Tidbits on November 18, 2010
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
This week I made a special
photograph file of Set 2 of my 2010 Summer Favorites
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/SummertimeFavorites/Set02/2010Set02.htm
In addition I featured some of my friend Wes Lavin's
professional photographs
Somewhere in Time (with awesome photos from outer
space) ---
http://www.greatdanepro.com/somewhere in time/index.htm
Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong)
---
Click Here
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on November 18,
2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations111810.htm
Tidbits on November 18, 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
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http://www.searchedu.com/.
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
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Video: The Value of an Interdisciplinary Core Curriculum ---
http://fora.tv/2010/10/20/The_Value_of_an_Interdisciplinary_Core_Curriculum
Video: Charles Furgeson has produced a powerful
documentary, “Inside Job,” about the deep capture of financial (de)regulation
---
http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/the-situation-of-the-2008-economic-crisis/
1,000 Years of European History -- An Animated Map (a bummer with no dates or
explanations) ---
Click Here
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/11/1000_years_of_e.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InfectiousGreed+%28Paul+Kedrosky%27s+Infectious+Greed%29
Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research ---
http://www.growingknowledge.bl.uk/
Note the link to "New Ways of doing research"
Evolution of Normal Fault Systems During Progressive
Deformation [Quick Time] ---
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/structure04/activities/3861.html
The Rising Burden of Government Debt [Flash Player] ---
http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2010/1101_government_debt_prasad.aspx
The Habitable Planet: Ecology Lab ---
http://www.learner.org/courses/envsci/interactives/ecology/
The video link is on the left column
The Wessels Living History Farm, the Story of Agricultural
Innovation [Flash Player, Quick Time] ---
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/
National Museum of Natural History: Arctic Studies Center
[Flash Player, QuickTime, Real Player]
http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/index.html
The Opera Company of Philadelphia was instrumental in bringing
it together to perform one of the Knight Foundation's "1000 Random Acts of
Culture" which they'll be doing over the next three years across the country ---
http://www.creativeminorityreport.com/2010/11/awesome-pop-up-hallelujah-chorus-at.html
Republic Versus Democracy ---
http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Somewhere in Time (with awesome photos from outer
space) ---
http://www.greatdanepro.com/somewhere in time/index.htm
Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong) ---
Click Here
Video: Opera in Italy ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=NLjuGPBusxs&vq=medium
Kate Smith in history ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnQDW-NMaRs
Tilting at Windmills: Massenet's 'Don Quichotte'
(Introduction to the opera) ---
http://www.npr.org/2010/11/11/131244769/tilting-at-windmills-massenet-s-don-quichotte
Hauschka Gets The Most Out Of 88 Keys ---
http://www.npr.org/2010/11/11/131245315/hauschka-gets-the-most-out-of-88-keys
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
Mix Collection of 99 Stunning Photographs to
Refresh Your Mind ---
http://www.instantshift.com/2009/10/12/mix-collection-of-99-stunning-photographs-to-refresh-your-mind/
Rome Photo Gallery ---
Click Here
http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/city-guides/rome-photos-1.html?source=sem_esv_G1200&esvcid=S1289937836_ADOGOB_AGI3691107_CRE4602146207_TID330855348_RFDd3d3Lmdvb2dsZS5jb20%3d&gclid=CMSKiPSQpqUCFctL5Qod6ynL4Q
NPR: The Picture Show ---
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/
Iwo Jima Today ---
http://www.soloshideawayfunpages.com/_tqxs/004/iwo_jima.htm
Panorama: Prehistoric Cave Art of Niaux ---
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/gigapan/niaux/
The Conner Prairie Museum Textile Collection ---
http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/digitalscholarship/collections/CPQuilts
Transcontinental Railroad Pictures and Exhibits
---
http://cprr.org/Museum/Exhibits.html
Union Pacific Railroad: History and Photos
http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/history/index.shtml
Steam and Electric Locomotives of the New Haven Railroad ---
http://railroads.uconn.edu/locomotives/index.html
The Spanish Manner: Drawings from Ribera to Goya
---
http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/spanishmanner
Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War
Portraits ---
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/caption/captionliljenquist.html
Cecelia Feld’s Art Pick of the Month for November
2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/post.aspx?bid=358&bpid=25984&nlid=3738
National Museum of Natural History: Arctic
Studies Center [Flash Player, QuickTime, Real Player]
http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/index.html
Barbara Ann Conlogue Collection of Eleanor Steber
Photographs, circa 1935-1977 ---
http://ubdigit.buffalo.edu/collections/lib/lib-mus/lib-mus020_Steber.php
Clingstone in Rhode Island ---
Click Here
http://www.google.com/images?q=Clingstone+"Rhode+Island"&hl=en&num=10&lr=&cr=&safe=images&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=A2fdTNqaMYa0lQfL3ICWDQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=5&ved=0CDoQsAQwBA&biw=1003&bih=561
From The Scout Report on November 5, 2010
In a region of superlatives, another engineering wonder is
completed Visitors aren't bypassing Hoover Dam since bridge opening
http://www.lvrj.com/news/visitors-aren-t-bypassing-hoover-dam-since-bridge-opening-106366573.html?ref=573
Hoover Dam Bridge is America's newest wonder
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-10-18-hooverbypass18_ST_N.htm
Hoover Dam: Taming the Colorado River and Powering
Millions
http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/Hoover-Dam-Taming-the-Colorado-River-and-Providing-Electricity-to-Millions-105833633.html
Bureau of Reclamation: Lower Colorado Region-Hoover Dam
http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/
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
CiteSeerX (Princeton University Library search engine) ---
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/
Frontiers (open source scholoarly publishing) ---
http://www.frontiersin.org/
Boston University Libraries: Research Guides ---
http://www.bu.edu/library/guides/
From the Harvard Law School
Dying Speeches & Bloody Murders: Crime Broadsides ---
http://broadsides.law.harvard.edu/
Brooker Collection at Boston College (law, history) ---
http://dcollections.bc.edu/R/?func=collections-result&collection_id=1742
"True Crime" Murder Pamphlets in the Collection of the
National Library of Medicine ---
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/murderpamphlets/index.html
Branch Rickey Collection (baseball) ---
http://drc.owu.edu/handle/2374.OWES/2
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 18,
2010
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations111810.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
Jensen Question
I once had a student submit plagiarized work that he did not know was
plagiarized from the Web. He'd assigned one of his employees to write the paper
not knowing that the employee then copied all three parts of the paper from
three different sources on the Web. Years later this student returned to me
wondering if the time had expired on his cheating. He requested that I remove
the F from his transcript. He's so wealthy that I was tempted to name a price
(just kidding of course).
This student was over 21 years of age at the time. But it leads me to wonder
what is proper for a teenager who cheats and receives an F in a course. In law,
an adult's crime record rap sheet follows that person for a lifetime. But in the
case of teenagers, the slate is often wiped clean when they become adults.
Should the same thing happen with respect to cheating and F grades on
transcripts?
From the Pen of an Academic Call Girl
"This Pen is for Hire: On Grinding Out Papers for College Students,"
by Abigail Witherspoon, Harpers Magazine, June 1995 ---
http://www.eacfaculty.org/pchidester/Eng 102f/Plagiarism/This Pen for Hire.pdf
Also see the references listed at
http://read2live.com/plagbibl2.html
"The Shadow Scholar: The man who writes your students' papers tells
his story," by Ed Dante, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 12, 2010
---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/
November 15, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi David,
Thanks for this interesting link.
This cheat cannot be an expert on everything
without becoming a very good plagiarist, and even then he probably does not
have a clue about specialty topics that can be plagiarized. My guess is that
he's never heard of XBRL, FAS 138, IAS 9, FIN 48, or FAS 157. So as long as
you stick to tough and narrow topics, chances are he will refuse offers to
write on such technical topics.
Our worry is that when he or she retires from ghost
writing, this cheat will form a sizable company comprised of technical
experts that can write/plagiarize on many more specialized topics.
If fact it leads me to wonder how many students
today are bypassing this cheat and are simply cutting and pasting from some
of my documents at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Thanks,
Bob
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 on cheating are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
Research should be problem driven rather than
methodologically driven," said Lisa Garcia Bedolla, a member of the task force
who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley.
Scott Jascik ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/04/polisci
Question
Most of us have an awareness of the upside of story telling and cases in
teaching, research, and communications in general.
What's the downside of a storytelling (that extends to cases) pedagogy in
higher education?
"A Good Story's Not the Whole Story," Stanford Graduate School of
Business Center for Social Innovation, November 9, 2010 ---
http://csi.gsb.stanford.edu/a-good-story-is-not-the-whole-story
Using stories to raise awareness and inspire action
seems to be all the rage. The New York Times bestselling book
Made to Stick, by Stanford GSB professor Chip
Heath and his brother Dan, has been at the forefront of uncovering and
advocating the use of stories to get an audience to remember your ideas,
programs, or products. And now presentations from the likes of
TED,
PopTech, and almost every cause, nonprofit
presentation, and brochure I can remember in the past few years is all about
stories, stories, stories ...
On the one hand, research clearly supports the
notion that we can get our messages to "stick" using stories. So isn't this
an improvement to plying our audiences with boring facts and figures that
they'll only forget — along with the point we're trying to make? Aren't we
more likely to move people to action because stories connect us on an
emotional level and motivate us to care, donate, or volunteer?
This all sounds nice but, unfortunately, there's a
downside to great storytelling.
We live in a world in which time, money, and talent
are limited resources. This leads to competition for ideas, funding, people,
and partnerships. In most cases, stories can't adequately convey whether
we're using our resources wisely or not. And that's a serious thing. We must
remember that resources get applied to ideas and organizations that have
proven their effectiveness at solving big social and environmental problems
through good old-fashioned metrics.
So we must not be lured into providing our
constituencies with great stories alone. We have to offer solid information
to support the tale about that intriguing person who has overcome immense
obstacles to help save the world. A good example of this weave happened at
the recent Poptech Conference.
Ned Breslin, CEO of
Water for People, gave a great presentation that
started with a compelling story of a child losing his life to a failed water
pump — driving home the massive failure of the majority of water relief
efforts around the world. While putting into perspective the fundraising
water stories we've heard for years, it still was just a story. But Breslin
followed it with hard facts, data, and examples that showed listeners why we
need to think about and invest differently in access to water programs in
the developing world.
In closing remember, a story is "a narrative,
either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse,
or instruct the hearer or reader; tale" (Wikipedia). We want to do more than
amuse. We want to inform. And we want to make sure that we're fully
conveying what our organizations are about so that we're sure to get the
resources we need.
Bob Jensen's threads on theory and research are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on case methodology are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Cases
Too Asian?" in Canada's Elite Universities
Please don't shoot the messenger!
This is racially explosive, but I forward it on the grounds that it's
published in a very respectable and non-biased journal (in my viewpoint). Also
it is not really disrespectful of Asians --- in fact quite the reverse is true
in this article.
I think this relates somewhat to accounting in that our accountics-dominated
doctoral programs where the quants excel may become dominated by Asians. This is
not in and of itself a bad thing if those students are also well grounded in
accountancy before entering accountics doctoral programs that in modern times
focus very little on accounting. Perhaps this counteracts what continues to be
Anglo-dominated accounting doctoral programs.
The goal should probably be to make our accounting doctoral programs more
multicultural in the middle --- an effort that is being helped considerably by
the KPMG Foundation minority doctoral initiative that's been both funding and
helping minority doctoral students in other ways.
"KPMG Foundation Celebrates 15th Year of
Minority Accounting Doctoral Program," SmartPros, August 1, 2009 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x67298.xml
""Too Asian?" in Canada," by Steve Hsu, MIT's Technology Review,
November 10, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/post.aspx?bid=354&bpid=26008&nlid=3766
Video: The Value of an Interdisciplinary Core Curriculum ---
http://fora.tv/2010/10/20/The_Value_of_an_Interdisciplinary_Core_Curriculum
Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research ---
http://www.growingknowledge.bl.uk/
Note the link to "New Ways of doing research"
Accountics Worshippers Please Take Note
"A Nobel Lesson: Economics is Getting Messier," by Justin Fox, Harvard
Business Review Blog, October 11, 2010 ---
Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/fox/2010/10/nobel-lesson-economics-messier.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
When Peter Diamond was a graduate student at MIT in
the early 1960s, he spent much of his time studying the elegant new models
of perfectly functioning markets that were all the rage in those days. Most
important of all was the
general equilibrium model assembled in the 1950s
by Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu, often referred to as the mathematical
proof of the existence of Adam Smith's "invisible hand." Working through the
Arrow-Debreu proofs was a major part of the MIT grad student experience. At
least, that's what Diamond told me a few years ago. (If I ever find the
notes of that conversation, I'll offer up some quotes.)
