course at UConn. I put students in groups and I ask them to work fairly lengthy quizzes (homework) independently, putting their answers in an Excel spreadsheet, and then they meet in chats to discuss their differences. When they can’t resolve a question, they invite me into chat. This week a student introduced me to Google docs, and I was swept off my feet by the way this tool could be used in my class. I love it! I created a video on the fly on Thursday to illustrate how to create a spreadsheet and share it with other group members. I may be the last to the party on this tool, but in case some of you aren’t aware of it, I am posting the video.

http://users.business.uconn.edu/adunbar/videos/GoogleDocs/GoogleDocs.html 

If anyone wants the “quiz” that the students worked, send me an email (not AECM), and I will send you the file.

Amy

Amy Dunbar
University of Connecticut School of Business
Department of Accounting
2100 Hillside Road Unit 1041 Storrs, CT 06269-1041  

amy.dunbar@business.uconn.ed 

May 31, 2010 reply from Rick Lillie [rlillie@CSUSB.EDU]
Note that Rick's beloved TokBox software is no longer available.  I am waiting for Rick to tell us what he uses in place of TokBox.

Hi Amy,

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with all of my courses.  It's free, includes most of the Microsoft Office features, and makes it easy for students to collaborate on team projects.  It also makes it easy to submit the final document in various formats (e.g., .pdf format).

My students use two communication tools in conjunction with Google Docs and Spreadsheets (i.e., TokBox and Skype).  To use these tools, they need a headset/microphone and webcam.

TokBox (http://www.tokbox.com) is a free, hosted video messaging service.  You can record up to a 10 minute video clip that can be shared by URL link.  TokBox also includes a video chat feature that enables multiple people to video conference.  This feature works great with study teams.

Skype (http://www.skype.com)  includes chat, audio and video-conferencing.  The chat feature works probably better than what you have been using.  With a headset/microphone, you can have up to 10+ people in a audio conference call.  Video-conferencing is 1:1 and includes a great  screen sharing feature.

You can really change the nature of team collaboration when you combine Google Docs and Spreadsheets with TokBox and/or Skype.  Following is an example of how to do this.

EXAMPLE

Students use Google Docs to create a shared workspace for writing a paper.  One student sets up the workspace and invites team members into the space through an email link.  Each team member is given editor rights.

Using a headset/microphone and webcam, students use TokBox to host a group video conference call.  This enables students to brainstorm and get a project running.

During the work process, each team member adds/changes the paper in the common workspace in Google Docs.

When it is time to pull the paper together and do final editing, students use the audio conference call feature to talk with each  other.  While all are online in Skype, each team member logs into the Google Docs paper and views it on his/her computer screen.  One or more students act as the editor.  All see changes as they are made.

When editing is finished, one student exports the final assignment document in .pdf format to his/her hard drive.  The student then submits the document for grading (e.g., student uploads the paper through the Digital Drop Box in Blackboard).

OUTCOME

By combining the features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets with communication tools like TokBox and Skype, students learn how to use technology to get things done.  Major companies pay a fortune to do what your students can  do for free.  Purchasing a headset/microphone and webcam is relatively inexpensive.  The experience students get is priceless.

I use this approach and technology tools with face-2-face, blended, and online classes.  It works great.  The approach changes the nature of how students and instructor interact in the teaching-learning experience.

Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA.  92407-2397
Email:  rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone:  (909) 537-5726Skype (Username):  ricklillie

On the last day of class, I would love to hear my students say:
“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”
(Joe Hoyle)

Jensen Comment
I’m certain that you will miss your beloved TokBox software now that it, like Google Wave, has been discarded on the trash pile of abandoned technology.

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

How to author books and other materials for online delivery
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How Scholars Search the Web ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars

 Bob Jensen


Wired News Bottom Line:  The MacBook Air is only a limited  substitute for the MacBook Pro
"The MacBook Air & 'Where Good Ideas Come From'," by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, October 20, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/the_macbook_air_where_good_ideas_come_from 

Watch the Steve Job's video (slow loading) at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0jIpSCndtw

Wired News Bottom Line:  The MacBook Air is only a limited  substitute for the MacBook Pro

WIRED So slender, so sexy. Ridiculously fast app launch times. Excellent battery life. Comfortable keyboard and trackpad.
TIRED Size does matter — 11 inches is too small, no matter how nice the screen is. Sluggish with some media-heavy tasks.


Read More http://www.wired.com/reviews/2010/10/11inch_macbook_air/#ixzz13qP5fHVZ
WIRED So slender, so sexy. Ridiculously fast app launch times. Excellent battery life. Comfortable keyboard and trackpad.
TIRED Size does matter — 11 inches is too small, no matter how nice the screen is. Sluggish with some media-heavy tasks.


Read More http://www.wired.com/reviews/2010/10/11inch_macbook_air/#ixzz13qP5fHVZ
WIRED So slender, so sexy. Ridiculously fast app launch times. Excellent battery life. Comfortable keyboard and trackpad.
TIRED Size does matter — 11 inches is too small, no matter how nice the screen is. Sluggish with some media-heavy tasks.


Read More http://www.wired.com/reviews/2010/10/11inch_macbook_air/#ixzz13qP5fHVZ

WIRED So slender, so sexy. Ridiculously fast app launch times. Excellent battery life. Comfortable keyboard and trackpad.
TIRED Size does matter — 11 inches is too small, no matter how nice the screen is. Sluggish with some media-heavy tasks.

Read More http://www.wired.com/reviews/2010/10/11inch_macbook_air/#ixzz13qP5fHVZ

Jensen Comment
Now we know why some key components were left out of the iPad --- because Steve Jobs wanted you to also buy the MacBook Air. At some point when do we realize we are being had by clever and secretive marketing?

Now we also know that Apple had no intent of making the iPad or the MacBook Air a substitute for the MacBook Pro.


"Video: Face-Off—Moodle v. Blackboard," by Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 27, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/video-face-off%e2%80%94moodle-v-blackboard/27865?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Moodle, the open-source software for managing courses, is gaining ground on Blackboard, the best-selling commercial system. Leaders from both software projects discuss coming features, including better interfaces for smartphones and integration with other education software.

Continued in article

Watch the Video

Blackboard likes the old John D. Rockefeller strategy of buying off or driving off the competition and then raising prices ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm


Question
Why is the annual Educause Conference "weird?"

"ProfHacker Goes to Educause," Chronicle of Higher Education, October 21, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/profhacker-goes-to-educause/27941

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


Conspiracy Code—History through Gaming (games) --- http://www.flvs.net/areas/flvscourses/ConspiracyCode/Pages/default.aspx

Also see http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2009/07/necc08.html

Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment


AICPA's Accountancy Video Games
I wonder if there are any accountancy video games in this Paris museum?
I wonder if any accounting educators have visited this museum?

"Museum Lets You Play Just About Every Video Game Ever:  Paris's Museum of Arts and Trades has put together a comprehensive playable video game exhibit -  Help us name some mystery consoles," by Christopher Mims, MIT's Technology Review, October 27, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/25927/?nlid=3695

MuseoGames is as comprehensive a history of home video game consoles as any museum has ever created. Visitors to Paris's Museum of Arts and Trades are treated to a collection of video games so extensive that all but the most hardcore gamer would be hard-pressed to identify them all. They stretch from the birth of Pong in the 1970s through the heyday of console gaming and end with the PS2.

The exhibit also includes interviews with many of the developers responsible for these early gems--all of them overdubbed in French, unfortunately, so I hope you've been brushing up.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I could not find the English version of this Paris Website. An English version would be nice for some of the categories such as Blogs.

Back in the U.S.A., the AICPA has a Website to attract students into accountancy that includes accounting video games ---
http://www.startheregoplaces.com/
Eventually click on the Games hot word at the the bottom of the screen. Accounting teachers, however should first click on the Teachers hot word at the top of the screen. They will be asked to get "sign in"  login name and password. There is a delay before they get login permission.

Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment and learning games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment


The Financial Management Association (popular with finance professors) had it's 2010 annual meeting in late October in NYC. Here are reviews of some of the FMA papers that interest finance professors --- http://www.fma.org/NY/NYProgram.htm

The FMA (and its main journals (Financial Management and the Journal of Applied Finance) was formed at a time when the American Finance Association (and its Journal of Finance) was deemed too esoteric in mathematical economics and growing out of touch with the industry of finance. Some would argue today that the quants are also taking over the FMA, but that's a topic I will leave to the membership of the FMA. Finance practitioners have generally been more respectful of their quants than accounting practitioners are respectful of their quants in academia. One simple test would be to ask some random practitioners to name ten quants who have had an impact on industry. Finance practitioners could probably name ten (e.g., Markowitz, Modigliani, Arrow, Sharp, Lintner, Merton, Scholes, Fama, French, etc.). Accounting practitioners could probably only name one or two from their alma maters at best and then not because of awareness of anything practical that ever came out of accountics.

The FMA makes a concerted effort to motivate finance professors to do research on topics of interest to practitioners ---
http://69.175.2.130/~finman/Practitioners/PDDARIpage.htm


Asia:  The Best and the Worst of Education Technology

"Closing Thoughts From a Monthlong Ed-Tech Tour of Asia," by Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 30, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/college20/closing-thoughts-from-a-monthlong-ed-tech-tour-of-asia/27305

Jensen Comment
One of the biggest issues when the West views the East, is the alleged failure of many parts of the East to honor the West's copyrights and patents on advances in technology and the failure to not only pay royalties but to profit from distribution of the West's books and software and some hardware.


Why Do They Hate Us? Part 1
Hate may be too strong a verb, but this article does raise some good points
"Why Do They Hate Us?" by Thomas H. Benton (actually William Pannapacker), Chronicle of Higher Education, September 26, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Do-They-Hate-Us-/124608/

 

"Why Do They Hate Us? Part 2,"  by Thomas H. Benton (actually William Pannapacker), Chronicle of Higher Education, October 24, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Do-They-Hate-Us-Part-2/125066/

Sometimes I write sequels to columns when they generate a lot of comments, blog discussion, and e-mail. Usually, the first column is based on my own experiences and intuitions. In the second one I try to respond to issues and compelling criticisms raised by the readers.

Last month, when I tried to explain why professors are so unpopular these days, the initial response—mostly from inside academe—suggested that I was being overly provocative. Professors, like other professionals, attract some criticism, readers said, but we are still regarded with moderate respect. At worst, we are treated with indifference: Most people don't care about us as much as we'd like to think they do.

And, besides, worrying about whether people like us is a little neurotic.

I was beginning to believe that my initial theory—that I am just a disagreeable person—was the best explanation for all the hostile remarks I've heard over the years about professors. But then my column started to make the rounds of the conservative blogosphere, and the tone of the comments and e-mail shifted to one that sounded both threatening and familiar.

Essentially, the message was that a large segment of the population thinks humanities professors are a bunch of left-wing elitists who hate America, are overpaid, underworked, focused on pointless research, and unwilling to teach undergraduates.

