Tidbits on January 6, 2011
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

It seems appropriate to begin your new year with a wish upon a rainbow.
I prepared a special file of my rainbow pictures at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits\Rainbows\RainbowFavorites.htm 

Happy and Prosperous New Year from Bob and Erika
This is a Champaign-bucket gift given to us years ago by friends in San Antonio

Cannon Mountain is on the right side of Franconia Notch as seen from the beach at Echo Lake

Is she still backing out the car?

Four Seasons of Life

Enjoy your holiday gifts all year long

 White Mountain News --- http://www.whitemtnews.com/

Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on January 6, 2011
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2011/TidbitsQuotations010611.htm         

Tidbits on January 6, 2011
Bob Jensen

For earlier editions of Tidbits go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/.

Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations   

Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

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 

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

Video:  Marxism Insurgency in America --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7w3ZEbC09k

"Fama Says Too-Big-to-Fail `Distorting' Financial System (of efficient markets)" Bloomberg Video ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/64476076/
Jensen Comment
This seems to coincide with the hypothesis that "Too Big to Lose" is distorting the auditing system worldwide.

Three ways to save video from the Internet ---
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11327_7-6555399-1.html?tag=rb_content
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtube

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

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

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

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

On May 14, 2006 I retired from Trinity University after a long and wonderful career as an accounting professor in four universities. I was generously granted "Emeritus" status by the Trustees of Trinity University. My wife and I now live in a cottage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm

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

A Must View
Video:  Authors@Google: Chris Chabris (including his book on the Invisible Gorilla and perceptual psychology) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rdUk52h-MY&feature=youtu.be

Great Dance Routine: James Cagney and Bob Hope --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOoNOs8Ql28

How to Sharpen a Knife With a Cup --- http://www.dump.com/2010/12/08/how-to-sharpen-your-knife-with-a-cup-video/
I never thought of this.

Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time (not my picks) --- http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_youtube_videos_of_all_time.php

You have to watch to the end to study the lawyer language for warm wishes ---
http://www.manatt.com/holidaycards/2010/
This video was generated by a "warm wishing" law firm.
Now you know why we don't waste half our lives reading the fine print on every contract we sign,
every label on a package, and every footnote in a set of financial statements

Language professors might be especially interested in this "Word Lens" app for an iPhone ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2OfQdYrHRs

Oh Holy Night (without the legal footnotes) --- http://worriersanonymous.org/Share/Christmas/Holynite.htm .

Star Spangled Banner -(the real story) -- http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Iwa-lSVqA1M&vq=medium

Tipu Sultan (d.1799) Weapons Research, Warrior Empire --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHnjq4-Ixck
Thank you Jagdish

The Journey Through Hallowed Ground --- http://www.hallowedground.org/

Oliver North Giving Thanks to Our Heroes --- http://www.nragive.com/ringoffreedom/index.html

Video on the Beauty of Mathematics --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h60r2HPsiuM&feature=youtube_gdata_pl

The Multimedia History of Artificial Intelligence https://lib.stanford.edu/ai-media

I've linked to this one before, but it's too good not to repeat
Johnny Carson and Betty White in the Garden of Eden --- http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/164409/detail/

Three ways to save video from the Internet ---
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11327_7-6555399-1.html?tag=rb_content
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtube

Cowboy Examination, by Garrison Keillor, Prairie Home Companion ---
http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2010/11/20/scripts/cowboy.shtml

The Best of Not Necessarily the News (HBO, 1 of 6) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppHMk6seu9E

Homeless Man with Golden Radio Voice Will Have Your Ears Ringing for Days ---
http://tv.gawker.com/5724444/homeless-man-with-radio-voice-will-have-your-ears-ringing-for-days

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

'Oxford American' Digs Into Alabama's Music --- http://www.npr.org/2010/12/31/132525909/oxford-american-digs-into-alabama

Do You Remember These (Statler Brothers) --- http://oldfortyfives.com/DYRT.htm

A Fairytale Grows Up: Rossini's 'La Cenerentola'(Introduction to the Opera) ---
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/24/132210721/a-fairytale-grows-up-rossinis-la-cenerentola

The King's Singers: Four Decades Of Close, Sweet Harmony (Studio Concert) ---
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/23/132228929/the-kings-singers-four-decades-of-close-sweet-harmony

Ancient Inspiration: Monteverdi's 'Return of Ulysses' (Introduction to the opera) ---
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/17/132108065/monteverdi-return-of-ulysses

An Early Look At 2011's Best Music --- http://www.npr.org/2011/01/01/132490038/an-early-look-at-2011s-best-music

Forwarded by Paula

Bosa Nova Baby
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxHs7OMZcWM

Suspicious Minds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-NDXtDUcGQ

Blue Suede Shoes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s70rkdP1qI

Great Dance Routine: James Cagney and Bob Hope --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOoNOs8Ql28

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

National Snow and Ice Data Center --- http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/

Virtual Museum of Optical Illusions --- http://www.opticalillusionsmuseum.com/index.html

NEH Grant Project: The AGS Library's Historic Images --- http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/digilib/NEHgrant/

Maryhill Museum of Art --- http://www.maryhillmuseum.org/index.html

American Medical Association: Atlas of the Human Body --- Click Here
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/patient-education-materials/atlas-of-human-body.shtml  

The Journey Through Hallowed Ground --- http://www.hallowedground.org/

Gillray Collection (Art History) --- http://diglib.princeton.edu/xquery?_xq=getCollection&_xsl=collection&_pid=gc108

Maryland ArtSource: Maryland Historical Society Painting Collection http://www.marylandartsource.org/collections/collection_index_000000001.html

Tokens & Treasures: Gifts to Twelve Presidents http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/tokens_and_treasures/tokens_and_treasures_home.html

Imagining the Past in France, 1250-1500 http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/imagining_past_france/

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

American Medical Association: Atlas of the Human Body --- Click Here
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/patient-education-materials/atlas-of-human-body.shtml  

Papers Past (New Zealand)  --- http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/

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 January 6, 2011
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2011/TidbitsQuotations010611.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

What did you accomplish in the fall semester? You helped to make the world a better place because you are a teacher.
"Take a Moment to Relish What You Did," by Joe Hoyle, January 2, 2011 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2011/01/take-moment-to-relish-what-you-did.html

The real meaning of Occam's razor --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_Razor

"Top Scientific Breakthroughs in 2010," Gizmodo, December 31, 2010 ---
http://gizmodo.com/5721504/the-top-scientific-breakthroughs-of-2010

This is actually quite good and written in Adrienne's usual entertaining style
"The Second Annual Jr Deputy Accountant Fed Year In Review," Jr. Deputy Accountant Blog, December 31, 2010 ---
http://www.jrdeputyaccountant.com/2010/12/second-annual-jr-deputy-accountant-fed.html

A Must View
Video:  Authors@Google: Chris Chabris (including his book on the Invisible Gorilla and perceptual psychology) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rdUk52h-MY&feature=youtu.be

Jensen Comment
This has some implication for financial statement analysis. We are conditioned to look for certain types of things like return on investment, net cash flow, and other things that are commonly looked at in financial statements. We may be warned ahead of time to look for a "gorilla" or a "woman carrying an umbrella passing by." But we have limited ability to perceive unexpected events.

PS
Also note why "hands free" cell phones do very little to make driving safer while being on the phone.

"Skype 5 beta is horrible," by Dennis Howlett, AccMan, January 4, 2011 --- Click Here
http://accmanpro.com/2011/01/04/skype-5-beta-is-horrible/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+flacknhack/jRao+%28Dennis+Howlett:+AccMan%29

I am not alone.
The howls of protest on the Skype forums are both impassioned and detailed in their condemnation of the new UI/UX.

January 4, 2010 reply from Robert Bowers (tax accountant)

This Skype thread interests me.

I have been cutting costs w/ a vengeance for sev yrs

Sev yrs ago I went from Verizon tel (120) + full Comcast cable (130) + net = about 250/mo

I talked Com into giving me a promo rate of 62, went to Vonage @ 25, total 87 … not bad

Then Com went back to 130, so I talked Verizon into 70 for all 3. But this expires in June.

I have looked at Vonage, Magic Jack, not Skype – all these alt phones don’t seem to support Faxes,

and to be honest it seems Verizon still beats all these for clarity

This wouldn’t bother me, as I send email attachments to all but one – guess who – the IRS

As far as cable, I just went w/ Netflix – unlimited movies for $8/mo

Now if I could find a TV provider of all the news (incl CNBC), I would be happy

When you go to alternative providers there is always a tradeoff – you can’t get something for nothing.

January 4, 2010 reply from Rick Lillie

While there are some features in Skype v5.0.0.156 that I do not care about, overall I really like the new Skype version. I'm not a Facebook person. I prefer that links to Facebook and other social media be kept optional for users who want such features.

We all have our biases, which is clear from the Howlett article, forum comments and my comments in this email message. I'm a "PC" person. I'm not an "Apple" person. I'm probably in the minority, but I don't care for the iPad. I'll stick with my ThinkPad Tablet computer. It's capabilities go far beyond what the iPad can do.