Diamond certainly learned well. In a long career
spent almost entirely at MIT, he became known for
work of staggering theoretical sophistication. As
economist Steven Levitt put it today:
He wrote the kind of papers that I would have to
read four or five times to get a handle on what he was doing, and even then,
I couldn't understand it all.
But Diamond wasn't out to further prove the
perfection of markets. He was trying instead to show how, with the injection
of the tiniest bit of reality, the perfect-market models he'd learned so
well in grad school began to break down. Today he won a third of the
Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory
of Alfred Nobel (it's not technically a "Nobel
Prize"), mainly for a paper he wrote in 1971 that explored how the injection
of friction between buyers and sellers, in the form of what he called
"search costs," prices would end up at a level far removed from what a
perfect competition model would predict. The two economists who shared the
prize with him, Dale Mortensen of Northwestern University and Christopher
Pissarides of the London School of Economics, later elaborated on this
insight with regard to job markets (as did Diamond).
The exact practical implications of this work can be a little hard to
define — although Catherine Rampell makes a
valiant and mostly successful effort in The New
York Times. What this year's prize does clearly indicate is that the Nobel
committee believes economic theory is messy and getting messier (no, I
didn't come up with this insight on my own; my colleague Tim Sullivan had to
nudge me). The last Nobel awarded for an all-encompassing mathematical
theory of how the economic world fits together was to
Robert Lucas in 1995 for his work on rational
expectations. Since then (with the arguable exceptions of the prizes awarded
to
Robert Merton and Myron Scholes in 1997 for options-pricing
and to Fynn Kydland and Edward Prescott in 2004 for
real-business-cycle theory) the Nobel crew has chosen to honor either
interesting economic side projects or work that muddies the elegance of
those grand postwar theories of rational actors buying and selling under
conditions of perfect competition.
The 2001 prize for work exploring the impact on
markets of asymmetric information, awarded to George Akerlof, Michael Spence
and Joseph Stiglitz, was probably most similar to this year's model (and,
not coincidentally, Akerlof and Stiglitz were also MIT grad students in the
1960s).
The implications of messier economics are
interesting to contemplate. The core insight of mainstream economics — that
incentives matter — continues to hold up well. And on the whole, markets
appear to do a better job of channeling those incentives to useful ends than
any other form of economic organization. But beyond that, the answers one
can derive from economic theory — especially answers that address the
functioning of the entire economy — are complicated and often contradictory.
Meaning that sometimes we non-economists are just going to have to figure
things out for ourselves.
Jensen Comment
Not mentioned but certainly implied is the increased complexity of replicating
and validating empirical models in terms of assumptions, missing variables, and
data error. Increasing complexity will affect accountics researchers less since
replicating and validating is of less concern among accountics researchers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
iPad versus Galaxy Tab versus Cius
"Samsung's Galaxy Tab Is iPad's First Real Rival," Walter S. Mossberg,
The Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703805004575606580224319038.html
After seven months of unchallenged prominence,
Apple's hot-selling iPad now has its first credible competitor in the
nascent market for multitouch consumer tablet computers: the Samsung Galaxy
Tab.
The Tab is being introduced over the next week by
three major U.S. wireless phone carriers at $400 with a cellular data
contract, or at $600 with cellular capability but no contract. The iPad
starts at $499 for a Wi-Fi model with no cellular-data capability or
contract, and is $629 for the least expensive model with cellular data
capability but no contract.
Like the iPad, the Tab, which uses Google's Android
operating system, is a good-looking slate with a vivid color screen that can
handle many of the tasks typically performed on a laptop. These include
email, social networking, Web browsing, photo viewing, and music and video
playback. It also can run a wide variety of third-party apps. But it has
major differences, most notably in size.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab has less than half the
screen real estate than that of the iPad. .The Tab has a 7-inch screen
versus the 9.7-inch display on the iPad. That may seem like a small
difference, but the numbers are deceptive, because screen sizes are always
described using diagonal measurements. In fact, the actual screen real
estate on the Tab is less than half of the iPad's. That's a disadvantage,
but it allows the overall unit to be much smaller and lighter, and thus more
easily used in one hand, something some users will welcome.
The new tablet will be introduced in coming days by
Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, with a variety of cellular data plans. AT&T
also will carry the Tab during the holiday season but hasn't announced its
timing or data-plan pricing. Although it is being sold by cellular carriers,
the Tab, like the iPad (which offers optional month-to-month cellular data
through AT&T) can't make cellular voice calls.
More Mossberg's Mailbox: Macs vs. PCs .
I've been testing the Tab for a couple of weeks and I like it. It's a
serious alternative to the iPad and one that will be preferred by some
folks. It includes the three most-requested features missing in the iPad: a
camera (two in fact); the ability to run Web videos and applications written
in Adobe's Flash software; and multitasking, though, to be fair, the latter
feature is coming to the iPad imminently via a software update. Another
strong point is that like Apple, Samsung has rewritten some of the standard
apps, such as the email and calendar programs, to make them look more like
PC programs and less like smartphone apps.
. . .
On balance, however, I still prefer the iPad. For
one thing, I like getting twice the screen size for a little more money up
front—as little as $29 for the no-contract model with cellular capability.
For another, the iPad has vastly more apps specifically designed for a
tablet versus a smartphone—about 40,000 according to Apple, compared with
just a handful for the Tab. And it can run about triple the apps overall, if
you count smartphone apps that aren't optimized for tablets.
On an iPad, if you opt for cellular-data service,
there is no contract and only two monthly prices—$14.99 for 250 megabytes
and $25 for 2 gigabytes. On the Tab, it's much more complicated. Verizon,
which is selling only the $600 no-contract model, says its pricing will
start at $20 a month for 1 gigabyte of data. Sprint charges $29.99 monthly
for 2 gigabytes and $59.99 for 5 gigabytes. T-Mobile has different prices
for no-contract and contract models, and different rates for new and
existing customers. Just two examples: a new customer under contract on a
Tab can pay $30 monthly for 200 megabytes or $50 for 5 gigabytes.
So, I urge Tab buyers to do the math carefully on
the overall cost of the device under various carriers and plans.
Bottom Line The Tab is attractive, versatile and
competitively priced, though monthly cell fees can add up. It's different
enough from the iPad, yet good enough, to give consumers a real choice.
Jensen Comment
The Galaxy Tab only weighs about half of an iPad and fits more neatly into one
hand for book reading and holding a drink at the same time. The screen is
smaller and does not have the USB and VGA ports we've been waiting for in tablet
computers. The cameras and Flash playback are clear advantages over the iPad.
Other advantages and disadvantages are discussed above and in the links below.
Other tablet alternatives ---
http://www.axleration.com/apple-ipad-vs-samsung-galaxy-tab-vs-viewsonic-g-tablet-vs-dell-streak/
Official Tab Site ---
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/galaxy-tab
Video 1 ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3trFKYIOALo
Video 2 (longer) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNUhmV6usGA
The Cius ---
Click Here
Relative to iPad, I like the fact that Cisco's new tablet connects to a docking
station.
The iPad has zero USB ports, whereas the Cius has three USB ports
Relative to iPad, I like the fact that Cisco's new tablet has a port for
external display such as an LCD Projector
Unlike an iPad, the Cius will play Adobe's Flash Videos served up at millions of
sites in the world
Why didn't Steve Jobs think of these for the iPad (I suspect he did but feared
that an iPad with these would blast a hole in Mac laptop sales)
Expanded capabilities through:
Click Here
• 3 USB ports
• 3.5-mm headset jack
• 10/100/1000-Gbps switch
ports for wired connections
and Power over Ethernet (PoE)
• Additional speaker for
wideband hands-free
communications
• DisplayPort™
to connect to a larger
display for an immersive
video experience and for a
virtualized desktop
experience
• Two handset options:
standard and slimline
|
|
|
|
The Cius is also much more friendly toward applications developers than the
greedy iPad's Orwellian Big Brother
I’ve been an open-source advocate from get go!
Video ---
Click Here
"Cisco Debuts Android-Based Tablet," by Jeffrey Schwartz, T.H.E.
Magazine, July 1, 2010 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/07/01/cisco-enters-tablet-market.aspx
Cisco Systems is the latest vendor to enter the
tablet device market and, like other players, the company is looking at its
entry as an alternative to traditional Windows-based PCs.
The Cius, announced this week, is a device that to
some degree looks like Apple's iPad, though it is based on Google's Android
platform. Cisco becomes the second major vendor to launch an Android-based
tablet in as many months: Dell in late May launched the
Streak. With its 5-inch display, it was described
by Dell as a hybrid smartphone and tablet.
But that's where the similarities end. Cisco's Cuis
is clearly targeted at professional, not consumer use. It will support an
optional docking station, enabling individuals to mount it to the IP-based
handset.
When undocked, the Cuis can connect to an
enterprise network or the Internet via 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi or 3G cellular
services. Ultimately it will support 4G services as they become more broadly
available, Cisco said. Through Bluetooth and USB communications, the device
will be able to share data with a PC, Cisco said.
The Cius is not slated to be available until the
first quarter of next year, though Cisco said customer trials will begin in
the third quarter of this year, which begins July 1. The company has not set
pricing though a spokeswoman said it will carry a street price of less than
$1,000.
Cisco is pitching the Cius as a virtual desktop
that will allow for data collaboration and communication. It will support
real-time HD video, messaging, and Web browsing, allowing users to share
content in cloud-based services, Cisco said.
Weighing slightly more than 1 pound, it will have a
front-mounted 720p camera and a 5 megapixel rear-mounted camera, dual
noise-cancelling microphones, and a 7-inch Super VGA display.
The Cius will be designed to cork with Cisco's
various lines of collaboration products and services, including WebEx
Connect, Cisco Presence, and its high-end TelePresence videoconferencing
systems.
Cisco said it will also reach out to developers
with an SDK that includes its Collaboration APIs. The Cius will be made
available through Cisco's network of Unified Communications and
Collaboration partners, according to the spokeswoman.
With all these features, Cius owners may only have to carry the Cius tablet
from conference-to-conference or class-to-class. The burdened down iPad
and Galaxy Tab users will
most likely have to lug their laptops along with their iPads.
But iPad still wins hands downs in terms of tens of thousands of apps.
CEO Compensation Leaders for Non-Profit Private Universities
From the Chronicle of Higher Education, November 14, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/College-Chief-Executives/125311/
College Chief Executives Earning Over $1-Million in Total
Compensation, 2008
Name |
Institution |
State |
Institution type |
Base pay |
Bonus pay |
Other pay |
Deferred compensation |
Nontaxable benefits |
Total compensation |
Bernard Lander* 1 |
Touro College |
N.Y. |
Master's |
$350,844 |
$85,000 |
$0 |
$4,269,390 |
$81,596 |
$4,786,830 |
John R. Brazil* |
Trinity U. |
Tex. |
Master's |
$332,824 |
$0 |
$2,207,096 |
$233,057 |
$4,676 |
$2,777,653 |
R. Gerald Turner |
Southern Methodist U. |
Tex. |
Research |
$534,866 |
$264,739 |
$1,627,581 |
$219,223 |
$127,591 |
$2,774,000 |
Nicholas S. Zeppos |
Vanderbilt U. |
Tenn. |
Research |
$682,071 |
$729,627 |
$736,626 |
$226,910 |
$32,354 |
$2,407,588 |
Steven B. Sample* |
U. of Southern California |
Calif. |
Research |
$827,597 |
$500,000 |
$222,728 |
$231,800 |
$131,802 |
$1,913,927 |
John L. Lahey |
Quinnipiac U. |
Conn. |
Master's |
$746,043 |
$0 |
$1,059,367 |
$23,000 |
$17,017 |
$1,845,427 |
Lee C. Bollinger 2 |
Columbia U. |
N.Y. |
Research |
$878,409 |
$0 |
$12,993 |
$518,650 |
$343,932 |
$1,753,984 |
Shirley Ann Jackson |
Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute |
N.Y. |
Research |
$795,001 |
$160,610 |
$143,012 |
$526,292 |
$30,715 |
$1,655,630 |
Constantine N. Papadakis
* 3 |
Drexel U. |
Pa. |
Research |
$696,907 |
$310,000 |
$0 |
$574,214 |
$44,971 |
$1,626,092 |
Steadman Upham |
U. of Tulsa |
Okla. |
Research |
$585,000 |
-- |
$3,051 |
$1,030,165 |
$4,013 |
$1,622,229 |
Harold J. Raveché* |
Stevens Institute of
Technology |
N.J. |
Research |
$601,465 |
$285,000 |
$29,003 |
$606,468 |
$59,530 |
$1,581,466 |
Richard C. Levin |
Yale U. |
Conn. |
Research |
$965,077 |
$50,000 |
$165,955 |
$328,250 |
$20,726 |
$1,530,008 |
The above table is continued at
http://chronicle.com/article/College-Chief-Executives/125311/
Jensen Comment
This year Trinity University has a new President, the former Dean of the college
of business at the University of Colorado. I've no idea what his compensation
package is, although Trinity normally provides a large house on campus, new car,
and many other benefits to its CEO. Because the fringe benefits vary so much and
are so difficult to value, the numbers in the Total Compensation column should
be compared with great caution.