That perspective has been represented most recently by Glenn Beck's accusation that professors are systematically lying about our national history. A few years ago David Horowitz published a who's who of professors who have been reviled by the right: The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Regnery 2006). One blurb on the book's cover says it "reveals a shocking and perverse culture of academics who are poisoning the minds of today's college students." And, of course, that point of view is familiar to anyone who remembers the culture wars of the 80s and 90s. American populism is eternally self-renewing, and that's probably a good thing, since academe—as well as other institutions—should be accountable to the population at large and not just to itself.

But I was disappointed that most readers from outside academe did not notice the self-critical elements of my essay: Once they find out someone is a professor—particularly in the humanities—they just assume that person has a whole set of clearly defined beliefs and attitudes. There's no need to read the essay, and there's no need to construct any new arguments in response, or build any new alliances.

We're trapped in a polarized state of indifference to each other's complexities and conflicts.

So after teaching for 10 years at a Christian, liberal-arts college in the rural Midwest, and writing articles critical of academe under the pen name of a notoriously populist painter, it's almost a pleasant surprise to find myself categorized as an arugula-eating leftist. It makes me feel like I belong in academe, after all, despite a background that might otherwise have made me a card-carrying member of the Tea Party.

I was born in Camden, N.J., and I grew up in a working-class, Catholic neighborhood where professors—when they were discussed at all—were regarded as dangerous subversives (they would turn you into an atheist and a Democrat), but they also had a lot of power to determine your future, so you had to please them if you went to college.

Of course, I didn't know any professors back then—neither did anyone in my immediate family—which made it easy to demonize them. As a new undergraduate at a Catholic university, I regarded professors with suspicion, particularly if they had ostentatiously liberal sensibilities. I believed that they did not like people like me, and I might not have been wrong in some cases.

Even now, I don't really feel at home in some academic contexts, like the big, national conventions: I still regard other professors—particularly from elite colleges (like Harvard University, where I eventually earned my doctorate)—as people living on some other social plane, against whom I have some reflexive and defensive grievances. Always, they seem concerned with social justice, but those concerns almost never extend to working-class Americans, as such, including all the adjuncts who increasingly do the teaching at our universities.

In the small community of academics with working-class origins, it is sometimes noticed that professors at major universities—the ones who attract most of the public's attention—seem to be mostly from the upper half of the income spectrum. I suspect that they are clustering even higher now than they were at any time since before the 1960s.

With few exceptions, elite positions are seemingly filled through a kind of closed system in which academic pedigree (itself the outcome of prior class position) stands in for the more blatant old-boy network of an earlier period. As a result, a large percentage of the faculty members of our leading universities have a limited understanding of the way most people live; they cannot be expected to sympathize with the alienating experience of moving between social classes, or the strain of paying for an education coupled with the fear of not finding a job afterward.

My entire education took place in the shadow of such anxieties, so I think I understand why many people who feel coerced into attending college at great expense, while still being potentially shut out from economic opportunity, might resent those for whom an elevated social position seems to have come as a matter of course. People resent professors even more when they seem to attack the institutions that give people's lives meaning, such as the military, the church, and the traditional family. Denouncing any of those things from behind the shield of tenure and potentially at taxpayer expense is offensive to most Americans.

It is also offensive to many professors who are not at elite institutions.

The "public be damned" attitude of some academic provocateurs ignores the impact that their grandstanding has on higher education as a whole—on the lives of professors farther down in the academic-status hierarchy. Professors at elite institutions can do as they please; they are not going to bear the brunt of cutbacks inspired by their more extreme remarks, or be regarded with suspicion by their students, most of whom think as they do because they come from the same social stratum.

Again, most professors are not part of that small, elite culture of pseudoradicalism. Outside the major universities, most of us have more ordinary social backgrounds and more moderate views. We are people who worked hard at school, won scholarships, invested many years in our educations, became admirers of traditional disciplines, devoted ourselves idealistically to scholarship and teaching, and trusted the system.

A lot of us entered graduate school following the promise of tenure-track jobs being available in the not-so-distant future—the familiar "labor-shortage hoax." But an increasing percentage of Ph.D.'s in the last 40 years have ended up working for poverty-class wages with no benefits or job security. Far from being a leisure class, most college teachers are sharing the economic stresses faced by millions of other displaced, downsized, and outsourced workers who see no relief on the horizon.

Yet, for some reason, most graduate students and adjuncts remain unrealistically aspirational: They do not work together to reform the academic labor system because they still believe that they will, somehow, become tenure-track professors on the basis of individual merit. The thousands of adjuncts who staff most college courses are like the part-time warehouse worker who doesn't want the rich to pay more taxes because he buys a lottery ticket every day.

Whose interest does it serve for most academics to alienate themselves from the working class, and for the working class to regard all professors as elitists with whom they have no common interests? What is it going to take for academe to become part of a broader movement for economic opportunity, instead of being perceived—sometimes rightly—as an impediment to that goal?

Those are larger questions than I can answer in a column. But some changes could take place within academe—in addition to the ones I suggested last month—that could begin to disrupt the unproductive divisions between professors and the broader public.

First, academics should begin to think of ourselves as workers rather than members of an elite profession. We should stop competing with each other individually and look for ways to build solidarity across the divisions of discipline, institutional hierarchy, and academic rank.

Second, academe needs to work harder to deal with the ways that social class has isolated its leading institutions from the perspectives of most Americans.

Third, we need to take the economic concerns of our students more seriously at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It is no longer enough to merely teach subjects we happen to find interesting.

Meanwhile, we need to work together to improve our image in the public imagination. Most of us are working long hours with our students and managing the business of our institutions for relatively modest salaries—when we are reliably employed at all. But a large number of people are convinced, as an article of faith, that we are all millionaires who engage in pointless research with the goal of indoctrinating students into radical beliefs. We need to work harder to crowd out the more polarizing examples of academic work with evidence of our enormous dedication to furthering the public good.

Given enough evidence of good-faith efforts, we might begin to move away from the tired clichés of the culture wars toward a new coalition that aligns academe with the interests of most citizens.

Thomas H. Benton is the pen name of William Pannapacker, an associate professor of English at Hope College.

Jensen Comment
Can you think of other reasons to "hate us?" For example, many employees in the private and public sectors give up their returns from work-related consulting and book royalties. Top professors six-figure salaries and keep additional consulting fees and book royalties that, in many instances, are enhanced by the reputations of their employers. For example, a MIT professor who consults or obtains successful textbook royalties greatly benefits by being affiliated with one of the great universities of the world. Sounds like a cushy deal to me!

The counter argument of course is that professors would do less consulting and textbook writing if they did not get huge rewards for their added efforts. The public, however, does not always see it this way, especially when they are taxpayers helping to pay the salaries of the professors.

When does "questionable management" become fraud?
Raising university funds to privately publish a professor's book?
"UVa Audit Finds 'Questionable' Management by Journal Editor," by Robin Wilson, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 20, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/UVa-Audit-Finds-Questionable/125034/

Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Hate


To date Nadine has eight modules on accounting fraud plus more modules on other types of fraud
A woman known as "Fraud Girl" ran a series of weekly columns in Simoleon Sense. Now Fraud Girl has her own blog called Sleight of Hand ---
 http://sleightfraud.blogspot.com/
Her real name is Nadine Sebai
Now I have two women to stalk in Chicago ---
Francine --- http://retheauditors.com/ 
Nadine  ---  http://sleightfraud.blogspot.com/

Nadine's accounting modules to date --- http://sleightfraud.blogspot.com/search/label/Accounting

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting education blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm


Bravo American ingenuity and American private enterprise

Forwarded by Dr. Wolff

Far be it for an American President to publicly congratulate (let alone even mention) American ingenuity and American private enterprise for the miracle rescue of the miners.

1. SCHRAMM, INC. of West Chester, PA, built the drills and equipment used to reach the trapped miners.

2. CENTER ROCK, INC, from Berlin, PA, built the drill bits used to reach the miners.

3. UPS, the US shipping company, delivered the 13-ton drilling equipment from Pennsylvania to Chile in less than 48 hours.

4. Crews from LAYNE CHRISTENSEN CO., of Wichita , KS and its subsidiary GEOTEC BOYLES BROS., worked the drills and machinery to locate and reach the miners and then enlarge the holes to ultimately rescue them.

5. Jeff Hart of Denver, CO, was called off his job drilling water wells for the U.S. Army's forward operating bases in Afghanistan to lead the drilling crew that reached the miners.

6. ATLAS COPCO CONSTRUCTION MINING CO., of Milwaukee. WI, provided consulting on how to make drilling equipment from different sources work together under differing pressure specifications.

7. ARIES CENTRAL CALIFORNIA VIDEO, of Fresno, California, designed the special cameras that were lowered nearly a mile into the ground sending back video of the miners.

8. ZEPHYR TECHNOLOGIES, of Annapolis, MD, made the remote monitors of vital signs that miners wore during their ascent.

9. NASA engineere designed the "Phoenix" capsule that the miners would be brought to the surface in, and provided medical consulting, special diets and Spandex suits to maintain miners' blood pressure, as they're brought back to the surface.

Also, Canadian based PRECISION DRILLING CORP. and South African based MURRAY & ROBERTS Co., drilled a backup rescue shaft, in case the American rig failed . . . which it didn't.

 


Question
What company accounts for 20% of the Internet traffic at peak times?

Hint:  It's not traffic to Google or Bob Jensen's site.

"Netflix Streaming Accounts for 20% of Peak Internet Traffic," by Audrey Walters, Read/Write Blog, October 21, 2010 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/netflix_streaming_accounts_for_20_of_peak_internet.php#more

It's no surprise that Netflix is preparing to make a move to a streaming-only service. As we reported earlier today, demand for Netflix's streaming service is on the rise.

Netflix's roughly 16 million subscribers can access streaming content from a variety of devices - XBox 360, iPads, laptops (and that's just in my household). And that adds up to a substantial increase in demand. A recent study has found that Netflix makes up more than 20% of downstream Internet traffic during peak times in the U.S.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I'm really going to miss the arrival of movie CDs twice and sometimes three times a week in our rural mailbox.


"Whatever Happened to ... Virtual Reality? Remember the movie Lawnmower Man? Here's why we're not even close," MIT's Technology Review, October 21, 2010 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/25917/?nlid=3673

The early 90's were awesome. Bill Waters was still drawing Calvin and Hobbes, the tattered remnants of the Cold War were falling down around our ears, and most of Wall Street was convinced that the Macintosh was a computer for effete graphic designers and that Apple was more or less on its way out.

Into this time of innocence came a radical vision of the future, epitomized by the movie Lawnmower Man. It was a future in which Hollywood starlets had virtual intercourse with developmentally challenged computer geeks in Tron-style bodysuits and everything looked like it was rendered by a Commodore Amiga.

Anyway, at that time Virtual Reality was a Big Deal. Jaron Lanier, the computer scientist most closely associated with the idea, was bouncing from one important position to another, developing virtual worlds with head mounted displays and, later, heading up the National Tele-immersion initiative, "a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet 2," whatever the heck that was.

Google Trend shows the steady decline in searches for "Virtual Reality" Soon some sensed that the technology wasn't bringing about the revolution that had been promised. In a 1993 column for Wired that earns a 9 out of 10 for hilarity and a 2 out of 10 for accuracy, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab (who I'm praying will have a sense of humor about this) asked the question that was on everyone's mind: Virtual Reality: Oxymoron or Pleonasm?