I use Skype to offer virtual office hours for my students. This makes it possible to extend the benefits of traditional office hours to students who are unable to come to my office during set times. Students really like using Skype to work together.

Skype features like desktop sharing make it easy to work one-on-one with students when they need help with assignments. The instant messaging and file sharing features are exceptional, especially with improvements added in v5. With v5, you can send a message or file to someone even though the other party is not online at the moment. Skype now temporarily stores the message or file until the other party is available and then downloads it. This improvement takes peer-to-peer to the next performance level.

I have used Skype's new multi-party video conferencing. It worked fine. Several study groups used multi-party video conferencing during Fall Quarter 2010 and liked its performance. I see a real future for multi-party video conferencing. My concern is that it will become a fee-based service that students will not be able to afford.

I combine the free features of Skype with features of other free Web 2.0 technologies to teach my students how to use technology to create, share, and communicate. For example, when we combine Skype with Google Docs and Spreadsheets, students learn to do what you can do in WebEx or Adobe Connect. This combination is free. The alternatives are extremely expensive.

Skype's interface changed with v5. Without a doubt, it will change again. Skype listens to feedback. Technology evolves.

Skype includes a bundle of features that makes it a powerful communicative, collaborative Web 2.0 technology tool. It includes far more useful features in one tool than I find in other similar tools. This is what makes Skype really useful and easy to use.

Skype changes itself about every 15 minutes. If you don't like the current version, be patient or find a better alternative. If you truly find a better alternative, please share it.

Happy New Year! May we all prosper in 2011.

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

Nations ranked as to level of corruption ---
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/gov_cor-government-corruption 

David Albrecht reminded us that Canada quietly reduced its top corporate tax rate ---
http://21stcenturytaxation.blogspot.com/2011/01/canada-further-drops-its-top-corporate.html

"Fama Says Too-Big-to-Fail `Distorting' Financial System (of efficient markets)" Bloomberg Video ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/64476076/

Jensen Comment
This seems to coincide with the hypothesis that "Too Big to Lose" is distorting the auditing system worldwide.

Bob Jensen's threads on the EMH ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#EMH

Yahoo Education ranks "hot careers" through 2018 and beyond.
Accountants/audits get top billing, which is probably the first time we've ever been called "hot."
http://education.yahoo.net/articles/hot_careers_through_2018.htm

Accounting Careers are Hot at Rank 2 According to College Board
"Hottest Careers for College Graduates:  Experts Predict Where the Jobs Will Be in 2018," College Board, December 30, 2010 ---
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/csearch/majors_careers/236.html

Government economists estimate which occupations will have the most job openings between 2008 and 2018. Openings occur because new jobs are created and because workers retire or leave the field for other reasons.

Check out these top 10 lists of occupations, sorted by the level of education typically required:

• Graduate degree
• Bachelor's degree
• Associate's degree or postsecondary vocational award

 

Occupations with the Most Job Openings: Graduate Degree

 

Occupation	Total Job Openings 2008–2018
Postsecondary teachers	553,000
Doctors and surgeons	261,000
Lawyers	240,000
Clergy	218,000
Pharmacists	106,000
Educational, vocational, and school counselors	94,000
Physical therapists	79,000
Medical scientists, except epidemiologists	66,000
Mental health and substance abuse social workers	61,000
Instructional coordinators	61,000

 

Occupations with the Most Job Openings: Bachelor's Degree

 

Occupation	Total Job Openings 2008–2018
Elementary school teachers, except special education	597,000
Accountants and auditors	498,000
Secondary school teachers, except special and vocational education	412,000
Middle school teachers, except special and vocational education	251,000
Computer systems analysts	223,000
Computer software engineers, applications	218,000
Network systems and data communications analysts	208,000
Computer software engineers, systems software	153,000
Construction managers	138,000
Market research analysts	137,000

 

Occupations with the Most Jobs Openings:  Associate's Degree or Postsecondary Vocational Award

 

Occupation	Total Job Openings 2008–2018
Registered nurses	1,039,000
Nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants	422,000
Licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses	391,000
Computer support specialists	235,000
Hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists	220,000
Automotive service technicians and mechanics	182,000
Preschool teachers, except special education	178,000
Insurance sales agents	153,000
Heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration technicians	136,000
Real estate sales agents	128,000

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

Fun Facts About Accountant Celebrities ---
http://cpatrendlines.com/2010/11/08/fun-facts-12-accountant-celebrities/

A Sociology Decision Provokes Sociologists
Apart from having to consider costs as well as benefits of particular accounting standards, accounting standard setters face the inevitable problem of tradeoffs in benefits where achieving a greater good on one criterion harms performance on another criterion. This for example, is a problem in the various standards that are now requiring the booking of fair values of financial instruments in place of their original booked historical costs and before their ultimate realized transactions sales values. If you only have one number that can be reported on a given balance sheet on a particular date you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Similarly, you cannot be physically present in two cities in the same meeting at the same point in time time.

A sociology meeting was rescheduled from from Chicago to Las Vegas because a hotel labor dispute in Chicago is not yet settled and sociologists cannot be hired in college sociology departments if they do not side with unions in labor disputes --- that's the first or second rule of political correctness. But meeting planners soon discovered that there are greater priorities among many sociologists than bashing hotel owners. Read the comments at the bottom of this article ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/relocated-sociology-meeting-will-take-place-in-las-vegas/29479

May I recommend the Sunset Hill House Hotel in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire where there've been no labor disputes in history to my knowledge and a pimp would freeze to death and be buried in four feet of fresh snow while waiting outside the hotel.

Is hiring a stalker cheaper than paying rent?
"There Oughta Be a Law: Californians Getting 725 New Ones in 2011," by Hoa Patch, LaMesa Patch, December 31, 2011 ---
http://lamesa.patch.com/articles/there-outta-be-a-law-californians-getting-725-new-ones-in-2011

Jensen Comment
Are you tired of the same old "Make versus Buy" or "Buy versus Rent" cases in your managerial and cost accounting courses? Spice up your teaching with the new "Stalk versus Pay" house rental cases from California. Assume that long-term stalkers are plentiful for a fee. Determine the breakeven point where you become indifferent between paying a stalker versus paying your landlord.

What if a company leasing the tallest building in Los Angeles is being stalked by Carl Icahn? Can the company stop paying rent until Carl Icahn agrees to leave the lessee alone --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Icahn

I think David Albrecht should adapt a new variation of his use of Parker Bros. Monopoly board game when teaching accounting. If you land on luxurious Park Place or Boardwalk, with each having four very expensive rental houses, you should have a chance to get out of paying rent with a "Hired a Stalker" card from the Community Chest.

You might even hang your stalkers by the fireplace on Christmas eve. Moms should make a point of buying stalker stuffers for each stalker hung by the chimney with care.

Additional Comment
AB 1871 allows people to lease out their cars when they are not being used—alleviating the need to purchase additional insurance. Can your teenage son, who caused four deaths in three separate accidents in which he was convicted of drunk driving, get a better deal on insurance by leasing a car from his parents instead of borrowing a car from them?

Here's another managerial and cost accounting project for students.
When is it cheaper for a sixteen year old driver to lease a his grandpa's car rather than take out insurance on his own new car?
Does your answer vary whether the teenager lives in New York versus Wyoming when he's contemplating renting Grandpa's car in Yuba City, California.

Additional Comment
Here's another project for accounting students. Since insurance companies can no longer differentiate teenage driver car insurance fees on the basis of gender of the teenager, will teenage women end up paying more in 2011 than they were paying insurance companies in 2010 to insure their SUVs?

Does this new gender-neutral law really screw women in general for life insurance, medical insurance, car insurance, etc.
Did California women simply overlook this law before it went into effect?

Additional Comment
AB 12 allows foster youth to acquire state services until the age of 21.
Is it a good idea to put your kid out for foster care when she/he graduates from high school.
With any kind of luck, your neighbor might get paid to take care of your kid between the ages of 18 and 21. Maybe you can get a kickback. Wouldn't that be a kick?

"Half of Money Lent to Students at For-Profits Will End Up in Default, Government Predicts," Chronicle of Higher Education, December 22, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/half-of-money-lent-to-students-at-for-profits-will-end-up-in-default-government-predicts/29325

Bob Jensen's threads on for-profit university controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud

Cash Flow versus Accrual Accounting
A Secret That Will Never Be Revealed on MSNBC
"Cooking the Books: The 2010 Deficit Was $2.1 trillion," by Bruce Bartlett, The Fiscal Times, December 24, 2010 ---
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Issues/Budget-Impact/2010/12/24/Cooking-the-Books-The-2010-Deficit-Was-2trillion.aspx

When federal finances are discussed, it is almost always in terms of the difference between expenditures and revenues. Usually, the former exceed the latter and we have a deficit. The cumulative total of deficits less the occasional surpluses is what we call the national debt. When we analyze the debt in terms of its burden, it is usually by looking at it in terms of the gross domestic product. Presently, debt held by the public, the most common measure of federal debt, is $9.3 trillion, or about 60 percent of GDP.