John Brazil is a good friend so I will refrain from making any comments about
his compensation package. The reported compensation may have been increased in
honor of the last year of his Presidency.
In recent years students have turned more toward majoring in professional
programs which might explain, in part, why Trinity appointed a President with a
background outside the disciplines of humanities and science, although Trinity
has had economists lead the university in the past. At Trinity economics is not
part of the Department of Business.
Listings of U.S. University Endowments (including a table on endowments
per student) 2005-2009 ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment
A more current listing of many university data tables is provided in the
"Almanac Issue 2010-2011" from the Chronicle of Higher Education. August
27, 2010. I got my booklet in hard copy in late August 2010. Non-subscribers can
get the booklet at a cover price of $15. Most online links to this Almanac data
are only available to subscribers, although students and faculty on campus may
be able to use their library's subscription ---
http://chronicle.com/section/Almanac-of-Higher-Education/463/
Dr. Brazil's roots are in English with an undergraduate degree from Stanford
and a PhD from Yale. Before coming to Trinity, he was President of Butler
University and a member of the Board of Directors of Caterpillar Tractor.
Trinity is a small liberal arts school with a relatively large endowment (rank
33 per student the last time I looked at the national rankings for the year 2006
rankings). Surprising things happen in tables for endowments per student. Number
1 is Princeton University and Number 2 is Bryn Athyn College (never heard of it
until recently). The table shown in the following link is for years 2005 and
2006.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment
U.S. News and World Report has ranked Trinity #1 in the West among
colleges offering undergraduate and master's degrees for nearly two decades. ---
http://web.trinity.edu/x836.xml
View IRS Tax Form 990 Outcomes ---
http://www2.guidestar.org/rxg/products/GuideStar-premium.aspx?gclid=CMThoN2bpaUCFQl_5Qod5zl95w
2008 990 Tax Report Information ---
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0%2C%2Cid=176722%2C00.html
990 Ground Zero: The 2008 990 Tax Forms are difficult to compare
with prior years
"The New 990 Tax Form: More Data, More Headaches," by Paul Fain, Chronicle of
Higher Education, November 14, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-990-More-Data-More/125376/
Also see
http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=212597,00.html
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Video: Charles Furgeson has produced a powerful documentary, “Inside
Job,” about the deep capture of financial (de)regulation ---
http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/the-situation-of-the-2008-economic-crisis/
A Helpful and Fun Quiz for World Travelers
Note that I've not verified the answers
Dining Out in the World ---
http://www.fekids.com/img/kln/flash/DontGrossOutTheWorld.swf
"How Banning Happy Meals Could Make Kids Fatter," by Joshua Gans,
Harvard Business Review Blog, November 8, 2010 ---
Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/11/how_san_francisco_is_making_mo.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
News from Tuesday's election that after months of
debate, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors has effectively
banned the Happy Meal. If you want to buy a kids
meal at McDonald's (or elsewhere that includes a toy), that meal will have
to satisfy certain nutritional guidelines, including caps on sodium and the
inclusion of half cups of fruit or vegetables. The move is aimed at reducing
childhood obesity.
Jensen Comment
Gans has a bit of complicated reasoning. Let me put the in more simple terms.
Kids are great bargainers. They grow cranky and pout when they're served meals
they don't like. Quite bluntly, all the SF Board of Supervisors has accomplished
is to transfer business from McDonalds to pizza parlors, pancake houses, and
donut shops like Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks. There probably would be more of a
net gain in flab if there were more kids in SF and more McDonalds restaurants to
put out of business in San Francisco. But most of the Bay Area children and
McDonalds restaurants are in the suburbs like Oakland.
What the SF Board of Supervisors accomplished more than anything else is to
put more McDonalds employees in San Francisco out of work.
As they say, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions and lined with
stupid politicians."
If San Francisco really wants less fatties, why not have a city-wide ban on
all fried food, pastries, pancakes, waffles, butter-oozing seafood, pizza, and
the city's world-famous sourdough bread? That way all the fat residents flee to
the suburbs and fat tourists will no longer come to San Francisco for its great
food. Think of energy savings just from pulling cable cars up those steep hills.
More than 100
colleges have set up channels on YouTube ---
http://www.youtube.com/edu
Many
universities offer over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583
Search for words like “accounting”
"YouTube Creates
New Section to Highlight College Content," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of
Higher Education, March 27, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3684&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
There are now
nearly 7,000 accounting education videos on YouTube, most of which are in very
basic accounting.
But there are nearly 150 videos in advanced accounting.
There are nearly
70 videos on XBRL
YouTube Education
Channels ---
http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400
An Absolute Must Read for Educators
One of the most exciting things I took away from the 2010 AAA Annual Meetings in
San Francisco is a hard copy handout entitled "Expanding Your Classroom with
Video Technology and Social Media," by Mark Holtzblatt and Norbert Tschakert.
Mark later sent me a copy of this handout and permission to serve it up to you
at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Video-Expanding_Your_Classroom_CTLA_2010.pdf
This is an exciting listing to over 100 video clips and full-feature videos
that might be excellent resources for your courses, for your research, and for
your scholarship in general. Included are videos on resources and useful tips
for video projects as well as free online communication tools.
My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of
work that they are now sharing with us
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
"Teaching Online Professors ... Online," by Steve Kolowich, Inside
Higher Ed, November 10, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/10/pearson
Will colleges and universities buy online courses
designed to train the instructors who teach online courses?
Pearson, the education and media conglomerate, is
betting on it. The company will announce today a plan to sell courses aimed
at preparing professors to teach online.
As more traditional institutions look to scale up
their online offerings, Pearson -- which already sells some pre-packaged
courses, as well as textbooks and online learning platforms — sees demand
for training rising. “We’re pretty bullish on the opportunity," says Don
Kilburn, CEO of Pearson Learning Solutions. “There’s a real need to help.”
Pearson officials say the
target audience for the new courses, scheduled to be offered beginning in
January, will be institutions and systems looking to outsource training of
existing faculty as they grow their Web-based programs, as well as
freelancers looking to bolster their résumés as they apply for adjunct gigs.
The company is also hoping to team up with one or more accredited graduate
programs to offer the courses as part of a degree — or at least a
certificate — in online teaching.
The move is part of
Pearson’s strategy to expand beyond publishing into more segments of the
e-learning industry — not unlike Blackboard, which recently
announced that it
will soon start packaging and selling remedial education courses to
community colleges in conjunction with another e-learning company, K-12.
Like Blackboard’s remedial
courses, Pearson’s courses in online teaching are still in development. The
Louisiana Community and Technical College System is piloting some of the
courses, but it is only two weeks in — and while Pearson has provided a good
foundation, there is still tweaking to be done before the courses are
shelf-ready, says Tammy Hall, director of academic services there.
Still, a
preliminary menu available on Pearson’s website
lists eight course titles: Introduction to Online Learning, Instructor
Technology Preparation, Instructional Design for Online Learning, Promoting
Student Success in the Online Learning Environment, Assessing Knowledge and
Skills in the Online Learning Environment, Beyond the Online Classroom,
Online Teaching Internship, and Course Design/Project Practicum.
The company plans to
market the courses in the K-12 and corporate training sectors too, but it
plans to do about half of its business in higher education, Kilburn says.
Many higher ed
institutions with large online enrollments — including the University of
Phoenix, the largest employer of online instructors — run their own training
programs. But there are a few third-party providers that handle online
instructor training, both for individuals and for institutions.
One is the
Sloan
Consortium, a nonprofit that focuses on technology
and online education. Sloan runs nearly 100 workshops, averaging about a
week in length and costing $400 to $500 each for individuals or $3,500 for a
100-seat institutional license. It provides online training for around 2,500
instructors per year, according to John Bourne, the organization’s executive
director.
Another nonprofit, called
LERN, offers a three-course sequence, plus
course materials, for about $800 per head. LERN has found an accredited
partner in the University of South Dakota, which offers a handful of LERN
courses in online instruction
for credit
toward a master’s degree in educational administration.
Outside of that, the organization handles online teacher training for a
number of institutions, including Middle Tennessee State University,
Missouri Baptist University, New Mexico State University, Norfolk State
University, and several University of Texas campuses, according to Tammy
Peterson, head of customer service at LERN.
Kilburn, the Pearson
executive, says it is too early to estimate how his company will price its
courses. But it is hoping to attract not only institutions looking to grow
online that lack any scalable training mechanism for faculty, but also
institutions that already do online instructor training in-house that might
decide it is cheaper or more effective to outsource that task to Pearson. “I
do think there will be some folks who have their own in-house programs who
will look at [our offering] and evaluate it,” Kilburn says.
Continued in article
The Sad Case of Accounting Education in Texas: How Historic Brick
and Mortar Universities Fail Students Who Can Only Earn Credit Via
Distance Education ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/TexasBigBrother.htm
"Enrollment in Online Courses Increases at the Highest Rate Ever," by
Tavis Kaya, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 16, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/enrollment-in-online-courses-increases-at-the-highest-rate-ever/28204?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Despite predictions that the growth of online
education would begin to level off, colleges reported the highest-ever
annual increase in online enrollment—more than 21 percent—last year,
according to a
report on an annual survey of 2,600
higher-education institutions from the Sloan Consortium and the Babson
Survey Research Group.
In fall 2009, colleges—including public, nonprofit
private, and for-profit private institutions—reported that one million more
students were enrolled in at least one Web-based course, bringing the total
number of online students to 5.6 million. That unexpected increase—which
topped the previous year’s
17-percent rise—may have been helped by higher
demand for education in a rocky economy and an uptick in the number of
colleges adopting online courses.
Although the survey found sustained interest in
online courses across all sectors, there was a spike in the number of
for-profit institutions—a 20-percent increase over last year—that said
online education is critical to their long-term strategies. However, more
public colleges than private for-profits—74.9 percent versus 60.5
percent—say it’s part of their long-term plans.
Elaine Allen, associate professor of statistics and
entrepreneurship at Babson College and co-director of the Babson Survey
Research Group, said that the disproportionate increase in the for-profit
sector may mean that online programs are becoming their “bread and butter.”
Colleges are telling themselves that “if we want to grow and have profits,
we need to be in the online sector,” she said.
Increased government scrutiny of the for-profit
sector has complicated plans for expansion online. Approximately 32 percent
of for-profit institutions—compared with about 17 percent of public
colleges—said it will be difficult to comply with
government regulations on financial aid. Those new
regulations include a pending “gainful
employment” rule that could cut off federal aid to
programs with high levels of student debt relative to what students make
after graduation—a move that could slash revenue for institutions dependent
on student-aid money. “For the first time, we saw the government regulate
financial aid and some kind of return on investment,” Ms. Allen said. “The
for-profits are feeling the pressure there.”
Administrators also continue to wrestle with the
question of quality in online education. According to the survey report,
“Class Differences: Online Education in the United States, 2010,” 66 percent
of college administrators say that online education is the same as or better
than face-to-face classes—a slight decline from last year. Still, Ms. Allen
said it appears that more faculty members are warming up to online education
as a quality alternative to face-to-face learning and are finding new ways
to use the technology.
Ms. Allen expects Web enrollment to plateau as more
competitors—whether they are Web programs from established universities or
from new for-profit institutions—hit the market. And for-profit colleges
will probably take advantage of their more-nimble business models to expand
much more rapidly online than will their government-reliant public
competitors. As more budget cuts loom, public institutions are already
beginning to “feel competition from the for-profits,” she said.
Bob Jensen's threads on online training and education alternatives are at
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/CrossBorder.htm
"Cheating Scandal Snares Hundreds in U. of Central Florida Course,"
Chronicle of Higher Education, November 9, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/cheating-scandal-snares-hundreds-in-u-of-central-florida-course/28200
Nearly 600 students at the University of Central
Florida are retaking a midterm examination after the professor found
evidence of widespread cheating, The Orlando Sentinel reported. The
professor in the business course on strategic management, Richard Quinn,
told students in an emotional lecture that the cheating had made him
“physically ill, absolutely disgusted,” and “completely disillusioned.” An
investigation is under way to determine how an answer key to the
200-question test had circulated so widely. Mr. Quinn said students who
confessed would be permitted to complete the course if they attended an
ethics class. Those who don’t, he said, would be found out anyway, and
university officials said they could face expulsion.