It didn't matter if anyone knew what he was talking about, because time has proved most of it to be nonsense:

"The argument will be made that head-mounted displays are not acceptable because people feel silly wearing them. The same was once said about stereo headphones. If Sony's Akio Morita had not insisted on marketing the damn things, we might not have the Walkman today. I expect that within the next five years more than one in ten people will wear head-mounted computer displays while traveling in buses, trains, and planes."..."One company, whose name I am obliged to omit, will soon introduce a VR display system with a parts cost of less than US$25."

Affordable VR headsets were just around the corner, really? And the only real barrier to adoption, according to Negroponte? Lag. Computers in 1993 just weren't fast enough to react in real time when a user turned his or her head, breaking the illusion of the virtual.

According to Moore's Law, we've gone through something like 10 doublings of computer power since 1993, so computers should be about a thousand times as powerful as they were when this piece was written - not to mention the advances in massively parallel graphics processing brought about by the widespread adoption of GPUs, and we're still not there.

So what was it, really, that kept us from getting to Virtual Reality?

For one thing, we moved the goal posts - now it's all about augmented reality, in which the virtual is laid over the real. Now you have a whole new set of problems - how do you make the virtual line up perfectly with the real when your head has six degrees of freedom and you're outside where there aren't many spatial referents for your computer to latch onto?

And most important of all, how do you develop screens tiny enough to present the same resolution as a large computer monitor, but in something like 1/400th the space? This is exactly the problem that has plagued the industry leader in display headsets, Vuzix. Their products are fine for watching movies, but don't try using them as a monitor replacement.

Consumer-level Virtual Reality, it turns out, is really, really hard - not quite Artificial Intelligence hard, but so much harder than anyone expected that people just aren't excited anymore. The Trough of Disillusionment on this technology is deep and long.

That doesn't mean Virtual Reality is gone forever - remember how many false starts touch computing had before technologists succeeded with, of all things, a phone?

And, just a coda, even though the public long ago gave up on searching for Virtual Reality, the news media never got tired of it. Which just shows you how totally out of touch we can be:

Comments 

Artificial intelligence
To my opinion there is a big need to artificial intelligence, therefore the virtual reality research has future. I wish the mankind had artificial "people", who work instead him. Virtual reality must be created from the simple reality, and storaged in big memories of artificial creatures. Afterwards these robots can learn anything... Rate this comment: (Reply) vkrmful 10/22/2010 Posts:1

VR, AR, etc.
The problem with all of these technologies is not just interface (getting the tools to work well), it is also one of content and content creation. I would argue that iPhone only made touch interfaces sexy again because they created a platform that had just enough tools to make it easy for the 3rd party comunity to generate lots of exciting content for it that leveraged the interface. If someone could create an inexpensive VR/AR system and tool kit that not just worked but also made it easy to for instance point the system's cameras at a nearby object and get a workable shaded 3D model which the user could easily manipulate and use to create new conent I think these products will continue to stay out of the consumer space. Sure bits and pieces of AR and VR will continue to creep into our lives but don't expect any explosions anytime soon there is a lot of work on this stuff left to be done. 

Re: VR, AR, etc.
VR has to be vectored, In order to deal with the specter, Of people losing their way, While navigating their stay, In a world where reality is sectored. Rate this comment: (Reply) luddite 10/22/2010 Posts:151 Avg Rating:

Jensen Comment
High end virtual reality learning was and is too expensive for main stream higher education. Second Life is vastly inferior to virtual reality but was more affordable until the 50% academic discount was taken away. Any type of virtual world learning beyond video is probably to technical facilitate and deliver for mainstream higher education Now in the military training for most any nation, it is quite another matter where virtual reality is too valuable to ignore..

Bob Jensen's threads on virtual learning worlds ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#VirtualWorldResearch

Bob Jensen's threads on multivariate data visualization are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm


In Defense of Whistle Blowing

October 27, 2010 message from Bob Jensen

Hi David,

I once had a professor who asserted in class that America was a land of cop haters who despised the scum that ratted to the cops for whatever reason --- a posted reward, a lighter sentence, media attention, book royalties, guilty conscience, religious guilt/fear, personal revenge, or whatever.

American is also a land where it's often very difficult to detect perpetrators of crimes and to get convictions without despised scums that rat/snitch to the cops. The most important power of the police is that of being the place where whistleblowers/informants come forth to aid in detecting perpetrators of crimes and to help in gaining convictions in court.

I would not say I'm such a huge fan of whistleblowers. I just don't despise them as much as dastardly criminals. And I'm a realist who genuinely feels that many more criminals would go scott free if it were not for whistleblowers/informants.

I also think that we sometimes dwell on motives we don't respect (e.g., collecting rewards, book royalties, and revenge) and overlook the price paid by whistleblowers (ostracism, loss of friends, loss of job, loss of career, loss of savings, loss of respect, and fear of retaliation).

Thus we are torn between hating whistleblowers and desperately needing them for the criminal justice system. I would assert that nearly all corporate frauds have been uncovered because of whistleblowers and not internal or external auditors acting without the help of some whistleblowers along the way. Of course, sometimes the whistleblowers are also auditors who sometimes see the need to bypass the chain of command.

Trivia Questions
Who were the famous whistleblowers working for Enron and WorldCom?
How did they bypass the chain of command? (especially interesting in the case of Enron)

Hint:  Both were women accountants!

Bob Jensen's threads on Enron and WorldCom ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on whistle blowing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#WhistleBlowing


"SEC Whistleblower Fund Totals $450 Million," Huffington Post, October 29, 2010 ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/29/sec-whistleblower-fund-450-million_n_776397.html

The Securities and Exchange Commission says it has set aside about $450 million for payments to outside whistleblowers whose information results in successful cases and penalties collected from companies or individuals.

The SEC set up the program in accordance with the financial overhaul law enacted in July. It follows intense public criticism of the agency for the breakdown that allowed Bernard Madoff's multibillion-dollar fraud to go undetected for 16 years, despite numerous red flags raised by whistleblowers.

A report issued Friday by the SEC shows it has put $451.9 million into a new fund to pay whistleblowers, which must have a minimum $300 million.

Bob Jensen's threads on whistle blowing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#WhistleBlowing


The Idiotic Top Tools for Learning Compiled by Jane Hart

"Top 100 Tech Tools for 2010," by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside the Box Blog, October 20, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/top-100-tech-tools-for-2010/

Each year, I look forward to the “Top 100 Tools for Learning” list compiled by Jane Hart (Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, UK).  This year’s tools were recommended by 545 learning professionals from around the world.  You may recognize many of the tools on the list.  Some have been around for a while.  Pay particular attention to tools shaded in “blue.”  These are new to the 2010 list.  Click the picture below to access the Top 100 Tools for Learning web page.

Jensen Comment
In the past I've been very critical of this supposed "Top 100 Tools for Learning." I'm still not impressed in 2010, but there are a few improvements ---
http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100-2010.html

Where is Blackboard and Moodle? --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard
In 2010 Blackboard was added at Rank 68 (far too low)m and Moodle came in at Rank 10 (about right).

Where is Blackboard and WebCT? --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard
In 2010 this was added at Rank 68 (far too low)

Where are the many important tools for handicapped learners? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
Jane seems to never find some of this great learning software for the disabled.

Where is Camtasia? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
In 2010 this was added at Rank 27 (finally)

Where are the edutainment and learning game alternatives? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

Where is Matlab (used in virtually every U.S. university) --- --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB

Like it or not, Wikipedia is one of the most sought out sights in the world by e-Learners --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
There are risks, but the odds are high that users will get helpful learning information and links.
In 2010 this was finally added at Rank 16. It should've been Rank 1.

Where are HTML and related XML/RTF and XBRL markups?  --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm  

Where are the many huge and free online libraries? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
In 2010 various Google sites are mentioned, but not the vast Google Library Project ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/electronicliterature.htm#OnlineBookFinders

Where are the important blogs and listservs? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

I could go on and on here! Jane is not a pain, just a yawn!

Bob Jensen

August 3, 2007 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Bob:
I agree with you that the list is flawed - Toolbook should be #1

Richard J. Campbell

mailto:campbell@rio.edu

Bob Jensen's threads on the history of course authoring, management, and presentation technologies are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm


When does "questionable management" become fraud?
Raising university funds to privately publish a professor's book?
"UVa Audit Finds 'Questionable' Management by Journal Editor," by Robin Wilson, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 20, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/UVa-Audit-Finds-Questionable/125034/

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm


Three Tidbits from the Stanford Knowledge Base in October 2010

Question
How do leaderless organizations find their creative ideas?

From the Stanford Knowledge Base in October 2010

Books
Unexpected Fame- They Wrote the Tea Party ‘Bible’

A book written by two Stanford Graduate School of Business alums describing how leaderless organizations find their ideas has resonated with groups ranging from the Tea Party to environmental organizations. Their 2006 book, The Starfish and the Spider, champions the strength and flexibility of autonomous organizations.

Read the Book on Haven blog
http://e2ma.net/go/8722174727/3165975/99496059/28059/goto:http:/bookhaven.stanford.edu/
Jensen Comment:  In truth I could not find this book at Cynthia Haven's blog. Maybe it really is there.

Especially take a look at
http://ffbsccn.wordpress.com/2010/07/31/saul-alinsky-the-starfish-and-the-spider-wisdom-for-a-new-generation-on-both-sides-of-the-aisle/

Jensen Comment
I'm not a great fan of political extremists on either side of most issues (for example I support pay-as-you-go socialized medicine and a new VAT tax despised by corporate executives), but this is an interesting book on the nature of autonomous organizations in general.

 

Question
How is extreme bank leveraging now harming the greater society?

Bank Regulation
Why Bank Equity Is Not Expensive (Includes video)
Three Stanford University Graduate School of Business (GSB) faculty disagree strongly with leaders of the banking industry who contend equity is expensive. In fact, Professor Anat Admati and her co-authors argue that allowing banks to continue leveraging themselves is like subsidizing polluters - it will harm the greater society.
http://e2ma.net/go/8722174727/3165975/99496056/28059/goto:http:/www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/admati_equity.html?utm_source=newsletter-october2010&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=knowledgebase

 

Question
 If an executive has hedged the equity position, why does the board continue to grant new equity and not cash?

 

Accounting
Pledge (and Hedge) Allegiance to the Company (PDF)
Many executives accumulate substantial dollar ownership in the firm they manage as part of their compensation package. They may want to limit their exposure by hedging a portion of the position through financial instruments or pledging shares as collateral for a loan. Can boards explain why they do or do not allow executive hedging? asks Professor David Larcker. If an executive has hedged the equity position, why does the board continue to grant new equity and not cash?