If the federal government was a corporation and one was contemplating buying shares of its stock, however, one would certainly want to know much more about its finances. One would want to know about the government’s assets as well as its liabilities. And one would want to know whether there are any liabilities other than those included in the figures for debt held by the public, among other things.

These data are not easy to come by. For many years they appeared only in an obscure mimeographed document called the Statement of Liabilities and Other Financial Commitments of the United States that the Treasury Department produced only because it was required by a 1966 law to do so. The reason is that the financial statement showed vast government liabilities not included in the usual figures for the national debt. Since 1998, these data have been published in a document called the Financial Report of the U.S. Government. The fiscal year 2010 edition was released on Dec. 21.

The most important difference between the Financial Report and the federal budget is that the former calculates costs on an accrual basis, whereas the latter only measures cash flow. Thus if the federal government incurred a debt that would not be paid until some time in the future, that cost would not be part of the conventionally measured national debt. It would only add to the debt when cash had to be expended to cover the expense that had been incurred. It’s worth remembering that private corporations are required to use accrual accounting and corporate executives would be jailed for using the sort of accounting that the federal government routinely uses.

The difference in accounting methods is most easily grasped in terms of Social Security. It has a liability over the next 75 years of $8 trillion more than the projected revenue from payroll taxes and interest on the Social Security trust fund. In every meaningful sense of the term, this is part of the national debt, but is excluded from the official debt figures.

Another consequence of ignoring future liabilities in calculating the national debt is that programmatic changes that save money in the future are similarly ignored. Thus, according to the Financial Report, Medicare had estimated liabilities in excess of future revenues over the next 75 years of $38 trillion at the end of fiscal year 2009. However, in the meantime, Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act, which contains significant cost controls on future Medicare spending. As a consequence, Medicare’s long-term liabilities fell by $15 trillion in 2010.

 

Financial Report of the U.S. Government --- http://www.fms.treas.gov/fr/index.html

Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of governmental accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#GovernmentalAccounting

Hugo Chavez Takes Over the Oil Monopoly in Franconia, New Hampshire
Among those states that tax businesses on the basis of worldwide income are Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New York (oil companies only), North Dakota, Oregon, and Utah. There may be others (Maine?) by now. ---
http://custom.cengage.com/pktax/09_edition/CHE-ARC2009-07-1202-001-IT.pdf

Our village of Sugar Hill has no fuel station so I often fill my tank at Bob's Mobil Station, the only fuel station in nearby Franconia. Bob's wife told me that there soon would not be a Mobil station in Franconia because of increases in the corporate income tax rates in Massachusetts and Maine  According to her (I could not verify this in an early morning search of the Web) the domestically-owned oil stations are pulling out of New England due largely to Massachusetts and Maine corporate tax rate increases on global profits. Presumably the loss of these fuel stations in other New England states is collateral damage due to tax increases in Maine and Mass. It just does not pay to keep the fuel stations in the smaller New England states when pulling out of the bigger states.

I should point out that we will not losing our only nearby fuel station. Bob's independently owned fuel station will replace its Bob's Mobil sign with a new Bob's Citgo sign, but this boils Bob's blood since Citgo is owned by "communist dictator" Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. You must realize that Bob, a very proud war veteran, complained incessantly about the leftist leanings of Ronald Regan and Barry Goldwater. He suspects that Chavez is supporting Hezbollah and other insurgent bases that will launch attacks on U.S. soil. He feels no comfort in the probability that Citgo stations are safe from Chavez terror attacks.

If what Bob's wife tells me is really true about domestic companies selling or abandoning their fuel stations in New England, this is like taxation without representation to residents of New Hampshire. New Hampshire voters have no say in the setting of nearby Massachusetts tax rates. Yet we will be left with only foreign-owned fuel stations like Citgo (Chavez), Irving (Canadian), and Shell (Dutch) fuel stations. Fewer companies means reduced competition, and reduced competition means higher prices that we in New Hampshire will be paying because of tax increases in Maine and Mass. Also New Hampshire will be losing corporate tax revenues due to tax rate hike decisions in nearby Mass. and Maine.

I have two questions:

1. Are there authoritative confirmations of what Bob's wife told me about domestic oil companies pulling out of New England?
    
2.  Do foreign-owned oil companies have a tax break on state income taxes or can their global profits be taxed just like domestic corporation global profits are taxed in some of our U.S. states?

"What's In Store for Technology in 2011:  Products, Services and Big Developments to Watch for and the Challenges Facing the Major," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2011 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704774604576035624059759898.html
Some excerpts only:

In 2011, Apple also is likely to try to address two areas where it has been weak: cloud computing and social networking. Both its MobileMe cloud service and its Ping social network had rough starts, and MobileMe charges $100 a year for services others give away.

. . .

A separate group at Google will try in 2011 to revolutionize the PC operating-system business and muscle in on incumbents Microsoft and Apple. Its new Chrome OS will power notebooks that essentially act as Web browsers, and run programs stored in the cloud, not on a hard disk. They also store all your files in the cloud. We'll learn in 2011 how many consumers are comfortable with that approach. Google also may take another whack at social networking, where it hasn't made much of a dent after its Buzz service failed to take off. And it will have to rework its overly complex Google TV effort to bring Internet video to the living room.

. . .

In tablets, Microsoft is hinting that a new version of Windows is being designed with a tablet focus to complement its PC focus. That product can't be too late, given the rapid rise of the iPad and the many planned Android and other tablets for 2011. One golden opportunity Microsoft has is to expand the reach of its brilliant Kinect technology for games to other forms of computing. This system can recognize individual users and interpret gestures without the use of a controller device.

. . .

The BlackBerry maker had a good 2010 in some ways, though sales were propped up by two-for-one giveaways, and consumer surveys show enthusiasm fading for the iconic smart phone. It needs a radically new user interface to keep up with iPhone and Android, and a lot more third-party apps. But it can't afford to alienate its fan base. The company has an answer: a new software platform called QNX, but is vague on when that will show up on the BlackBerry. For 2011, RIM's big move will be a new QNX-based tablet, the PlayBook, which looks speedy and highly attractive in the limited demos RIM has provided. What isn't clear is how much the PlayBook will be aimed at consumers, as company officials have consistently stressed its appeal to businesses.

. . .

The technology behemoth's (HP) laptops and printers have proved popular with consumers. But it hasn't had any real presence in smart-phones, tablets or consumer cloud services. To solve the problems, in 2010 HP bought innovative but struggling Palm, whose smart-phone operating system, webOS, and phones, the Pre and Pixi, got good reviews but sold poorly and didn't attract many third-party apps. In 2011, HP hopes to use its ample money and talent to revive webOS with new phones and tablets to challenge Apple and Android. A successful Palm re-launch, with the new initiatives from RIM and Microsoft, would be good for consumers by providing more choice and competition. HP also hopes to boost home printing with a new line of printers that can print anything emailed across the Internet and wirelessly print from Apple's hand-held devices

. . .

The twin leaders (Facebook and Twitter)  in social networking were red-hot in 2010, attracting vast numbers of users. They have huge opportunities for further success, but face challenges. Smaller services, like social-coupon company Groupon, continue to emerge with new social and community ideas consumers like. Apple and Google could be big headaches if they get social right in 2011. Facebook must continue its recent initiative to let members share personal details with more limited groups of friends, and to find ways to make money while offering more privacy, which has been a thorn in its side. Twitter is on a mission to get more than an active minority to post, while convincing people it is a valuable way to keep up with news and opinion even if you never post.

. . .

For all of Walt's columns and videos, go to the All Things Digital site.

 

How to find Excel commands that were visible in the 2007 and are hidden in the 2010 version of Excel ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2011/Jan/ICommandYou.htm

Unlimited Supply of Labor:  The Dismal Economic Theories of Arthur Lewis

Hi Zafar,

Questions
Although all 50 states are in deep financial troubles, what state is in the worst shape at the moment and is unable to pay its bills?
Hint: The state in deepest trouble is not California, although California is in dire straights!

How did accountants hide the pending disasters?

Watch the Video
This module on 60 Minutes on December 19 was one of the most worrisome episodes I've ever watched
It appears that a huge number of cities and towns and some states will default on bonds within12 months from now
"State Budgets: The Day of Reckoning Steve Kroft Reports On The Growing Financial Woes States Are Facing," CBS Sixty Minutes, December 19, 2010 ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/19/60minutes/main7166220.shtml

The problem with that, according to Wall Street analyst Meredith Whitney, is that no one really knows how deep the holes are. She and her staff spent two years and thousands of man hours trying to analyze the financial condition of the 15 largest states. She wanted to find out if they would be able to pay back the money they've borrowed and what kind of risk they pose to the $3 trillion municipal bond market, where state and local governments go to finance their schools, highways, and other projects.

"How accurate is the financial information that's public on the states? And municipalities," Kroft asked.

"The lack of transparency with the state disclosure is the worst I have ever seen," Whitney said. "Ultimately we have to use what's publicly available data and a lot of it is as old as June 2008. So that's before the financial collapse in the fall of 2008."