New and Old Ways of Cheating ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
Statalist Protocol for Questions on the Web
And how to resist helping with homework for students who are complete strangers
November 12, 2010 message from Amy Dunbar
Re: cheating by asking questions in an online
venue, I subscribe to statalist, and, at first, I didn’t always recognize
when questions were homework questions. Like this list, a core of people
answer almost all the questions. I have learned so much from them. They must
have a sixth sense about homework posts because some posts never get a
response. And if someone posts again, the poster is sent to the stata FAQ,
which tells the poster not to double post! Truly a great FAQ and a great
listserv.
http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/statalist.html#comment
Amy Dunbar
UConn
Bob Jensen's threads on cheating ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
Equity shareholders, including pension funds, were completely wiped out in
the government's takeover of GM. Why are they so eager to jump back into this
kind of risk once again, especially with the pension obligations "hanging over
GM's turnaround"?
"General Motors IPO Insights From Harvard Business School Faculty," by
Joseph Bower, Vineet Kumar, and Dante Roscini, Harvard Business Review
Blog, November 16, 2010 ---
Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2010/11/general-motors-ipo-insights-fr.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
Jensen Comment
I notice that these three Harvard professors are not accountants or engineers.
GM pins its hopes on the forthcoming Volt hybrid ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt
The above link seems to be relatively fair on the pluses and minuses of the
Volt. I suspect this module was edited by GM and all the minuses are shoved to
the end of the module.
An engineer would probably note that the forthcoming Volt was supposed to be
an all-electric car that fails to be an all-electric car and is more of a
relatively low mileage hybrid --- in part because it's almost as heavy as a
tank. The batteries are very expensive to replace, thereby leading to some
question as to the resale value of the car relatively to similarly priced
competitors. The only hope for GM is that taxpayers are paying for much of
the cost to buyers of new Volts. There certainly appear to be better
alternatives for buyers who just do not want to be the first kid on their blocks
with a Volt ---
http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules/2010/08/02/twenty-better-values-than-a-chevy-volt/
At this point, GM’s balance sheet remains
loaded with fluff and OBSF Worries
An accountant might note the fluff in the GM's financial statements going into
this IPO. Is the financial risk for investors in this IPO distinguishing the Las
Vegas nature of this IPO?
Equity shareholders, including pension funds, were completely wiped out in
the government's takeover of GM. Why are they so eager to jump back into this
kind of risk once again, especially with the pension obligations "hanging over
GM's turnaround"?
"How GM Made $30 Billion Appear Out of Thin Air," by Jonathan Weil,
Bloomberg, September 8, 2010 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-09/how-gm-made-30-billion-appear-from-thin-air-commentary-by-jonathan-weil.html
It will be a long time before General Motors
Co. can shake the stigma of being called Government Motors. Here’s another
nickname for the bailed-out automaker: Goodwill Motors.
Sometimes the wackiest accounting results are
the ones driven by the accounting rules themselves. Consider this: How could
it be that one of GM’s most valuable assets, listed at $30.2 billion, is the
intangible asset known as goodwill, when it’s been only a little more than a
year since the company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection?
That’s the amount GM said its goodwill was
worth on the June 30 balance sheet it filed last month as part of the
registration statement for its planned initial public offering. By
comparison, GM said its total equity was $23.9 billion. So without the
goodwill, which isn’t saleable, the company’s equity would be negative. This
is hardly a sign of robust financial strength.
GM listed its goodwill at zero a year earlier.
It’s as if a $30.2 billion asset suddenly materialized out of thin air. In
the upside-down world that is GM’s balance sheet, that’s exactly what
happened.
Indeed, the company’s goodwill supposedly is
worth more than its property, plant and equipment, which GM listed at $18.1
billion. The amount is about eight times the $3.5 billion GM is paying to
buy AmeriCredit Corp., the subprime auto lender. Another twist: GM said its
goodwill would have been worth less had its creditworthiness been better.
Talk about a head- scratcher. (More on this later.)
Not Normal
This isn’t the way goodwill normally works.
Usually it comes about when one company buys another company. The acquirer
records the other company’s net assets on its books at their fair market
value. It then records the difference between the purchase price and the net
assets it bought as goodwill.
The origins of GM’s goodwill are more
convoluted. Shortly after it filed for bankruptcy last year, GM applied
what’s known as “fresh-start” financial reporting, used by companies in
Chapter 11. Through its reorganization, GM initially slashed its liabilities
by about $93.4 billion, or 44 percent. Under fresh- start reporting, though,
GM’s assets rose by $34.6 billion, or 33 percent, mainly because of the
increase to goodwill.
GM’s explanation? The company said it wouldn’t
have registered any goodwill under fresh-start reporting if it had booked
all its identifiable assets and liabilities at their fair market values.
However, GM recorded some of its liabilities at amounts that exceeded fair
value, primarily related to employee benefits. The company said the decision
was in accordance with U.S. accounting standards on the subject.
Funky Numbers
The difference between those liabilities’
carrying amounts and fair values gave rise to goodwill. The bigger the
difference, the more goodwill GM booked. In other instances, GM said it
recorded certain tax assets at less than their fair value, which also
resulted in goodwill.
On the liabilities side, for example, GM said
the fair values were lower than the carrying amounts on its balance sheet
because it used higher discount rates to calculate the fair value figures.
The higher discount rates took GM’s own risk of default into account, which
drove the fair values lower.
Here’s where it gets really funky. If GM’s
creditworthiness improves, this would reduce the difference between the
liabilities’ fair values and carrying amounts. Put another way, GM said, the
goodwill balance implied by that spread would decline. That could make GM’s
goodwill vulnerable to writedowns in future periods, which would reduce
earnings.
Unexpected Outcome
A similar effect would ensue on the asset side
if GM’s long-term profit forecasts improved. Under that scenario, GM could
recognize higher tax assets and bring their carrying amount closer to fair
value, narrowing the spread between them.
So, to sum up, the stronger and more
creditworthy GM becomes, the less its goodwill assets may be worth in the
future. An intuitive outcome, this is not.
There’s a broader storyline here. Normally
when companies go public, they’re supposed to be prepared from a business
and financial-reporting standpoint to take on the responsibilities of public
ownership. GM’s IPO, of course, is a much different animal. Taxpayers
already own most of the company. Now the government is trying to unload its
61 percent stake back onto the investing public, though it may take years
before the government can sell it completely.
Fluffy Balance Sheet
At this point, GM’s balance sheet remains
loaded with fluff, as the goodwill
illustrates. GM said its August deliveries were down 25 percent from a year
earlier, so it’s not as if business is booming. Moreover, GM disclosed that
it still has material weaknesses in its internal controls, which is a fancy
way of saying it doesn’t have the necessary systems in place to ensure its
financial reporting is accurate.
This being the political season, the Obama
administration has made clear that it wants GM to complete the IPO this
year, so the president can claim a policy success. It’s bad enough GM needed
a taxpayer bailout. What would be worse is taking the company public again
prematurely.
This much is certain: The next time GM wants to create $30 billion out of
nothing, it won’t be so easy.
Also see Francine's article at
http://blogs.forbes.com/francinemckenna/2010/11/04/the-gm-ipo-are-you-buying-it/
"Pension time bomb: The shadow hanging over GM's turnaround," The
Washington Post, August 27, 2010
PRESIDENT OBAMA has a riposte for
critics of his decision to rescue
General Motors and Chrysler: You can't argue with
success. And much good news has emanated from Detroit of late, especially
from GM. Having wiped out almost all of its debt through an
administration-orchestrated bankruptcy process, slashed excess plants and
streamlined operations, GM is once again
turning a profit: $2.2 billion so far in 2010.
Sales are up; promising new models are coming to
market. GM's aggressive
new management is
planning a public stock offering, which would let
the Treasury Department start unloading the 61 percent stake it bought for
nearly $50 billion. U.S. officials speak of escaping with modest losses -- a
small price for averting industrial catastrophe.
All true -- up to a point. But
the company's stock prospectus points to several reasons for caution,
including such obvious ones as the sluggish U.S. economy and overcapacity in
global auto manufacturing. And then there's a threat that the
Obama-supervised bankruptcy did not address: the precarious condition of
GM's immense pension plans.
With almost $100 billion in
liabilities, GM's defined-benefit plans for U.S. employees (one covers a
half-million United Auto Workers members, another, 200,000 white-collar
personnel) are the largest of any company in America. Yet they were
underfunded by $17.1 billion as of the end of
2009, and the underfunding had only slightly lessened, to $16.7 billion, as
of June 30. (Chrysler has a similar problem, on a smaller scale.) Having
been filled with borrowed money before Chrysler's bankruptcy, the funds can
limp along for a couple of years. But, as GM's prospectus acknowledges,
federal law will require it to start pumping in "significant" amounts by
2014 if not sooner. GM does not say exactly how much, but an April
Government Accountability Office report suggested
that a $5.9 billion injection might be required initially, with larger ones
to follow. In other words, any investor who buys GM stock is buying stock in
a firm whose revenue is already partially committed to retired workers.
When companies go bankrupt, their
underfunded pensions often are taken over by the Pension Benefit
Guaranty Corp. (PBGC), a government-run,
industry-funded insurance agency, which then pays retirees a fraction of
what they were owed. But that didn't happen in the GM-Chrysler bankruptcy.
The UAW resisted what would have been a huge reduction in the generous
benefits of its members, especially the many who retire before age 65. And
the Obama administration chose not to push back.
The net effect is that the
pension time bomb is still ticking. If GM earns robust profits, even more
robust than it is making now, the bomb won't detonate. Otherwise -- well, in
a worst-case scenario, GM winds up back in bankruptcy, with PBGC
intervention both unavoidable and more expensive than it would have been
last year. And that could necessitate a bailout from Congress, because of
the PBGC's own deficits.
We're not offering investment
advice -- just a dash of realism about a still-troubled industry, and a
warning that its dependence on taxpayers may not be ended so easily.
Bob Jensen's threads on pension accounting are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#Pensions
Bob Jensen's threads on the bailout are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
Equity shareholders, including pension funds, were completely wiped out in
the government's takeover of GM. Why are they so eager to jump back into this
kind of risk once again, especially with the pension obligations "hanging over
GM's turnaround"?
MAAW Social Networks Bibliography ---
http://maaw.info/SocialNetworksBib.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on social networks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
Times are changing in higher education and lines that used to separate
non-profit and profit universities are beginning to fade
Unusual Distance Education Ventures with Non-Profit and Profit Partners
What's to prevent a Northwestern-Deloitte for-profit venture to supplement
Deloitte's new onsite campus with general public online offerings?
What's to prevent a Thunderbird-University of Phoenix for-profit venture in a
global MBA program?
There are various types of hybrid distance education programs in accountancy.
First there are distance education courses that have substantial onsite modules
where students and faculty interact in physical presence.
DeVry University, for
example, has hybrid accounting courses of this nature and so does the
Chartered Accountancy School of
Business in western Canada although CASB's onsite components are relatively
small.
A second type of program would be one that is primarily an onsite program but
has selected courses that are taught online in the curriculum. This is becoming
popular for students want to go online in the summers and while in the field on
internships. Also for-profit schools like DeVry University and the University of
Phoenix use their own hundreds of learning centers to allow students to mix
online and onsite courses.
A third hybrid that is not nearly as common is an entirely online distance
education program that's a partnership between public and private owners.
Although it's common for large corporations to arrange for special-admission
programs within universities such as the University of Georgia's distance
education MBA program conducted especially for PwC consulting division
employees, it would be quite a stretch if the University of Georgia
(hypothetically) partnered with PwC to create a distance education for-profit
MBA distance education venture that might be called something like the Bulldog
PwC Global Executive MBA Program that seeks worldwide applicants from the public
in general and not just PwC employees. Such a program has not yet been
conceived, but times are changing in higher education.