 

Pledge (and Hedge) Allegiance to the Company
http://e2ma.net/go/8722174727/3165975/99496057/28059/goto:http:/www.gsb.stanford.edu/cgrp/research/documents/CGRP11-HedgingandPledging.pdf


"Admission to Top B-Schools Gets Easier:  With applications to MBA programs starting to slip, getting into some top B-schools is easier than it has been in years,"  by Francesca Di Meglio, Business Week, October 14, 2010 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/oct2010/bs20101014_393850.htm?link_position=link1

"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/


"Here's Your Diploma. Now Here's Your Mop," by Don Troop, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 17, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Heres-Your-Diploma-Now/124982/

Eastern Michigan University gave Sam Fanning a degree in network and information-technology administration last December. A month later, after he couldn't find work, it gave him a job as a custodian in the student center.

Mr. Fanning feels fortunate to be working in a unionized job with benefits. As he toils to make monthly $500 payments on his student loan, he is able to chuckle about his situation. But it isn't the future he envisioned for himself.

Q. Why did you decide to take this job?

A. I took it because I couldn't get any other job.

Q. What did you do to look for work?

A. I was looking for work while I was still in school. Maybe three or four months before I graduated, I started searching. ... I was checking all the job-search places and looking around locally to see if anyone was hiring. I looked at a lot of the universities in the area. Borders's headquarters is nearby, mostly larger places like that. I had one interview, but they chose someone else.

Q. Are you still looking?

A. I've just started looking again recently, but once I got the job at the university, I stopped looking, because I planned to get a couple more certifications. Once I found out I could go to grad school, I thought maybe I'll take a break and do that. [Eastern Michigan offers free tuition to its employees.]

Q. Do you wear a uniform?

A. Well, I don't have it yet, but I'm supposed to.

Q. How much are you paid?

A. I started out at $13.01 an hour.

Q. That doesn't sound terrible for just getting out of school.

A. I knew that that was probably the best nonskilled job that I could get. It's unionized, so we have a little better pay, and I also have benefits. I get sick and vacation time. I have a 401(k) that they contribute to. I also get pretty decent health care. And the tuition-assistance benefit is pretty good.

Q. Describe a typical day.

A. I work the midnight shift, Tuesday through Saturday, 10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., so it's a lot of deep cleaning. ... I go through and clean bathrooms, and I'm in charge of cleaning one of the floors of the building as well.

Q. Do you ever run into any of your old classmates?

A. No, I don't, because most of them are graduated as well, although I do see some people I know.

Q. How do they treat you?

A. They're aware of my situation. I don't think anyone looks down on me, because everyone who is graduating or is close to graduation is probably thinking the same thing.

Q. Like "Can you get me a job, too?"

A. Yeah.

Q. Do your professors know you're there?

A. One of them does. Most of the core classes in my major were taught by one professor. I communicate with him once in a while. ... While I was an undergrad, he told me about [unpaid] internship positions.

Q. Did you take any of those internships?

A. I wasn't able to, because when I was an undergrad I was working close to 30 hours a week and going to school full time.

Q. What's the worst mess you've ever had to clean up?

A. It could be pretty graphic [laughs]. Some of the stuff happens regularly, so I'm sort of desensitized to it, like [feces] that's caked on the toilet bowls, things like that.

The worst occurrence I've ever had was one day when there was a large event. Someone had dropped a baby diaper on the carpeted floor and smeared it in. I got a radio call about it. I went up there, and there were tons of people standing around gawking, making comments. I just got really angry. I wanted to quit that day. It smelled terrible, it was stuck in the carpet, it was terrible to clean up. ... Some people were just standing there laughing about it.

Q. What's next for you?

A. I feel like this is the biggest decision-making time of my life right now. I have so many things I could do, but it's hard to decide which one's the right one. I'm definitely applying to grad school. I'm also trying to look for jobs. But I don't know if it's a good idea to take a job. My education would be free, and I think that eventually anyone who wants to have some upward mobility probably goes back to school at some point in their life.

Q. What's your debt right now?

A. I have about $35,000 taken out. It's not bad compared to some people, but looking back, I think I could have done more to reduce the debt. I took out a little extra some semesters, and I always ended up spending it instead of paying it back like I should have. I also initially had a scholarship if I could keep my GPA above 3.5, and it dropped to a 3.45, so I lost that. I didn't really think a lot of it at the time, but that would have really added up. I think it was three grand a year.

Q. Have you considered moving?

A. I've considered it. [He is locked into an apartment lease, though a sublet is possible.] I'd like to look out of state, but right now I almost feel like I'm sort of worse off, because in a year I haven't really worked with any IT. I don't have any on-the-job experience. When I apply for those jobs, it's sort of hard for me to feel legitimate. I consider myself a really quick learner. I can excel in that sort of environment given some time, but I feel I'd be a detriment at first.

Q. What has this experience done to your confidence?

A. I'm not really too bent out of shape about it. I know that one of the things I should have had was some real-life work experience when I was an undergrad, and I was unable to get that. There are some reasons why I don't have a job right now. I don't feel incompetent. I just feel like my potential isn't being used.

 


Hiding Government Debt is About the Worst Thing That Ever Happened in Accounting History

"The Biggest Race You Haven't Heard Of A rare chance to defuse the pension bomb," The Wall Street Journal, October 21, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304741404575564133687036768.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t

Forget Andrew Cuomo and Carl Paladino. Let us turn instead to a race that might truly matter in terms of the nation's economic future. It's the most important 2010 election you've never heard of—for comptroller of New York State.

"Comptroller" is the second or third most boring word in the English language. Comptroller: That's the green-eyeshade guy who keeps the books. He's always adding up columns and somehow it all balances. But as everyone now knows, in the public sector the books don't balance. They balloon.

New York, like California and many other once-important states, is sitting on a public- pension debt bomb. If it blows, it will take great swaths of the productive American economy with it for years. Harry Wilson thinks he can defuse the New York bomb.

At this point the article turns political about unions so I will not quote it other than to say that NYC Mayor Bloomberg and many of our best bipartisan leaders think that if the pension bomb is not defused it will explode with immense repercussions --- far worse than anything al Qaeda can deliver.

Continued in article

From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on July 10, 2009

Public Pensions Cook the Books
by Andrew G. Biggs
The Wall Street Journal

Jul 06, 2009
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com

TOPICS: Advanced Financial Accounting, Financial Accounting Standards Board, Governmental Accounting, Market-Value Approach, Pension Accounting

SUMMARY: As Mr. Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, puts it, "public employee pension plans are plagued by overgenerous benefits, chronic underfunding, and now trillion dollar stock-market losses. Based on their preferred accounting methods...these plans are underfunded nationally by around $310 billion. [But] the numbers are worse using market valuation methods...which discount benefit liabilities at lower interest rates...."

CLASSROOM APPLICATION: Introducing the importance of interest rate assumptions, and the accounting itself, for pension plans can be accomplished with this article.

QUESTIONS: 
1. (Introductory) Summarize the accounting for pension plans, including the process for determining pension liabilities, the funded status of a pension plan, pension expense, the use of a discount rate, the use of an expected rate of return. You may base your answer on the process used by corporations rather than governmental entities.

2. (Advanced) Based on the discussion in the article, what is the difference between accounting for pension plans by U.S. corporations following FASB requirements and governmental entities following GASB guidance?

3. (Introductory) What did the administrators of the Montana Public Employees' Retirement Board and the Montana Teachers' Retirement System include in their advertisements to hire new actuaries?

4. (Advanced) What is the concern with using the "expected return" on plan assets as the rate to discount future benefits rather than using a low, risk free rate of return for this calculation? In your answer, comment on the author's statement that "future benefits are considered to be riskless" and the impact that assessment should have on the choice of a discount rate.

5. (Advanced) What is the response by public pension officers regarding differences between their plans and those of corporate entities? How do they argue this leads to differences in required accounting? Do you agree or disagree with this position? Support your assessment.

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island

 

"Public Pensions Cook the Books:  Some plans want to hide the truth from taxpayers," by Andrew Biggs, The Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2009 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124683573382697889.html

Here's a dilemma: You manage a public employee pension plan and your actuary tells you it is significantly underfunded. You don't want to raise contributions. Cutting benefits is out of the question. To be honest, you'd really rather not even admit there's a problem, lest taxpayers get upset.

What to do? For the administrators of two Montana pension plans, the answer is obvious: Get a new actuary. Or at least that's the essence of the managers' recent solicitations for actuarial services, which warn that actuaries who favor reporting the full market value of pension liabilities probably shouldn't bother applying.

Public employee pension plans are plagued by overgenerous benefits, chronic underfunding, and now trillion dollar stock-market losses. Based on their preferred accounting methods -- which discount future liabilities based on high but uncertain returns projected for investments -- these plans are underfunded nationally by around $310 billion.

The numbers are worse using market valuation methods (the methods private-sector plans must use), which discount benefit liabilities at lower interest rates to reflect the chance that the expected returns won't be realized. Using that method, University of Chicago economists Robert Novy-Marx and Joshua Rauh calculate that, even prior to the market collapse, public pensions were actually short by nearly $2 trillion. That's nearly $87,000 per plan participant. With employee benefits guaranteed by law and sometimes even by state constitutions, it's likely these gargantuan shortfalls will have to be borne by unsuspecting taxpayers.

Some public pension administrators have a strategy, though: Keep taxpayers unsuspecting. The Montana Public Employees' Retirement Board and the Montana Teachers' Retirement System declare in a recent solicitation for actuarial services that "If the Primary Actuary or the Actuarial Firm supports [market valuation] for public pension plans, their proposal may be disqualified from further consideration."

Scott Miller, legal counsel of the Montana Public Employees Board, was more straightforward: "The point is we aren't interested in bringing in an actuary to pressure the board to adopt market value of liabilities theory."

While corporate pension funds are required by law to use low, risk-adjusted discount rates to calculate the market value of their liabilities, public employee pensions are not. However, financial economists are united in believing that market-based techniques for valuing private sector investments should also be applied to public pensions.

Because the power of compound interest is so strong, discounting future benefit costs using a pension plan's high expected return rather than a low riskless return can significantly reduce the plan's measured funding shortfall. But it does so only by ignoring risk. The expected return implies only the "expectation" -- meaning, at least a 50% chance, not a guarantee -- that the plan's assets will be sufficient to meet its liabilities. But when future benefits are considered to be riskless by plan participants and have been ruled to be so by state courts, a 51% chance that the returns will actually be there when they are needed hardly constitutes full funding.

Public pension administrators argue that government plans fundamentally differ from private sector pensions, since the government cannot go out of business. Even so, the only true advantage public pensions have over private plans is the ability to raise taxes. But as the Congressional Budget Office has pointed out in 2004, "The government does not have a capacity to bear risk on its own" -- rather, government merely redistributes risk between taxpayers and beneficiaries, present and future.

Market valuation makes the costs of these potential tax increases explicit, while the public pension administrators' approach, which obscures the possibility that the investment returns won't achieve their goals, leaves taxpayers in the dark.

For these reasons, the Public Interest Committee of the American Academy of Actuaries recently stated, "it is in the public interest for retirement plans to disclose consistent measures of the economic value of plan assets and liabilities in order to provide the benefits promised by plan sponsors."

Nevertheless, the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, an umbrella group representing government employee pension funds, effectively wants other public plans to take the same low road that the two Montana plans want to take. It argues against reporting the market valuation of pension shortfalls. But the association's objections seem less against market valuation itself than against the fact that higher reported underfunding "could encourage public sector plan sponsors to abandon their traditional pension plans in lieu of defined contribution plans."