Whitney believes the states will find a way to honor their debts, but she's afraid some local governments which depend on their state for a third of their revenues will get squeezed as the states are forced to tighten their belts. She's convinced that some cities and counties will be unable to meet their obligations to municipal bond holders who financed their debt. Earlier this year, the state of Pennsylvania had to rescue the city of Harrisburg, its capital, from defaulting on hundreds of millions of dollars in debt for an incinerator project.

"There's not a doubt in my mind that you will see a spate of municipal bond defaults," Whitney predicted.

Asked how many is a "spate," Whitney said, "You could see 50 sizeable defaults. Fifty to 100 sizeable defaults. More. This will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of defaults."

Municipal bonds have long been considered to be among the safest investments, bought by small investors saving for retirement, and held in huge numbers by big banks. Even a few defaults could affect the entire market. Right now the big bond rating agencies like Standard & Poor's and Moody's, who got everything wrong in the housing collapse, say there's no cause for concern, but Meredith Whitney doesn't believe it.

"When individual investors look to people that are supposed to know better, they're patted on the head and told, 'It's not something you need to worry about.' It'll be something to worry about within the next 12 months," she said.

No one is talking about it now, but the big test will come this spring. That's when $160 billion in federal stimulus money, that has helped states and local governments limp through the great recession, will run out.

The states are going to need some more cash and will almost certainly ask for another bailout. Only this time there are no guarantees that Washington will ride to the rescue.

Continued in article

The Government' Recipe for Off-Budget Debt
"US Government 'hiding true amount of debt'," by Gregory Bresiger, news,com ---
http://www.news.com.au/business/breaking-news/us-government-hiding-true-amount-of-debt/story-e6frfkur-1225926567256#ixzz106MjZzOz 

Bob Jensen's threads on the economic crisis ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm

The Sad State of Government Accounting and Accountability ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory02.htm#GovernmentalAccounting

Basic Accounting Crossword Games --- http://www.ehow.com/list_6830614_basic-accounting-games.html

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

Tenure Tacks for Professionally Qualified (PQ) Faculty as well as Academically Qualified (AQ) Faculty

December 23, 2010 message from Bob Jensen to Patricia Walters

Hi Pat,

I think your question should be reworded as follows:

Rhetorical question: How many new doctoral program graduates would opt for a clinical appointment if (as in medical schools) the clinical faculty could get tenure alongside the research faculty? .

Clinical faculty presumably would have heavier teaching loads and in some ways more difficult loads in that they have to stay as up to date as practicing accountants on standards, interpretations, tax laws, and business applications of accountancy. As far as teaching is concerned they may have to be more generalists in covering intermediate, advanced, auditing, systems, and masters level professional accountancy courses. .

Research faculty would have to make original contributions to knowledge and joust with research referees and journal editors. They could become more narrowly focused on research specialties, methodologies, and data mining. .

Of course there are a few areas where clinical faculty could become more narrowly specialized such as in ERP and XBRL and forensic accounting specialties. .

How would clinical faculty be judged for tenure beyond teaching excellence and outstanding service?
Clinical faculty might be required to become active in case writing associations such as NACRA and be required to write Harvard-style cases and teaching notes upon which they would be judged on the quality of the cases and even publication of the cases. Hence, publish or parish may not completely disappear for clinical faculty.

Clinical faculty might be required to publish in some top professional journals such as* Issues in Accounting Edu*cation and *Accounting Horizons*and the *Harvard Business Review*.

As an example of a case that I think would make a great contribution toward tenure for a clinical faculty member I recommend one of my all time favorite cases published in IAE:

"Questrom vs. Federated Department Stores, Inc.: A Question of Equity Value," May 2001 edition of* Issues in Accounting Educati*on, by University of Alabama faculty members *Gary Taylor, William Sampson, and Benton Gup*, pp. 223-256. .

Perhaps clinical faculty would even have to take annual professional examinations as one of the conditions for tenure granting.

It's important that clinical faculty do not have an easier track for tenure.
The clinical track should be a rigorous track based on teaching excellence, scholarly publications, and evidence of professional competency much like clinical medical faculty are judged upon their superb skills in medical practice.

It may even be easier to conduct research on the brain than to become an outstanding and tenured brain surgeon in a leading medical school

In one of my think tank years I lived in Staford housing on campus. Across the street I became close with a clinical hand surgeon in the Stanford Medical School. His duties included teaching and performing experimental surgeries installing metal joints in hands. Surgeons came from far and wide just to watch him perform surgeries.

I once asked him why he took such a sacrifice in income to be a medical school professor? He said it was to avoid the hassle of practice including such things as having to deal with malpractice insurance and a larger patient caseload. In medical school he could cherry pick the most interesting surgery cases. He said he also got more sleep as a medical school surgeon than as a surgeon in private practice.

Beside me lived a tenured research professor in the Stanford Medical School who was not even an MD. He was a PhD engineer with a specialty in the kidney and fluid dynamics. He was tenured on the basis of his research and publication record. I remember he and his wife especially well. They had a huge doberman that was gentle as a lamb when my daughter watched their baby in their house. But I didn't dare step inside the house when my daughter was baby sitting.

Respectfully,
Bob Jensen

 

**************

Hi Tom,

You mentioned Denny Beresford standing tall in a crowd. Denny also stands tall in another department for the last 13-14 years of his career. Although he holds a named professorship at the University of Georgia he's probably viewed more as a clinical professor than a research professor by his colleagues. He's also one of our pioneers in distance education who's not burned out when he teaches online to students in the PwC online MBA Program at the University of Georgia. .

As a clinical professor Denny stands tall as my role model for a clinical professor who actively publishes articles in practitioner journals such as the *CPA Journal* and elsewhere where he has published some excellent articles. And he's one of the more popular speakers in the academy. Hall of Fame Citation --- Click Here  http://fisher.osu.edu/departments/accounting-and-mis/the-accounting-hall-of-fame/membership-in-hall/dennis-robert-beresford/  .

Thus if we are to grant tenure to clinical professors it would not be unreasonable to still require that they publish even if their articles are scholarly-professional rather than research contributions. .

Denny is well beyond traditional retirement age with substantial savings. He remains in harness (rather being pastured like me) largely out of the love of teaching and the love of still making a difference in our craft. .

For those clinical professors who are younger, like Patricia Walters, I would like to stress that trying to get employers to grant tenure to PQ full-time professors should be a goal. There are many advantages to tenure. In times of financial crisis, tenured professors are the last employees standing.

Contract employees serve at the whim of an administrator. If the new Dean or new Department Chair does not particularly like a contract employee it's c'est la vie. .

Also when it comes time to make deals for early retirement tenured professors are given much better offers than most contract employees --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Retire  .

Of course there is one huge drawback of being on tenure track. Tenure track faculty face an up-or-out crisis point after six or seven years. Contract employees not on tenure track face contract renewals but these are not quite the same as the tenure decision hurdle. .

Perhaps PQ faculty should be given a choice as to whether they want to take a tenure track.

Respectfully,
Bob Jensen

Bob Jensen's threads on tenure appear in various places at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

Say What?
Common sense dictates that employees would ceteris paribus rather have pay raises than bonuses, but on Wall Street there seems to be something beyond economics in the desire for bonuses.

"Mental accounting on Wall Street," Nudges, December 20, 2010 ---
http://nudges.org/2010/12/20/mental-accounting-on-wall-street/

Even though employees will receive roughly the same amount of money, the psychological blow of not getting a bonus is substantial, especially in a Wall Street culture that has long equated success and prestige with bonus size. So there are sure to be plenty of long faces on employees across the financial sector who have come to expect a bonus on top of their base pay. Wall Streeters typically find out what their bonuses will be in January, with the payout coming in February.

One executive, whose firm prohibited discussing the topic with the news media, said the bump in base salaries had confused people, even though their overall compensation was the same. “People expect a big bonus,” this person said. “It is as if they don’t even see their base doubled last year.”

"A Wind Power Boonedoggle T. Boone Pickens badly misjudged the supply and price of natural gas," by Robert Bryce, The Wall Street Journal, December 22, 2010 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704368004576027310664695834.html

After 30 months, countless TV appearances, and $80 million spent on an extravagant PR campaign, T. Boone Pickens has finally admitted the obvious: The wind energy business isn't a very good one.

The Dallas-based entrepreneur, who has relentlessly promoted his "Pickens Plan" since July 4, 2008, announced earlier this month that he's abandoning the wind business to focus on natural gas.

Two years ago, natural gas prices were spiking and Mr. Pickens figured they'd stay high. He placed a $2 billion order for wind turbines with General Electric. Shortly afterward, he began selling the Pickens Plan. The United States, he claimed, is "the Saudi Arabia of wind," and wind energy is an essential part of the cure for the curse of imported oil.

Voters and politicians embraced the folksy billionaire's plan. Last year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he had joined "the Pickens church," and Al Gore said he wished that more business leaders would emulate Mr. Pickens and be willing to "throw themselves into the fight for the future of our country."

Alas, market forces ruined the Pickens Plan. Mr. Pickens should have shorted wind. Instead, he went long and now he's stuck holding a slew of turbines he can't use because low natural gas prices have made wind energy uneconomic in the U.S., despite federal subsidies that amount to $6.44 for every 1 million British thermal units (BTUs) produced by wind turbines. As the former corporate raider explained a few days ago, growth in the wind energy industry "just isn't gonna happen" if natural gas prices remain depressed.

In 2008, shortly after he launched his plan, Mr. Pickens said that for wind energy to be competitive, natural gas prices must be at least $9 per million BTUs. In March of this year, he was still hawking wind energy, but he'd lowered his price threshold, saying "The place where it works best is with natural gas at $7."

That may be true. But on the spot market natural gas now sells for about $4 per million BTUs. In other words, the free-market price for natural gas is about two-thirds of the subsidy given to wind. Yet wind energy still isn't competitive in the open market.

Despite wind's lousy economics, the lame duck Congress recently passed a one-year extension of the investment tax credit for renewable energy projects. That might save a few "green" jobs.

But at the same time that Congress was voting to continue the wind subsidies, Texas Comptroller Susan Combs reported that property tax breaks for wind projects in the Lone Star State cost nearly $1.6 million per job. That green job ripoff is happening in Texas, America's biggest natural gas producer.

Today's low natural gas prices are a direct result of the drilling industry's newfound ability to unlock methane from shale beds. These lower prices are great for consumers but terrible for the wind business. Through the first three quarters of 2010, only 1,600 megawatts of new wind capacity were installed in the U.S., a decline of 72% when compared to the same period in 2009, and the smallest number since 2006. Some wind industry analysts are predicting that new wind generation installations will fall again, by as much as 50%, in 2011.

There's more bad news on the horizon for Mr. Pickens and others who have placed big bets on wind: Low natural gas prices may persist for years. Last month, the International Energy Agency's chief economist, Fatih Birol, said that the world is oversupplied with gas and that "the gas glut will be with us 10 more years." The market for natural-gas futures is predicting that gas prices will stay below $6 until 2017.

So what is Mr. Pickens planning to do with all the wind turbines he ordered? He's hoping to foist them on ratepayers in Canada, because that country has mandates that require consumers to buy more expensive renewable electricity.

How do you say boonedoggle in French?

Mr. Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His latest book is "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future" (PublicAffairs, 2010).

Jensen Comment
It has long been my contention since the oil crisis in the 1970s that alternative sources of energy will most likely never compete with oil and gas until at least 2030 because the Middle East and other world suppliers of oil will simply turn up their valves and lower their prices to make oil and gas the cheapest alternative, especially when our infrastructure of pipelines and fuel stations are all geared to oil and gas.

But we should still vigorously search for alternative sources of energy. That's what will make oil and gas prices "relatively" cheap for everybody. Without these other alternatives, sheiks will simply add more gold plating to their limousines.

How to Lie With Statistics
Questions
Since most business and accounting graduate school applicants take the GMAT, I can't figure is why prospective business and accounting majors are taking the GRE?

Do the smart accounting graduate school applicants take the GMAT and the dumb ones take the GRE?

"Verbal vs. mathematical aptitude in academics," Discover Magazine, December 11, 2010 ---
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/12/verbal-vs-mathematical-aptitude-in-academics/

Some observations:

- Social work people have more EQ than IQ (this is not a major achievement because of the scale obviously).

- Accountants never made it into the “blue bird” reading group.

- Philosophers are the smartest humanists, physicists the smartest scientists, economists the smartest social scientists.

- Yes, anthropologists can read and write far better than they can do math.

The raw data below.

Major	Verbal	Quant	Writing
Philosophy	589	636	5.1
English	559	552	4.9
History	543	556	4.8
Art History	538	554	4.7
Religion	538	583	4.8
Physics	534	738	4.5
Anthropology	532	571	4.7
Foreign Language	529	573	4.6
Political Science	522	589	4.8
Economics	504	706	4.5
Math	502	733	4.4
Earth Science	495	637	4.4
Engineering, Materials	494	729	4.3
Biology	491	632	4.4
Art & Performance	489	571	4.3
Chemistry	487	682	4.4
Sociology	487	545	4.6
Education, Secondary	486	577	4.5
Engineering, Chemical	485	727	4.3
Architecture	477	614	4.3
Banking & Finance	476	709	4.3
Communications	470	533	4.5
Psychology	470	543	4.5
Computer Science	469	704	4.2
Engineering, Mechanical	467	723	4.2
Education, Higher	465	548	4.6
Agriculture	461	596	4.2
Engineering, Electrical	461	728	4.1
Engineering, Civil	457	702	4.2
Public Administration	452	513	4.3
Education, Elementary	443	527	4.3
Engineering, Industrial	440	710	4.1
Business Administration	439	562	4.2
Social Work	428	468	4.1
Accounting	415	595	3.9

 

December 20, 2010 reply from Apostolos Ballas

As always, it is a good idea to have a look at the raw data. ETS’s relevant webpage shows that the scores of prospective Accounting majors refer to only 424 test-takers while for economists close to 7.900 test-takers. Thus, there is some merit to the thesis that the dumb ones take the GRE. Indeed, since most schools hint that they want applicants to take the GMAT (administered by GMAC not ETS) those who do take it, definitively have “perception” issues.

Apostolos Ballas

December 21, 2010 reply from

Thank you so much for Apostolos for finding the data to support my conjecture that the outcomes reported in Discover Magazine are very misleading. I've always admired Discover Magazine until now. A science magazine should know better than to make this elementary mistake that third grader would understand once they realize that the majority of accounting applicants that the GMAT and not the GRE and that the GRE takers are probably outliers, some of whom probably had low a gpa averages and were not allowed to major in accounting as an undergraduate.

Bob Jensen

"How Social Networking Has Changed Business," by Bill George, Harvard Business Review Blog, December 20, 2010 --- Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2010/12/how-social-networking-has-chan.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date 
.

Bob Jensen's threads on social networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm 

December 24, 2010 reply from David Albrecht

One of the topics for this semester's research paper was the current status of business use of social media.

One student found that Starbucks employs 340 different types of social media.

Times have changed, and very quickly. Michelle Golden's new book
( http://www.amazon.com/Social-Media-Strategies-Professionals-Their/dp/0470633107/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293198412&sr=8-1 )
on Social Media for business is a must aread.

Dave Albrecht

"Trying Out a Revamped Myspace," by Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street Journal, December 22, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703581204576033703049174660.html

Thanks to the popularity of Facebook, it's easy to assume that all social networks are designed primarily to connect friends with one another. But many of these networks—think Twitter, Yelp and LinkedIn—aren't focused on that. Instead, they provide information from strangers, business contacts and group postings on a variety of topics. Myspace is now also shifting in this direction after Facebook decisively overtook it as the most popular social network.

Last month, the company rolled out a revamped version of Myspace, which is owned by News Corp., publisher of the Wall Street Journal. I've been testing it to see what has changed and if it's worth using. Its interface is cleaner than the old version of Myspace and I found it easy to navigate. It's also inviting for non-members or people who've long-since given up on Myspace. But I can't definitely say I like it enough to add it to my large list of social networks.

Step one of this site's rehab was a new focus. Myspace (myspace.com) was redesigned to serve as a source of information about entertainment. People who use it can follow five categories—TV, music, movies, celebrities and comedy—that include more than 100,000 topics. News about these topics comes from sites all over the Web and is arranged on users' home pages to show loads of information at a glance. A Discovery tab at the top of the page shows content related to trends on Myspace makes suggestions based on a user's preferences and taste. A spokesman said the Myspace topics can be expanded, but for now, if you're fonder of, say, books, theater or hard news, Myspace won't be a good fit.

. . .

This week, a Myspace mobile app was launched in Apple's App Store, and an Android app is due out next year.

Myspace successfully reinvented itself in a way that could very well get people using it again, but Facebook's more personalized social network may be more valuable than a rich library of entertainment content.

Bob Jensen's threads on social networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

"Tenure, RIP: What the Vanishing Status Means for the Future of Education," by Robin Wilson, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 4, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Tenure-RIP/66114/

Some time this fall, the U.S. Education Department will publish a report that documents the death of tenure.

Innocuously titled "Employees in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2009," the report won't say it's about the demise of tenure. But that's what it will show.

Over just three decades, the proportion of college instructors who are tenured or on the tenure track plummeted: from 57 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 2007. The new report is expected to show that that proportion fell below 30 percent in 2009. If you add graduate teaching assistants to the mix, those with some kind of tenure status represent a mere quarter of all instructors.

The idea that tenure, a defining feature of U.S. higher education throughout the 20th century, has shrunk so drastically is shocking. But, says Stanley N. Katz, director of Princeton University's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, "we may be approaching a situation in which there will not be good, tenure-track jobs for the great majority of good people."

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on tenure are scattered about at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

This might be viewed as a complement to "Make Versus Buy" cases in accounting. However, "Buy Versus Rent" cases have added complications in tax laws and transactions cost complexities (it may take a lot of time and money to sell real estate) coupled with greater risk of price declines for owners. Renters, however, may just not be able to find adequate properties to rent, especially for their manufacturing operations and for operations that otherwise require expensive installations such as pollution control and air purification equipment.

"Buy vs. Rent: An Update," by David Leonhardt,  The New York Times, December 22, 2010 ---
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/buy-vs-rent-an-update/

Below is an updated list of rent ratios — the price of a typical home divided by the annual cost of renting that home — for 55 metropolitan areas across the country.

We last covered this subject about eight months ago, and you’ll notice that most ratios have not changed much since then. A good rule of thumb is that you should often buy when the ratio is below 15 and rent when the ratio is above 20. If it’s between 15 and 20, lean toward renting — unless you find a home you really like and expect to stay there for many years.

 

Metro area	Ratio
East Bay, Calif.	35.9
Honolulu	34.4
San Jose, Calif.	32.7
San Francisco	27.9
Seattle	27.3
Charlotte, N.C.	27
Orange County, Calif.	27
New York (Manhattan)	26.7
Raleigh, N.C.	26.2
Portland, Ore.	25.9
North – Central New Jersey	25.2
Nashville	24
Denver	22.6
San Diego	22.1
Long Island, N.Y.	21.4
Milwaukee	21.4
Austin, Tex.	20.5
Norfolk, Va.	19.9
Richmond	19.7
Memphis	19.3
Bridgeport, Conn.	18.5
Hartford	18.4
Boston	18.4
Washington – Northern Virginia – Maryland	18.3
Oklahoma City	18.2
Baltimore	17.6
Columbus, Ohio	17.6
Palm Beach County, Fla.	17.6
Salt Lake City	17.6
Sacramento	16.7
San Antonio	16.7
Chicago	16.6
New Orleans	16.2
Philadelphia	16.1
Houston	15.9
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.	15.7
Miami	15.6
New York	15.4
Los Angeles	15.4
Kansas City, Kan.	15.3
Inland Empire, Calif.	15.1
National average for metro areas	15.1
Indianapolis	15.1
Jacksonville, Fla.	15
Minneapolis	14.9
St. Louis	14.6
Las Vegas	14.3
Atlanta	14.3
Orlando, Fla.	14.1
Tampa, Fla.	14
Cincinnati	13.9
Dallas – Fort Worth	13.8
Phoenix	13.3
Detroit	12.4
Cleveland	11.7
Pittsburgh	11.4

It’s pretty amazing when you think about it. The country has suffered through a terrible crash in home prices, yet buying a house remains an iffy proposition in many markets.

The data comes from Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics and covers the second quarter of this year. Home prices haven’t changed very much since then, so I would expect ratios in most places to be quite close to the numbers

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I'm told that towns in New Hampshire where there have been mill closings, especially paper mills, are getting an influx of chronic welfare recipients because of dirt-cheap rents on abandoned apartments and houses. In small farm towns such as those decaying farm towns in Iowa where economies of scale in agribusiness forced small family famers out of business, real estate prices have been declining for years. People that trickle into these decaying towns are elderly people on very low retirement incomes and chronic welfare cases.

The big house my grandfather built in around 1900 in Swea City, Iowa is surprisingly well maintained to this day. A few years back it was purchased for $10,000 by a retired couple. I remember as a child how neighbors congregated on this house's big front porch to cool off on hot summer nights and to partake in my grandmother's endless pitcher of fresh lemonade.

Darn! I could've become rich 50 years ago suing over the "prize" inside a box of Cracker Jacks!
If I'd only been smart enough to move to California and hire a lawyer.

Now the prize in each box of Cracker Jacks must be taped to the business card of a law firm.

And alongside the nutrition chart in each California fast food restaurant must be a bulletin board for law firm business cards.

Just think of how much easier it would be for Attorney General Cuomo if Lehman had offered an Elmo toy with the purchase of each Ropo 105 and a Barbie Doll with each Repo 108! The jingle could've been "A Barbie date with every 108."

"A Lawyer's Paradise:  Atop all its other woes, California adds litigation madness," The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703581204576033781635883412.html#mod=djemEditorialPage_t .

With an unemployment rate at the national outer limits of 12.4%, a state budget deficit of $28 billion, and rains that would have challenged Noah, Californians are in a glum mood this week. But that's no reason to take it out on the kids who may be the only happy citizens left in California. Tell that to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is suing McDonald's in California in the hopes of obtaining a court injunction banning Happy Meals. Only in California could such mindlessness float alongside a state crisis.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is representing the mother of a six-year-old girl in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all California children under the age of eight who have been exposed to McDonald's "inherently deceptive and unfair" marketing in the last three years. The suit claims that McDonald's has "engaged in a highly sophisticated scheme to use the bait of toys to exploit children's developmental immaturity and subvert parental authority" and that arguments over Happy Meals have caused "needless and unwarranted dissension in their parent-child relationship." Who can doubt that tableside Happy Meals arguments will be at the center of these kids' sessions with their shrinks in another 10 years?

The suit arrived too late for this year's report by the American Tort Reform Association of the nation's top "Judicial Hellholes," in which California placed second, behind top-ranked Philadelphia. (And for aficionados of the tort follies, remember that lawsuit filed in Long Island, New York, by one doctor who sued his doc partner for not yelling "Fore!" before an errant ball hit him in the eye? The state court of appeals ruled this week that failure to yell "fore" isn't "reckless conduct.")

The tort reform group's report lists some other notable examples of frivolous class-action suits in California, including one against more than a dozen olive-oil companies for fraud and deception. Allegedly, their extra-virgin olive oil wasn't extra virgin enough to meet USDA standards. Where were these attorneys when Madonna was singing about similar virginal nuances?

Another suit alleged that Apple misled customers with the claim that "reading on the iPad is just like reading a book." Au contraire. Unlike a real book which can be left outside on a hot day, the iPad automatically shuts down after reaching a critical temperature in order to allow its system to cool down.

More serious was a class-action suit brought against one of the nation's largest nursing-care providers Skilled Healthcare Group. It alleged that some of the company's facilities sometimes didn't provide the 3.2 nursing hours per patient per day as required by California's health code. A Humboldt County jury demanded that the company pay $677 million in damages. The financially strapped company settled for $62.8 million, but not until after its stock plunged 75%. The plaintiffs bar ended up with roughly $20 million of the haul and the patients with $26 million.

So by all means, add tort hellhole to floods, fiscal calamity and whatever else is turning once heavenly California into something else.

Bob Jensen's threads on the Lehman/Ernst Repo 105 scandal are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Ernst

"University of California Faculty, Administrators Earning > $245k to Sue for Higher Pensions," by Paul Caron, Tax Professor Blog, December 30, 2010 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/

Three dozen of the University of California's highest-paid executives are threatening to sue unless UC agrees to spend tens of millions of dollars to dramatically increase retirement benefits for employees earning more than $245,000.

"We believe it is the University's legal, moral and ethical obligation" to increase the benefits, the executives wrote the Board of Regents in a Dec. 9 letter and position paper obtained by The Chronicle. ...

The executives fashioned their demand as a direct challenge to UC President Mark Yudof, who opposes the increase. "Forcing resolution in the courts will put 200 of the University's most senior, most visible current and former executives and faculty leaders in public contention with the President and the Board," they wrote. ...

They want UC to calculate retirement benefits as a percentage of their entire salaries, instead of the federally instituted limit of $245,000. The difference would be significant for the more than 200 UC employees who currently earn more than $245,000.

Under UC's formula, which calculates retirement benefits on only the first $245,000 of pay, an employee earning $400,000 a year who retires after 30 years would get a $183,750 annual pension. Lift the cap, and the pension rises to $300,000. ...

The executives say the higher pensions are overdue because the regents agreed in 1999 to grant them once the IRS allowed them to lift the $245,000 cap, a courtesy often granted to tax-exempt institutions like UC. The IRS approved the waiver in 2007.

Yudof wants the regents to rescind their original approval of the higher pensions, but withdrew his recommendation after receiving the letter. He did so to allow "time for further review by the regents," his spokesman said.

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

Laugh of the Day (if some attorneys weren't making money on this)
Who is suing the SEC for $3.87 trillion of taxpayer money?
http://www.jrdeputyaccountant.com/2010/12/cmkm-greatest-financial-statements-weve.html

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

I suspect video cameras and Webcams deter shoplifting in much the same way --- if the odds of getting caught increase then many potential violators are deterred by the fear of being caught!

"Cheaters Find an Adversary in Technology," by Tripp Gabriel, The New York Times, December 27, 2010 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/education/28cheat.html?_r=1&hpw

Mississippi had a problem born of the age of soaring student testing and digital technology. High school students taking the state’s end-of-year exams were using cellphones to text one another the answers.

With more than 100,000 students tested, proctors could not watch everyone — not when some teenagers can text with their phones in their pockets.

So the state called in a company that turns technology against the cheats: it analyzes answer sheets by computer and flags those with so many of the same questions wrong or right that the chances of random agreement are astronomically small. Copying is the almost certain explanation.

Since the company, Caveon Test Security, began working for Mississippi in 2006, cheating has declined about 70 percent, said James Mason, director of the State Department of Education’s Office of Student Assessment. “People know that if you cheat there is an extremely high chance you’re going to get caught,” Mr. Mason said.

As tests are increasingly important in education — used to determine graduation, graduate school admission and, the latest, merit pay and tenure for teachers — business has been good for Caveon, a company that uses “data forensics” to catch cheats, billing itself as the only independent test security outfit in the country.

Its clients have included the College Board, the Law School Admission Council and more than a dozen states and big city school districts, among them Florida, Texas, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta — usually when they have been embarrassed by a scandal.

“Every single year I’ve been in testing there has been more cheating than the year before,” said John Fremer, 71, a Caveon co-founder who was once the chief test developer for the SAT.

Exposing cheats using statistical anomalies is more than a century old. James Michael Curley, the so-called rascal king of Massachusetts politics, and an associate were shown to have copied each other’s civil service exams in 1902 because they had 12 identical wrong answers.

Probability science has come a long way since then, and Caveon says its analysis of answer sheets is the most sophisticated to date. In addition to looking for copying, its computers, which occupy an office in American Fork, Utah, and can crunch up to one million records, hunt for illogical patterns, like test-takers who did better on harder questions than easy ones. That can be a sign of advance knowledge of part of a test.

The computers also look for unusually large score gains from a previous test by a student or class. They also count the number of erasures on answer sheets, which in some cases can be evidence that teachers or administrators tampered with a test.

When the anomalies are highly unlikely — their random occurrence, for example, is less than one in one million — Caveon flags the tests for further investigation by school administrators.

Although its data forensics are esoteric and the company operates in the often-secretive world of testing, Caveon’s methods are not without critics. Walter M. Haney, a professor of education research and measurement at Boston College, said that because the company’s methods for analyzing data had not been published in scholarly literature, they were suspect.

“You just don’t know the accuracy of the methods and the extent they may yield false positives or false negatives,” said Dr. Haney, who in the 1990s pushed the Educational Testing Service, the developer of the SAT, to submit its own formulas for identifying cheats to an external review board.

David Foster, the chief executive of Caveon, said the company had not published its methods because it was too busy serving clients. But the company’s chief statistician is available to explain Caveon’s algorithms to any client who is curious.

Other means that the company uses to stop cheating are not based on statistics.

For the Law School Admission Council, which administers the LSAT four times a year to a total of more than 140,000 people, Caveon patrols the Internet looking for leaked questions on sites it calls “brain dumps,” where students who have just taken an exam discuss it openly.

“There’s all kinds of stuff on the blogs after the test trying to guess which stuff will show up in the future; there’s a whole cottage industry,” said Wendy Margolis, a spokeswoman for the council.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
It would seem that one means of discouraging cheating would be to video test takers during an entire examination much like stores videotape shoppers as they move about a store. If the text takers know they are on camera the entire time and the videos will be examined in a serious way, will this discourage them from some common types of cheating (like using cell phones or passing notes) --- I think so. Of course they must be discouraged from leaving the classroom during an examination --- let them turn in their examinations early or pee their pants.

Grandfather was explaining price  inflation to his grandson. Gramps asserted he could go into the the grocery store in the 1940s and, for one dollar, bring home three quarts of milk, five loaves of bread, three pounds of ground beef, six pork chops, a carton of cigarettes, three tomatoes, a head of lettuce and two bits in change. Later he admitted that he'd never try such a fete today because of "all the f**king video cameras."

Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm

"Islamic Accounting," IAS Plus, January 3, 2011  --- http://www.iasplus.com/islamicfinance/islamicaccounting.htm

Accounting Standards for financial reporting by Islamic financial institutions have to be developed because in some cases Islamic financial institutions encounter accounting problems because the existing accounting standards such as IFRSs or local GAAP were developed based on conventional institutions, conventional product structures or practices, and may be perceived to be insufficient to account for and report Islamic financial transactions. Shariah compliant transactions that observe the prohibition to charge interest may not have parallels in conventional financing and therefore, there may be significant accounting implications. Likewise, the Islamic finance industry is under considerable pressure to enhance practice and improve risk management systems and protect investors.

On this page, we maintain a history of recent developments in Islamic accounting requirements and practices.

 

Bob Jensen's threads on Islamic accounting are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#IslamicAccounting

"Which of These Banks Was 2010's Most Shameless Corporate Outlaw?" by Richard Escow, Huffington Post, December 30, 2010 ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/which-of-these-banks-was_b_802887.html

Their collective rap sheet includes fraud, sex discrimination, collusion to bribe public officials... even laundering drug money for Mexican drug cartels. One of them is accused of ripping off some nuns! None of this criminal behavior has stopped them from sulking over a presidential slight. Let's review the record for these corporate malefactors, and then decide:

The Greatest Swindle in the History of the World ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Bailout

More on the Nightmares of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (they have their feet on the ground far beneath looming dark clouds)

"Google Goes to the Cloud for New Idea in PC System," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021571135209978.html

In the personal-computer industry, where things change fast, one fact has been a constant for years: There are two major, mainstream operating systems for consumers. One, Microsoft Windows, runs on many brands of hardware and dominates sales. The other, Apple's Mac OS X, runs only on its maker's Macintosh computers, and has had a resurgence in popularity in recent years. Other contenders, such as various versions of Linux, have remained on the fringes.

Next summer, however, Google hopes to add a third broad-based computer-operating system to challenge the duopoly. It's called Chrome OS, and is based on Google's Chrome Web browser. With Chrome, Google isn't just aiming to elbow its way into the OS business. It's hoping to change the entire paradigm. Instead of storing most programs and files on your computer itself, the Chrome OS will mainly run programs from, and require you to keep your data in, the cloud—remote servers located on the Internet. In effect, it turns your entire computer into a giant Web browser, instead of treating the browser as just one among many local programs.

More Mossberg's Mailbox .The Chrome OS isn't finished, and isn't ready for broad public testing. Google readily concedes it has lots of bugs and rough edges. But the company has designed a small test laptop with the new operating system installed and distributed "a few thousand" of them to outsiders to try.

I have been using this machine, called the Cr-48, for about a week, and have some explanations and first impressions to share. This isn't a formal review; that will have to wait till the product is finished and is on commercial computers.

I focused mainly on the software, which is built on a Linux underpinning. That's because Google doesn't ever intend to sell the Cr-48 hardware, an all-black, unbranded laptop with a 12-inch screen, a rubbery surface and a large, buttonless touchpad that resembles those pioneered on the Mac.

In my tests, I found this early Chrome OS machine to be fast, with decent battery life and almost instant resumption from sleep. It handled most Web sites fine, and worked almost exactly like the very nice Chrome browser on Windows and Mac.

I also liked the one hardware feature worth mentioning: a radically redesigned keyboard. Instead of function keys, or various legacy keys such as Caps Lock, Chrome OS keyboards feature dedicated browser-oriented keys, like ones for moving back and forth among Web pages and windows, refreshing a page, entering full-screen mode, or quickly opening a new tab and beginning a search.

The Chrome OS will have a big advantage. Because it is mainly a front-end-to-cloud service, if you lose your laptop, you can get another one and just sign into your cloud accounts. You should be able to find all your stuff waiting for you.

However, users of the Chrome OS will have a huge adjustment to make. They will have to give up the rich, local programs they have spent years learning to use and tweaking to their liking. You can't install local programs on a Chrome OS computer. Instead, Google provides a Web Store inside the browser that allows you to download icons for "Web apps"—mostly websites designed to look and work like standard programs.

Some of these, like Gmail, are familiar and popular. Others are newer. For instance, the New York Times and AOL already designed Web-based news apps for Chrome OS, and there is a Web-based version of the TweetDeck program for Twitter. These apps, and the store's own icon, appear on the new Tab screen of Chrome OS (and also are available in the current Chrome browser.)

In my tests, I found these apps generally worked fine. But most aren't as rich and versatile as local Windows and Mac programs. For example, there was no way to play my local, personalized iTunes music collection, unless I spent many hours uploading it to some Web-based service.

I also had to settle for Web-based productivity programs—like word processors and spreadsheets—with many fewer features than standard local ones, such as Microsoft Office.

And I ran into plenty of frustrations. At this stage, Chrome OS can't do anything with USB flash drives or SD memory cards, and can't synchronize phones. And it has a very limited ability to store, or allow you to do anything with, email attachments or other files you might download and prefer to keep locally rather than on a server controlled by somebody else.

Printing was a chore, requiring a complicated setup on a Windows computer that Chrome used as a conduit to a printer.

Plus, Chrome OS is hardly stable yet. I suffered numerous crashes of Adobe's Flash player, and even Google's own Google Talk instant-messaging service, which appears in a little pop-up window on top of the browser. The company says it hopes to fix these problems by next summer.

Finally, the biggest downside: Because it's a cloud-oriented system, Chrome OS is almost useless if you lack an Internet connection. Google says it plans to offer some limited offline functionality, and to encourage makers of Web apps to do the same. It will also eventually be able to make some use of some files stored on external hard disks. But the basic operating mode will require you to be connected to the Internet.

To help with this, the Cr-48 has a Verizon cellular modem built in, to supplement its Wi-Fi connectivity. Verizon is offering 100 megabytes of data free, but that is a small amount, and you have to pay for more.

Like the Mac OS, but unlike Windows or Google's own smartphone operating system, Android, the Chrome OS will be deeply integrated with hardware. So, Google doesn't plan to distribute or license the new operating system to every hardware maker—at least not at first. You won't be able to install it on an existing computer. It will be available in 2011 on a limited number of computer models from selected manufacturers.

Google says this is because security is a high priority and requires special hardware designs that tightly bond with the software.

Also, Chrome OS computers will, in some respects, be more like iPads than laptops. They won't have hard disks, just a limited amount of flash-memory storage, and they won't have DVD drives.

They are an attempt to realize the old idea of a "network computer," or one which is mostly a front end for network services.

Of course, many people already spend most of their time with their PCs and Macs connected to the Net. Many use Web-based email programs or streaming music programs instead of local software.

So the time may be right for a cloud computer, a change in the paradigm. Google certainly hopes so.

From the Scout Report on December 17, 2010

WordPress 3.0.3 --- http://wordpress.org/

For those looking for a way to document their experiences throughout the holiday season and the New Year, WordPress might be just the ticket. This new release of the popular blogging software contains a few new plugins, including those that are designed to synchronize posts with Twitter and the "BuddyPress", which helps users build social networks for their company, school, or sports team. This version is compatible with all operating systems, including Linux.

---

Aviary --- http://www.aviary.com/ 

Designed to be a powerful suite of online creation tools, Aviary has an image editor, a screen capture tool, image markup capabilities, and five other free tools. One of the newer additions is the music creator, which gives users the ability to pick an instrument (such as the drums) and then create their own riff for use on their website. Additionally, visitors can check out items created by fellow users and their own in-house blog. This version is compatible with all operating systems

---

As the new year approaches, a plan to showcase Chernobyl to visitors from around the world emerges Kiev Sees Chernobyl as Tourist Hot Spot
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703727804576017720342095028.html

Ukraine plans to open Chernobyl, site of massive nuclear disaster, open to tourists in 2011 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/12/13/201013_ukraine_plans_to_open_chernobyl_site_of_massive_nuclear_disaster_open_to_tourist.html 

Chernobyl: now open to tourists http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/13/chernobyl-now-open-to-tourists

Chernobyl [pdf] http://www.chernobyl.info/ 

US Nuclear Weapons Accidents http://www.cdi.org/issues/nukeaccidents/accidents.htm 

Atomic Heritage Foundation http://www.atomicheritage.org/

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

Education Tutorials

Fire Safety for Kids --- http://www.firesafety.gov/kids/flash.shtm

Mobilizing Minds: Teaching Math and Science in the Age of Sputnik ---
http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/small_exhibition.cfm?key=1267&exkey=535

The Multimedia History of Artificial Intelligence https://lib.stanford.edu/ai-media

The Wikimedia Foundation announced this morning that it has reached its goal of $16 million in record time, more than doubling the $7.5 million the organization raised in 2009. The foundation, which is the non-profit parent organization of massively collaborative online encyclopedia Wikipedia and a multitude of other wikis, says that more than half a million people from all over the world donated to the effort this year.
ReadWriteWeb, January 1, 2011 --- http://readwriteweb.com/

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

The Multimedia History of Artificial Intelligence https://lib.stanford.edu/ai-media

Mobilizing Minds: Teaching Math and Science in the Age of Sputnik ---
http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/small_exhibition.cfm?key=1267&exkey=535

Virtual Museum of Optical Illusions --- http://www.opticalillusionsmuseum.com/index.html

American Medical Association: Atlas of the Human Body --- Click Here
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/patient-education-materials/atlas-of-human-body.shtml  

National Institutes of Health: Research Matters --- http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/

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 Multimedia History of Artificial Intelligence https://lib.stanford.edu/ai-media

A Must View
Video:  Authors@Google: Chris Chabris (including his book on the Invisible Gorilla and perceptual psychology) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rdUk52h-MY&feature=youtu.be

Jensen Comment
This has some implication for financial statement analysis. We are conditioned to look for certain types of things like return on investment, net cash flow, and other things that are commonly looked at in financial statements. We may be warned ahead of time to look for a "gorilla" or a "woman carrying an umbrella passing by." But we have limited ability to perceive unexpected events.

"Fama Says Too-Big-to-Fail `Distorting' Financial System (of efficient markets)" Bloomberg Video ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/64476076/

Jensen Comment
This seems to coincide with the hypothesis that "Too Big to Lose" is distorting the auditing system worldwide.

Bob Jensen's threads on the EMH ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#EMH

Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and Philosophy tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social

Law and Legal Studies

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

Math Tutorials

Video on the Beauty of Mathematics --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h60r2HPsiuM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Mobilizing Minds: Teaching Math and Science in the Age of Sputnik ---
http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/small_exhibition.cfm?key=1267&exkey=535

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

History Tutorials

Star Spangled Banner -(the real story) -- http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Iwa-lSVqA1M&vq=medium

Tipu Sultan (d.1799) Weapons Research, Warrior Empire --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHnjq4-Ixck
Thank you Jagdish

The Journey Through Hallowed Ground --- http://www.hallowedground.org/

NEH Grant Project: The AGS Library's Historic Images --- http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/digilib/NEHgrant/

Gillray Collection (Art History) --- http://diglib.princeton.edu/xquery?_xq=getCollection&_xsl=collection&_pid=gc108

Maryland ArtSource: Maryland Historical Society Painting Collection http://www.marylandartsource.org/collections/collection_index_000000001.html

Maryhill Museum of Art --- http://www.maryhillmuseum.org/index.html

Papers Past (New Zealand) --- http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/

Tokens & Treasures: Gifts to Twelve Presidents http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/tokens_and_treasures/tokens_and_treasures_home.html

Imagining the Past in France, 1250-1500 http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/imagining_past_france/

Computing History

Timeline of Computing History --- http://www.computer.org/computer/timeline/ 

The History of Computing --- http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/ 

American University Computer History Museum --- http://www.computinghistorymuseum.org/ 

The Apple (Computer) Museum  --- http://www.theapplemuseum.com/ 

A History of Microsoft Windows (slide show from Wired News) --- http://www.wired.com/gadgets/pcs/multimedia/2007/01/wiredphotos31

Oldcomputers.com  --- http://www.old-computers.com/news/default.asp

The Multimedia History of Artificial Intelligence https://lib.stanford.edu/ai-media

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

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/

December 20, 2010

December 22, 2010

December 24, 2010

December 25, 2010

December 29, 2010

December 30, 2010

• “The King’s Speech”: Raising Stuttering Awareness
• Gene May Be a Target of Stomach Cancer Treatment
• Team Treatment Helps Depression, Chronic Disease
• Kids’ Behavior Not Linked to Obese Moms-to-Be
• Smoking May Worsen Cancer Pain
• Benefits in Delaying Sex Until Marriage
• Teen Hearing Loss: Girls Catch Up With Boys
• Year-End Flurry of Food Recalls, Illness
• Low Vitamin D in Newborns Linked to Wheezing
• Cow Milk Formula Leads to Quicker Weight Gain in Infants

 

December 31, 2010

January 4, 2011

• Radiation Imaging Is Common in Children
• New Push to Develop Cancer Blood Test
• Recall of Albuterol Used in Nebulizers
• New Evidence on Benefits of Colonoscopies
• CPAP Treatment for Sleep Apnea Fights Fatigue
• New Guidelines on When Kids Need Tonsillectomies
• Chickenpox Vaccine Drastically Cuts Hospitalizations
• Youths With STDs May Not Admit They Had Sex
• Bright Light Eases Depression in Elderly People
• Test Evaluates Teen Athletes With Concussions

January 5, 2011

Ganser syndrome.
As described by WebMD.com: The most well-recognized symptom of Ganser syndrome is the so-called symptom of approximate answers (alternately designated in the literature by the German terms vorbeireden [talking past], vorbeigehen [to pass by], or danebenreden [talking next to]). Here, the patient responds to questions with an incorrect answer, but by the nature of the answer reveals an understanding of the question posed. This can be illustrated by the patient answering "3" when asked, "How many legs has a horse?" or "black" when asked "What color is snow?" or "Tuesday" when asked "What is the day after Sunday?" Frequently, the patient answers a number of questions with these odd approximate answers. This is in direct contrast to answers that are simply nonsensical, perseverative, or otherwise inappropriate.

A Southern grandma meets Bill Cosby --- https://mail.google.com/a/trinity.edu/#inbox/12d060ef5df4be27

My Blackberry Is Not Working! - The One Ronnie, Preview - BBC One ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI

The Best of Not Necessarily the News (HBO, 1 of 6) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppHMk6seu9E

Cowboy Examination, by Garrison Keillor, Prairie Home Companion ---
http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2010/11/20/scripts/cowboy.shtml

Cracker Jack 1975 --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK-BcJMuN5s

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

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