Although I'm not Thunderbird's biggest fan for reasons I won't go into here,
Thunderbird is a
well-known AACSB-accredited non-profit international business school ---
Click Here
http://programs.thunderbird.edu/index.php?content=schoolwide&campaign=Google&adgroup=Branded&keyword=thunderbird
training&_vsrefdom=GoogPPC&gclid=CMee_KiOoKUCFeFM5QodmV6nIw
#1 "International" Full–time MBA |
U.S. News & World Report 2011 (15th consecutive #1
ranking)
|
#1 "Best in International Business" Full–time MBA |
Financial Times 2010 |
#3 "Best Executive MBA Program" |
The Wall Street Journal 2010 |
Among the top 5 Distance Learning MBA Programs in the World |
The Economist 2010 |
#10 "Top 10 for Corporate Social Responsibility" |
Financial Times 2010 |
Unusual Public-Private Partnerships
"Online Education's New Campus-Thunderbird: In what would be an
unusual public-private partnership, Thunderbird School of Global Management
seeks private capital to help it launch a new online executive-education program,"
by Francesca Di Meglio, Business Week, November 8, 2010 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/nov2010/bs2010115_478844.htm?link_position=link18
Online education has been gathering momentum for
some time. Enrollment in for-profit degree programs is growing, and the
response in academia signals growing acceptance of an educational format
once considered a poor substitute for classroom-based learning. Now a
well-regarded business school is planning an ambitious online venture that
represents a new model for online education.
The
Thunderbird School of Global Management (Thunderbird
Full-Time MBA Profile) intends to announce its
plans in the coming months, says President Ángel Cabrera. Details are
sketchy, but Cabrera says Thunderbird is setting the foundation for "a
commercial venture on the professional training side that will provide
nondegree programs around the world through an online format."
After hundreds of years educating people more or
less the same way—via a teacher in front of a class—online courses are the
wave of the future, says Cabrera, who adds that his school doesn't want to
be left out. Of the 4,160 U.S. colleges and universities surveyed by the
National Center for Education Statistics, 66 percent offered college-level
distance-education programs in the 2006-07 academic year, the most recent
year for which information is available.
Years of Web and Satellite Offerings
"It's a tsunami in the industry and what you've
seen happen with the media moving to the Internet is coming to education,"
says Cabrera. "It's a [trend] that you can ignore at your own peril."
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Wouldn't it be interesting if the University of Phoenix approached Thunderbird
with a proposal to invest in Thunderbird's initiative to attract investing
partners?
The IRS takes a dim view of most business ventures of non-profit
organizations, but this partnering initiative is a such a big deal for
Thunderbird that tax experts will undoubtedly create a work around to satisfy
the IRS.
Possibly a bigger stumbling block is the AACSB given the AACSB's aversion for
for-profit onsite or online universities in North America
The AACSB generally does not accredit for-profit universities in North America
as a matter of practice even if not stated verbatim writing. I also don't know
of any stand-alone distance education programs, profit or non-profit, that are
accredited by the AACSB in North America. However, if the AACSB has accredited
an onsite non-profit onsite degree program, it will extend its accreditation to
distance education degree programs that co-exist with accredited onsite programs
such as the dual AACSB business and accounting accreditation of the Master of
Science in Accounting (MSA) degree program at the University of Connecticut ---
http://msaccounting.business.uconn.edu/
Similar AACSB accredited undergraduate and graduate accounting degree programs
can be found at such places as the University of Wisconsin System and the
University of Maryland System.
Question
Why would non-profit and profit partnering be a North American turf concern of
the AACSB?
Answer
The AACSB probably worries that North American for-profit universities will use
these partnerships to make an end run to obtain AACSB accreditation of North
American for-profit ventures. The business school deans of non-profit North
American universities virtually run the AACSB. Fear that massive for-profit
universities like the University of Phoenix (with 500,000 students annually)
will invade non-profits' turf resulted in for-profit university paranoia among
all-powerful AACSB deans. This is why they will fret and stew about non-profit
and profit partnerships such as that being proposed by Thunderbird.
There are basically two extremes when it comes to distance education markets.
At one extreme we have poor, often unemployed, people who want a college degree
but are located a long distance from onsite degree alternatives and/or are
single parents that prefer to both learn on line and care for their children at
the same time. At the other extreme we have busy executives who can afford to
travel anywhere in the world but find it difficult to take the time to
travel/commute to onsite learning centers. For example, an executive with an oil
company might like to earn an MBA online while working in Nigeria.
Whereas the University of Phoenix targets the lower end of the admissions
spectrum (e.g., an unemployed single parent having virtually no chance for a
degree other than an online degree), a totally different non-profit university
in Phoenix, Thunderbird, targets the higher end of the admissions spectrum
(rising stars in management who are employees of big companies that are
reluctant to grant time off for purposes of onsite classroom attendance). One
distinction for the time being is that the University of Phoenix is a for-profit
university versus the non-profit Thunderbird. Now Thunderbird is trying to inch
forward into the for-profit world with partnership ventures. Will the University
of Phoenix take the bait?
Although I've never seen it mentioned, it would seem possible for some
non-profit colleges to partner with the University of Phoenix. In a way this is
already happening without formal partnerships. Suppose a small non-profit
liberal arts college has a very limited accounting degree program (maybe only a
minor) that cannot offer all the very expensive specialty courses required to
for career opportunities in accounting, such as courses in AIS, forensic
auditing, corporate tax, and governmental accounting. Those limited-budget
liberal arts colleges might now allow accounting majors to transfer in these
specialty course credits from such accredited schools as the University of
Phoenix that has ACBSB business specialty accreditation (
http://www.acbsp.org/ ) as
well as North Central Association regional accreditation.
It would be a bit of a stretch, but it might be possible to approach the
University of Phoenix with a proposal for tuition discounts for students from a
particular non-profit college. Perhaps the University of Phoenix might even work
with the non-profit college to jointly design a particular course for that
college or even a partnered curriculum of specialty courses.
Partnering with non-profit colleges in this manner would save the University
of Phoenix a great deal of trouble in the admissions process since it's
non-profit partners would handle admissions and graduation certifications.
The next step would be for the University of Phoenix to invest money in a
partnership with a non-profit college venture.
Anything seems possible these days
Anything seems possible these days since for-profit universities are seeking
ways to overcome their recent admissions scandals ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Anything seems possible these days since non-profit universities are seeking
ways to overcome budgetary crises. Accounting programs are especially vulnerable
to budgetary crises since new tenure-track faculty in some accounting
specialties command over $200,000 starting salaries per year. The University of
Phoenix and other online programs tend to find these specialists to teach online
whereas traditional colleges seem to have more difficulties finding these
specialists part-time for onsite courses. There are various economies of scale
in distance education, and hiring instructors seems to be one of these vis-à-vis
trying to hire a governmental accounting specialist to teach a night course
onsite for a small Baptist College in Cactus Gulch, Nevada that's 100 miles from
civilization.
Times are changing in higher education and lines that used to separate
non-profit and profit universities are beginning to fade!
********************
Changes are coming (forwarded by Gene and Joan except change Number 10)
Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them.
But, ready or not, here they come
1. The Post Office.
Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in
financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email,
Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the
post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.
2. The Check.
Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It
costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic
cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check.
This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills
by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out
of business.
3. The Newspaper.
People in younger generations seldom buy magazines and newspapers in newstands.
They certainly don't subscribe to daily delivered print editions. Hardcopy
newstands may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the
paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and
e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an
alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies
to develop a model for paid subscription services.
4. The Book.
You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and
turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from
iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I
discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home
to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a
bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price
is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you
start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you
are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that
you're holding a gadget instead of a book.
5. The Land Line Telephone (and the associated White Pages of telephone
directories that are already declared dead).
Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it
anymore. Most people keep it simply because they've always had it. But you are
paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will
let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your
minutes
6. Music.
This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is
dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of
innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to
hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio
conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music purchased today
is "catalog items," meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with.
Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To
explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book,
"Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary,
"Before the Music Dies."
7. Television.
Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy.
People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they're
playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to
be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the
lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run
about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It's
time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose
what they want to watch online and through Netflix.
8. The "Things" That You Own.
Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we
may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud."
Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies,
and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it
if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all
finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a
computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows,
Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an
icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it
will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the
cloud provider.
In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever
from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually
own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a
big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It
makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book
from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.
9. Privacy.
If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be
privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras
on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and
cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, "They" know who you are and where you
are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy
something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change
to reflect those habits. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else.
Again and again.
Are we allowed to take video of passengers having orgasms to ticklish theatrics
while having security pat downs at airports?
Can pat downs be avoided by wearing a bikini or going topless when traveling by
airplane?
10. For-profit and not-for profit joint ventures in higher education.
"Online Education's New Campus-Thunderbird: In what would be an
unusual public-private partnership, Thunderbird School of Global Management
seeks private capital to help it launch a new online executive-education program,"
by Francesca Di Meglio, Business Week, November 8, 2010 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/nov2010/bs2010115_478844.htm?link_position=link18
A Lost Generation: Joe Hoyle has a chat with an official in the
Afghanistan government
"We Shouldn’t Take It For Granted," by Joe Hoyle, November 18, 2010 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2010/11/we-shouldnt-take-it-for-granted.html
Video: Charles Furgeson has produced a powerful documentary, “Inside
Job,” about the deep capture of financial (de)regulation ---
http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/the-situation-of-the-2008-economic-crisis/
"How Wall Street Fleeced the World: The Searing New doc Inside
Job Indicts the Bankers and Their Washington Pals," by Mary Corliss
and Richard Corliss, Time Magazine, October 18, 2010 ---
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2024228,00.html
Like some malefactor being grilled by Mike Wallace
in his 60 Minutes prime, Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School,
gets hot under the third-degree light of Charles Ferguson's questioning in
Inside Job. Hubbard, who helped design George W. Bush's tax cuts on
investment gains and stock dividends, finally snaps, "You have three more
minutes. Give it your best shot." But he has already shot himself in the
foot.
Frederic Mishkin, a former Federal Reserve Board
governor and for now an economics professor at Columbia, begins stammering
when Ferguson quizzes him about when the Fed first became aware of the
danger of subprime loans. "I don't know the details... I'm not sure
exactly... We had a whole group of people looking at this." "Excuse me,"
Ferguson interrupts, "you can't be serious. If you would have looked, you
would have found things." (See the demise of Bernie Madoff.)
Ferguson—whose Oscar-nominated No End in Sight
analyzed the Bush Administration's slipshod planning of the Iraq
occupation—did look at the Fed, the Wall Street solons and the decisions
made by White House administrations over the past 30 years, and he found
plenty. Of the docufilms that have addressed the worldwide financial
collapse (Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, Leslie and Andrew
Cockburn's American Casino), this cogent, devastating synopsis is the
definitive indictment of the titans who swindled America and of their pals
in the federal government who enabled them.
With a Ph.D. in political science from MIT,
Ferguson is no knee-jerk anticapitalist. In the '90s, he and a partner
created a software company and sold it to Microsoft for $133 million. He is
at ease talking with his moneyed peers and brings a calm tone to the film
(narrated by Matt Damon). Yet you detect a growing anger as Ferguson digs
beneath the rubble, and his fury is infectious. If you're not enraged by the
end of this movie, you haven't been paying attention. (See "Protesting the
Bailout.")
The seeds of the collapse took decades to flower.
By 2008, the financial landscape had become so deregulated that homeowners
and small investors had few laws to help them. Inflating the banking bubble
was a group effort—by billionaire CEOs with their private jets, by agencies
like Moody's and Standard & Poor's that kept giving impeccable ratings to
lousy financial products, by a Congress that overturned consumer-protection
laws and by Wall Street's fans in academe, who can earn hundreds of
thousands of dollars by writing papers favorable to Big Business or sitting
on the boards of firms like Goldman Sachs.
Who's Screwing Whom? In the spasm of moral
recrimination that followed the collapse, some blamed the bright kids who
passed up careers in science or medicine to make millions on Wall Street and
charged millions more on their expense accounts for cocaine and prostitutes.
After the savings-and-loan scandals of the late-'80s, according to Inside
Job, thousands of executives went to jail. This time, with the economy
bulking up on the steroids of derivatives and credit-default swaps, the only
person who has done any time is Kristin Davis, the madam of a bordello
patronized by Wall Streeters. Davis appears in the film, as does disgraced
ex--New York governor Eliot Spitzer; both seem almost virtuous when compared
with the big-money men. (See "The Case Against Goldman Sachs.")
The larger message of both No End in Sight and
Inside Job is that American optimism, the engine for the nation's expansion,
can have tragic results. The conquest of Iraq? A slam dunk. Gambling
billions on risky mortgages? No worry—the housing market always goes up.
Ignoring darker, more prescient scenarios, the geniuses in charge
constructed faith-based policies that enriched their pals; they stumbled
toward a precipice, and the rest of us fell off.
The shell game continues. Inside Job also details
how, in Obama's White House, finance-industry veterans devised a "recovery"
that further enriched their cronies without doing much for the average Joe.