The Government Accounting Standards Board, which sets guidelines for public pension reporting, does not currently call for reporting the market value of public pension liabilities. The board announced last year a review of its position regarding market valuation but says the review may not be completed until 2013.

This is too long for state taxpayers to wait to find out how many trillions they owe.

 

Bob Jensen's threads about fraud in government are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#Lawmakers

The Sad State of Government Accounting and Accountability ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#GovernmentalAccounting

Pensions and Post-retirement Benefits: Schemes for Hiding Debt ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#Pensions


Rick Lillie has to be frustrated. First his beloved TokBox software became vaporware. Now his highly acclaimed Collanos is possibly history.

"Collanos Workplace — Seems to have died!" by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside the Box Blog,October 22, 2010 —
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/collanos-workplace-seems-to-have-died/

In a previous posting, I introduced you to Collanos Workplace and told you how great the collaboration software is, especially for use with distance teaching and learning projects.  I have used it successfully with both undergraduate and graduate students.  For example, during Winter Quarter 2010, I used Collanos Workplace to guide five grad students through independent study projects.  Collanos Workplace made it easy to communicate with students and keep the whole process under control.  In a nutshell, I felt that Collanos Workplace was a great collaboration tool!

Jensen Comment
Collaboration software sees to be particularly vulnerable. Google Wave crashed on shore. However, Google Docs lives on with great prospects for the future.
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Collaboration


Criticisms of the Doubters: Missing Data is Not Necessarily Scientific Misconduct
"Difficulties in Defining Errors in Case Against Harvard Researcher," by Nicholas Wade, The New York Times, October 25, 2010 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/science/26hauser.html?_r=1&hpw 

Jensen Comment
Hauser's accusers backed off slightly. It would seem that the best scientific evidence would be for independent researchers to collect new data and try to replicate Hauser's claims.

We must keep in mint that Hauser himself retracted one of his own scientific journal articles.

Bob Jensen's threads on validity challenges and research replication are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm


"New York Court of Appeals Stands By Corporate Man: In Pari Delicto Prevails," by Francine McKenna, re:TheAuditors, October 22, 2010 ---
http://retheauditors.com/2010/10/22/new-york-court-of-appeals-stands-by-corporate-man-in-pari-delicto-prevails/

The New York Court of Appeals decided on October 21, 2010, by a vote of 4-3, to “decline to alter our precedent relating to in pari delicto and imputation and the adverse interest exception, as we would have to do to bring about the expansion of third-party liability sought by plaintiffs here.”

 

The decision is flawed, misguided and strongly biased towards corporate interests rather than shareholder and investor interests. Imputationa fundamental principle that has outlived its usefulness and that defies common sense and fairness – has been reaffirmed in cases of third-party advisor negligence or collusion.

“A fraud that by its nature will benefit the corporation is not “adverse” to the corporation’s interests, even if it was actually motivated by the agent’s desire for personal gain (Price, 62 NY at 384). Thus, “[s]hould the ‘agent act[] both for himself and for the principal,’ . . . application of the [adverse interest] exception would be precluded” (Capital Wireless Corp. v Deloitte & Touche, 216 AD2d 663, 666 [3d Dept 1995] [quoting Matter of Crazy Eddie Sec. Litig., 802 F Supp 804, 817 (EDNY 1992)]; see also Center, 66 NY2d at 785 [the adverse interest exception "cannot be invoked merely because . . . .(the agent) is not acting primarily for his principal"]). [*12]

New York law thus articulates the adverse interest exception in a way that is consistent with fundamental principles of agency. To allow a corporation to avoid the consequences of corporate acts simply because an employee performed them with his personal profit in mind would enable the corporation to disclaim, at its convenience, virtually every act its officers undertake. “[C]orporate officers, even in the most upright enterprises, can always be said, in some meaningful sense, to act for their own interests” (Grede v McGladrey & Pullen LLP, 421 BR 879, 886 [ND Ill 2008]). A corporate insider’s personal interests — as an officer, employee, or shareholder of the company — are often deliberately aligned with the corporation’s interests by way of, for example, stock options or bonuses, the value of which depends upon the corporation’s financial performance.

And this is ok?

A majority of the New York Court of Appeals bought the self-serving, selfish and unjust arguments of the defendants and their flunky amicus brief toadies supporting criminal corporate fraudsters and, get this, the shareholders of the accounting firms (!!). The New York Court of Appeals abandoned the shareholders and creditors of Refco and AIG for criminals and incompetents.

I could not have imagined more contemptible excuses for judicial cowardice if I were writing this decision for a novel of corporate cronyism to the extreme in a Utopian nirvana for capitalist parasites.

“In particular, why should the interests of innocent stakeholders of corporate fraudsters trump those of innocent stakeholders of the outside professionals who are the defendants in these cases?

…In a sense, plaintiffs’ proposals may be viewed as creating a double standard whereby the innocent stakeholders of the corporation’s outside professionals are held responsible for the sins of their errant agents while the innocent stakeholders of the corporation itself are not charged with knowledge of their wrongdoing agents. And, of course, the corporation’s agents [*19]would almost invariably play the dominant role in the fraud and therefore would be more culpable than the outside professional’s agents who allegedly aided and abetted the insiders or did not detect the fraud at all or soon enough. The owners and creditors of KPMG and PwC may be said to be at least as “innocent” as Refco’s unsecured creditors and AIG’s stockholders.

The doctrine’s full name is in pari delicto potior est conditio defendentis, meaning “in a case of equal or mutual fault, the position of the [defending party] is the better one” (Baena, 453 F3d at 6 n 5 [internal quotation marks omitted]).

I have some other names for it:

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on legal issues and professionalism are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm


Goodwill Impairment and Liabilities Contingent Upon Uncertain Politics of the  Future

Lehman bought back 100% of its Repo 105/108 poison with the auditor's blessing that these were truly sales
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Ernst
Bank of America, however, is resisting buying back its dumping off of poisoned securities

Wouldn't it be a kick if tens of thousands of local Main Street banks and mortgage companies had to buy back their fraudulent mortgages sold down stream to Fannie, Freddie, etc.?

Teaching Case from The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on October 22, 2010

BofA Resists Buying Back Bad Loans
by: Dan Fitzpatrick
Oct 20, 2010
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com

TOPICS: Bad Debts, Banking, Flexible Spending Accounts, Loan Loss Allowance
 

SUMMARY: Bank of America Corp. "..vowed to fight government backed demand that it repurchase loans that allegedly didn't meet underwriting guidelines and other promises." Those demanding the repurchases include Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as well as other investors such as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Neuberger Bergman Group, BlackRock Inc., Western Asset Management Co. and Pacific Investment Management Co, or Pimco. These demands were the first time that Fannie and Freddie have attempted to force banks to buy back mortgage-backed securities that were issued by Wall Street, not by Freddie and Fannie themselves. BofA made these statements as it reported a $4.3 billion loss, primarily stemming from a goodwill charge related to a decline in value of its credit card business that the company says stems from regulatory changes; otherwise, the company would have earned $3.1 billion.
 

CLASSROOM APPLICATION: The article covers loan losses and a goodwill impairment charge, useful for covering these topics in a financial reporting class.
 

QUESTIONS:
1. (Introductory) What are mortgage-backed securities? Why might Bank of America be forced to repurchase these securities or their underlying loans?

2. (Introductory) What is BofA saying it will do in response to investor requests to repurchase these loans?

3. (Introductory) Refer to the related article and describe the response to BofA's announcement. In your answer, define the terms Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and government sponsored entities (GSEs).

4. (Advanced) Describe in general the factors that lead to a goodwill impairment charge. What accounting codification section addresses these requirements?

5. (Advanced) Access the BofA filing on Form 8-K of the earnings press release on October 19, 2010, available at http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/70858/000119312510231353/0001193125-10-231353-index.htm It is also available by clicking on the live link to Bank of America in the online version of the article, then clicking on SEC filings on the left hand side of the page, then clicking on Form 8-K filed on October 19, 2010. Review the selected slides used to facilitate the earnings release conference call with analysts. Describe the goodwill charge.

6. (Advanced) How does a goodwill impairment charge result from "diminished future debit card profitability"?

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island

RELATED ARTICLES:
Regulator for Fannie Set to Get Litigious
by Nick Timiraos
Oct 21, 2010
Online Exclusive

"BofA Resists Buying Back Bad Loans," by: Dan Fitzpatrick, The Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304510704575561763244413610.html?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid

Bank of America Corp. and some of its largest mortgage investors clashed on Tuesday as the bank vowed to fight government-backed demands that it repurchase loans that allegedly didn't meet underwriting guidelines and other promises.

The bank acknowledged receiving a Monday letter from investors alleging that a Bank of America unit didn't properly service 115 bond deals. The investors include Freddie Mac, the government-owned mortgage company. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, its larger sibling, have boosted demands on lenders over the past year to buy back defaulted loans that had been sold to and guaranteed by the mortgage titans.

Now Reporting Track the performances of 150 companies as they report and compare their results with analyst estimates. Sort by reporting date and industry. .More Heard: BofA Is Bracing for a Long War BofA Sues FDIC Over Mortgage Losses Custody Banks Rebound BofA: Not Worried on Mortgages Buyback .But Tuesday's action marks the first step by either company to force banks to buy back mortgage-backed securities that were issued by Wall Street, not by government-backed mortgage giants.

Other investors, some of whom were acting on behalf of their clients, include the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Neuberger Berman Group LLC, BlackRock Inc., Western Asset Management Co. and Allianz SE's Pacific Investment Management Co., or Pimco, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Charlotte, N.C., bank hoped the lifting of its foreclosure sale moratorium would debunk fears that the mortgage process was flawed. But investors grappled with new concerns Tuesday that the bank could be overwhelmed with investor requests to repurchase flawed mortgages made before the U.S. housing collapse. Its shares dropped 54 cents or 4.4% to $11.80. The shares have declined more than 30% since the end of April amid worries about regulatory reform, lackluster revenues and weak loan demand.

Experience WSJ professional Editors' Deep Dive: Banks Face Changing LandscapeFINANCIAL NEWS Banks Must Rethink Their Strategies .Fund Strategy IMF Warns Finance Is Vulnerable .Financial News Could Basel III Rescue Banking?. Access thousands of business sources not available on the free web. Learn More .Chief Executive Brian Moynihan quickly vowed to push back on the repurchase requests.

"We will diligently fight this," Mr. Moynihan told analysts Tuesday.

.A spokesman, responding to Monday's letter, added that "We're not responsible for the poor performance of loans as a result of a bad economy. We don't believe we've breached our obligations as servicer. We will examine every avenue to vigorously defend ourselves."

The bank's defiant stance came as it reported a $7.3 billion loss in the third quarter, or 77 cents per share. The loss was largely the result of a $10.4 billion goodwill charge tied to a decline in value of its credit card business. Without the charge, which the company attributes to a regulatory crimp in its debit-card revenue, the bank would have earned $3.1 billion.

No U.S. bank is more vulnerable to an array of political and financial threats posed by home-lending woes. Bank of America has more repurchase requests than any of its rivals and it services one out of every five U.S. mortgages, many of them picked up from California lender Countrywide Financial Corp. in 2008.

Worries about sloppy mortgage underwriting and servicing practices clouded discussion of the bank's results Tuesday.

The bank on Oct. 1 said it would suspend foreclosures cases in 23 states where court approval is required and on Oct. 8 said it would halt all foreclosures sales in 50 states. Starting Monday, the bank will begin resubmitting court documents in the first 23 states after the company said an internal review of 102,000 cases found no underlying problems. It and other banks initiated reviews following revelations that "robo signers" had approved hundreds of foreclosure documents a day without examining them thoroughly.

Mr. Moynihan said it would take a few more weeks for the bank to complete its assessment of all 50 states, but so far "we don't see the issues that people were worried about."

Concerns about the underlying foreclosure documents amount to "technical issues" that are not a "big deal" for the bank, although he acknowledged it was a "big issue for people who live in the homes."

Investors submitted $4 billion in new mortgage repurchase claims during the third quarter, the bank said. Total claims amounted to $12.8 billion at the end of the third quarter, up from $7.5 billion in the year-ago quarter. The bank has so far set aside $4.4 billion in reserves for these putback attempts, including $872 billion in the third quarter.

A majority of the claims are from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The bank said it sold $1.2 trillion in loans to the government-controlled housing giants from 2004 to 2008 and has thus far received $18 billion in repurchase claims on those loans. The bank has resolved $11.4 billion of the $18 billion, recording a net loss of $2.5 billion on those putbacks, or 22%.

The bank also could face more losses on claims from other investors, although Chief Financial Officer Chuck Noski said those figures are harder to predict.

"This is an area where there is a lot of speculation and commentary but not a lot of specific claims asserted," he said in an interview. The bank said it had received $3.9 billion in private repurchase claims through the end of the third quarter.

Mr. Moynihan said he isn't interested in a large lump sum payment to make the repurchase issue go away. "We're not going to put this behind us to make us feel good," he said. "We're going to make sure that we'll pay when due but not just do a settlement to move the matter behind us."

Sandler O'Neill + Partners analyst Jeff Harte said in a note that "the actual level of future repurchase remains both a key determinant and an unknown." Nomura Securities analyst Glenn Schorr said in a note it is "tough to convince investors on putback risk."

Some analysts also noted several silver linings in Bank of America's results Tuesday.

Excluding the $10.4 billion charge, which the bank attributed entirely to an amendment in the Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law that limits debit-card income, the bank's third-quarter results exceeded Wall Street estimates. Its $3.5 billion in fixed-income revenue also beat rivals Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and credit costs showed improvement. The amount the bank set side for future loan losses was $5.4 billion, compared with $11.7 billion a year ago.

Teaching Case from The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on October 22, 2010

BofA is Bracing for a Long War
by: David Reilly
Oct 20, 2010
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com

TOPICS: Banking, Loan Loss Allowance, Securitization
 

SUMMARY: David Reilly, the author of this article, analyzes the loan loss reserves and potential loan write-offs facing Bank of America(BofA). These assessments are based on information in the BoA earnings release and presentation slides prepared for the related conference call with analysts. The graphic associated with the article shows the large size of the reserve balance at the end of the third quarter relative to past quarters.
 

CLASSROOM APPLICATION: The article is useful to discuss both the latest developments in the mortgage and banking crisis and then to thoroughly analyze loss reserves and bank warranties made on securitized loan portfolios.
 

QUESTIONS:
1. (Introductory) By how much did BoA stock drop on announcement of the investor push for the big bank to buy back mortgage loans sold off as mortgage-backed securities? How much has it dropped since last spring?

2. (Introductory) What are the efforts of investors who bought loans or mortgage-backed securities made by BofA? In your answer, describe your understand of the process for selling mortgage-backed securities.

3. (Advanced) Access the BofA filing on Form 8-K of the earnings press release on October 19, 2010, available at http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/70858/000119312510231353/0001193125-10-231353-index.htm It is also available by clicking on the live link to Bank of America in the online version of the article, then clicking on SEC filings on the left hand side of the page, then clicking on Form 8-K filed on October 19, 2010. Review the selected slides used to facilitate the earnings release conference call with analysts. What points in the discussion in this article are taken from those slides?

4. (Advanced) Focus on the author's analysis of BoA sales to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from 2004 to 2008. How does the author use that information to estimate the impact of possible repurchases and subsequent write-offs of MBS sold to private investors?

5. (Introductory) What does the author conclude in this article?

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island

RELATED ARTICLES:
BofA Resists Buying Back Bad Loans
by Dan Fitzpatrick
Oct 20, 2010
Page: C1

"BofA is Bracing for a Long War," by: David Reilly, The Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304510704575562611959168200.html?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid

Brian Moynihan seemed to be channeling Winston Churchill on Tuesday. Describing how Bank of America will deal with mortgage-bond holders trying to force it to repurchase loans, he made clear the bank shall fight, fight and fight in court.

"We have thousands of people willing to stand and look at every one of these loans," the chief executive declared on the bank's earnings call.

Judging by the 4.4% drop in BofA's stock, the tough talk didn't convince investors. After all, mortgage-bond holders, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, are ratcheting up efforts to return more loans to the bank as "put-backs." And Mr. Moynihan's chances of winning this war depend on knotty legal issues related to questions over loan ownership or the terms on which mortgages were sold to investment pools.

News Hub: BofA Braces for Long Foreclosure War 3:10

David Reilly discusses Bank of America's continuing foreclosure battle. .Even so, Mr. Moynihan's stance should be taken seriously. Bank of America, like other big banks, has the resources and the ability to drag the legal fight out for years. That should reassure the bank's shareholders. Not only could a war of attrition wear out opponents, who already face significant legal hurdles in attempts to bring actions, but it means losses connected to repurchased loans may be stretched over many years and may not ultimately be as severe as some investors fear.

Tuesday, Bank of America tried to address shareholder angst by laying out its experience with repurchase claims. That should help investors think through some scenarios for new claims.

From 2004 to 2008, Bank of America said it sold $1.2 trillion in loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It has received repurchase requests for $18 billion and believes this represents two-thirds of expected claims. That would put total expected claims at about $27 billion, or 2.25% of the total. Of loans repurchased, Bank of America sustained losses of 22%.

Bank of America also sold $750 billion in loans to private investors, which may become subject to new repurchase claims. It said 40% have already paid off.

Say, for example, that repurchase requests on the still-outstanding $450 billion in these loans run at 10 times the rate of those sold to Fannie and Freddie. That would put repurchase requests at about $100 billion. Assume, then, that half the requests were approved and losses ran at 30%. The result would be a hit of about $15 billion.

While a blow, it should be manageable, especially if spread over four or five years. What's more, Bank of America has already lost about $15 billion in market value since announcing it would temporarily halt foreclosures.

Granted, Bank of America and peers still face plenty of unknown legal risks related to loan ownership and securitization. But, for now, the market looks to have already priced in much of the risk facing Bank of America.

 

Bob Jensen's threads on goodwill impairment are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#Impairment

Bob Jensen's threads on intangibles and contingencies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#TheoryDisputes
 


"Putting Twitter to Work with ThinkUp," by Mark Sample, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 28, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/putting-twitter-to-work-with-thinkup/28161?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Earlier this week I reviewed several ways to archive your Twitter activity on your own server, using Your TwapperKeeper, WordPress, or Tweet Nest. I ended my post by hinting at another solution that I wanted share. I’ve saved the best for last, and here it is: ThinkUp.

ThinkUp is an open source PHP application and the brainchild of Lifehacker founding editor Gina Trapani. ThinkUp began for Trapani as a modest side project, which she called Twitalytic. Her idea was to create a web app that could archive, curate, and thread Twitter conversations. It was a great idea. And Twitalytic soon turned into a full scale development project renamed ThinkUp, sponsored by Anil Dash’s nonprofit organization, Expert Labs.

With its latest beta, ThinkUp has an easy 3-step web-based installation, and it does exactly what Trapani set out to do: archive, curate, and thread conversations.

And it rocks.

I initially installed ThinkUp for its archiving capabilities, but using ThinkUp simply to preserve tweets is like using a Ferrari for its cigarette lighter. Sure, you can use the cigarette lighter to charge your phone, but you’re missing the point of having a sports car.

What Makes ThinkUp Different?

ThinkUp can indeed archive your tweets. And with the included Facebook plugin, it can archive your Facebook status updates, along with your friends’ comments to those updates.

But what makes ThinkUp different from other archiving solutions is that it also archives responses to your tweets. And it organizes them. It works like this: if you ask a question on Twitter and somebody replies, that reply is included in the archive and associated with your question.

Let’s take a look at ThinkUp, using my own installation as a case study:

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on social networking in education are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm


Is there a limit to insider trading restrictions and punishments?
Rail yard workers note the number and formal dress of plant tour participants

"Sorkin: So What Is Insider Trading?," by Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times, October 25, 2010 ---
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/sorkin-so-what-is-insider-trading/

"Late last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought an unusual and colorful insider-trading case: It accused two employees who worked in the rail yard of Florida East Coast Industries and their relatives of making more than $1 million by trading on inside information about the takeover of the company.

How did these employees — a mechanical engineer and a trainman — know their company was on the block (for a merger or acquisition)?

Well, they were very observant.

They noticed “there were an unusual number of daytime tours” of the rail yard, the S.E.C. said in its complaint, with “people dressed in business attire.”

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
There are three broad classes of securities market inefficiencies with "insider trading" being the worst of the worst classification. But it appears that this classification has some fuzzy edges and possibly some implications with the already beaten down CAPM.

As employee shareholders, should we contact our lawyers or brokers if there are an unusual number of external CPA auditors with somber faces, dark suits, and high heels?


Papyrus --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus
Early accounting records were written on papyrus

Serious Accounting Historians May Find Some Things of Use Here
Advanced Papyrological Information System from Columbia University --- http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/projects/digital/apis/

Questions
What was an ancient Greek ploy to combat inflation?
How do you account for interest paid in cabbages during hyperinflation?

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and the Carpenter --- http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/walrus.html

"Papyrus Research Provides Insights Into 'Modern Concerns' of Ancient World," Science Daily, October 30, 2010 --- Click Here
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101029092045.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

A University of Cincinnati-based journal devoted to research on papyri is due out Nov. 1. That research sheds light on an ancient world with surprisingly modern concerns: including hoped-for medical cures, religious confusion and the need for financial safeguards.

What's old is new again. That's the lesson that can be taken from the University of Cincinnati-based journal Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, due out Nov. 1.

The annually produced journal, edited since 2006 by Peter van Minnen, UC associate professor of classics, features the most prestigious global research on papyri, a field of study known as papyrology. (Papyrology is formally known as the study of texts on papyrus and other materials, mainly from ancient Egypt and mainly from the period of Greek and Roman rule.)

It's an area of research that is more difficult than you might think. That's because it was common among antiquities dealers of the early 20th century to tear papyri pages apart in order to increase the number of pieces they could sell.