Want proof? Look at the financial industry's fat profits of the past year
and then at your bank account, your pension plan, your own bottom line.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2024228,00.html#ixzz154ZcbY4W
Video: Watch Columbia's Business School Economist and Dean Hubbard rap
his wrath for Ben Bernanke
The video is a anti-Bernanke musical performance by the Dean of Columbia
Business School ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u2qRXb4xCU
Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Federal Reserve and a great friend of big banks)
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Bernanke
R. Glenn Hubbard (Dean of the Columbia Business School) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Hubbard_(economics)
Bob Jensen's threads on the Greatest Swindle in History ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Bailout
Just goes to show you don't necessarily have to coddle students
"The Unknown's Students Nail an Exam," by The Unknown Professor,
Financial Rounds Blog, November 03, 2010 ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/2010/11/unknown-students-nail-exam.html
I've been teaching the undergraduate core finance
class this semester, . If you've been teaching for a while, you know that
it's easy in that class to get discouraged by students who are (pick any or
all that apply) unmotivated, unable to do simple math, whiny, unwilling to
be stretched, never darken your office doorway, etc...
This semester, I made a conscious decision to
really push my students - since the first week of September, they've two
exams, three very involved problem sets (with a lot of curves thrown in -
the typical one takes about 3-5 hours to complete), eight online quizzes,
and short pop quizzes (they typically last 5 minutes or less and contain 1
or 2 basic questions on the material to be covered for the day's class) on
average every other day, and almost constant cold-calling in class (in a 50
minute class, I typically call on 15-20 students). I like to think that I've
set the bar at a far higher level than the other sections of the intro class
being taught this semester. In fact, some of my students have told me that
I've brought the class together - they're getting together in study groups
of as many as 10 at a time (and there was supposedly a study group the night
before the first exam of almost twenty students).
I've also made a decision to teach in full-blown
crazy mode. Those who've heard my bloviations over the years know that I'm a
flaming extrovert that tends toward (in my better moments) impressions of
Ahnuld (I Am The Denominator!), Mister Rogers, Kermit The Frog, Inigo
Montoya, and various characters from the Simpsons, South Park, and Monty
Python, often in rapid succession. The last few years, the Unknown Son's
illness had really taken a toll on my zest for teaching (and it showed in my
evaluations). While he passed away almost 18 months ago, it's only been this
semester that I've really felt like the "old" me. So, teaching has been a
real pleasure.
Well, my class just had their second exam, and to
put it bluntly, they did more damage to the exam than the Republicans did to
the Democrats in the last election - they knocked it out of the park. There
was the usual variation in grades, of course (one student got a 23 - It's
never when your grade approximates your age), but on the whole they
performed better than any comparable class I can remember going back to the
late 1990's.
So, there is hope. It's nice to see that when you
set the bar high (and meet the students more than halfway), they respond to
the challenge.
Jensen Comment
Some years back, before his young son died of cancer, The Unknown Professor
revealed his real name to me and his affiliation in the Finance Department of a
flagship state university. Knowing his real name allowed me to look at his
student evaluation performance on RateMyProfessor.com. He's one of the rare
breeds who scores enviably high on all teaching performance criteria except
"hardness" where he's rated low (1.7) which means he's very hard.
Two student comments of possible interest:
Student 1
XXXXX is cool - he's enthusiastic, knows his subject, and tests fairly. He's
clear about what he expects, sets high standards, and prepares his students
well for the exams (they're tough, but no surprices). Work hard & you'll do
o.k. - if you don't, there's no way to skate through. Prepare to really work
if you want a B or A.
Student 2
He's a good teacher. His class is alright, most people go. Tests are kind of
tough but he gives a problem set that helps alot. Good guy...he might pull
his pants up like 12-15 times each class - but it makes for a fun guessing
game during the class.
Texas A&M Case on Computing the Cost of Professors and Academic Programs
Jensen Comment
In an advanced Cost/Managerial Accounting course this assignment could have two
parts. First assign the case below. Then assign student teams to write a case on
how to compute the cost of a given course, graduate in a given program, or a
comparison of a the cost of a distance education section versus an onsite
section of a given course taught by a tenured faculty member teaching three
courses in general as well as conducting research, performing internal service,
and performing external service in his/her discipline.
From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on November 5,
2010
Putting a Price on Professors
by: Stephanie Simon and Stephanie Banchero
Oct 23, 2010
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com
TOPICS: Contribution Margin, Cost Management, Managerial Accounting
SUMMARY: The article describes a contribution margin review at Texas A&M
University drilled all the way down to the faculty member level. Also
described are review systems in place in California, Indiana, Minnesota,
Michigan, Ohio and other locations.
CLASSROOM APPLICATION: Managerial concepts of efficiency, contribution
margin, cost management, and the managerial dashboard in university settings
are discussed in this article.
QUESTIONS:
1. (Introductory) Summarize the reporting on Texas A&M University's Academic
Financial Data Compilation. Would you describe this as putting a "price" on
professors or would you use some other wording? Explain.
2. (Introductory) What is the difference between operational efficiency and
"academic efficiency"?
3. (Advanced) Review the table entitled "Controversial Numbers: Cash Flow at
Texas A&M." Why do you think that Chemistry, History, and English
Departments are more likely to generate positive cash flows than are
Oceanography, Physics and Astronomy, and Aerospace Engineering?
4. (Introductory) What source of funding for academics is excluded from the
table review in answer to question 3 above? How do you think that funding
source might change the scenario shown in the table?
5. (Advanced) On what managerial accounting technique do you think
Minnesota's state college system has modeled its method of assessing
campuses' performance?
6. (Advanced) Refer to the related article. A large part of cost increases
in university education stem from dormitories, exercise facilities, and
other building amenities on campuses. What is your reaction to this parent's
statement that universities have "acquiesced to the kids' desire to go to
school at luxury resorts"?
Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island
RELATED ARTICLES:
Letters to the Editor: What Is It That We Want Our Universities to Be?
by Hank Wohltjen, David Roll, Jane S. Shaw, Edward Stephens
Oct 30, 2010
Page: A16
"Putting a Price on Professors," by Stephanie Simon and Stephanie Banchero,
The Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703735804575536322093520994.html?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid
Carol Johnson took the podium of a lecture hall one
recent morning to walk 79 students enrolled in an introductory biology
course through diffusion, osmosis and the phospholipid bilayer of cell
membranes.
A senior lecturer, Ms. Johnson has taught this
class for years. Only recently, though, have administrators sought to
quantify whether she is giving the taxpayers of Texas their money's worth.
A 265-page spreadsheet, released last month by the
chancellor of the Texas A&M University system, amounted to a profit-and-loss
statement for each faculty member, weighing annual salary against students
taught, tuition generated, and research grants obtained.
Ms. Johnson came out very much in the black; in the
period analyzed—fiscal year 2009—she netted the public university $279,617.
Some of her colleagues weren't nearly so profitable. Newly hired assistant
professor Charles Criscione, for instance, spent much of the year setting up
a lab to research parasite genetics and ended up $45,305 in the red.
The balance sheet sparked an immediate uproar from
faculty, who called it misleading, simplistic and crass—not to mention,
riddled with errors. But the move here comes amid a national drive, backed
by some on both the left and the right, to assess more rigorously what,
exactly, public universities are doing with their students—and their tax
dollars.
As budget pressures mount, legislators and
governors are increasingly demanding data proving that money given to
colleges is well spent. States spend about 11% of their general-fund budgets
subsidizing higher education. That totaled more than $78 billion in fiscal
year 2008, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers.
The movement is driven as well by dismal
educational statistics. Just over half of all freshmen entering four-year
public colleges will earn a degree from that institution within six years,
according to the U.S. Department of Education.
And among those with diplomas, just 31% could pass
the most recent national prose literacy test, given in 2003; that's down
from 40% a decade earlier, the department says.
"For years and years, universities got away with,
'Trust us—it'll be worth it,'" said F. King Alexander, president of
California State University at Long Beach.
But no more: "Every conversation we have with these
institutions now revolves around productivity," says Jason Bearce, associate
commissioner for higher education in Indiana. He tells administrators it's
not enough to find efficiencies in their operations; they must seek
"academic efficiency" as well, graduating more students more quickly and
with more demonstrable skills. The National Governors Association echoes
that mantra; it just formed a commission focused on improving productivity
in higher education.
This new emphasis has raised hackles in academia.
Some professors express deep concern that the focus on serving student
"customers" and delivering value to taxpayers will turn public colleges into
factories. They worry that it will upend the essential nature of a
university, where the Milton scholar who teaches a senior seminar to five
English majors is valued as much as the engineering professor who lands a
million-dollar research grant.
And they fear too much tinkering will destroy an
educational system that, despite its acknowledged flaws, remains the envy of
much of the world. "It's a reflection of a much more corporate model of
running a university, and it's getting away from the idea of the university
as public good," says John Curtis, research director for the American
Association of University Professors.
Efforts to remake higher education generally fall
into two categories. In some states, including Ohio and Indiana, public
officials have ordered a new approach to funding, based not on how many
students enroll but on what they accomplish.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on managerial and cost accounting are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#ManagementAccounting
"New Web Site Offers Career ‘Resilience’ Advice for Female Academics,"
by Paige Chapman, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 5, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-web-site-offers-career-resilience-advice-for-women-academics/28044?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Women in science and technology doctoral-degree
programs are
more
likely to drop out than are their male
counterparts:
Unfavorable workplace climates and discrimination
are leading reasons. Arizona State University, in partnership with the
National Science Foundation, is the latest university to attempt to combat
this problem with a novel approach, featured on its new
CareerWISE Web site.
Bianca L. Bernstein, the project’s principal
investigator, says the site offers women examples of resilience: ways to
rebound from the discouragement of situations in which they feel they are
belittled and treated as outsiders. She says this is a different approach
from other Internet-based materials for women academics. “There have been a
lot of resources out there, but we felt a lot of them are not helpful
because they either provide a lot of statistics and reports or tell a lot of
war stories,” Ms. Bernstein says. “We instead want to teach women how to
counter discouragement and give them the confidence to deal with any
situation that comes up.”
One of the tools Ms. Bernstein says can offer a big
help is the “HerStories” section, which now has approximately 180 video
interviews with women who have continued academic careers in the face of
adversity.
“They can see how women handled situations that may
be similar to what they’re facing with success and learn from those
approaches,” she says.
For example, the home page features a video of Jean
M. Andino, an associate professor at Arizona State’s school of engineering.
In the three-minute clip, Ms. Andino says she felt pressured to participate
in a university committee because of her gender and race, but she didn’t
have the time to devote to it. She says by emphasizing both the importance
of her other obligations and her dedication to her employer, she was able to
decline the opportunity and maintain the respect of her colleagues.
The site also details several different ways that
women often respond to conflict-ridden situations, Women can identify their
own patterns and then see alternative responses that may lead to productive
outcomes.
Ms. Bernstein says she is hoping that the
interpersonal approach will help women learn how to handle everyday
situations and that using the Internet as a resource will make them more
likely to seek help.
“Sometimes, women in these situations feel very
vulnerable and don’t know what to do,” she says. “Going online gives them
the ability to get advice and help in the privacy of their own home.”
Bob Jensen's threads on tenure can be found in the following links:
(Teaching vs. Research) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#TeachingVsResearch
(Micro-level Research) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#MicroLevelResearch
(Co-authoring) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#JointAuthorship
(Scholarship in the Humanities) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#MLA
(Obsolete and Dysfunctional Tenure) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Tenure
"The 11 Most Shocking Insider Trading Scandals Of The Past 25 Years,"
Business Insider, November 4, 2010 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-insider-trading-scandals-2010-11#ixzz14WznUXEr
1986: Ivan Boesky, Dennis Levine and the fall of Drexel Burnham Lambert
2001: Martha Stewart and ImClone (I think this is less about what she did
than who she was)
2001: Art Samberg's Illegal Microsoft Trades
2001: Rene Rivkin Convicted For Insider Trading That Netted Him Only $346
2005: Joseph Nacchio and Qwest Communications
2006: Livedoor and Murakami, The Enron Of Japan
2007: Mitchel Guttenberg, David Tavdy and Erik Franklin
2007: Randi and Christopher Collotta
2009: The Galleon Mess
2010: Some Very Wily Brothers - Charles and Sam Wyly And An Alleged $550
M Scheme
2010: Insider Trading By French Doc Might Have Helped FrontPoint Avoid
Huge Losses
"Giuliani Asks Congress to Define Insider Trading," by Nathaniel C.
Nash, The New York Times, April 23, 1987 ---
Click Here
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEFD8113FF930A15757C0A961948260&n=Top/Reference/Times
Topics/People/G/Giuliani, Rudolph W.
The United States Attorney in Manhattan, Rudolph W.
Giuliani, asked Congress today to pass legislation that would define illegal
insider trading, saying it would help him in prosecuting criminal cases.
Such a definition would ''end the debate'' over
what are legal and illegal practices, said Mr. Giuliani, whose office has
brought almost a dozen criminal insider trading cases against participants
in the current Wall Street scandal.
Mr. Giuliani's prominence in the investigations led
the White House to offer to appoint him chairman of the Securities and
Exchange Commission, succeeding John S. R. Shad, who is retiring. But Mr.
Giuliani declined the appointment.
Mr. Giuliani told the Senate Banking Committee in
hearings today that his office and the S.E.C. were investigating at least
one case that involved criminal collusion by various investors or firms on
Wall Street. He declined to provide any specifics about the case, citing his
policy of not commenting on continuing investigations. An Investigation
Confirmed
''Are you finding problems with such issues as
collusion, say among arbitrage firms or other investors, in your
investigations?'' asked Senator Donald W. Riegle Jr., Democrat of Michigan,
who is chairman of the Banking Committee's securities subcommittee.
After consulting with Gary G. Lynch, the head of
the S.E.C.'s enforcement division, who was also testifying, Mr. Giuliani
said such an investigation was being conducted by both agencies and that a
public development in the case might ''be coming fairly soon.''
Since the insider-trading scandal began last year,
there has been much debate over what should be done to stop what some in
Congress say is a ''systemic'' problem of insider trading and other abuses
of the takeover process. Several Proposals Put Forward
Mr. Giuliani had several recommendations:
* In addition to increasing the size of the S.E.C.
enforcement staff and that of the Justice Department to handle the growing
caseload, he recommended that the penalties for insider trading be increased
from the current five-year maximum to eight or 10 years.
* He suggested that Congress send a message to the
judiciary that ''prison sentences should be given in most of these cases,''
saying he strongly believed that the likelihood of spending time in prison
would be the single largest deterrent to traders, ''as opposed to the
organized-crime figure who factors a six-year prison term into his
strategy.''
* He recommended that a mandatory prison sentence
of one to two years be given anyone convicted of obstruction of justice or
perjury in an insider-trading investigation and that firms be subject to
penalties for the illegal actions of their employees if the firms are found
to be negligent on self-policing.
Mr. Giuliani's call for a clear definition of
insider trading comes amid considerable debate over whether such a statute
would restrict, rather than preserve, the S.E.C.'s current enforcement
reach.
For years, S.E.C. officials have opposed such a
definition, but Mr. Lynch said he would not oppose a definition provided it
was sufficiently broad and ''neither narrows the current case law, discards
the misappropriate theory or increases the evidentiary burdens on the
S.E.C.''
Both Mr. Lynch and Mr. Giuliani said they were
surprised at the pervasiveness of insider trading they had discovered on
Wall Street. Mr. Lynch said 20 of the 100 professionals on his staff were
working on cases that have come out of current scandal; Mr. Giuliani said as
much as 20 percent of his staff was involved in insider-trading cases.
Bob Jensen's threads on greater sinners ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
American
History of Fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
November 6, 2010 message from Bob Jensen to the AECM
Does this all come down to turf protection hidden agenda?
Is Big Brother just a dupe?
Please hear me out.
The Texas Board Big Brother already demands that candidates allowed to
sit for the CPA examination must be graduates of AACSB or ACBSP accredited
programs. But that alone is not enough!
The rest of the story ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/TexasBigBrother.htm
Preliminary draft of President Obama's long-awaited
bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform report
Jensen Comment
A very preliminary draft of President Obama's long-awaited bipartisan National
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform report was released as a
Co-Chairs' Proposal on November 10, 2010
Very Brief Summary ---
http://pnhp.org/blog/2010/11/10/deficit-commission-co-chairs-proposal/
Huffington Post Slide Show ---
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/CoChairDraft.pdf
Full Report ---
http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/news/cochairs-proposal
It's probably a time when accounting professors and students should
have more scholarly debates on comprehensive tax reform alternatives. Such
debates should be civil and as well-informed as possible. Tax reforms could
possibly have an enormous impact on the accounting profession in terms of
tax services, course content, employment alternatives for graduates,
software development, AIS content, and scholarly research reported in
accounting and tax journals.
Initial Reactions on the Left ---
"Deficit panel leaders propose curbs on Social Security, major cuts in spending,
tax breaks," The Washington Post, November 11, 2010 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/10/AR2010111004029.html
Initial Reactions on the Right ---
"A Deficit of Nerve," The Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703848204575608610971091280.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t
Jensen Opinion
The conservative right always has knee jerking opposition to increased taxes and
new taxes of any kind. The liberal media objects to increasing burdens on the
middle income class and labor. Nancy Pelosi has already commenced all out war
against the deficit commission's preliminary recommendations. Democrats,
Republicans, and everybody else agree that the incomprehensible tax system of
the United States needs to be drastically reformed but Congress probably will
never agree to drastic reforms. Trying for comprehensive tax reforms will be an
absolute political dogfight.
Personally, I lean toward eliminating the corporate income tax entirely and
replacing the personal income tax code with a flat tax. But in order to keep the
flat tax rate relatively low, I support introducing a Value Added Tax (VAT)
sales tax that is now common in other parts of the world, especially in Europe.
Businesses in the U.S. will fight a VAT tax tooth and nail, and the VAT tax will
seriously increase prices of consumer and industrial goods. But serious deficit
reductions cannot be financed without pain and sacrifice in all economic sectors
These are my personal thoughts and are not all included in the Co-Chair's
Report..
More importantly, the VAT tax should be the primary tax that is used to
gradually put Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the new "Affordable"
Health Care law on a pay-as-you-go basis that no longer will keep piling on to
deficits and unfunded entitlements. These are my personal thoughts and are not
all included in the Co-Chair's Report..
But the most important thing to do immediately is to extend the retirement age
to current average life expectancy averaged across race and gender categories.
Persons that elect early retirement should take a heavy hit in benefits and not
be eligible for Medicare before reaching the established retirement age.
Of
course any increases in taxes will probably slow economic growth. But the
insanity of simply printing money (read that buying back Treasury notes by the
Fed) and borrowing that increases deficit by well over a trillion each year will
eventually destroy the the economy and standard of living of the entire United
States ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/entitlements.htm
From the Left
"Deficit panel leaders propose curbs on Social Security, major cuts in
spending, tax breaks," The Washington Post, November 11, 2010 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/10/AR2010111004029.html
The chairmen of President
Obama's bipartisan deficit commission on Wednesday offered an aggressive
plan to rebalance the federal budget by curbing increases in Social Security
benefits, slashing spending at the Pentagon and other agencies, and wiping
out more than $100 billion a year in popular tax breaks for individuals and
businesses.
The blueprint drafted by
former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former senator
Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) would slice more than $3.8 trillion from deficits
over the next decade, reversing a rapid run-up in the national debt that
many fear has the country headed for crisis.
To meet that goal, Bowles
and Simpson are proposing to slay a herd of sacred cows, including the tax
deduction for mortgage interest claimed by many homeowners, the tax-free
treatment of employer-provided health insurance and the practice of letting
retirees claim Social Security benefits starting at age 62. The blueprint
would raise the early retirement age to 64 and the standard retirement age
to 69 for today's toddlers.
During a briefing for
reporters, Bowles and Simpson stressed that the plan is theirs alone and
acknowledged that it is unlikely to win support from a majority of the
commission's 18 members, many of whom seemed startled Wednesday by its
breadth and scope. Bowles called it "a starting point" as the panel attempts
to forge an agreement by Dec. 1.
Obama, speaking Thursday at
a news conference in Seoul where he is attending the G-20 conference,
cautioned that "before anybody starts shooting down proposals, I think we
need to listen, we need to gather up all the facts."
"If people are, in fact,
concerned about spending, debt, deficits and the future of our country, then
they're going to need to be armed with the information about the kinds of
choices that are going to be involved, and we can't just engage in political
rhetoric," the president said.
"I set up this commission
precisely because I'm prepared to make some tough decisions," Obama said,
adding that "I'm going to need Congress to work with me."
Balanced-budget advocates
praised the seriousness of the effort, saying it has the potential to
reframe the debate over taxes and spending that dominated this month's
congressional elections, regardless of how many commission members
ultimately support it.
"A White House commission
has put out a credible plan to eliminate the deficit and debt. This has
changed the rules of the game and, for the first time, things are serious,"
said Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a
Responsible Federal Budget, who hailed the blueprint as "a breakthrough."
"After this," she said, "the
debate simply cannot go back to silly games where people pretend that
eliminating earmarks will solve the problem."
Still, the reaction was
harsh in some quarters, particularly among liberals who have vowed to
protect retirees from any reduction in benefits. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.) called the plan "simply unacceptable."
Speaker-in-waiting John
A. Boehner (R-Ohio) declined to comment, saying he would discuss the plan
with his three representatives on the panel. But Republican anti-tax
activist Grover Norquist was not happy and warned that Republicans who
support the proposal would be breaking their pledge not to raise taxes.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Many far more hostile reactions are pouring forth to support Pelosi's
resistance plan. It's unlikely that a sharply divided House versus Senate
over the next two years will accomplish a single recommendation in the
deficit commission's preliminary report. Much depends on reducing the
Congressional divide in the 2012 election, and at this point we don't know
whether the 2013 Congress will be sipping on tea or vodka.
From the Right
"A Deficit of Nerve," The Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2010
---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703848204575608610971091280.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t
We've been expecting to dislike the report of
President Obama's deficit commission, so count us as pleasantly surprised by
the draft outline released on Wednesday by its two chairmen. There's plenty
to oppose but also something for the next Congress to build on, not least
the plea for a more efficient, competitive tax code.
Neither Democrat Erskine Bowles nor Republican Alan
Simpson are trusted by their respective parties these days, so the duo seem
to have decided to roil everybody. Fair enough. Even if their proposals fail
to gain the 14 commission votes out of 18 needed for a consensus judgment by
December 1, they've at least shown that restraining the federal Leviathan is
possible.
Before we pound the details, it's important to
understand why we have had deficits of 10% and 8.9% of GDP for the past two
years, with another 10% or so anticipated in fiscal 2011. The most important
reason is the burst of spending from the 111th Congress that has taken
federal outlays as a share of GDP to 25% in 2009, 23.8% in 2010 and back to
an estimated 25% in 2011. This is unheard of in the modern era, when the
average has been under 21%.
The second reason is a revenue shortfall due to the
recession and feeble economic recovery. Revenues have averaged about 18.5%
of GDP in recent decades, but in 2009 and 2010 they were only 14.9% with
little improvement expected this fiscal year. The single least painful way
to reduce the deficit is to get the economy growing at a healthy pace again,
which would cut the deficit by 3.5% of GDP a year without a dime of spending
cuts.
This is where the chairmen's draft is both wrong
and useful. Its mistake is proposing new taxes—notably on Social Security
payroll taxes—that it claims would raise revenues as a share of GDP to no
more than 21%. But this is an accountant's-eye view of taxation. The conceit
is that Washington can raise taxes and, voila, revenue will follow on
demand. But revenue will only follow if the economy grows, and higher taxes
will restrain growth to some extent, depending on the timing and incidence
of the tax increases.
The chairmen are on better ground arguing for
fundamental tax reform that would swap lower rates for fewer loopholes and
"tax expenditures." On the latter, the draft is right to put the mortgage
interest deduction on the table, as taboo as that is in Washington. If we've
learned anything from the last decade, it ought to be that our many housing
subsidies have led to a misallocation of capital with few benefits. Canada
has no such deduction but a higher rate of home ownership.
Ditto for the employer deduction for health
insurance, which costs some $200 billion a year and has also distorted
incentives by creating a system of third-party payments. Individuals who
bear little responsibility for their health-care expenses have little
incentive to reduce costs, much less lead a healthier life-style that would
save money over time. Refocusing this tax benefit on the needy while
encouraging wealthier consumers to economize would help health markets and
the federal budget.
The chairmen also take aim at the corporate tax
rate, proposing in one option a reduction to 26%. Everyone to the right of
MoveOn.org knows that the 35% corporate tax rate is a disincentive to invest
in America and has sent businesses pleading to Congress for this or that
loophole. This is the second Obama-appointed outfit to recommend a cut in
the corporate tax rate, following Paul Volcker's economic advisory group
this year, and it ought to be one basis for bipartisan agreement.
The draft also proposes spending cuts, albeit far
too timidly. Its discretionary spending proposals would take outlays down
only to 2010 levels, though Republicans have already promised to take them
back to 2008. We wonder if this is a bow to Democrats who think that
spending at 25% of GDP should be the new normal.
More egregiously, the chairmen tiptoe around
ObamaCare, which has led some on the right and left to claim that the
commission is essentially endorsing the largest new entitlement in 40 years.