Below are five topics treated in the upcoming 2010 volume of the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists. The five issues resonate with our own concerns today.

IOU cabbage

Katherine Blouin from the University of Toronto publishes on a papyrus text regarding a Greek loan of money with interest in kind, the interest being paid in cabbages. Such in-kind interest protected the lender from currency inflation, which was rampant after 275 AD -- and no doubt also provided a convenient way to get groceries.

Hippo strapped for cash

Cavan Concannon from Harvard University edits a Greek letter in which a priest of the hippopotamus goddess, Thoeris, asks for a money transfer he is waiting for. Such money transfers were for large amounts and required mutual cooperation between two banks in different places that had sufficient trust between them to accept one another's "checks."

"American Gladiators" ca. 300 AD

Sofie Remijsen of Leuven University in Belgium discusses a Greek letter in which the author details his visit to Alexandria in Egypt, at a time (ca. 300 AD) when the Roman Emperor Diocletian was also visiting the city -- and demanding entertainment. The letter's author, an amateur athlete, was selected to entertain the emperor in "pankration" (Greco-Roman wrestling with very few rules). He did poorly in this event and so challenged five others to do "pammachon," which literally translates to "all-out fight," with even fewer rules. The letter's author fought five "pammachon" rounds, and it appears he won first prize.

Alternative medicine: Don't try this at home

Magali de Haro Sanchez from Liège University in Belgium discusses magical texts from Greco-Roman Egypt that use technical terms for fevers (over 20), wounds, including scorpion bites and epilepsy. The "prescriptions" (magical spells) were as difficult-to-decipher as any written in modern medical scrawl. Here is a translation of an amulet against epilepsy written on gold leaf: "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, our God, deliver Aurelia from every evil spirit and from every attack of epilepsy, I beg you, Lord Iao Sabaoth Eloai, Ouriel, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Sarael, Rasochel, Ablanathanalba, Abrasax, xxxxxx nnnnnn oaa iiiiiiiiii x ouuuuuuu aoooooooo ono e (cross) e (cross) Sesengenbarpharanges, protect, Ippho io Erbeth (magical symbols), protect Aurelia from every attack, from every attack, Iao, Ieou, Ieo, Iammo, Iao, charakoopou, Sesengenbarpharanges, Iao aeeuuai, Ieou, Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, Eleleth, Iako."

Spelling counts: Orthodoxy and orthography in early Christianity

An essay by Walter Shandruk from the University of Chicago examines the ways in which Christ and Christian are spelled in Greek papyri. Chrestos, which was pronounced the same way as Christos, was a common slave name meaning "good" or "useful." Confused by this, representatives of the Roman government often misspelled Christ's name "Chrestos" instead of "Christos" meaning "anointed" or "messiah." They also called the early followers of Christ "Chrestianoi" rather than "Christianoi." The early Christians themselves went with the Romans here and often spelled their own name "Chrestianoi," but they stuck to the correct spelling "Christos" for Christ's name.

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting history ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory

 


From the Scout Report on October 22, 2010

Wolfram/Alpha Computational Knowledge Engine ---  http://www.wolframalpha.com/ 

What is a "computational knowledge engine"? Simply put, it can help you figure out just about any question or calculation. The goal of this project is "to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone." First-time visitors can get started by entering a date, typing in two stocks, a simple (or complex) math formula, and examining the results. The engine uses its computational power and ever growing collection of knowledge to computer the answer. Visitors to the site can also view the "What's New" area, check out examples listed by topic, and peruse their visual gallery. This version is compatible with all operating systems.

Also see
Some Things You Might Want to Know About the Wolfram Alpha (WA) Search Engine:  The Good and The Evil
as Applied to Learning Curves (Cumulative Average vs. Incremental Unit)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theorylearningcurves.htm


Dipity  --- http://www.dipity.com/ 

If you're looking to create a visually compelling and interactive timeline with little fuss, Dipity might be worth a look. With Dipity, visitors can create their own timeline, and populate it with photos, video clips, text, and other items. The mission of Dipity is "to organize the web's content by date and time", and it is well suited for use by journalists, government organizations, teachers, and museums, among others. Visitors will need to create an account to get started, but the basic version remains free. Dipity is compatible with all operating systems.


The 'Culture of Poverty' moves to the suburbs, reviving old problems and generating new complications Poverty in the suburbs: Mortgage or food
http://www.economist.com/node/17257857?story_id=17257857&fsrc=rs s

How Important Is Economic Diversity in Schools?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130647610 

Poorest school districts get least-qualified teachers; affluent districts get the best, survey finds
http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/10/18/2556603/poorest-school-districts-get-least.html   

A Culture of Poverty
http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2010/10/a-culture-of-poverty/64854/   

Reconsidering the 'Culture of Poverty'
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130701401 

The Great Recession and Poverty in Metropolitan America
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2010/1007_suburban_poverty_acs_kneebone.aspx


From the Scout Report on October 29, 2010

Camino 2.0.5 --- http://caminobrowser.org/ 

Unlike other browsers designed for PC's, Camino is designed to function specifically on Macs. This open-source browser has a number of new bells and whistles this time around, including content zooming and keychain support. This version also has a number of new customizable skins that make Camino a bit more fun, and they are worth checking out. This version is compatible with computers running Mac OS X 10.4 and newer.


Fly Free Photo Editing and Viewer 2.96 --- http://www.5dfly.com/free-photo-editing-software/ 

The Fly Free Photo Editing and Viewer breathes new life into the world of photo editing software by offering a number of professional tools that can be used with ease by neophytes. There are the usual suspects, including redeye removal tools and modifying color images into grayscale. The application's compatibility with a range of social media is refreshing, and it features a push-button option for uploading photos to Facebook, Flickr, and Google. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 2000 and newer.


In a "biggest loser" style energy contest, a dormitory at the University of North Carolina is triumphant N.C. Dorm Wins Energy Contest http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303467004575574231410723108.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsFifth 

UNC wins EPA energy contest
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/26/am-unc-wins-epa-energy-contest  

The Biggest Loser (of energy waste): UNC dormitory
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-10-26-the-biggest-loser-of-energy-waste-university-of-north-carolina 

National Building Competition: Energy Star
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=buildingcontest.index 

Green Building http://www.epa.gov/greenbuilding/ 

Green Guide for Everyday Living http://www.thegreenguide.com/


Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance, economics, and statistics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks


Education Tutorials

Video:  Open Education for an Open World
45-minute Video from the Long-Time President of MIT --- http://18.9.60.136/video/816

Bob Jensen's threads on open source video and course materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology in general ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

THE COLLEGE OF 2020: STUDENTS  ---
https://www.chronicle-store.com/Store/ProductDetails.aspx?CO=CQ&ID=76319&PK=N1S1009

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

What Makes Me [Flash Player, 3-D, Art] http://www.whatmakesme.com.au/

Video:  Augmented 3-D Sketching ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/24253/?nlid=2446&a=f
Bob Jensen's threads on visualization of multivariate data ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.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

University of Minnesota Physics Demonstrations Page  --- http://groups.physics.umn.edu/demo/

Museum of Science and Industry: Simple Machines [Flash Player] --- http://www.msichicago.org/fileadmin/Activities/Games/simple_machines/

Physics History Videos:  Physclips --- http://www.physclips.unsw.edu.au/

Health Physics Society --- http://www.hps.org/

Portsmouth and Macclesfield Collections (Isaac Newton, Gravity, Calculus, Physics) ---
 http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/portsmouth_and_macclesfield/

Magnetic Resonance Online Texts --- http://www.ebyte.it/library/refs/MROnlineTexts.html

Physics Education Technology --- http://phet-web.colorado.edu/new/index.php

American Association of Physics Teachers: Downloadable Teacher Resources & Guides [pdf] http://www.aapt.org/Resources/teacherresource.cfm

The Big Bang --- http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=3639

Clifford Glenwood Shull Collection (Physics) --- http://diva.library.cmu.edu/Shull/index.html

American Institute of Physics: Education --- http://www.aip.org/education/

Examination of Front-of-Package Nutrition Rating Systems and Symbols --- http://iom.edu/Activities/Nutrition/NutritionSymbols.aspx

Global Green USA: Building Resources --- http://www.globalgreen.org/greenurbanism/buildingresources/

Marjory Stoneman Douglas Writer & Conservationist (Everglades) --- http://scholar.library.miami.edu/msdouglas/

US Green Building Council: LEED --- http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CategoryID=19 

Redlands Institute: Salton Sea [environment] http://www.spatial.redlands.edu/salton/

UMass Cranberry Station --- http://www.umass.edu/cranberry/

Food Research And Action Center --- http://www.frac.org/index.html

Beyond the Taj: Architectural Traditions and Landscape Experiences in South Asia --- http://beyondthetaj.library.cornell.edu/about.php

The History of Vaccines (medicine) ---  http://www.historyofvaccines.org/

"A Game Eases the Pain of Cramming for Chemistry," by Paige Chapman, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 3, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Game-Eases-the-Pain-of/125179/

When the need to procrastinate strikes, students often turn to the Chinese tile-matching game mah-jongg, which comes free on many personal computers.

Tandy Grubbs, a professor at Stetson University, has turned the popular time waster into a study aid for chemistry students. Instead of simply searching for game pieces that are imprinted with identical symbols, players must pair tiles that are related to each other—say, a molecule's structure with its proper oxidation number.

Mr. Grubbs says the idea for Mahjong Chem came to him this summer in a "Eureka moment" as the university was seeking new ways to use the Internet to enhance learning. The matching component of mah-jongg, he realized, could be adapted to ease the tedious memorization process of chemistry.

"Memorization isn't a very sexy learning strategy, but is necessary to take on more complex problem-solving strategies," says Mr. Grubbs. "We're always trying to engage students in a way that captures their attention, and the game is really addictive."

With the help of some Stetson alums, Mr. Grubbs connected with Travis Cossairt, an EA Games software developer who worked on the online version of the Tiger Woods PGA Tour game. Mr. Grubbs created the images for the tiles, while Mr. Cossairt developed the software for Mahjong Chem.

The game is available through Stetson's Web site and as a Facebook application, where players can choose among eight variations that reinforce basic chemistry concepts. Need to memorize the periodic table? There's a game for that. Need to know which compounds form a precipitate in an aqueous solution? There's a game for that, too.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

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

Teaching Educational Psychology --- http://www.teachingeducpsych.org/

Introduction to Psychology --- http://www.intropsych.com/

Library Lectures: Georgetown University Library --- http://www.library.georgetown.edu/digital/lecture-hall

World Bank: Annual Report 2010 --- http://go.worldbank.org/KP8RTF2L20

World Bank: News & Broadcast [iTunes, pdf]  --- http://www.worldbank.org/news

World Bank: Global Challenges --- http://www.worldbank.org/sixthemes

Anarchism Pamphlets in the Labadie Collection (radical protests) ---  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/labadie/

Stony Brook Press (race, gender, poverty) --- http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/handle/1951/25510

The Civil Rights Digital Library --- http://crdl.usg.edu/voci/go/crdl/home/

Extra! (fairness in media reporting) ---  http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4

The State of the News Media 2010 --- http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010/

The March on Milwaukee Civil Rights History Project --- http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/digilib/march/index.cfm

Complaints Choirs Worldwide --- http://www.complaintschoir.org/

BBC: Democracy Live (video) --- http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/

CapitolHearings.org [Real Player, C-SPAN] --- http://www.capitolhearings.org/

St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project --- http://www.stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu/

WNYC Culture in New York City [iTunes] http://culture.wnyc.org/

Planning Oregon --- http://oscdl.research.pdx.edu/

That fly on the wall or the bird on in a tree
Video on the Future of M.A.V. Warfare and Intelligence Gathering ---
http://video.designworldonline.com/bugbots.html
The challenge will also be to adapt M.A.V.s to more peaceful and positive uses to better mankind

More specific information about the Lady Gaga sociology course can be found at GaGaCourse.net – a website Professor Deflem created for the class ---
http://www.gagacourse.net/

October 22, 2010 message from Richard Campbell (don't forget to turn the lights "Off" when requested to hit the switch:

This excellent elearning example was created by a psych professor in 3 days.

http://elearning-examples.s3.amazonaws.com/PsychedIn10/player.html 

Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu

From the Scout Report on October 22, 2010

The 'Culture of Poverty' moves to the suburbs, reviving old problems and generating new complications Poverty in the suburbs: Mortgage or food
http://www.economist.com/node/17257857?story_id=17257857&fsrc=rs s

How Important Is Economic Diversity in Schools?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130647610 

Poorest school districts get least-qualified teachers; affluent districts get the best, survey finds
http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/10/18/2556603/poorest-school-districts-get-least.html   

A Culture of Poverty
http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2010/10/a-culture-of-poverty/64854/   

Reconsidering the 'Culture of Poverty'
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130701401 

The Great Recession and Poverty in Metropolitan America
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2010/1007_suburban_poverty_acs_kneebone.aspx

Marjory Stoneman Douglas Writer & Conservationist (Everglades) --- http://scholar.library.miami.edu/msdouglas/

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

St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project --- http://www.stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu/

Marjory Stoneman Douglas Writer & Conservationist (Everglades) --- http://scholar.library.miami.edu/msdouglas/

Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law


Math Tutorials

Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics


History Tutorials

The Photographs of Francis Blake (19th Century History) --- http://www.masshist.org/photographs/blake.cfm

The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today --- http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/originalcopy/

Robert W. Krueger Collection (20th Century) --- http://www.chipublib.org/images/krueger/index.php

The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler (art, painting) ---  http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/

The Mariners' Museum --- http://www.marinersmuseum.org/

Marjory Stoneman Douglas Writer & Conservationist (Everglades) --- http://scholar.library.miami.edu/msdouglas/

Extra! (fairness in media reporting) ---  http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4

Kentucky Military Treasures [Flash Player] --- http://history.ky.gov/military/

Currier Museum of Art --- http://www.currier.org/ 

Secrets of the Dead (including Egyptian tombs) --- http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/

The Secrets of Tomb10A: Egypt 2000 BC [Flash Player] --- http://www.mfa.org/tomb/

Arago: People & the Post [stamps and the post office] http://arago.si.edu/flash/?slide=1%7Ceid=395%7Cs1=6%7C

Mail Art (meaning art sent via the post office) --- http://ubdigit.buffalo.edu/collections/lib/lib-pc/lib-pc001_MailArt.php

Museum of Science and Industry: Simple Machines --- http://www.msichicago.org/fileadmin/Activities/Games/simple_machines/

The History of Vaccines (medicine) ---  http://www.historyofvaccines.org/

Factory Tours USA http://www.factorytoursusa.com/

Library Lectures: Georgetown University Library --- http://www.library.georgetown.edu/digital/lecture-hall

WNYC Culture in New York City [iTunes] http://culture.wnyc.org/

Seeking Michigan --- http://seekingmichigan.org/

The Digital Atlas of Idaho --- http://imnh.isu.edu/digitalatlas/

The March on Milwaukee Civil Rights History Project --- http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/digilib/march/index.cfm

Anarchism Pamphlets in the Labadie Collection (radical protests) ---  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/labadie/

A Ballot for the Lady: Washington Women's Struggle for the Vote (1850- 1910) http://content.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/suffrage/index.html

Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897-1911 http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/millerscrapbooks/

St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project --- http://www.stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu/

The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy ---  http://www.themourners.org/

Beyond the Taj: Architectural Traditions and Landscape Experiences in South Asia --- http://beyondthetaj.library.cornell.edu/about.php

Making a Difference Through the Arts [Asian Society] --- http://www.asiasociety.org/files/pdf/as_making_difference_report.pdf

Complaints Choirs Worldwide --- http://www.complaintschoir.org/ University of Tennessee Libraries-Great Smoky Mountains Regional Collection --- http://www.lib.utk.edu/digitalcollections/gsm.html

American Experience: Victory in the Pacific (World War II) --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/pacific/

Telegraph: World War II Articles  ---
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/world-war-2/

Hawaii War Records Depository Photos --- http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/hwrd/ 

Alice Dancing Under the Gallows --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlccsLr48Mw&sns=em 
The oldest survivor of the Holocaust

Online Archive of the Japanese American Relocation during World War II http://departments.oxy.edu/digitalarch/web/index.htm 

Hawaii War Records Depository Photos --- http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/hwrd/ 

Provenance in the World War II Era, 1933-1945 --- http://provenance.si.edu/jsp/index.aspx

Online Archive of the Japanese American Relocation during World War II http://departments.oxy.edu/digitalarch/web/index.htm 

Escape Maps in WW II --- http://www.mapforum.com/04/escape.htm#3

Center for First World War Studies: Lions Led By Donkeys --- http://www.firstworldwar.bham.ac.uk/biogs.htm

A Nursery of Patriotism: The University at War, 1861-1945 --- http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/exhibits/patriotism/

Digital University Photographs: University of Dayton --- http://digital.udayton.edu/cdm-archives/

The Hoagy Carmichael Collection --- http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/hoagy/ 

Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm  


Language Tutorials

Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages


Music Tutorials

Alice Dancing Under the Gallows --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlccsLr48Mw&sns=em 
The oldest survivor of the Holocaust

The Hoagy Carmichael Collection --- http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/hoagy/

Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music

Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm


Writing Tutorials

Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries


Updates from WebMD --- http://www.webmd.com/

October 20, 2010

October 21, 2010

October 22, 2010

October 24, 2010

October 25, 2010

October 26, 2010

October 27, 2010

October 28, 2010

October 29, 2010

October 30, 2010

November 1, 2010

November 2, 2010

November 3, 2010

 


The History of Vaccines (medicine) ---  http://www.historyofvaccines.org/


"Cancer Drug Zeroes In on a Genetic Mistake:  An experimental compound shrank lung-cancer tumors in half of the patients in a recent study," by Emily Singer, MIT's Technology Review, October 28, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/26630/?nlid=3695


Health Physics Society --- http://www.hps.org/


Fall Allergy Capitals (shouldn't this be capitols?) : The Worst Cities for People With Fall Allergies ---
http://www.webmd.com/allergies/news/20101027/fall-allergy-capitals

Jensen Comment
Obviously these multivariate rankings can be misleading for people afflicted with selected allergies. They should seek out rankings of locations with respect to their most troublesome allergies in different seasons. For example. cedar pollen is a huge problem in parts of Texas in the spring compared to the 2010 ragweed capitals  of Dayton, Wichita, Louisville, and Knoxville in autumn.




Bedbugs are not nearly as troublesome as calories
Calories are the little Devils that get into your wardrobe at night and sew your clothes tighter


Forwarded by Auntie Bev

Commandment 1
Marriages are made in heaven. But then again, so is thunder and lightning.

Commandment 2
If you want your wife to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say, talk in your sleep.

Commandment 3
Marriage is grand -- and divorce is at least a 100 grand!

Commandment 4
Married life is very frustrating. In the first year of marriage, the man speaks and the woman listens. In the second year, the woman speaks and the man listens. In the third year, they both speak and the neighbors listen.

Commandment 5
When a man opens the door of his car for his wife, you can be sure of one thing: Either the car is new or the wife is.

Commandment 6

Marriage is when a man and woman become as one; The trouble starts when they try to decide which one.

Commandment 7
Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said .... After marriage, he will fall asleep before you finish.

Commandment 8
Every man wants a wife who is beautiful, understanding, economical, and a good cook. But the law allows only one wife.

Commandment 9
Marriage and love are purely a matter of chemistry. That is why one treats the other like toxic waste.

Commandment 10
A man is incomplete until he is married. After that, he is finished.

BONUS COMMANDMENT STORY

A long married couple came upon a wishing well. The wife leaned over, made a wish and threw in a penny. The husband decided to make a wish too. But he leaned over too much, fell into the well, and drowned. The wife was stunned for a moment, but then smiled, 'It really works!'


Undeniable adult truths

1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.

5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

6. Was learning cursive really necessary?

7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on # 5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.

10. Bad decisions make good stories.

11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection...again.

13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.

14. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

15. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

16. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lite than Kay.

17. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.

18. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

19. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?

20. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!

21. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

22. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

23. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time.

24. The first testicular guard, the "Cup," was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important.


Video:  Jimmy Stewart wrote a terrible poem about his dog for the Johnny Carson Show ---
http://silverandgoldandthee.net/V/J_S.html


Forwarded by Maureen

You have to  love British humour! 
These are classified ads, which were actually placed in a U.K. newspaper:

FREE  YORKSHIRE TERRIER. 8 years old. Hateful little bastard. Bites!  

FREE  PUPPIES. 1/2 Cocker Spaniel,  1/2 sneaky neighbour's dog. 

FREE  PUPPIES. Mother is a Kennel  Club registered German Shepherd. Father is a Super Dog, able to leap tall fences in a single  bound.  

COWS,  CALVES: NEVER BRED. Also 1 gay bull for sale.  

JOINING  NUDIST COLONY! Must sell washer and dryer £100.  

WEDDING  DRESS FOR SALE. Worn once by mistake. Call Stephanie.  ****

And the WINNER is... **** 
FOR  SALE BY OWNER. Complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 45 volumes. Excellent condition, £200 or best offer. No longer needed, got married, wife knows everything. 


Humor Between November 1-30, 2010 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book10q4.htm#Humor113010 
Humor Between October 1-31, 2010 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book10q4.htm#Humor103110  

Humor Between August 1 and Sept. 30, 2010 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book10q3.htm#Humor093010 
Humor Between June 1 and July 31, 2010
--- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book10q3.htm#Humor073110

Humor Between June 1 and June 30, 2010 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book10q2.htm#Humor063010
Humor Between May 1 and May 31, 2010
--- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book10q2.htm#Humor053110
Humor Between April 1 and April 30, 2010 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book10q2.htm#Humor043010  

Humor Between March 1 and March 31, 2010 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book10q1.htm#Humor033110  
Humor Between February 1 and February 28, 2010 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book10q1.htm#Humor022810 
Humor Between January 1 and January 31, 2010 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book09q1.htm#Humor013110




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/
U.S. National Debt --- http://twitter.com/nationaldebt
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