We're told the chairmen mostly dodged the subject because Democrats on the
commission made that a nonnegotiable demand. A truly bold report would
consider Congressman Paul Ryan's model to make Medicare a defined
contribution program. Instead, the chairmen settle for the familiar likes of
"payment reforms," which never work because of Medicare's flawed political
price-control model.
Medicaid also gets a near total pass, probably
because ObamaCare is expanding that program more than at any time since its
inception in 1965. Worse, the federal Medicaid formula rewards states for
spending more. If the commission's goal is to spur debate, it ought to
propose making Medicaid an annual block grant that would force state
politicians to better manage what is often the biggest expense line in their
budgets. The status quo will lead to huge state tax increases over the next
two decades.
The chairmen are braver on Social Security, though
again not brave enough. They propose to raise the retirement age for
receiving full benefits to 68 from 67 by—brace yourself—2050, and 69 by
2075. For context, consider that the average American woman born today will
live to be 80.
The draft also suggests a payroll tax increase, in
particular on upper-middle-class earners, even as it proposes to cut their
benefits to a greater extent than lower earners. Republicans should rule out
a tax increase, while accepting that some benefit cuts on the basis of need
will be required.
Mr. Obama conceived the deficit commission as a
form of political cover for his spending blowout—and to coax Republicans
into a tax increase. So it's notable that Democrats and liberals have been
more critical of the chairmen's draft than have Republicans. Having put the
U.S. in a fiscal hole, Nancy Pelosi's minority wants to oppose all spending
cuts or entitlement reform to climb out.
House Republicans should react accordingly, which
means taking what they like from the commission report and making it part of
their own budget proposals. If Senate Democrats and Mr. Obama want to regain
any fiscal credibility, they'll be willing to listen and talk. If not, the
voters will certainly have a choice in 2012.
Jensen Comment
Meanwhile the United States will continue to both print more money supported by
neither taxes nor borrowing plus continued to borrow over a trillion dollars
each year to finance the cash flow deficit differences between what the
government takes in in revenue and what the government pays out. At this point
voters are simply numb to the difference between a billion dollars and a
trillion dollars, but in terms of economic survival the difference is crucial.
"Do Podcasts Help Students Learn?" by Tanya Roscorla, Converge
Magazine, November 3, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/Podcasts-George-Washington-University.html
Before George Washington University renewed its
iTunes U contract, the administration wanted to know how the podcasts
impacted student learning and engagement.
In fall 2009, the university's Center for
Innovative Teaching and Learning studied a world history class of 262
students to find the answer.
But the answer isn't yes or no — the answer depends
on the student's learning style, gender and motivation.
“If your goal is to find a magic bullet that makes
all students better, this isn’t it," said Hugh Agnew, a professor from the
Elliott School of International Affairs who taught the course. "But If your
goal is to reach some students better that maybe you aren’t reaching so
terribly well, then I think this is worth trying.”
6 interesting results He created 10-minute podcasts
with graphics and audio, as well as a text transcript of the podcasts with
visuals to supplement his lecture class. In the first research run, half of
the class used the podcasts, and the other half used the text. In the second
run, they switched.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I would expect that Steve Hornik will find the same outcomes when he studies
whether Second Life helps students learn. .
The five-year SCALE experiments when 30 instructors each term had a live
section of a course and online section of a course. What the study found is that
there was no difference on average for D and F students who are not much
motivated under any pedagogy and/or lack sufficient ability to handle the course
level. .
What the SCALE research found, however, is that B and some C students did
better under the online pedagogy. Hence, I would expect that Second Life,
Podcasts, and other advances in technology probably do better with B and C
students. A-grade students tend to be A students under any pedagogy --- they're
just gung ho for learning and/or A grades. .
Bob Jensen's threads on learning and memory are at the following two sites:
From The Scout Report on November 5, 2010
ThinkFree Online ---
http://member.thinkfree.com/member/goLandingPage.action
With ThinkFree Online, interested parties wont'
have to fuss around with carrying flash drives or worrying about whether
they have a certain important file handy lodged away in their email. The
ThinkFree Online service provides a free web office suite with 1GB of online
storage. Visitors can use the program to store documents, and they can also
edit and manipulate documents without opening it in a separate program.
Visitors will need to sign up for an account here on the site, and this
version is compatible with all operating systems.
CiteULike ---
http://www.citeulike.org/
The CiteULike site is a free service designed to
help individuals manage and discover scholarly references. Sponsored by the
Springer group, the service allows users to click on a paper they find
online, and it will be automatically stored in their personal library. The
service is "social" in a matter of speaking, as visitors can share this
library of references and papers with others. CiteULike also has a flexible
filing system based on tags, and visitors can customize these tags as they
see fit. It's a fantastic resource, and it's compatible with all operating
systems
In a region of superlatives, another engineering wonder is completed
Visitors aren't bypassing Hoover Dam since bridge opening
http://www.lvrj.com/news/visitors-aren-t-bypassing-hoover-dam-since-bridge-opening-106366573.html?ref=573
Hoover Dam Bridge is America's newest wonder
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-10-18-hooverbypass18_ST_N.htm
Hoover Dam: Taming the Colorado River and Powering Millions
http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/Hoover-Dam-Taming-the-Colorado-River-and-Providing-Electricity-to-Millions-105833633.html
Bureau of Reclamation: Lower Colorado Region-Hoover Dam
http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/
From the Scout Report on November 12, 2010
TeuxDeux ---
http://teuxdeux.com/
If you have a mounting pile of things to get done,
you may want to check out the TeuxDeux application. This browser-based
application allows visitors to create a weekly overview, a "someday" bucket,
edit existing tasks, and also sync up with their mobile phones. Visitors to
the site can view an introductory video and also look at their list of
recently added features. This version is compatible with all operating
systems.
Mendeley ---
http://www.mendeley.com/
Mendeley is a research management tool for the
desktop and the web, and it's an easy way to organize, share, and discover
new and compelling research papers. Mendeley helps users automatically
generate bibliographies, import papers from other research software, and
also access papers of note from anywhere online. The program is fully
integrated with use with Microsoft Word, Open Office, and other related
tools like Zotero, and Endnote. This version is compatible with all
operating systems
Amidst casinos and fine fishing, a new museum opens in Mississippi Biloxi
Bets Gehry-Designed Museum Can Compete With Casinos
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/us/09biloxi.html?_r=1&hpw
On Gulf Coast, a ceramics museum that's unafraid of hurricanes
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/07/nation/la-na-gehry-biloxi-20101107
Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art
http://www.georgeohr.org/
Identifying George Ohr Pottery
http://oldpottery.com/george_ohr_identification.htm
History of Biloxi
http://www.biloxi.ms.us/history/index.asp
Beauvoir
http://www.beauvoir.org/
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Video: The Value of an Interdisciplinary Core Curriculum ---
http://fora.tv/2010/10/20/The_Value_of_an_Interdisciplinary_Core_Curriculum
Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research ---
http://www.growingknowledge.bl.uk/
Note the link to "New Ways of doing research"
Frontiers (open source scholarly publishing) ---
http://www.frontiersin.org/
CiteSeerX (Princeton University Library search engine) ---
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/
Boston University Libraries: Research Guides ---
http://www.bu.edu/library/guides/
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
Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research ---
http://www.growingknowledge.bl.uk/
Note the link to "New Ways of doing research"
Frontiers (open source scholarly publishing) ---
http://www.frontiersin.org/
Boston University Libraries: Research Guides ---
http://www.bu.edu/library/guides/
CiteSeerX (Princeton University Library search engine) ---
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/
Evolution of Normal Fault Systems During Progressive Deformation [Quick Time]
---
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/structure04/activities/3861.html
The Habitable Planet: Ecology Lab ---
http://www.learner.org/courses/envsci/interactives/ecology/
Lesotho Highlands Water Project ---
http://www.lhwp.org.ls/default.htm
The Wessels Living History Farm, the Story of Agricultural Innovation [Flash
Player, Quick Time] ---
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/
Food Timeline ---
http://www.foodtimeline.org/index.html
Fertility of American Women ---
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/fertility.html
National Museum of Natural History: Arctic Studies Center [Flash Player,
QuickTime, Real Player]
http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/index.html
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
The Rising Burden of Government Debt [Flash Player] ---
http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2010/1101_government_debt_prasad.aspx
Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research ---
http://www.growingknowledge.bl.uk/
Note the link to "New Ways of doing research"
Frontiers (open source scholarly publishing) ---
http://www.frontiersin.org/
CiteSeerX (Princeton University Library search engine) ---
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/
Boston University Libraries: Research Guides ---
http://www.bu.edu/library/guides/
The Habitable Planet: Ecology Lab ---
http://www.learner.org/courses/envsci/interactives/ecology/
Citizen Corps ---
http://www.citizencorps.gov/
Cultural Shock ---
http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Culture_shock_-_web.pdf?1286815564
Institute of International Social Development ---
http://www.iisd-ngo.org/
London Lives ---
http://www.londonlives.org/
California Healthcare Foundation: Center for Health Reporting ---
http://www.centerforhealthreporting.org/
Fertility of American Women ---
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/fertility.html
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Law and Legal Studies
Brooker Collection at Boston College (law, history) ---
http://dcollections.bc.edu/R/?func=collections-result&collection_id=1742
From the Harvard Law School
Dying Speeches & Bloody Murders: Crime Broadsides ---
http://broadsides.law.harvard.edu/
London Lives ---
http://www.londonlives.org/
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
1,000 Years of European History -- An Animated Map ---
Click Here
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/11/1000_years_of_e.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InfectiousGreed+%28Paul+Kedrosky%27s+Infectious+Greed%29
Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research ---
http://www.growingknowledge.bl.uk/
The International Dunhuang Project [The Silk Road] ---
http://idp.bl.uk/
CiteSeerX (Princeton University Library search engine) ---
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/
Boston University Libraries: Research Guides ---
http://www.bu.edu/library/guides/
Panorama: Prehistoric Cave Art of Niaux ---
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/gigapan/niaux/
Transcontinental Railroad Pictures and Exhibits ---
http://cprr.org/Museum/Exhibits.html
The Spanish Manner: Drawings from Ribera to Goya ---
http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/spanishmanner
Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Portraits ---
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/caption/captionliljenquist.html
From the Harvard Law School
Dying Speeches & Bloody Murders: Crime Broadsides ---
http://broadsides.law.harvard.edu/
National Museum of Natural History: Arctic Studies Center [Flash Player,
QuickTime, Real Player]
http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/index.html
"True Crime" Murder Pamphlets in the Collection of the National Library of
Medicine ---
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/murderpamphlets/index.html
Branch Rickey Collection (baseball) ---
http://drc.owu.edu/handle/2374.OWES/2
The Conner Prairie Museum Textile Collection ---
http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/digitalscholarship/collections/CPQuilts
Web Archiving Service (history data) ---
http://webarchives.cdlib.org/
NPR: The Picture Show ---
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/
London Lives ---
http://www.londonlives.org/
Barbara Ann Conlogue Collection of Eleanor Steber Photographs, circa
1935-1977 ---
http://ubdigit.buffalo.edu/collections/lib/lib-mus/lib-mus020_Steber.php
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
Barbara Ann Conlogue Collection of Eleanor Steber Photographs, circa
1935-1977 ---
http://ubdigit.buffalo.edu/collections/lib/lib-mus/lib-mus020_Steber.php
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/
November 5, 2010
November 6, 2010
November 8, 2010
November 9, 2010
November 12, 2010
November 13, 2010
November 15, 2010
November 16, 2010
November 17, 2010
"Marijuana Smokers Who Start Early Are at Greatest Risk, Study Finds,"
by Roni Caryn Rabin, The New York Times, November 15, 2010 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/health/research/15marijuana.html?_r=1&hpw
Fun Facts About Each of Our 50 States ---
https://mail.google.com/a/trinity.edu/#inbox/12c3c4294b517bd9
Devastating Floods in Ireland
Why can't Haiti have more relief centers like this one?
Fun Facts About the English Language
Forwarded by Maureen
We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?
>
Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!
>
Let's face it - English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England .
We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
>
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,
grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.
If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do
you call it?
>
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed
to an asylum for the verbally insane.
>
In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a
wise guy are opposites?
>
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can
burn up as it burns down,
in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by
going on.
>
And in closing, if
Father is Pop, how come Mother's not Mop?
Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
Find a College
College Atlas ---
http://www.collegeatlas.org/
Among other things the above site provides acceptance rate percentages
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accountancy Discussion ListServs:
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a
ListServ (usually for free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc
Roles of a ListServ ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
|
CPAS-L (Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo
(Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation
Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu