Tidbits on October 27, 2011
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
This week my photographic
feature is
Set 1 of My
Favorite Hiking Trails in the White Mountains
Cannon Mountain Rim Trail, Flume Gorge, Bridal Falls, Lost River Gorge and
Caves, and the Livermore, NH Ghost Town
www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/HikingTrails/Set01/HikingTrailsSet01.htm
I still sit at my desk about 8-10 hours a day
and look out at mountains on two sides and my small woods to the south. What's
important is the serendipity of opportunity with such things as great lighting,
great cloud formations, and other moments that can crop up and pass very quickly
if my camera is not at my side at all times.
Unfurling Flowers ---
http://player.vimeo.com/video/27920977?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0href=
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
WhiteMountainHistory.org ---
http://whitemountainhistory.org/
Over 70 Historical Photographs ---
http://photos.whitemountainhistory.org/AlbumHomeView.aspx
Blogs of White
Mountain Hikers (many great photographs) ---
http://www.blogger.com/profile/02242409292439585691
Especially note
the archive of John Compton's blogs at the bottom of the page at
http://1happyhiker.blogspot.com/
White
Mountain News ---
http://www.whitemtnews.com/
Tidbits on October 27, 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/
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
Best Interactive Halloween Card Ever (with a surprise ending)
---
Click Here
Shucking Corn--Clean Ears Every time (8 minutes in a microwave)
---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnBF6bv4Oe4
Video: How to silence Nobel Prize winning economists: Ask them about the
economy ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFdnA5UNmVw&feature=feedu
Commentary: See Below
Smart Idea: 80-Foot Mast Under a 65-Foot Bridge ---
http://www.wimp.com/mastbridge/
60 Second Adventures in Thought (animated sequence
that highlights six famous thought experiments) ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/60_second_adventures_in_thought.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Some of these are stupid and funny (the first one is a clumsy attempt to
illustrate asymptotic epsilon)
Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research ---
http://www.growingknowledge.bl.uk/
Note the link to "New Ways of doing research"
The Futures Channel (Science and Engineering) ---
http://www.thefutureschannel.com/index.php
Witness (Human Rights Causes) ---
http://www.witness.org/
An Owl's Final Approach ---
http://www.dogwork.com/owfo8/
Kentucky Critter Files ---
http://www.uky.edu/Ag/CritterFiles/casefile/casefile.htm
Humanities on the Road (Videos in Pennsylvania) ---
http://www.humanitiesontheroad.org/
Here's a 1932 Cartoon That Explains Everything Happening Right
Now ---
http://www.jrdeputyaccountant.com/2011/10/heres-1932-cartoon-that-explains.html
(or go to YouTube
here)
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
The Futures Channel
(Science and Engineering) ---
http://www.thefutureschannel.com/index.php
Senior Jitterbug (a groupie) ---
http://www.youtube.com/v/uNE3YSr_o2A%26feature%3drelated
Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/thelonious_monk_straight_no_chaser.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Legendary Folklorist Alan Lomax: ‘The Land Where
the Blues Began’---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/legendary_folklorist_alan_lomax_the_land_where_the_blues_began.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
‘Jammin’ the Blues,’ by Gjon Mili ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/jammin_the_blues_by_gjon_mili.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Paul Simon, Then and Now: Celebrating His 70th
Birthday ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/paul_simon_then_and_now_celebrating_his_70th_birthday.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
First Listen: Joseph Calleja, 'The Maltese Tenor'
(full concert) ---
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/16/141353649/first-listen-joseph-calleja-the-maltese-tenor
The Mariinsky Orchestra At Carnegie Hall ---
http://www.npr.org/music/genres/classical/
Just like old times with the nursing home trip
Willie Nelson, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie at Occupy Wall Street ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/willie_nelson_pete_seeger_and_arlo_guthrie_at_occupy_wall_street.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
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
Earth As Art 3: A Landsat Perspective ---
http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/earthasart/Pages/default.aspx
Unfurling Flowers ---
http://player.vimeo.com/video/27920977?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0href=
Video: Iceland in the Midnight Sun ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/iceland_in_the_midnight_sun.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
The Negro Travelers' Green Book, Spring 1956
(African American History) ---
http://library.sc.edu/digital/collections/greenbook.html
Digital Horizons (North Dakota and Minnesota
History) ---
http://digitalhorizonsonline.org
International Museum of Women ---
http://imow.org
Pruitt-Igoe Photographs ---
http://tjrhino1.umsl.edu/whmc/view.php?description_get=Pruitt+Igoe
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
John Turturro Reads Italo Calvino’s Animated Fairy Tale ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/john_turturro_reads_italo_calvinos_animated_fairy_tale.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on October 27, 2011
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2011/TidbitsQuotations102711.htm
"US deficit is 'real and growing' threat: Bernanke," ForexTV,
October 4, 2011 ---
http://www.forextv.com/forex-news-story/forex-us-deficit-is-real-and-growing-threat-bernanke
Federal Reserve chairman Ben
Bernanke called for quick and decisive steps to rein in the exploding US
budget deficit, warning failure to act could result in a serious crisis.
Warning that surging annual deficits presented a "real and growing threat"
Read Full Story
"A New Spending Record: Washington had its best year ever in fiscal 2011,"
The Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2011 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204479504576637513885592874.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t
Maybe it's a sign of the tumultuous times, but the
federal government recently wrapped up its biggest spending year, and its
second biggest annual budget deficit, and almost nobody noticed. Is it rude
to mention this?
The Congressional Budget Office recently finished
tallying the revenue and spending figures for fiscal 2011, which ended
September 30, and no wonder no one in Washington is crowing. The political
class might have its political pretense blown. This is said to be a new age
of fiscal austerity, yet the government had its best year ever, spending a
cool $3.6 trillion. That beat the $3.52 trillion posted in 2009, when the
feds famously began their attempt to spend America back to prosperity.
What happened to all of those horrifying spending
cuts? Good question. CBO says that overall outlays rose 4.2% from 2010 (1.8%
adjusted for timing shifts), when spending fell slightly from 2009. Defense
spending rose only 1.2% on a calendar-adjusted basis, and Medicaid only
0.9%, but Medicare spending rose 3.9% and interest payments by 16.7%.
The bigger point: Government austerity is a myth.
In somewhat better news, federal receipts grew by
6.5% in fiscal 2011, including a 21.6% gain in individual income tax
revenues. The overall revenue gain would have been even larger without the
cost of the temporary payroll tax cut, which contributed to a 5.3% decline
in social insurance revenues but didn't reduce the jobless rate.
The nearby table shows the budget trend over the
last five years, and it underscores the dramatic negative turn since the
Obama Presidency began. The budget deficit increased slightly in fiscal 2011
from a year earlier, to $1.298 trillion. That was down slightly as a share
of GDP to 8.6%, but as CBO deadpans, this was still "greater than in any
other year since 1945."
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
In fairness, the exploding budget deficits were in the pipeline before President
Obama took office. His predecessor, George W. Bush, had no ink in his veto pen
when Congressional spending bills crossed his desk. Obama inherited the same
inkless pen as far as spending bills are concerned.
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Life Legacy --- Dr. William Breit, age 78 of San Antonio, died
Thursday, August 25, 2011 ---
http://porterloring.com/sitemaker/sites/Porter1/obit.cgi?user=1368_WBreit6281
Years earlier Bob Jensen wrote a tribute to Bill Breit and Ken Elzinga ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/muppets.htm
Scroll down to find the tribute.
Course Management Systems/Learning Management Systems (CMS/LMS) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system
From the 2011 EDUCAUSE Annual Meetings
"Educause Video Archive; Why You Hate Your CMS," by Josh Keller,
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 21, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/crosstalk-educause-video-archive-why-you-hate-your-cms/33885?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Educause Archive: Higher ed’s
biggest tech conference is over, but Educause has posted a
video archive of selected sessions. For those who
missed them, be sure to check out Danah Boyd’s presentation on
students and online privacy,
a Pew presentation on
trends in mobile learning, and The Chronicle’s
panel on the
challenges of the unbundled university.
Mobile Growth: Mary Meeker, a
former Morgan Stanley analyst who is one of the most perceptive thinkers on
the future of technology, made her annual presentation on how the Internet
is changing on Tuesday (slides, video).
The presentation emphasizes the rapid growth of mobile
devices and global Internet usage.
The Hated CMS: Content-management
systems, which typically help people organizations their Web sites, are
typically among the least liked pieces of software. Among other faults, they
age poorly, says Michael Fienen at .eduGuru. Mr. Fienen offers some advice
for colleges to
choose a CMS more intelligently and for CMS
vendors to serve as better members of the higher-ed community.
Question
What was the first computer-based CMS/LMS system?
Hint
It went "hoot."
In the early days of CMS/LMS software there was no Internet available to the
general public. The earliest commercial CMS/LMS software came in boxes of floppy
disks. The earliest software was developed with funding for the U.S. military
training. It later became available to the public in computer stores. Colleges,
however, were long delayed in adopting this software in computing centers.
Professors like me of course were experimenting on our own. In the early years I
used DOS-based HyperGraphics CMS and later Windows-based Toolbook CMS.
The history of CMS/LMS systems can be investigated at the following two
links:
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245cont.htm
By being an early adopter, I was invited to hundreds of campuses to
demonstrate CMS software ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm#Presentations
Now I'm a has-been with tons of old floppy disks and old CDs!
Learning Management System (LMS) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system
"Freeing the LMS," by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, October
13, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/13/pearson_announces_free_learning_management_system
Last year, the media conglomerate Pearson
controlled a shade over 1 percent of the market for learning management
systems (LMS) among traditional colleges, according to the Campus
Computing Project.
This year, Pearson is
taking aim at the other 99 percent.
In a move that could shake the e-learning
industry, the company today
unveiled a new learning management system that
colleges will be able to use for free, without having to pay any of the
licensing or maintenance costs normally associated with the technology.
Pearson’s new platform, called
OpenClass, is only in beta phase; the company does
not expect to take over the LMS market overnight. But by moving to turn the
learning management platform into a free commodity — like campus e-mail has
become for many institutions — Pearson is striking at the foundation of an
industry that currently bills colleges for hundreds of millions per year.
“I think that the announcement really marks
another, and important, nail in the coffin of the proprietary
last-generation learning management system,” says Lev Gonick, CIO of Case
Western Reserve University.
By providing complimentary customer support and
cloud-based hosting, OpenClass purports to underprice even the nominally
free open-source platforms that recently have been
gaining ground in the LMS market.
Hundreds of colleges have defected from Blackboard
-- whose full-service, proprietary platform has ruled the market for more
than a decade -- in favor of open-source alternatives that cost nothing to
license. But while the source code for these systems is free, colleges have
had to pay developers to modify the code and keep the system stable.
OpenClass can be used “absolutely for free,” says
Adrian Sannier, senior vice president of product at Pearson. “No licensing
costs, no costs for maintenance, and no costs for hosting. So this is a freehttp://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
r offer than Moodle is. It’s a freer offer than any other in the space.”
Outflanking the Market
Pearson, which sells a variety of higher-education
products and services, including textbooks, e-tutoring software and online
courseware, has had
success selling its own proprietary learning
management system, LearningStudio (formerly known as eCollege), to
for-profit colleges. But the company has made fewer inroads with the much
larger nonprofit sector. With OpenClass, Sannier says Pearson is taking aim
at “traditional institutions around the country where professors are the
ones making the decisions about what’s happening in their classrooms” — a
demographic that has long been Blackboard’s stronghold.
“Our intention is to serve every corner of that
instructor-choice marketplace,” says Sannier.
Pearson says it is taking a strategic cue from
Google, which offers its cloud-based e-mail and applications suite to
colleges for free in an effort to secure “mind share” among the students and
professors who use it. Like Google with its Apps for Education — with which
Pearson has partnered for its beta launch — the media conglomerate is hoping
to use OpenClass as a loss leader that points students and professors toward
those products that the company’s higher ed division sees as the future of
its bottom line: e-textbooks, e-tutoring software, and other “digital
content” products.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on the history of Learning Management Systems (also
called Course Management Systems) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
And this is why nearly half the U.S. taxpayers receive the benefits of U.S.
Federal Government services without paying any Federal income tax
Some even take home taxes paid by the other half of the taxpayers
IRS Releases 2012 Inflation-Adjusted Tax Tables and Other Guidelines ---
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-11-52.pdf
Question
What subject is never raised when the media interviews protesters at Occupy
America Protest sites?
"Why do half of Americans pay no federal income tax? A new study shows
the top reasons that some Americans don't pay federal income taxes," by Don
Marron, The Christian Science Monitor, July 28, 2011 ---
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Donald-Marron/2011/0728/Why-do-half-of-Americans-pay-no-federal-income-tax
You may have heard the claim that about half of
Americans pay no federal income tax. That’s a true fact. My
Tax Policy Center colleagues estimate, for
example, that 46% of households either will pay no federal income tax in
2011 or will receive more from the
IRS than they pay in.
Today, TPC released a
new study that examines why these people end up
paying no federal income tax.
The number one reason should come as no surprise.
It’s because they have low incomes. As my colleague
Bob Williams notes:
A couple with two children earning less than
$26,400 will pay no federal income tax this year because their $11,600
standard deduction and four exemptions of $3,700 each reduce their taxable
income to zero. The basic structure of the income tax simply exempts
subsistence levels of income from tax.
Low incomes (or, if you prefer, the standard
deduction and personal exemptions) account for fully half of the people who
pay no federal income tax.
The second reason is that for many senior citizens,
Social Security benefits are exempt from federal
income taxes. That accounts for about 22% of
the people who pay no federal income tax.
The third reason is that
America uses the tax code to provide benefits to
low-income families, particularly those with children. Taken together, the
earned income tax credit, the child credit, and the childcare credit account
for about 15% of the people who pay no federal income tax.
Taken together, those three factors — incomes that
fall below the standard deduction and personal exemptions; the exemption for
most Social Security benefits; and tax benefits aimed at low-income families
and children — account for almost 90% of the Americans who pay no federal
income tax.
For further details and info about the other 10%,
please see
the study.
P.S.: The true fact — about half of Americans do not pay
federal income taxes – often gets transmogrified in public discourse into
the decidedly untrue claim that half of Americans pay no taxes. That simply
isn’t so. There are many other taxes in our fair land, including payroll
taxes, excise taxes, sales taxes, state income taxes, and property taxes.
Most people who don’t pay federal income taxes still encounter some of these
other taxes, especially at state and local levels. Even those that rent
housing pay something toward local taxes in their rent checks.
Jensen Comment
Most of us receiving Social Security benefits do pay Federal income taxes on
those benefits. It's a mistake to conclude that most of these benefits are
exempt from income taxes.
I personally have benefitted from credits not mentioned above, particularly
credits for payments made to add insulation and air tight windows to our
150-year old cottage. Thus I get the reduced cost of heating plus the tax
breaks. I have not yet invested in solar or wind energy, but some of my friends
up here in the mountains are getting tax credits for those investments as well.
The bottom line for me, however, is that I still pay what seems like a heavy
Federal income tax in retirement even though I do get the benefits of a huge
mortgage on my home. I do not have to pay a state income tax in New Hampshire
except for a relatively small state tax on cash dividends and interest (but not
capital gains).
But I'm not really protesting my taxes. Over the years I've received tenfold
more benefits from living in America than anything I contributed for those
benefits.
In spite of the media hype about 9-9-9, I think it's safe to assume there
won't be serious tax reform in the near future.
If tax reform swaggered into a Luckenbach, Texas saloon, it would be "all
hat and no horse"
The ladies of the night would die laughing at that "itty-bitty thang" that
walked in
And it would need a ladder to peek over the top of the spittoon
My point is that you probably should plan your financial future on the
present mess we call the Tax Code. In this regard, you might like to learn about
one of the best helper sites around.
Tax Helpers
October 22, 2011 message from Scott Bonacker (himself a professional CPA tax
expert)
It is hard to prioritize the things that are
important to tax preparers, not the least of which are these: keeping up
with current developments and improving understanding of the principles of
taxation. Single sourcing is one way we do it, and for that reason the
commercial tax services provide
extensive editorial content and regular newsletters and updates.
There is also a considerable amount of information and thought that is
available for free on the internet if you know where to find it. So much,
that it is difficult sometimes to filter the choices to the ones that can
make a valuable contribution.
Email study groups are one way, and blogs are another. One of those is the
21st Century Taxation blog by Professor Nellen.
Professor Nellen is a tax professor and director of the MS Taxation Program
at San Jose State University, and her blog is frequently updated with
intelligent commentary and links to resources.
Her experience as a teacher shows as Professor Nellen will often point out
an event or an article or a circumstance and then describe how she sees it
in relation to current events or professional practice. Her blog posts
provide analysis and links to allow the reader to look into things in more
depth, and many times they close with a question - "What do you think?"
A prolific writer, Professor Nellen maintains a personal website -
http://www.21stcenturytaxation.com/
Professor Nellen's academic page at San Jose State
University -
http://www.cob.sjsu.edu/nellen_a/ is
also a large repository of useful information.
Since most of us are in the business of tax planning and preparation we also
become involved in explaining and discussing relative advantages and
disadvantages of the options that are available now. Then there is also the
potential for future alternatives. Professor Nellen's collection of
articles and analysis of tax reform information can be a very important
addition to the resources available to a tax professional.
I saw an email tagline that said something about experts knowing where to
find answers. First you have to recognize that there may be an issue. What
are your sources of information?
Scott Bonacker CPA
Springfield, MO
Bob Jensen's tax helpers (which are virtually nothing compared to those of
Professor Nellen) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation
Screencasting
ScreenCast from TechSmith is a leading storage/server alternative for your
Jing and Camtasia videos ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TechSmith
However, there are quite a few other screeencast video capturing alternatives
and hosts ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_screencasting_software
This is a pretty impressive Wikipedia comparison site!
Bob Jensen's video helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
Dropbox (Cloud Storage) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_%28service%29
"Dropbox Will Simplify Your Life," by David Pogue, The New York
Times, October 20, 2011 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/dropbox-will-simplify-your-life/
Every time I’m tempted to write about some tech
product that’s been around awhile, I’m torn. On one hand, I’ll be blasted by
the technogeeks for being late to the party. On the other hand, it doesn’t
seem right to keep something great hidden under a barrel from the rest of
the world.
So here goes: I love Dropbox.
Continued in article
October 22, 2011 reply from Amy Dunbar
I use
dropbox for my excel-based students projects. I create a dropbox folder for
each group, and then share the folder with the students. Each student is
expected to complete all three projects, but they can help each other.
Every student submits the first project but for the next two, each group
selects one project for final grading. When someone is stuck, I can quickly
open the project and see what is going on. To demonstrate how to use
dropbox, I ask a student in class to save a file to the dropbox and then the
class can see on the overhead the file showing up in my dropbox folder for
that group. I love it!
Heads up:
If two people are working on a file at the same time the file saves as a
conflicted file. So students have to be careful to save files with unique
names.
Amy Dunbar
UConn
October 22, 2011 reply from Rick Lillie
I read David Pogue's post
about Dropbox. I agree it is easy to use and is a great tool for file
sharing.
There are many software
programs and hosted collaboration services available (both free and for fee)
that focus on file sharing as a way to collaborate. But, file sharing is
just one aspect of collaborating with others on a project.
Dropbox is great for what
it does. There are alternatives that do much more than what Dropbox does.
For example, for the past few
years, I have used
Collanos Workplace as a way to collaborate
with students on independent study and group projects. Collanos is similar
to Groove Networks (now part of enterprise edition of Microsoft Office).
Collanos emphasizes organizing the project and workflow and includes many
options for communicating and incorporating other technology tools as needed
to meet project needs.
I've also used Collanos Workplace
to collaborate with colleagues on research projects. Recently, I've been
using a great online hosted collaboration service called
Glasscubes.
It's more intuitive than Collanos and shifts the
process to "the Cloud."
There are lots of tech
tools to use for research and classroom activities. The key is to find the
tool that "best fits" the needs of the project and the technology skills of
both students and instructor.
Best wishes,
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
Bob Jensen's threads on archiving and long-term storage ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#archiving
Bad News for the World
Germany will not bail out French banks or Rhode Island's Public Pensions
Question
What happens when you get more retirees on a pension plan than there are workers
contributing to that plan?
"The Little State With a Big Mess," by Mary Williams Walsh,
The New
York Times, October 21, 2011 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/business/for-rhode-island-the-pension-crisis-is-now.html?hp
ON the night of Sept. 8, Gina M. Raimondo, a
financier by trade, rolled up here with news no one wanted to hear: Rhode
Island, she declared, was going broke.
Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow. But if
current trends held, Ms. Raimondo warned, the Ocean State would soon look
like Athens on the Narragansett: undersized and overextended. Its economy
would wither. Jobs would vanish. The state would be hollowed out.
It is not the sort of message you might expect from
Ms. Raimondo, a proud daughter of Providence, a successful venture
capitalist and, not least, the current general treasurer of Rhode Island.
But it is a message worth hearing. The smallest state in the union, it turns
out, has a very big debt problem.
After decades of drift, denial and inaction, Rhode
Island’s $14.8 billion pension system is in crisis. Ten cents of every state
tax dollar now goes to retired public workers. Before long, Ms. Raimondo has
been cautioning in whistle-stops here and across the state, that figure will
climb perilously toward 20 cents. But the scary thing is that no one really
knows. The Providence Journal recently tried to count all the municipal
pension plans outside the state system and stopped at 155, conceding that it
might have missed some. Even the Securities and Exchange Commission is
asking questions, including the big one: Are these numbers for real?
“We’re in the fight of our lives for the future of
this state,” Ms. Raimondo said in a recent interview. And if the fight is
lost? “Either the pension fund runs out of money or cities go bankrupt.”
All of this might seem small in the scheme of
national affairs. After all, this is Little Rhody (population: 1,052,567).
But the nightmare scenario is that Ms. Raimondo has seen the future of
America, and it is Rhode Island. As Wall Street fixates on the financial
disaster in Greece, a fiscal wreck is playing out right here. And the odds
are that it won’t be the last. Before this is over, many Americans may be
forced to rethink what government means at the state and local level.
Economists have talked endlessly about a financial
reckoning for the United States, of a moment in the not-so-far-away when the
nation’s profligate ways catch up with it. But for Rhode Island, that moment
is now. The state has moved to safeguard its bond investors, to avoid being
locked out of the credit markets. Last week, the General Assembly went into
special session and proposed rolling back benefits for public employees,
including those who have already retired. Whether the plan will succeed is
anyone’s guess.
Central Falls, a small city north of Providence,
didn’t wait for news from the Statehouse. In August, the city filed for
bankruptcy rather than keep its pension promises to its retired firefighters
and police officers.
Illinois, California, Connecticut, Oklahoma,
Michigan — the list of stretched states runs on. In Pennsylvania, the
capital city, Harrisburg, filed for bankruptcy earlier this month to avoid
having to use prized assets to pay off Wall Street creditors. In New Jersey,
Gov. Chris Christie wants to roll back benefits, too.
In most places, as in Rhode Island, the big issue
is pensions. By conventional measures, state and local pensions nationwide
now face a combined shortfall of about $3 trillion. Officials argue that, by
their accounting, the total is far less. But with pensions, hope often
triumphs over experience. Until this year, Rhode Island calculated its
pension numbers by assuming that its various funds would post an average
annual return on their investments of 8.25 percent; the real number for the
last decade is about 2.4 percent. A phrase that gets thrown around here, à
la Rick Perry describing Social Security, is “Ponzi scheme.”
That evening in September, Ms. Raimondo walked into
the Cranston Portuguese Club to face yet another angry audience. People like
Paul L. Valletta Jr., the head of Local 1363 of the firefighters union.
“I want to get the biggest travesty out of the way
here,” Mr. Valletta boomed from the back of the hall. “You’re going after
the retirees! In this economic time, how could you possibly take a pension
away?”
Someone else in the audience said Rhode Island was
reneging on a moral obligation.
Ms. Raimondo, 40, stood her ground. Rhode Island,
she said, had a choice: it could pay for schoolbooks, roadwork, care for the
elderly and so on, or it could keep every promise to its retirees.
“I would ask you, is it morally right to do
nothing, and not provide services to the state’s most vulnerable citizens?”
she asked the crowd. “Yes, sir, I think this is moral.”
FOR many Americans, the Ocean State conjures images
of Newport mansions and Narragansett chic. The overall reality is more
prosaic. Rhode Island today is a place where the roads and bridges rank
among the worst in the nation and where jobs are particularly hard to find.
Unemployment rose faster during the 2008-9 recession than in any other
state. The official jobless rate is now 10.6 percent, versus the national
average of 9.1 percent.
The textile mills and jewelry manufacturers that
once employed thousands here have dwindled away. The big employers today are
in health care and education, both of which rely heavily on government
spending that has been drying up.
Many states and cities can credibly say their
pension plans are viable, even when those plans are not fully funded. That
is because state retirement funds, like Social Security, pay out benefits
bit by bit, over many years.
But unlike, say, California, with its large,
diverse economy, Rhode Island is so small that there is little margin for
error. Leaving the state, to escape its taxes, is almost as easy as moving
to the other side of town. Efforts to balance the state budget by shrinking
the public work force have left Rhode Island with a problem like the one
that plagues General Motors: the state has more public-sector retirees than
public-sector workers.
Continued in article
The Sad State of Governmental Accounting and Accountability ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#GovernmentalAccounting
Madoff Book's 9 Juiciest Bits ---
Click Here
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/21/bernie-madoffs-daughter-in-law-on-husbands-suicide-and-bernies-crime.html
The End of Normal, by Stephanie Madoff Mack. Blue Rider Press. 253 p.
$17.43 (prices may vary)
Bob Jensen's threads on Bernie Madoff and Ponzi frauds ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#Ponzi
"The Student Loan Racket" - The Complete Infographic ---
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/student-loan-racket-complete-infographic
"Washington's Quietest Disaster Student loan defaults are growing, and the
worst is still to come," The Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2011
---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903703604576587103028334580.html#mod=djemEditorialPage_t
When critics warned about rising defaults on
government-backed student loans two years ago, the question was how quickly
taxpayers would feel the pain. The U.S. Department of Education provided
part of the answer this month when it reported that the default rate for
fiscal 2009 surged to 8.8%, up from 7% in 2008.
This rising default rate doesn't even tell the
whole story. The government allows various "income contingent" and
"income-based" repayment options, so the statistics don't count kids who
were given permission to pay less than they owed. Taxpayers shouldn't expect
relief any time soon. Thanks to policy changes in recent years and
fraudulent government accounting, the pain could be excruciating.
Readers who followed the Congressional birth of
ObamaCare in 2010 may recall that student lending was the other industry
takeover that came along for the legislative ride. Private lenders used to
originate federally guaranteed loans, but the new law required all such
loans to come directly from the feds. Combined with earlier changes that
discouraged private loans sold without a federal guarantee, the result is a
market dominated by Washington.
The 2010 changes did not happen simply because
President Obama and legislators like Rep. George Miller and Sen. Tom Harkin
distrust profit-making enterprises. The student-loan takeover also advanced
the mirage that ObamaCare would save money.
Thanks to only-in-Washington accounting, making the
Department of Education the principal banker to America's college students
created a "savings" of $68 billion over 11 years, certified by the
Congressional Budget Office. Even CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf admitted
that this estimate was bogus because CBO was forced to use federal rules
that ignored the true cost of defaults. But Mr. Miller had earlier laid the
groundwork for this fraud by killing amendments in the House that would have
required honest accounting and an audit.
Armed in 2010 with their CBO-certified "savings,"
Democrats decided they could finance a portion of ObamaCare, as well as an
expansion of Pell grants. But as Bernie Madoff could have told them, frauds
break down when enough people show up asking for their money. That's
happening already, judging by recent action in the Senate Appropriations
Committee, where lawmakers apparently realize that the federal takeover
isn't going to deliver the promised riches.
To preserve Team Obama's priority of maintaining a
maximum Pell grant of $5,550 per year and doubling the total annual funding
to $36 billion since President Obama took office, Democrats recently decided
to make student-loan borrowers pay interest on their loans for their first
six months out of college. Washington used to give the youngsters an
interest-free grace period. Taxpayers might cheer this change if the money
wasn't simply being transferred to another form of education subsidy. But it
seems almost certain to raise default rates as it puts recent grads under
increased financial pressure.
None of these programs has anything to do with
making it easier to afford college. Universities have been efficient in
pocketing the subsidies by increasing tuition after every expansion of
federal support. That's why education is a rare industry where prices have
risen even faster than health-care costs.
This is also the rare market where the recent trend
of de-leveraging doesn't apply. An August report from the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York found that Americans cut their household debt from a peak
of $12.5 trillion in the third quarter of 2008 to a recent $11.4 trillion.
Consumers have reduced their debt on houses, cars, credit cards and nearly
everything except student loans, where debt has increased 25% in the three
years.
Perhaps this is because most federal student loans
are made without regard to income, assets or credit history. Much like the
federal obsession to finance a home for every American regardless of ability
to pay, the obsession to finance higher education for every high school
student ignores inconvenient facts. These include the certainty that some of
these kids will take jobs that don't require college degrees and may not
support timely repayment.
For this school year, even the loans that pay on
time aren't necessarily winners for the taxpayer. That's because of a 2007
law that Mr. Miller and Nancy Pelosi pushed through Congress—and George W.
Bush signed—that cut interest rates on many federally backed student loans.
Stafford loans, the most common type, have been available since July at a
fixed rate of 3.4%, barely above the historically low rates at which the
Treasury is currently borrowing for the long term. The student loan rates
are scheduled to rise back to 6.8% next year. But if our spendthrift
government ends up borrowing money above 7% and lending it to kids at 6.8%,
taxpayers will suffer even before the youngsters go delinquent.
Efforts to clean up this debacle are stirring on
Capitol Hill, with House Republicans moving to limit Pell grants to students
who have a high school diploma or GED. Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn would go
further and have government leave the business of subsidizing the education
industry via student loans and let private lenders finance college. That may
be too radical at the moment, but it won't be if taxpayers ever figure out
how much subsidized loans will cost them
Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for
2012 ---
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1826214
Note especially the "Internet of Things"
Note especially how technology forecasts have changed since the turn of the
21st Century. Back in 2002 Gartner foresaw the explosion of grid and cluster
computing but die not seem to foresee the explosion in mobile computing. Now all
that has changed somewhat at least.
"What Is Grid Computing,
Anyway?" by Tim McDonald, NewsFactor Network July 24,
2002 ---
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/18722.html
One
good way to gauge a new technology's degree of acceptance is to observe
whether it has moved out of the laboratory and onto store shelves -- from
science to commerce. According to that measure, grid computing is just coming
of age.
Often called the next
big thing in global Internet technology, grid computing employs clusters of
locally or remotely networked machines to work on specific computational
projects.
One well-known
example of grid computing -- sometimes called distributed or clustered
computing -- is the ongoing
SETI
(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project, in which thousands of
users are sharing their unused processor cycles to help search for signs of
"rational" signals from outer space.
From
Science to Commerce
Grid computing
traditionally has been useful to researchers working on scientific or
technical problems -- much like the SETI project -- that require a great
number of computer processing cycles or access to large amounts of data.
But while this
technology was once exclusively the province of academics in fields like
biomedicine and weather forecasting, it has recently been making a strong
foray into potentially lucrative e-commerce sectors. Although clustering has
been used for several years as a load-balancing technique by server
hardware manufacturers, grid computing now seems to be coming of age for other
applications as well.
"Grid computing
has advanced to the point now that there are products out there like Sun's
Grid Engine Enterprise Edition,"
Aberdeen
Group analyst Bill Claybrook told NewsFactor.
Much like a
load-balancing server cluster, Sun's Grid Engine software lets organizations
create networked grids to share resources on a wider scale and to allocate
processing resources according to department priorities.
Grid
Computing Components
Essentially, grids
are built from clusters of computer servers joined together over a local area
network (LAN) or over the Internet.
While several grids
that run over the Internet -- like the SETI project -- have been built with
proprietary software, there are several development tools that can facilitate
the growth and adoption of grid computing.
One of those tools is
Globus, a research and development
project focused on helping software developers apply the grid concept.
The Globus toolkit,
the group's primary offering, is a set of components that can be used to
develop grid applications. For each component in the toolkit, Globus provides
an API (application programmer interface) for use by software developers.
Power
to the People
Research scientists
historically have been attracted to grid computing because it uses the power
of idle computers to work on difficult computational problems.
Proponents of grid
computing say the technology will enable universities and research
institutions to share their supercomputers, servers and storage capacity,
allowing them to perform massive calculations quickly and relatively cheaply.
In line with those
expectations, HP recently announced that a 9.2-teraflop supercomputer
soon will be connected to the Department of Energy's Science Grid. When
installed, it will be the largest supercomputer attached to a grid anywhere in
the world, according to the company.
Sharing
Data
Until now, the
problem with grid computing has been a lack of common software for developers
to work with, largely because grids rely on Internet-based software.
In an effort to spur
broader adoption of grids, the
National Science
Foundation established the US$12.1 million Middleware
Initiative last year, and the agency has recently released software and other
tools designed to make working on grids easier for scientists and engineers.
"Scientists are
now sharing data and instrumentation on an unprecedented scale, and other
geographically distributed groups are beginning to work together in ways that
were previously impossible," according to the Grid Research Integration
Deployment and Support Center.
First
Gaming Grid
In a real-world
example of grid computing,
IBM (NYSE: IBM)
and Butterfly.net announced in May that they would soon release a computing
grid for the video game industry. Butterfly.net spent two years building the
grid, which distributes games across a network of server
farms using IBM e-business infrastructure technology.
Massively multiplayer
games (MMGs) historically have been run on mirrored servers that essentially
duplicate copies of the MMG universe to balance user loads.
While this technique
is designed to reduce latency for all users -- so that each set of servers
behaves responsively to user actions -- the mirroring technique limits the
number of players who can participate at one time in the same game universe.
When load balances
increase, the typical MMG response has been to add more servers, copy the game
universe and spill the extra load into that new copy.
Now, however,
Butterfly.net's grid technology provides "cross-server sentinels"
that supports the interaction of millions of players in one world, with server
boundaries invisible to players. According to the company, the extension of
grid computing to the gaming world lets game developers support a limitless
number of users in their MMGs.
'Taking
Hold of an Industry'
Companies are lining
up to jump on the Butterfly bandwagon. This week, for example, software
development site CollabNet announced it will work with Butterfly.net to
develop an online environment that lets game developers test their games.
"IBM's been
extremely busy on a number of fronts in grid, in terms of investing resources
and winning new partners and customers," IBM spokesperson Jim Larkin told
NewsFactor.
"Butterfly is
one of the key examples thus far of how IBM has worked with another company to
help develop a computing grid that is in the commercial arena," Larkin
said. "It's a clear example of how grid is taking hold of an
industry."
"Digipede to Showcase .NET Grid Computing Solutions at Securities
Industry Association Technology Management Conference," PR Web, June 19,
2006 ---
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/6/prweb400497.htm
"Grids Unleash the Power of Many," by John Gartner, MIT's Technology
Review, January 14, 2005 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/01/wo/wo_gartner011405.asp?trk=nl
Computer scientists in three states -- West Virginia,
North Carolina, and Colorado -- are each combining their technology resources
into separate computer grids that will give researchers, universities, private
companies and citizens access to powerful supercomputers.
The project designers say these information aqueducts
will encourage business development, accelerate scientific research, and
improve the efficiency of government.
"Grid computing will provide 1,000 times more
business opportunities than what we see over the Internet today," says
Wolfgang Gentzsch, managing director of grid computing and networking services
at MCNC in Research Triangle Park, NC.
MCNC is spearheading North Carolina's statewide grid
development that currently includes seven universities including North
Carolina State, Duke, and the University of North Carolina.
The North Carolina project -- which has a goal to
link 180 institutions -- is encouraging business development through its Start
Up Grid Initiative, which allows fledgling companies to plug into the grid for
up to nine months free of charge and afterwards at discounted rates, Gentzsch
says.
Because raising capital and acquiring technology
takes up most of a new company's time, "Startups usually only get to
spend 10 percent of their time executing their idea," says Gentzch, who
has launched seven companies.
According to a 2003 report by Robert Cohen, a Fellow
at the Economic Strategy Institute, North Carolina's grid could create 24,000
jobs and boost the state's output by $10.1 billion by 2010 if effectively
implemented.
Before statewide grids can become a realit, the
software used to share and manage resources needs to be improved to include
more standard communication protocols. Gentzsch says the expected release of
version 4.0 of the open source Globus Toolkit, which he estimates is used by
90 percent of grid projects, will greatly simplify connecting computers to the
grid.
Securing a location's computing resources so that
only specified resources are made available for sharing is a significant
challenge, Gentzsch says. To protect data files, institutions must
"encrypt everything," and configure the grid network so that
"the CPU cycles are separated from the disk resources."
Gentzsch estimates that advanced computing resource
utilization is just 25 percent, and grid computing could increase the
efficiency to 75 percent.
"Back to Basics and the Next Big Thing," by Phillip D. Long, Syllabus,
August 2002, pp.10-11 ---
http://www.syllabus.com/syllabusmagazine/article.asp?id=6590
Grid Computing: The Next Big Thing
The next big thing to transform the Internet is
likely to come from work going on with the grid. The grid is an infrastructure
that enables flexible, secure, coordinated resource sharing among dynamic
collections of people, institutions, and resources.
It may be useful to recall that the birth of the Web
came from a desire to share research papers among large numbers of particle
physicists doing “big science” at CERN, the Swiss research center. Tim
Berners-Lee’s vision has changed all our lives. In the world of
international science, its impact has been staggering. Recognizing this, the
Joint Information Systems Council (JISC), the UK analog of the National
Science Foundation, has embarked on a £98 million project called the Core
e-Science Programme, managed by the Engineering and Physical Science Research
Council (EPSRC) on behalf of the UK Research Councils. The e-Science project
proposes to connect scientists with expensive remote facilities, teraflop
computers, and information resources stored in dedicated databases. Add to
these resources higher level services such as workflow, transactions, data
mining, and knowledge discovery, and you begin to glimpse what’s envisioned.
The grid is the architecture proposed to make this a reality.
What kinds of research are we talking about?
Everything from particle physics (what goes around comes around) to basic
medical investigation. For example, our understanding of even basic human
physiology remains terribly limited. We don’t know how multiple parameters
interact over time in fundamental processes like heart rate, blood pressure,
and other cardiovascular indicators. Imagine if 100,000 people volunteered to
wear real-time monitoring devices so that their daily metabolic functions were
recorded and analyzed in real time. The volume of data is enormous but
that’s just the beginning. We would want to compare how the data relate to
the activities of the people as they went about their daily lives. In the end,
predicting the likelihood of an impending physical problem becomes a potential
reality. Just like the work underway to provide predictive intervention for
the replacement of computing hardware, you can imagine high risk heart
patients wearing proactive monitors that page them to head for a cardiac care
unit because the data indicate a potential problem in the next 24 hours. Today
it may seem like science fiction, but with research using the grid, it’s
emerging into possible science fact.
This may seem far a field from the classroom. How far
it is remains to be seen of course, but there are people working today on
applying the potential of the grid to learning management or virtual learning
environments. Better descriptions about teaching processes and the learning
objects needed, along with work on metadata for educational objects, are
underway. So stay tuned for more about the “next big thing” in future
columns.
References
Laurillard, D. The Changing University. 1996.
http://itech1.coe.uga.edu/itforum/paper13/paper13.html
Metadata for Education Group
www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/education/regproj
The full article is at
http://www.syllabus.com/syllabusmagazine/article.asp?id=6590
CLUSTER AND GRID COMPUTING REFERENCES ---
http://www.ic.uff.br/~vefr/research/clcomp/clustrefs.html
Bob Jensen's threads on education technologies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
With a bit of sarcasm
"Yes, You Need More Gadgets," by Michael Schrage, The Harvard Business
Review Blog, October 20, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/schrage/2011/10/yes-you-need-more-gadgets.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
Everyone heard the rising panic in her voice. The
irritating chatterbox nattering away on her cell phone while in line to
board our flight suddenly realized that her boarding pass was — surprise! —
in the Smartphone she was talking on. She'd have to disconnect the call in
order to wave her device before the optical reader. The impatient queue
behind her burst into laughter, smirks and chortles as her call abruptly
ended. I'm not ashamed to say I was among them.
The (brief) era of single and serial mobile devices
is over. The age of multiple and parallel devices has begun. An impromptu
survey of CIOs revealed that the typical executive already has roughly three
devices connected to the enterprise network. Our traveling companion should
have known better. She could have continued irritating everyone as she
boarded if only she'd remembered to put her boarding pass on her other
iPhone, Android, Kindle, iPad or latest tablet. As Smartphones become
significantly smarter —
Siri?
Watson? Is that you? — the combined cognitive and
coordinative challenge of juggling three or four devices becomes more like
supervising a small team than managing a personal assistant.
Treating phones, tablets, BlackBerries and laptops
as distinct technical entities is pragmatically anachronistic. In the
twinkling of fewer than two Moore's Law generations, the central personal
productivity question has shifted from, "How do I get more value from my
mobile device?" to "How should I get more value from my device ensemble?"
The notion that you might need a Smartphone
to manage your Smartphones may seem mildly funny and ironic. The
simpler reality is that smart ensembles of smarter devices require smarter
networking. Syncing — simply making sure your devices have the same
up-to-date data — is the sterile path to convergence. What you need to do is
both more demanding and more rewarding. Pay attention. Pay attention to
those moments when you wish you had another phone. Observe seatmates who
aren't merely multitasking but multi-device multitasking. Who is chatting on
their phone while retrieving email on an iPad while highlighting an HBR
article on their Kindle? Then ask yourself: are they doing this because
they're inefficient? Or because this improvised arrangement makes them more
efficient?
Utilizing two or three devices doesn't inherently
make you two or three times more effective. Diminishing returns exist. But
there are frequently times when having two or three devices working with,
and for, you concurrently can make you an order of magnitude more
productive. For example, the ability to have your phone conduct searches on
your tablet and allow you to compare competing results sent by a colleague
as you virtually chat with and text each other could turn a task that takes
a typical day into one requiring less than an hour. It's not the total
bandwidth that matters; it's how that bandwidth is split up and shared.
Productivity/creativity/effectiveness breakthroughs
will increasingly come not from greater data sharing between devices but
enabling devices to collectively offer integrated user experiences. A single
tablet or phone is — Microsoft should excuse the expression — a window or a
lens. But three or four devices becomes a productivity "cockpit" that allows
you to have multiple views. In other words, your phone will "know" to put
the boarding pass on your tablet if you're on the phone at boarding time.
Your two tablets will "know" to display the synchronized "bird's eye" and
"walkthrough" views of a site you're planning to visit. Siri will "know" to
send the Facebook and Flickr imagery to your tablet — and the reference
materials to your Kindle — of the two couples you and your spouse are
supposed to meet at a party in an hour. Every mobile device will have a
"stick
shaker" capability to alert their user that "must
see/must respond" information must be accessed.
Continued in article
Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price
You might want to examine the NYT feature while it is still free ---
http://nyti.ms/9EegB2
"Hooked on Gadgets and Happy About It," by Alexandra Samuel,
Harvard Business Review Blog, June 8, 2010 ---
Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/06/hooked_on_gadgets_and_happy_ab.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology
From the EDUCAUSE Annual Meetings in Philadelphia on October 20, 2011
EDUCAUSE 2011 Annual Meeting Highlights as They Unfold This Week ---
http://www.educause.edu/E2011
Updates for October 20 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/category/educause-2011
"Myths of Online Education," by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed,
October 21, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/21/educational-technologists-defend-online-education
One of higher education’s biggest exports is
skepticism. So it is perhaps unsurprising that, whereas many educators have
questioned the virtue of online education, others would question the way in
which the questioners have questioned online education.
A panel of academic technologists ganged up on a
straw-man version of the online education skeptic here at the annual
Educause conference here on Thursday.
The panel took aim at a number of questions that
often come up when online education is put under the microscope, including:
Does online education take more time? And does it enable cheating?
Using these questions to prod the worthiness of
online education is likely to lead to “causal fallacies” than useful
insights, said George Otte, director of academic technology at the City
University of New York System. “Just as you can lie with statistics, you can
mislead with questions,” he said.
For his part, Otte took aim at the question of
online education being a time-suck for professors — a question that has
prompted
fears of faculty burnout. But the CUNY
technologist suggested that this question does not adequately account for
the cost, in time, of finding one’s footing on a new teaching platform.
“We may be confounding the time it takes to do
something with the time it takes to learn to do something,” Otte said. The
first time instructors teach online, they tend to overcompensate for their
ignorance by over-investing their time in the virtual classroom. But that
does not mean they will not adjust and adapt — just as most instructors did
to the circumstance and demands of classroom teaching when they began their
careers.
“A linguist once told me that if we were adults
when we began language acquisition, and knew how hard it was and all it
entailed, who would ever bother?” he continued. “But, of course, that all
happens before we think we have a choice and when we’re really good at it.”
In other words, developing fluency in a new medium
might be more labor-intensive than sticking to grunts and gestures; but once
everybody gets going, it opens up the process of exchanging information to
new levels of complexity and understanding.
The new opportunities inherent to online education
come with new challenges, particularly when it comes to enforcing integrity
rules. Hence the next question: Does online education enable cheating?
Philip D. Long, a professor of innovation in
educational technology at the University of Queensland, in Australia,
suggested many issues that endanger the integrity of online learning, such
as assessing individual contributions to group projects, are not unique to
online education.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on education technology (including distance
education) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Bob Jensen's threads about asynchronous learning ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm
Bob Jensen's threads about the dark side of education technology and
distance education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
Smile! You're on Candid Class Camera!
"Nudity, Pets, Babies, and Other Adventures in Synchronous Online Learning,"
by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 20, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/nudity-pets-babies-and-other-adventures-in-synchronous-online-learning/33846?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
The University of Southern California places a
premium on synchronous online education. Students fire up their Webcams and
participate in live virtual classes.
But those live video feeds are opening a debate
about classroom decorum, pushing the university to create new guidelines for
“Netiquette.”
Barking dogs, wailing babies, a naked spouse—all
have made cameo appearances in USC online classes, said Jade Winn, head of
library services for USC’s education and social work schools, during a talk
about online education at the Educause conference here.
Ms. Winn recalled one pajama-clad student who
rolled over in bed, turned on a Webcam, and tried to attend class lying on a
pillow. Another distraction: students crunching bowls of cereal.
“It’s just a whole level of being in someone’s
home, that you don’t take into consideration,” Ms. Winn said in an interview
after her talk.
The university plans to start taking it into
consideration with a new Netiquette guide. The goal is to spell out up front
what USC won’t tolerate. A spouse parading naked behind a student clearly
isn’t kosher—but where else do you draw the line?
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads about the dark side of education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
Death of an Artificial Intelligence Pioneer from Stanford University Who
Spoke With a LISP
John McCarthy, a Pioneer in the Study of Artificial Intelligence, Dies,"
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 24, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/john-mccarthy-a-pioneer-in-the-study-of-artificial-intelligence-dies/37454?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
John McCarthy, a
computer scientist long associated with Stanford University and a
pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, died on Sunday,
according to
news reports and Tweets from the
Stanford
School of Engineering. He was 84.
Mr. McCarthy invented
the programming language Lisp and was responsible for coining the term
“artificial intelligence,” in a
proposal for a conference on the topic at
Dartmouth College in 1956. He
received the A.M. Turing Award, given by the
Association for Computing Machinery, in 1971 for his contributions to
the field.
Mr. McCarthy
earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1951 and
became a full professor at Stanford in 1962. He retired in 2000 and had
held
emeritus status since then. He also held
appointments at Princeton, Dartmouth, and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
Have we overvalued science (STEM) degrees?
"High Demand for Science Graduates Enables Them to Pick Their Jobs, Report
Says," by Paul Basken, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 20.
2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/High-Demand-for-Science/129472/
A couple of years ago, a pair of researchers at
Georgetown University and Rutgers University concluded that, contrary to
widespread perception, the United States
produces plenty of scientists and engineers.
The problem, wrote Harold Salzman of Rutgers and B.
Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown, is that fewer than half of all college
graduates in science and engineering actually take jobs in those fields. So
instead of pressing colleges to produce more science graduates,
they wrote, the country needed only to persuade
new graduates to take the right jobs.
A
study released on
Wednesday by another Georgetown research team suggests, however, that lot of
persuasion may be necessary.
Among its findings, the study, from the Georgetown
University Center on Education and the Workforce, shows that science and
engineering graduates enjoy high demand in a variety of fields, with a
bachelor's degree in a science major commanding a greater salary than a
master's degree in a nonscience major.
And, the new report says, English-speaking science
graduates are much less likely than foreign-born science graduates to take a
job in a traditional science career, which American graduates often view as
too socially isolating.
"It sort of fits the stereotype, frankly," said the
report's lead author, Anthony P. Carnevale, a research professor at
Georgetown who serves as director of the Center on Education and the
Workforce.
In recent months, the center has also issued
reports that analyzed
students' future earnings based on
their undergraduate majors, and that tied
lifetime earnings as
much to
students' choice of occupation as to their
degrees.
The 2009 study by Mr. Salzman, a professor of
public policy on Rutgers's New Brunswick campus, and Mr. Lowell, director of
policy studies at Georgetown's Institute for the Study of International
Migration, used 30 years of federal job data to show that American colleges
produce far more talented graduates in the sciences than is required by the
industry for which they've been specifically trained. But there is a labor
shortfall, the professors said, because so many science graduates take jobs
in areas such as sales, marketing, and health care.
The training and expertise of science graduates
give them that flexibility, Mr. Carnevale found in his study. Sixty-five
percent of students earning bachelor's degrees in science or engineering
fields earn more than master's-degree holders in nonscience fields do, the
report says. And 47 percent of bachelor's-degree holders in science fields
earn more than do those holding doctorates in other fields.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
This article begs some questions.
- If "science" is such a hot undergraduate degree, why do other studies
conclude that for students not going on to graduate or professional schools,
most science undergraduate degrees are "useless?" And why would some major
universities be contemplating dropping physics as an undergraduate major due
to lack of students electing to major in physics?
Answer
I think Salzman and Lowell confound engineering with science, thereby making
science degrees more attractive than undergraduates perceive them to be as
majors.
"Texas May Cut Almost Half of Undergrad
Physics Programs," Inside Higher Ed, September 27, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/09/27/qt#271341
Note that "useless" in context means an oversupply of graduates relative to
job opportunities in a discipline. The jobs themselves may be high paying,
but 300 may apply for a single opening such that the 299 that got turned
away wish they'd majored in some other discipline.
As college
seniors prepare to graduate, The Daily Beast crunches the
numbers to determine which majors—from journalism to psychology
—didn’t pay.
Some
cities are better than others for
college graduates. Some college courses are
definitely hotter than others. Even
some iPhone apps are
better for college
students than others. But when it comes down to it, there’s only
one question that rings out in dormitories, fraternities, and
dining halls across the nation: What’s your major?
Slide Show
01.Journalism
02. Horticulture
03. Agriculture
04. Advertising
05. Fashion Design
06. Child and Family Studies
07. Music
08. Mechanical Engineering Technology
09. Chemistry
10. Nutrition
11. Human Resources
12. Theatre
13. Art History
14. Photography
15. Literature
16. Art
17.Fine Arts
18. Psychology
19. English
20. Animal Science
- There are more opportunities for those that go on to earn their PhD
degrees in science, but even here opportunities are limited. When a college
gets a tenure track opening in science it will probably get hundreds of
highly qualified PhD applicants, including those who earned their doctorates
at very prestigious universities like Cal Tech or MIT. More scientists will
go into industry, but even here there is not a shortage of supply like there
is in some engineering specialties and medicine. This is why some
undergraduates choose to go on to professional programs like medical, law,
business and education graduate programs.
- Even though there are opportunities in industry for both science and
engineering graduates, some choose professional undergraduate degrees like
premed, prelaw, accounting, finance, marketing, and management because they
view these degrees as having faster tracks to high paying medical doctor
careers or managerial jobs and partnerships in corporations, accounting
firms, and law firms.
- To compete in the global economy where science and engineering
specialists are prized, the U.S. job market does not place a high enough
premium on opportunities in those disciplines to attract many of the
brightest and best who opt for alternatives like those mentioned above. The
Salzman and Lowell study outcomes suggests this by noting that science and
engineering undergraduates often track into nonscientific careers.
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Library of Online Technology Articles ---
http://www.techcast.org/Library.aspx
Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
"With New Google Docs Presentations, Why Use PowerPoint?" by Jon
Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, October 18, 2011 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/with_new_google_docs_presentations_why_use_powerpo.php
Google Docs takes another bite out of expensive
Microsoft Office software today with a complete do-over of Presentations.
Google Docs slideshows can now be edited live and simultaneously with a
team. It enables viewing of revision history, so any team member can go back
and see changes made by others. The update also features live chat alongside
the editing tools.
In addition to the collaboration features, Docs has
added new transitions, animations and themes, with which PowerPoint users
have been fluffing up their posts for years. The new features are only
supported on
modern
browsers.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
One of the strongest statements in favor of using Google Docs for interactive
accounting distance education came from Amy Dunbar ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#GoogleApps
Jensen Question
What presentation software preceded PowerPoint?
My guess is that you don't remember the various presentation software that is
now defunct for one reason or another because of Microsoft.
Answers go way back to the Jensen and Sandlin book of 1994 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/215ach04.pdf
"Business Degrees Skyrocket in Popularity in Asia," FINS
Asia-Pacific, October 7, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://asia-jobs.fins.com/Articles/SBB0001424053111903285704576560832111849732/Business-Degrees-Skyrocket-in-Popularity-in-Asia
Hi Barry, Dave, and others interested in blogging history,
(I hope Roger Debreceny reads this posting)
There's a country song lyric that goes something like this:
"I was country when country wasn't cool"
The term "blog" emerged by dropping the first two letters from what started as
the term "Weblog" or "We blog"
I can honestly say:
"I was 'We blog' when 'We blog' wasn't cool"
The longest serving Weblog/Blog in accounting is my New Bookmarks "blog"
that dates back to before 1998 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookurl.htm
To be honest I cannot recall when New Bookmarks commenced as an email
service, and I no longer have any record of my New Bookmarks "Blog
Postings" before 1998. Those early 1994 or 1995 "Blog Postings" on the AECM were
mostly about education technology, especially my work and the work of Barry Rice
in HyperGraphics and later ToolBooks. Barry Rice also posted emails about his
use of HyperGraphics Response Pads in his enormous lecture halls.
The term "Weblog" commenced in 1997, although I don't think I heard the term
used until around 1999.
Weblog History ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblog
The term "weblog" was
coined by
Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The
short form, "blog," was coined by
Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the
word weblog
into the phrase we blog
in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999. Shortly
thereafter,
Evan Williams at
Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun
and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's
weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs'
Blogger
product, leading to the popularization of the terms.
In the very early days of the AECM I sometimes strayed a bit too far off the
accounting-topic path. I recall being chewed out royally by Barry because I
posted a link to the early history of commodes. "What does that have to do with
accounting?" Barry asked. In reality I think commodes are where a lot of
accounting theory and research should be flushed!
An early international accounting education "blog" was called
AccountingEducation.com.. I think this was commenced by Roger Debreceny when he
was still living in either New Zealand or Australia. AE still is a great
international accounting blogging service. It's a commercial site with many free
services ---
http://accountingeducation.com/
Perhaps Roger can fill us in more about the
history of AccountingEducation.com which in email form might have even
preceded my New Bookmarks in 1996. I cannot find a database of the AE
archive of postings from AE's early years.
Is there an archive Roger?
Petrea Sandlin and I wrote an early history of education technology in 1995 that
was updated in 1997 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245cont.htm
This included a survey of accounting education programs back when there were
almost no applications of education technology in accounting education programs.
Respectfully,
Bob Jensen
Financial Education: Publisher of The Business School Daily and
Financial Education Daily ---
http://paper.li/~/publisher/229148
About Financial Education ---
http://paper.li/introduction.html
The Financial Education Daily published by Financial Education (131
news spotters today, October 19, 2011) ---
http://paper.li/businessschools
This has a new free subscription service (I subscribed this morning)
Here's a good pickup line at Carnegie-Mellon University
"Are you aware that your PowerPoint is showing?"
Jensen Comment
Even the Presbyterians might approve of mini-skirts used for OmniTouch purposes!
"OmniTouch: a Wearable Projection System," Financial Education Daily,
October 19, 2011 linked to the following site at Carnegie-Mellon University ---
http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/computing/2011/fall/omnitouch.shtml
OmniTouch, a wearable projection system developed
by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research, enables
users to turn pads of paper, walls or even their own
hands, arms and legs into graphical,
interactive surfaces.
In other words, there will be no need to find that pen you keep misplacing —
or even to dig your smartphone out of your pocket to record a note.
The system employs a depth-sensing camera, similar to the Microsoft Kinect,
to track the user's fingers on everyday surfaces.
This allows users to control interactive applications by tapping or dragging
their fingers, much as they would with touchscreens found on smartphones or
tablet computers.
The projector can superimpose keyboards, keypads and other controls onto any
surface, automatically adjusting for the surface's shape and orientation to
minimize distortion of the projected images.
"It's conceivable that anything you can do on today's mobile devices, you
will be able to do on your hand using OmniTouch," said Chris Harrison, a
Ph.D. student in Carnegie Mellon's
Human-Computer Interaction Institute.
The palm of the hand could be used as a phone keypad,
or as a tablet for jotting down brief notes. Maps projected onto a wall
could be panned and zoomed with the same finger motions that work with a
conventional multitouch screen.
Harrison was an intern at Microsoft Research when he developed OmniTouch in
collaboration with Microsoft Research's Hrvoje Benko and Andrew D. Wilson.
Harrison is describing the technology on Wed., Oct. 19, at the Association
for Computing Machinery's Symposium on User Interface Software and
Technology (UIST) in Santa Barbara, Calif.
A video demonstrating OmniTouch
and additional downloadable media are available at:
http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Research/OmniTouch
The OmniTouch device includes a short-range depth
camera and laser pico-projector and is mounted on a user's shoulder. But
Harrison said the device ultimately could be the size of a deck of cards, or
even a matchbox, so that it could fit in a pocket, be easily wearable, or be
integrated into future handheld devices.
"With OmniTouch, we wanted to capitalize on the tremendous surface area the
real world provides," said Benko, a researcher in Microsoft Research's
Adaptive Systems and Interaction group.
"We see this work as an evolutionary step in a larger effort at Microsoft
Research to investigate the unconventional use of touch and gesture in
devices to extend our vision of ubiquitous computing even further. Being
able to collaborate openly with academics and researchers like Chris on such
work is critical to our organization's ability to do great research — and to
advancing the state of the art of computer user interfaces in general."
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on Invisible Computing, Ubiquitous Computing,
Nanotechnology, and Microsoft.Net ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm
"New Digital Tools Let Professors Tailor Their Own Textbooks for Under $20
And that's just one option, along with mix-and-match Web sites from big
publishers and libraries of open-source content," by Alex Campbell,
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 8, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/New-Digital-Tools-Let/129309/
Bob Jensen's threads on free lectures, courses, videos, and
course materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Jensen Comment
I'm in sympathy with the protests of outrageous executive compensation
that rewards failure as well as success. But I'm not in sympathy with
protesters who blame the real estate crash on the private sector. In
reality, the real estate bubble and subsequent crash lies at the feet of bad
government policy dating back to Bill Clinton's presidency that created
opportunities for mortgage fraudsters on Main Street rather than Wall
Street:
Fannies' butt was being screwed on Main Street rather than Wall Street
because of government policies forced on Fannie Mae and the smaller Freddie
Mack.
Bob Jensen
"CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...
," by Henry Blodget, Business Insider, October 12, 2011 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10
The "Occupy Wall Street" protests are gaining
momentum, having spread from a small park in New York to marches to other
cities across the country.So far, the
protests seem fueled by a collective sense that things in our
economy are not fair or right. But the
protesters have not done a good job of focusing their complaints—and thus
have been skewered as malcontents who don't know what they stand for or
want.
(An
early list of "grievances" included some
legitimate beefs, but was otherwise just a vague attack on "corporations."
Given that these are the same corporations that employ more than 100 million
Americans and make the products we all use every day, this broadside did not
resonate with most Americans).
So, what are the protesters so upset about, really?
Do they have legitimate gripes?
To
answer the latter question first, yes, they
have very legitimate gripes.
And if
America cannot figure out a way to address
these gripes, the country will likely become increasingly "de-stabilized,"
as sociologists might say. And in that scenario, the current protests will
likely be only the beginning.
The problem in a nutshell is this: Inequality in
this country has hit a level that has been seen only once in the nation's
history, and unemployment has reached a level that has been seen only once
since the Great Depression. And, at the same time, corporate profits are at
a record high.
In other words, in the never-ending tug-of-war
between "labor" and "capital," there has rarely—if ever—been a time when
"capital" was so clearly winning.
The CHARTS (slide show) are at ----
Click Here
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10#lets-start-with-the-obvious-unemployment-three-years-after-the-financial-crisis-the-unemployment-rate-is-still-at-the-highest-level-since-the-great-depression-except-for-a-brief-blip-in-the-early-1980s-1
Jensen Comment
It would not be so bad if corporate executives and bankers really earned their
substantial incomes.
But in reality, these outrageous executive pay packages reward failure almost
as much as success.
Quotations from
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#OutrageousCompensation
The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market
award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal
gesture by the individual to himself.
John Kenneth Galbraith ---
Click Here
If you aren’t
(cynical) now, you will by the time you
finish the new Bebchuk and Fried paper on executive compensation. They
paint a fairly gloomy picture of managers exerting their power to “extract
rents and to camouflage the extent of their rent extraction.” Rather than
designed to solve agency cost problems, the paper makes the case that
executive pay can by an agency cost in and of itself. Let’s hope things
aren’t this bad.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=364220
They say
that patriotism is the last refuge
To which a scoundrel clings.
Steal a little and they throw you in jail,
Steal a lot and they make you king.
There's only one step down from here, baby,
It's called the land of permanent bliss.
What's a sweetheart like you doin' in a dump like this?
Lyrics of a Bob Dylan song forwarded by Damian Gadal
[DGADAL@CI.SANTA-BARBARA.CA.US]
Bankers bet with their bank's capital, not their
own. If the bet goes right, they get a huge bonus; if it misfires, that's
the shareholders' problem.
Sebastian Mallaby. Council on Foreign Relations, as quoted by
Avital Louria Hahn, "Missing: How Poor Risk-Management Techniques
Contributed to the Subprime Mess," CFO Magazine, March 2008, Page 53
---
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/10755469/c_10788146?f=magazine_featured
Now that the Fed is going to bail out these crooks with taxpayer funds makes
it all the worse.
Bob Jensen's "Rotten to the Core" threads are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
That some bankers have ended up in prison is not
a matter of scandal, but what is outrageous is the fact that all the others
are free.
Honoré de Balzac
I’d been working for the bank for about five
weeks when I woke up on the balcony of a ski resort in the Swiss Alps. It
was midnight and I was drunk. One of my fellow management trainees was
urinating onto the skylight of the lobby below us; another was hurling wine
glasses into the courtyard. Behind us, someone had stolen the hotel’s
shoe-polishing machine and carried it into the room; there were a line of
drunken bankers waiting to use it. Half of them were dripping wet, having
gone swimming in all their clothes and been too drunk to remember to take
them off. It took several more weeks of this before the bank considered us
properly trained. . . . By the time I arrived on Wall Street in 1999, the
link between derivatives and the real world had broken down. Instead of
being used to reduce risk, 95 per cent of their use was speculation - a
polite term for gambling. And leveraging - which means taking a large amount
of risk for a small amount of money. So while derivatives, and the financial
industry more broadly, had started out serving industry, by the late 1990s
the situation had reversed. The Market had become a near-religious force in
our culture; industry, society, and politicians all bowed down to it. It was
pretty clear what The Market didn’t like. It didn’t like being closely
watched. It didn’t like rules that governed its behaviour. It didn’t like
goods produced in First-World countries or workers who made high wages, with
the notable exception of financial sector employees. This last point
bothered me especially.
Philipp Meyer,
American Rust (Simon & Schuster, 2009) ---
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/American-Rust/Philipp-Meyer/e/9780385527514/?itm=1
American excess: A Wall Street trader tells all - Americas, World - The
Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/american-excess--a-wall-street-trader-tells-all-1674614.html
Jensen Comment
This book reads pretty much like an update on the derivatives scandals
featured by Frank Partnoy covering the Roaring 1990s before the dot.com
scandals broke. There were of course other insiders writing about these
scandals as well ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
It would seem that bankers and investment bankers do not learn from their
own mistake. The main cause of the scandals is always pay for performance
schemes run amuck.
The End of Investment Banking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#InvestmentBanking
The total return of the S&P 500 index fell by nearly 40% last year, the
second-worst performance by America’s stockmarket since 1825 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/us-stockmarket-returns-since-1825/
But Wall Street's pay packages in 2009 are shooting for all time highs ---
Click Here
Bonuses for What?
The only guy to make almost a $100 Million dollars at GE is the CEO who
destroyed shareholder value by nearly 50% in slightly less than a decade
"GE has been an investor disaster under Jeff Immelt," MarketWatch,
March 8, 2010 ---
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ge-has-been-an-investor-disaster-under-jeff-immelt-2010-03-08
When things go well,
chief executives of major companies rack up hundreds of millions of dollars,
even billions, on their stock allotments and options.
It's always justified
on the grounds that they've created lots of shareholder value. But what
happens when things go badly?
For one example, take
a look at General Electric Co. /quotes/comstock/13*!ge/quotes/nls/ge (GE
16.27, +0.04, +0.22%) , one of America's biggest and most important
companies. It just revealed its latest annual glimpse inside the executive
swag bag.
By any measure of
shareholder value, GE has been a disaster under Jeffrey Immelt. Investors
haven't made a nickel since he took the helm as chairman and chief executive
nine years ago. In fact, they've lost tens of billions of dollars.
The stock, which was
$40 and change when Immelt took over, has collapsed to around $16. Even if
you include dividends, investors are still down about 40%. In real
post-inflation terms, stockholders have lost about half their money.
So it may come as a
shock to discover that during that same period, the 54-year old chief
executive has racked up around $90 million in salary, cash and pension
benefits.
GE is quick to point
out that Immelt skipped his $5.8 million cash bonus in 2009 for the second
year in a row, because business did so badly. And so he did.
Yet this apparent
sacrifice has to viewed in context. Immelt still took home a "base salary"
of $3.3 million and a total compensation of $9.9 million.
His compensation in
the previous two years was $14.3 million and $9.3 million. That included
everything from salary to stock awards, pension benefits and other perks.
Too often, the media
just look at each year's pay in isolation. I decided to go back and take the
longer view.
Since succeeding Jack
Welch in 2001, Immelt has been paid a total of $28.2 million in salary and
another $28.6 million in cash bonuses, for total payments of $56.8 million.
That's over nine years, and in addition to all his stock- and option-grant
entitlements.
It doesn't end there.
Along with all his cash payments, Immelt also has accumulated a remarkable
pension fund worth $32 million. That would be enough to provide, say, a
60-year-old retiree with a lifetime income of $192,000 a month.
Yes, Jeff Immelt has
been at the company for 27 years, and some of this pension was accumulated
in his early years rising up the ladder. But this isn't just his regular
company pension. Nearly all of this is in the high-hat plan that's only
available to senior GE executives.
Immelt's personal use
of company jets -- I repeat, his personal use for vacations, weekend
getaways and so on -- cost GE stockholders another $201,335 last year. (It's
something shareholders can think about when they stand in line to take off
their shoes at JFK -- if they're not lining up at the Port Authority for a
bus.)
"A Dangerous Pattern: Rewarding Failure," by Ron Kensas,
Harvard Business Review Blog, March 9, 2010 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/ashkenas/2010/03/a-dangerous-pattern-rewarding.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
Over the past few months there has been growing
anger and frustration about outsized Wall Street bonuses awarded by
institutions that were rescued by taxpayer funds. At the core of this
anger is the feeling that the pursuit of big payoffs caused bankers to
develop complex products and take big risks which ultimately caused the
financial system to crash — and if this dynamic is not curbed, it will
happen again. At the same time, there is also a feeling, reinforced by
President Obama, that Wall Street bankers have not really been held
accountable for their risky actions and, in fact, are being unduly
rewarded while everyone else continues to suffer.
Unfortunately, the focus on Wall Street masks a
more dangerous pattern of rewarding failure that is deeply embedded in
the highest levels of corporate and governmental culture. For example,
President Obama's point person for reforming Wall Street is Treasury
Secretary Timothy Geithner. But somehow Geithner himself has not been
held accountable for the financial crisis. This is despite the fact that
as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Geithner was
responsible for the supervision of Wall Street banks. His reward for
allowing these banks to create unsustainable balance sheets: He was made
Treasury Secretary.
Similarly Geithner's boss in the Federal
Reserve, Ben Bernanke, was not held accountable for the interest rate
and regulatory policies that some say caused the crisis. Instead, he was
confirmed for a second term by a wide margin in the Senate. And to
complete the failure trifecta, Lawrence Summers, who supported many of
the policies that caused the financial crisis and resigned from his
position as President of Harvard after making unfortunate statements
about the capabilities of women, was given a senior role as a White
House economic policy advisor.
But this culture of rewarding failure is not
limited to the highest levels of government. Virtually every senior
corporate leader of a failed institution walks away with millions of
dollars. Many move on to other senior corporate jobs or board positions.
Take Robert Nardelli as an example. After not getting the top job at GE
in 2001, Nardelli became the CEO of Home Depot where he made a series of
strategic missteps and displayed an arrogance that alienated employees
and customers. After being ousted from that job (with millions of
dollars) he was hired by Cerberus to turn around Chrysler — another
failure which ultimately resulted in its acquisition by Fiat. And while
thousands of Chrysler employees and dealers lost their jobs and their
incomes, again Nardelli walked away with his fortune intact and
enhanced.
None of this is to blame Geithner, Bernanke,
Summers or Nardelli. The point of this argument is that at the highest
levels of government and corporations, we have accepted a culture of
rewarding failure. That is why perhaps the best job in America is to be
a failed CEO. You receive millions in severance and are once more given
opportunities to either try it again, or serve on a board of directors
where you can again escape accountability for failure. In fact, while
President Obama calls for "clawbacks" of banker's bonuses, nobody seems
to be calling for directors to return the compensation that they
received for poorly "supervising" financial institutions and other
corporations that struggle or fail.
Steve Kerr, former chief learning officer of GE
and Goldman Sachs, notes that the biggest problem with compensation is
what he calls "asking for A while rewarding B." If we are serious about
asking for excellent performance, then we have to stop rewarding
failure. It's a simple equation — and until we get it right, the
President's calls for greater accountability will have a hollow ring.
What do you think?
"Five Ways to Heal American Capitalism," by Roger Marti,
Harvard Business Review Blog, March 3, 2010 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/03/healing_american_capitalism_to.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
Bob Jensen's threads on outrageous executive compensation are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#OutrageousCompensation
Question
Do big bonuses lead to worse performance?
"Does Bigger Bonus Equal Worse Performance? Around the turn of every year,
bankers can think of only one thing: the size of their bonuses," by Dan
Ariely, Wall Street Technology, June 18, 2010 ---
http://wallstreetandtech.com/career-management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700612&cid=nl_wallstreettech_daily
Thanks Jagdish!
Around the turn of every year, bankers can
think of only one thing: the size of their bonuses.
Even beyond bonus season, they run different
scenarios and assumptions, trying to calculate their number.
This distracts them so much that the bigger the
bonus at stake, the worse the performance, according to behavioral
economist Dan Ariely, who lays out his theory in his new book "The
Upside of Irrationality" (HarperCollins, $27.99).
"For a long time we trained bankers to think
they are the masters of the universe, have unique skills and deserve to
be paid these amounts," said Ariely, who also wrote the New York Times
bestseller "Predictably Irrational."
"It is going to be hard to convince them that
they don't really have unique skills and that the amount they've been
paid for the past years is too much."
Ariely's findings come as regulators try to
rein in Wall Street's bonus culture after the 2008 financial collapse.
The financial industry argues it needs to pay large bonuses to attract
and motivate its top employees.
In an experiment in India, Ariely measured the
impact of different bonuses on how participants did in a number of tasks
that required creativity, concentration and problem-solving.
One of the tasks was Labyrinth, where the
participants had to move a small steel ball through a maze avoiding
holes. Ariely describes a man he identified as Anoopum, who stood to win
the biggest bonus, staring at the steel ball as if it were prey.
"This is very, very important," Anoopum mumbled
to himself. "I must succeed." But under the gun, Anoopum's hands
trembled uncontrollably, and he failed time after time.
A large bonus was equal to five months of their
regular pay, a medium-sized bonus was equivalent to about two weeks pay
and a small bonus was a day's pay.
There was little difference in the performance
of those receiving the small and medium-sized bonuses, while recipients
of large bonuses performed worst.
SHOCK TREATMENT
More than a century ago, an experiment with
rats in a maze rigged with electric shocks came to a similar conclusion.
Every day, the rats had to learn how to navigate a new maze safely.
When the electric shocks were low, the rats had
little incentive to avoid them. At medium intensity they learned their
environment more quickly.
But when the shock intensity was very high, it
seemed the rats could not focus on anything other than the fear of the
shock.
This may provide lessons for regulators who
want to change Wall Street's bonus culture, Ariely said. Paying no bonus
or smaller bonuses could help fix skewed incentives without loss of
talent.
"The reality is, a lot of places are able to
attract great quality people without paying them what bankers are paid,"
Ariely said. "Do you think bankers are inherently smarter than other
people? I don't." (Reporting by Kristina Cooke; Editing by Daniel Trotta)
Continued at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#OutrageousCompensation
Rotten to the Core ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
Jensen Comment
I'm in sympathy with the protests of outrageous executive compensation that
rewards failure as well as success. But I'm not in sympathy with protesters who
blame the real estate crash on the private sector. In reality, the real estate
bubble and subsequent crash lies at the feet of bad government policy dating
back to Bill Clinton's presidency that created opportunities for mortgage
fraudsters on Main Street rather than Wall Street:
Fannies' butt was being screwed on Main Street rather than Wall Street
because of government policies forced on Fannie Mae and the smaller Freddie
Mack.
"Wall Street's Gullible Occupiers The protesters have been sold a bill of
goods. Reckless government policies, not private greed, brought about the
housing bubble and resulting financial crisis," by Peter J. Wallison, The
Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2011 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203633104576623083437396142.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t
There is no mystery where the Occupy Wall Street
movement came from: It is an offspring of the same false narrative about the
causes of the financial crisis that exculpated the government and brought us
the Dodd-Frank Act. According to this story, the financial crisis and
ensuing deep recession was caused by a reckless private sector driven by
greed and insufficiently regulated. It is no wonder that people who hear
this tale repeated endlessly in the media turn on Wall Street to express
their frustration with the current conditions in the economy.
Their anger should be directed at those who
developed and supported the federal government's housing policies that were
responsible for the financial crisis.
Beginning in 1992, the government required Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac to direct a substantial portion of their mortgage
financing to borrowers who were at or below the median income in their
communities. The original legislative quota was 30%. But the Department of
Housing and Urban Development was given authority to adjust it, and through
the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations HUD raised the quota to
50% by 2000 and 55% by 2007.
It is certainly possible to find prime borrowers
among people with incomes below the median. But when more than half of the
mortgages Fannie and Freddie were required to buy were required to have that
characteristic, these two government-sponsored enterprises had to
significantly reduce their underwriting standards.
Fannie and Freddie were not the only
government-backed or government-controlled organizations that were enlisted
in this process. The Federal Housing Administration was competing with
Fannie and Freddie for the same mortgages. And thanks to rules adopted in
1995 under the Community Reinvestment Act, regulated banks as well as
savings and loan associations had to make a certain number of loans to
borrowers who were at or below 80% of the median income in the areas they
served.
Research by Edward Pinto, a former chief credit
officer of Fannie Mae (now a colleague of mine at the American Enterprise
Institute) has shown that 27 million loans—half of all mortgages in the
U.S.—were subprime or otherwise weak by 2008. That is, the loans were made
to borrowers with blemished credit, or were loans with no or low down
payments, no documentation, or required only interest payments.
Of these, over 70% were held or guaranteed by
Fannie and Freddie or some other government agency or government-regulated
institution. Thus it is clear where the demand for these deficient mortgages
came from.
The huge government investment in subprime
mortgages achieved its purpose. Home ownership in the U.S. increased to 69%
from 65% (where it had been for 30 years). But it also led to the biggest
housing bubble in American history. This bubble, which lasted from 1997 to
2007, also created a huge private market for mortgage-backed securities (MBS)
based on pools of subprime loans.
As housing bubbles grow, rising prices suppress
delinquencies and defaults. People who could not meet their mortgage
obligations could refinance or sell, because their houses were now worth
more.
Accordingly, by the mid-2000s, investors had begun
to notice that securities based on subprime mortgages were producing the
high yields, but not showing the large number of defaults, that are usually
associated with subprime loans. This triggered strong investor demand for
these securities, causing the growth of the first significant private market
for MBS based on subprime and other risky mortgages.
By 2008, Mr. Pinto has shown, this market consisted
of about 7.8 million subprime loans, somewhat less than one-third of the 27
million that were then outstanding. The private financial sector must
certainly share some blame for the financial crisis, but it cannot fairly be
accused of causing that crisis when only a small minority of subprime and
other risky mortgages outstanding in 2008 were the result of that private
activity.
When the bubble deflated in 2007, an unprecedented
number of weak mortgages went into default, driving down housing prices
throughout the U.S. and throwing Fannie and Freddie into insolvency. Seeing
these sudden losses, investors fled from the market for privately issued MBS,
and mark-to-market accounting required banks and others to write down the
value of their mortgage-backed assets to the distress levels in a market
that now had few buyers. This raised questions about the solvency and
liquidity of the largest financial institutions and began a period of great
investor anxiety.
The government's rescue of Bear Stearns in March
2008 temporarily calmed the market. But it created significant moral hazard:
Market participants were led to believe that the government would rescue all
large financial institutions. When Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail in
September, investors panicked. They withdrew their funds from the
institutions that held large amounts of privately issued MBS, causing banks
and others—such as investment banks, finance companies and insurers—to hoard
cash against the risk of further withdrawals. Their refusal to lend to one
another in these conditions froze credit markets, bringing on what we now
call the financial crisis.
Continued in article
Causes of the Bubble ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Causes
The Pathetic Nobel Prize in Economics
You must watch this video to the end because Peter Schiff's commentaries
are way too long
The video really speaks for itself without Peter's sarcasm
Peter Schiff by the way called the 2007-2008 economic meltdown before it really
happened
Video: How to silence Nobel Prize winning economists: Ask them about
the economy ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFdnA5UNmVw&feature=feedu
October 17, 2011 reply from Jagdish Gangolly
Bob,
This is pathetic. The Nobel committee ought to be
red-faced. In my humble opinion, this was inevitable. Perhaps starting such
a prestigious prize in an immature discipline was a bad idea. It would have
made sense to have a prize for social sciences in general so that they did
not have to reach bottom of the barrel to grant prizes.
Feynman once called economics a "cargo-cult
science" in that, filled with complicated mathematical mumbo-jumbo that, to
the uninitiated, it looked like Physics but had nothing to do with the real
world.
The great geneticist JBS Haldane once said that in
science, an ounce of algebra is worth a ton of verbal argument. Feynman, on
the other hand, said that one clear concept is worth more than a thousand
pages of mathematics. Economists would do well to pay heed to both. They
also need to pay heed to what some one described as the Feynman Principle:
Use no more math than necessary.
Jagdish --
Jagdish S. Gangolly
Department of Informatics College of Computing & Information
State University of New York at Albany Harriman Campus,
Building 7A, Suite 220 Albany, NY 12222
Phone: 518-956-8251, Fax: 518-956-8247
"Economics has met the enemy, and it is economics," by Ira Basen,
Globe and Mail, October 15, 2011 ---
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/economics-has-met-the-enemy-and-it-is-economics/article2202027/page1/
Thank you Jerry Trites for the heads up.
After Thomas Sargent learned on Monday morning that
he and colleague Christopher Sims had been awarded the Nobel Prize in
Economics for 2011, the 68-year-old New York University professor struck an
aw-shucks tone with an interviewer from the official Nobel website: “We're
just bookish types that look at numbers and try to figure out what's going
on.”
But no one who'd followed Prof. Sargent's long,
distinguished career would have been fooled by his attempt at modesty. He'd
won for his part in developing one of economists' main models of cause and
effect: How can we expect people to respond to changes in prices, for
example, or interest rates? According to the laureates' theories, they'll do
whatever's most beneficial to them, and they'll do it every time. They don't
need governments to instruct them; they figure it out for themselves.
Economists call this the “rational expectations” model. And it's not just an
abstraction: Bankers and policy-makers apply these formulae in the real
world, so bad models lead to bad policy.
Which is perhaps why, by the end of that interview
on Monday, Prof. Sargent was adopting a more realistic tone: “We experiment
with our models,” he explained, “before we wreck the world.”
Rational-expectations theory and its corollary, the
efficient-market hypothesis, have been central to mainstream economics for
more than 40 years. And while they may not have “wrecked the world,” some
critics argue these models have blinded economists to reality: Certain the
universe was unfolding as it should, they failed both to anticipate the
financial crisis of 2008 and to chart an effective path to recovery.
The economic crisis has produced a crisis in the
study of economics – a growing realization that if the field is going to
offer meaningful solutions, greater attention must be paid to what is
happening in university lecture halls and seminar rooms.
While the protesters occupying Wall Street are not
carrying signs denouncing rational-expectations and efficient-market
modelling, perhaps they should be.
They wouldn't be the first young dissenters to call
economics to account. In June of 2000, a small group of elite graduate
students at some of France's most prestigious universities declared war on
the economic establishment. This was an unlikely group of student radicals,
whose degrees could be expected to lead them to lucrative careers in
finance, business or government if they didn't rock the boat. Instead, they
protested – not about tuition or workloads, but that too much of what they
studied bore no relation to what was happening outside the classroom walls.
They launched an online petition demanding greater
realism in economics teaching, less reliance on mathematics “as an end in
itself” and more space for approaches beyond the dominant neoclassical
model, including input from other disciplines, such as psychology, history
and sociology. Their conclusion was that economics had become an “autistic
science,” lost in “imaginary worlds.” They called their movement
Autisme-economie.
The students' timing is notable: It was the spring
of 2000, when the world was still basking in the glow of “the Great
Moderation,” when for most of a decade Western economies had been enjoying a
prolonged period of moderate but fairly steady growth.
Some economists were daring to think the
unthinkable – that their understanding of how advanced capitalist economies
worked had become so sophisticated that they might finally have succeeded in
smoothing out the destructive gyrations of capitalism's boom-and-bust cycle.
(“The central problem of depression prevention has been solved,” declared
another Nobel laureate, Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago, in 2003 –
five years before the greatest economic collapse in more than half a
century.)
The students' petition sparked a lively debate. The
French minister of education established a committee on economic education.
Economics students across Europe and North America began meeting and
circulating petitions of their own, even as defenders of the status quo
denounced the movement as a Trotskyite conspiracy. By September, the first
issue of the Post-Autistic Economic Newsletter was published in Britain.
As The Independent summarized the students'
message: “If there is a daily prayer for the global economy, it should be,
‘Deliver us from abstraction.'”
It seems that entreaty went unheard through most of
the discipline before the economic crisis, not to mention in the offices of
hedge funds and the Stockholm Nobel selection committee. But is it ringing
louder now? And how did economics become so abstract in the first place?
The great classical economists of the late 18th and
early 19th centuries had no problem connecting to the real world – the
Industrial Revolution had unleashed profound social and economic changes,
and they were trying to make sense of what they were seeing. Yet Adam Smith,
who is considered the founding father of modern economics, would have had
trouble understanding the meaning of the word “economist.”
What is today known as economics arose out of two
larger intellectual traditions that have since been largely abandoned. One
is political economy, which is based on the simple idea that economic
outcomes are often determined largely by political factors (as well as vice
versa). But when political-economy courses first started appearing in
Canadian universities in the 1870s, it was still viewed as a small offshoot
of a far more important topic: moral philosophy.
In The Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith
famously argued that the pursuit of enlightened self-interest by individuals
and companies could benefit society as a whole. His notion of the market's
“invisible hand” laid the groundwork for much of modern neoclassical and
neo-liberal, laissez-faire economics. But unlike today's free marketers,
Smith didn't believe that the morality of the market was appropriate for
society at large. Honesty, discipline, thrift and co-operation, not
consumption and unbridled self-interest, were the keys to happiness and
social cohesion. Smith's vision was a capitalist economy in a society
governed by non-capitalist morality.
But by the end of the 19th century, the new field
of economics no longer concerned itself with moral philosophy, and less and
less with political economy. What was coming to dominate was a conviction
that markets could be trusted to produce the most efficient allocation of
scarce resources, that individuals would always seek to maximize their
utility in an economically rational way, and that all of this would
ultimately lead to some kind of overall equilibrium of prices, wages, supply
and demand.
Political economy was less vital because government
intervention disrupted the path to equilibrium and should therefore be
avoided except in exceptional circumstances. And as for morality, economics
would concern itself with the behaviour of rational, self-interested,
utility-maximizing Homo economicus. What he did outside the confines of the
marketplace would be someone else's field of study.
As those notions took hold, a new idea emerged that
would have surprised and probably horrified Adam Smith – that economics,
divorced from the study of morality and politics, could be considered a
science. By the beginning of the 20th century, economists were looking for
theorems and models that could help to explain the universe. One historian
described them as suffering from “physics envy.” Although they were dealing
with the behaviour of humans, not atoms and particles, they came to believe
they could accurately predict the trajectory of human decision-making in the
marketplace.
In their desire to have their field be recognized
as a science, economists increasingly decided to speak the language of
science. From Smith's innovations through John Maynard Keynes's work in the
1930s, economics was argued in words. Now, it would go by the numbers.
Continued in a long article
October 17, 2011 message from Paul Williams
It isn't all economists who are to blame, but a
particular species (the one that has infected accounting) that is the
problem. A growing number of economists are expressing increasingly brazen
disaffection with the "conventional wisdom." A recent book by Ha-Joon Chang,
an economist at Cambridge University, titled 23 Things They Don't Tell You
About Capitalism, debunks 23 significant myths, all of which US accounting
scholars, for the most part, believe with all of their hearts and souls.
Notable for an economist he is honest enough to proclaim the unthinkable
among that crowd:
"Recognizing that the boundaries of the market are
ambiguous and cannot be determined in an objective way lets us realize that
economics is not a science like physics or chemistry, but a political
exercise. Free-market economists may want you to believe that the correct
boundaries of the market can be scientifically determined, but this is
incorrect. If the boundaries of what you are studying cannot be
scientifically determined, what you are doing is not a science."
What Chang means by this is illustrated with his
example of labor markets. At one time child labor was ubiquitous so the
boundary of the labor market included children (in some parts of the world,
it still does). But those boundaries can be changed; they are, all of the
time, by value judgments enacted via the political process. Much of the US
scholarly enterprise in the US is erected on such value judgments. Harken
back to Anthony Hopwood's Presidential address: Accounting is not a science,
but a practice. As a practice we are free to speak about it anyway we want,
including (especially including) critical examination of the myths and value
judgments that it enacts in the world. (Speaking of ironies neither John
Locke nor Adam Smith thought limited liability corporations were a good
idea; Smith was adamantly opposed to them because they absolved people of
their moral responsibilities. But Karl Marx saw in them their great
potential to unleash productive possibilities. The free marketers who regard
accounting as the handmaiden of corporate values are more Marxian than
Smithian in their thinking about the institution of limited liability
corporations.).
Paul
Mathematical Analytics in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm#Analytics
October 21, Message from Bob Jensen to the AECM
Hi Jagdish,
Intellectual Capital: Forty Years of the Nobel Prize in Economics by Tom
Karier ---
http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Capital-Forty-Years-Economics/dp/0521763266/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319104060&sr=1-1
Years ago Paul Williams carefully explained to AECMers that the Nobel Prize
in Economics was funded by the Swedish central bank
rather than the Nobel Trust. However, that's probably not nearly as
important as the use of prestigious term "Nobel Prize" in Sweden.
Trinity University funded travel to campus and
generous stipends for presentations by all former Nobel Prize in Economics
winners. Their presentations, however, were to be biographical about their
lives rather than technical presentations about their discoveries. The late
economist Bill Breit conceived this idea and Trinity Funded the project over
the years ---
http://porterloring.com/sitemaker/sites/Porter1/obit.cgi?user=1368_WBreit6281
I think all living winners made presentations on campus except for two that
are severely mentally ill --- John Nash and John Hicks. Bill actually
traveled to England to search out the mysterious John Nash. Bill told this
story to me one day over lunch. I doubt that it will ever be put on paper,
but if it were ever written down it would read like a mystery novel about
searching out a hermit.
The most memorable campus presentation to me was the presentation of Franco
Modigliani.
Professor Modigliani is one of my all time heroes, and what stood out in his
presentation about his life is that when doing research in the 1960s and
before how much we did not pamper our research professors like we do today.
In modern times our research professors, especially in accountancy, bargain
for something like having to teach two or three courses in a year (across
two semesters), although one of my former students bargained for one a year
some time back at UC Berkeley. When producing his best early research,
Professor Modigliani was teaching nine or ten courses per year (some with
repeat preps in the second semester).
What we don't properly appreciate is that sometimes teaching stimulates
creative ideas, and sometimes hard sweat stimulates our Adrenalin beyond
normal levels.
Respectfully,
Bob Jensen
"The Problem is Beyond Psychology: The Real World is More Random than
Regression Analyses," by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Daniel G. Goldstein, SSRN,
October 10, 2011 ---
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1941792
Abstract:
Where the
problem is not expert underestimation of randomness, but more: the tools
themselves used in regression analyses and similar methods underestimate fat
tails, hence the randomness in the data. We should avoid imparting
psychological explanations to errors in the use of statistical methods.
Bob Jensen's discussion of black swans and fat tails is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#EMH
Question
What do the 2011 Wall Street protests have in common with the assassination of
President William McKinley, Jr. in 1901?
October 172 2011 message from Robert Bruce Walker in New Zealand
Here are a couple of articles
that relate, directly or indirectly, to the current protests against Wall
Street. I think they are vaguely related to accounting.
The first article is a straight
forward account of the intellectual origins of the protest. It is
reasonably interesting but the second is far more interesting because the
subject matter is identical albeit located in time about 110 years ago. It
is a discussion of the assassination of President McKinley. I did not know
this, but perhaps I should have, that the assassination was carried out by
an anarchist. The article describes McKinley’s association to big business
(principally a man named Hanna). It is the time that the Republicans became
strongly associated with business and Wall Street. The parallels are
uncanny.
The article also briefly touches
upon the consequence of the assassination which led to the presidency of
Roosevelt (version 1). It is Roosevelt of course that was one of the
principal authors of the idea that the government should intervene to curb
the excesses of capitalism.
I have been re-reading R A
Bryer’s article on the origins of fair value accounting which I found on
Bob’s website. His thesis is, if can do him an injustice, that fair value
accounting has its origins in the acrimonious relations between labour and
business in the US at the turn of the last century.
http://chronicle.com/article/Intellectual-Roots-of-Wall/129428/
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/oct/13/anarchists-capitalists/
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting history ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Perhaps Klein's overlapping roles of scholar and
writer contributed to the novel's themes as well as its plot. The lesson of
Something for Nothing is one of reason and restraint. The book's villains are
its ideological extremists: Bill Crocker, an ex-tobacco-industry smooth talker
who believes that moral principles should trump economic ones, and Randolph
Carlson, a professor of sociology who teaches a course called "Threats to
Liberty" and likes to accuse everyone and anyone of supporting capitalist greed.
It's the diligent, truth-seeking economists we root for, even when they
blunder.
"Something for Nothing'," by kacie Glenn, Chronicle of Higher Education's
Chronicle Review, October 23, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Something-for-Nothing/129468/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
David Fox's life is not working out as planned.
During his college years, the path ahead seemed clear: graduate with honors,
obtain Ph.D. at a prestigious institution, accept tenure-track position in
large metropolitan area.
But with his doctorate in hand, David finds himself
stuck in Knittersville, N.Y., with a one-year appointment at undistinguished
Kester College. He's deflated by the dismal job market, intimidated by his
colleagues in the economics department, overwhelmed by his teaching duties,
desperate to morph his dissertation into something publishable, and tempted
by a voluptuous thesis advisee—all as he suffers the indignity of living in
a town that is "not Manhattan" in every possible way.
A duller-sounding place than Knittersville never
was—because it's fictional. So is Kester College, and so is David Fox, which
considerably raises his chances of landing flyover interviews and getting
embroiled in academic intrigue. David is the protagonist of Something for
Nothing (MIT Press), a novel by Michael W. Klein, who is a professor of
international economic affairs at Tufts University.
David's prospects improve when he receives an
e-mail from the Center to Research Opportunities for a Spiritual Society
(Cross), a right-wing organization seeking to promote scholarship that
supports an evangelical-Christian agenda. Its director, Bill Crocker, is
interested in publishing and publicizing a long-forgotten graduate paper of
David's called "Something for Nothing." The paper shows the success of a
high-school abstinence program in lowering teen-pregnancy rates and raising
academic achievement.
David—who is liberal, Jewish, and no fan of
abstinence—worries about the social ramifications, but not so much that he
insists on a toned-down interpretation of the paper's results. After all,
the benefits are sweet: With the news coverage come respect and clout, along
with better chances at a tenure-track job. So, against his better judgment,
he keeps his head down and mouth shut, at least until things start to
unravel.
Economics and academe permeate the novel. Klein's
prose reflects a scholarly attention to detail; for example, he includes
e-mail correspondence from job committees and a transcript of David's
ill-fated interview on a conservative radio show. Like any good economist,
David weighs the costs and benefits of every choice, whether it involves his
paper for Cross, his dealings with the attractive advisee, or his shirt/tie
combination on the first day of class.
So how much of Klein's book is autobiographical? "I
never had any of my work promoted by a think tank (right-wing or other), I
was never interviewed on a right-wing talk show, and I never came close to
having an affair with a student," responds the author in an e-mail. "That
said, I found it easy and fun to draw on my quarter-century in academia to
inform the novel—things like the anxiety facing professors before the first
class of the semester, the seating patterns of students, the way professors
have to self-organize their days, and the challenges of the job market."
The author is on leave from Tufts, serving as chief
economist in the Office of International Affairs at the Treasury Department.
Although none of his characters work in government, all are to some extent
driven by politics. Their heated conflicts reflect the country's changing
climate, Klein notes.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
The newest Almanac of Higher Education gathers an assortment of key data
about the most important trends in higher education.
The Chronicle's annual Almanac brings readers an in-depth analysis of colleges
and universities with data on students, professors, administrators,
institutions, and their resources. Also featured are data spotlights on all 50
states, and special reports on technology, access and equity, and the changing
face of international higher education.
Item:
ALM1112 .
https://www.chronicle-store.com/Store/ProductDetails.aspx?CO=CQ&ID=78223&cid=alm11nb
This is probably available to students and faculty in the campus library.
RFID ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID
Note in Advance
Many people who watch this video will not know what RFID stands for and how it
can be used in the future to charge shoplifters for products they hide.
Actually the guy in this video is simply shopping without a cart.
Watch the video at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eob532iEpqk
"A Gem from CLTA at Midwest: YouTube Videos for Class," by Julie Smith
David on the AAA Commons ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/e712dae7dc#12234
I had the pleasure of attending the Conference on
Teaching and Learning (CTLA) at the Midwest Region meeting this past
weekend, and one of the gems that I took away was the power of using YouTube
videos in class. Mike Meyer, from Notre Dame, encouraged us to find and
share videos that would give our students a "common understanding" of
business environments that they are unfamiliar with - especially if they're
traditional students.
The video he shared (click on the image to see)
provides a glimpse into what grocery stores might be like in the future.
And he has used it when he teaches inventory to illustrate how emerging
technologies (RFID, in this case) can enhance a firm's control environment.
The session participants had a range of experiences
with video, and promised to share their favorites with the rest of us. So,
for everyone who uses video in class, please click on the title above to
open this post, and then enter your recommendations as comments. I'll have
them transferred over to the teaching area so everyone can find them here -
and there. And thanks in advance!
Julie
Jensen Comment
The AAA Commons is becoming a great resource for accounting researchers and
teachers. If you've not already done so, consider joining the American
Accounting Association and make use of the AAA Commons at least once per week!
"In Victory for Open-Education Movement, Blackboard Embraces Sharing,"
by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 19, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/in-victory-for-open-education-movement-blackboard-embraces-sharing/33776?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Professors who use Blackboard’s software have long
been forced to lock their course materials in an area effectively marked,
“For Registered Students Only,” while using the system. Today the company
announced plans to add a “Share” button that will let professors make those
learning materials free and open online.
The move may be the biggest sign yet that the idea
of “open educational materials” is going mainstream, nearly 10 years after
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology first began giving away lecture
notes online. Blackboard made the change after college officials complained
that the company’s software, which more than half the colleges in the
country use for their online-course materials, was holding them back from
trying open-education projects.
The president of Blackboard’s learning division,
Ray Henderson, plans to send an e-mail to customers today that effectively
modifies the company’s contract with colleges. In the old contract, colleges
could have been charged extra for every additional person who viewed course
materials placed on the Blackboard software platform (because license fees
were set based on the number of potential users). Now that has been
“liberalized” so that any outsiders who are invited to look in will not
bring extra charges to a college, says Mr. Henderson. “If it’s non-revenue
for you, we understand it’s going to be non-revenue for us,” he says.
Mr. Henderson said that in the past 18 to 24 months
he has heard increasing requests from colleges officials to allow sharing.
He said that he wanted to make the change sooner, but that it is easier for
him to win the argument now that the company, which was publicly held, has
been sold to a private-equity firm, Providence
Equity Partners.
“This is something that is easier to do as a
private company more easily than as a public company because the risk of
being misunderstood by investors is less,” says Mr. Henderson. “The investor
community was skeptical about that and worried” about an open policy, he
says, adding that in the new ownership model, “we had to tell three people
about that at Providence, who immediately got it.”
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Of course instructors will have to use caution when not owning some of their Bb
file copyrights. For example, instructors cannot share textbook solutions openly
with the world even though publishers allow sharing with students. The American
Accounting Association allows free sharing of its journal articles for classroom
purposes, but the AAA does not allow open sharing of its journals with the
entire world.
Bob Jensen's threads on Blackboard are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
New System-wide ideas for a student-centered university
"Building Something Different," by Kevin Kiley, Inside Higher Ed, October 17,
2011 ---
Click Here
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/17/bain_initiative_at_university_of_north_texas_dallas_aims_for_new_educational_model
Given the task of building a new university from
the ground up, most traditional higher education leaders might enlist
the help of faculty members, presidents of other universities, and
members of the community.John Ellis
Price has a different team. The president of the University of North
Texas System and CEO of the campus at Dallas, a 10-year-old campus that
gained its independence from the system's flagship in nearby Denton in
2009, has turned to a prominent management consulting firm,
Bain & Company,
primarily known for working with Fortune 500 companies.
The unconventional partnership is a reflection of
Price's unconventional goal. He's not trying to emulate Ivy League
institutions, the University of Texas at Austin, or even his university's
own flagship campus, which, like so many universities, has pursued a
research-intensive path.
Instead, he wants to create a model of higher
education that, he says, is more accessible, more flexible, and more
student-focused. "The one thing at the forefront of everything we do is what
can we do to drive down the cost of instruction and the time that it takes
to complete a four-year degree while maintaining quality," Price says.
Over the next year, Price and Bain will convene a
group of 10 community, business and education leaders, known as the "21st
Century Commission," to help the university draft
a strategic plan to grow from about 2,000 student to 16,000 by 2030. Judging
by statements from Price, Bain consultants, and members of the commission,
the plan is likely to include several ideas that have been discussed with
increasing frequency by higher education reformers, such as an emphasis on
online technology in education delivery, a restructuring of the traditional
15-week semester, and consideration of new ways of financing education.
The ideas thrown out by Price and the consultants
at Bain have troubled faculty members when they were proposed at other
universities, with professors arguing that such changes water down the
educational experience, strip faculty of traditional rights, and place too
much emphasis on what students want rather than giving them a well-rounded
education.
But because UNT-Dallas is so young, and because the
majority of the faculty are either assistant professors or lecturers,
positions that do not come with tenure protection, public criticism of the
commission has been minimal. Some faculty members have expressed concern
about the direction of the institution, but they feel they have no latitude
to stop the changes.
If UNT-Dallas ends up adopting these ideas, and if
they prove successful, the university could influence how other institutions
adapt to a changing higher education landscape. The initiative could also
have ramifications for Bain, which has already shown interest in consulting
with universities on
administrative issues. Success in creating a new
kind of university could drive other institutions to seek the firm’s
assistance (or those of other firms) to delve further into university
structure, including previously untouched areas such as academics, research
and student life.
"We really are trying to figure out a model that
can bend the curve on education costs pretty dramatically," says Mark
Gottfredson, a partner in Bain's Dallas office, which will be working with
the university.
Test Case
Price and Gottfredson say UNT-Dallas makes a good
testing ground for new approaches. It is the first undergraduate public
university situated within the city limits of Dallas. (Despite its name, the
University of Texas at Dallas is located in a suburb, Richardson, Tex.) UNT-Dallas
sits on a 264-acre campus in the south of the city, an area that has
historically been underserved by higher education, local officials say. They
believe demand exists in the area for a low-cost bachelor's degree that can
be flexible with nontraditional students' schedules.
Since it began in 2000, the university has been
growing at a rate of about 14 percent a year. When it reached 1,000 students
in 2009, it became a full-fledged institution independent from UNT's main
campus. It now runs undergraduate and graduate programs in business,
education, criminal justice and applied arts and sciences.
Continued in article
Our Compassless Colleges: What are students
really not learning? ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Berkowitz
THE COLLEGE OF 2020: STUDENTS ---
https://www.chronicle-store.com/Store/ProductDetails.aspx?CO=CQ&ID=76319&PK=N5S11XX
The Real Rosie the Riveter Project (labor, women, feminist, gender) ---
http://dlib.nyu.edu/rosie/
"Executive Overconfidence and the Slippery Slope to Financial Misreporting,"
Catherine Schrand, Professor of Accounting at the University of Pennsylvania,
and Sarah Zechman of the accounting group at the University of Chicago Booth
School of Business, The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and
Financial Regulation, October 14, 2011 ---
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/2011/10/14/executive-overconfidence-and-the-slippery-slope-to-financial-misreporting/
In the paper, Executive Overconfidence
and the Slippery Slope to Financial Misreporting, forthcoming
in the Journal of Accounting and Economics as published by
Elsevier, our detailed analysis of a sample of 49 firms subject to SEC
Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs) suggests two distinct
explanations for the misstatements. Just over one quarter of the cases
represent many of the well-publicized examples of corporate fraud including
Adelphia, Enron, Healthsouth, and Tyco. The nature of the misstatements,
their timing, and an analysis of the executives suggest that the activities
are consistent with a strong inference of intent on the part of the
respondent and consistent with the legal standards necessary to establish
fraud.
However, perhaps more surprising, we find that the
actions by the executives in the remaining three quarters of the cases are
not consistent with the pleading standards required to establish an intent
to defraud. Rather, our analysis of the 49 AAER firms suggests that
optimistic bias on the part of executives can explain these AAERs. We show
that the misstatement amount in the initial period of alleged misreporting
is relatively small, and possibly unintentional. Subsequent period earnings
realizations are poor, however, and the misstatements escalate. Using a
matched sample of non-AAER firms, we show that the misreporting firms did
not simply get a bad draw on earnings. Nor does it appear that weaker
monitoring relative to the matched sample explains why the misreporting
manager’s optimistic bias affects the financial statements.
We further examine whether the optimistic bias for
the misreporting firms is associated with the character trait of
overconfidence. The evidence from the analysis of the 49 AAER sample is
mixed on this question. However, we find evidence of a positive association
between proxies for overconfidence and the propensity for AAERs in two
larger samples that use alternative measures of overconfidence. The
association between overconfidence and AAERs is consistent with the slippery
slope explanation in which greater optimistic bias makes it more likely that
a manager is in the position that significant misreporting is an optimal
choice.
An interesting question raised by the analysis is
the importance of monitoring the optimistic bias of executives. Various
models predict that overconfidence has desirable effects on the executive’s
performance (Goel and Thakor, 2000; Gervais and Goldstein, 2007; Gervais et
al., 2010). Our analysis indicates overconfidence can be associated with
financial reporting concerns and prior work has documented an association
between overconfidence and distorted investment and financing decisions
(e.g., Malmendier and Tate, 2005 and 2008 among others). For firms who value
the positive aspects of overconfidence, a plausible response is to put
mechanisms in place to monitor the executive’s decision-making biases
associated with this trait. This response is feasible only if the Board
recognizes executive overconfidence. Our evidence indicating that the
misreporting firms and matched sample of non-AAER firms have different
compensation arrangements suggests that the Board is able to do so at some
level. However, our corresponding analysis of monitoring does not indicate
that the overconfident managers were better monitored, which explains why
they were more likely to end up misreporting. The potential for monitoring
to moderate the optimistic bias that characterizes executives remains an
interesting open question. Is it that our analysis does not adequately
capture the specific mechanisms that would control optimistic bias? Or, is
the cost of better monitoring higher than the expected benefits from
mitigating the risk of misreporting, which is a significant but unusual
event?
The full paper is available for download at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1919729
Download it while it's free.
Bob Jensen's threads on creative accounting and earnings management are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#Manipulation
Bob Jensen's threads on Enron are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm
Jensen Comment
Once again this illustrates how the IASB and FASB are overly focused on assets
and liabilities without even being able to define net income on anything other
than a residual leftover basis. As a result, things like unrealized fair value
changes get blended in with realized operational earnings in eps and P/E ratio
calculations that are the major focal points of company management and
investors. This supports my previous appeal for multi-column financial
statements that vary according to degree of realization and attestation by CPA
auditors.
You can read about media rankings of accounting and business programs
(undergraduate and graduate) at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
Rankings different somewhat as to criteria and who performs the rankings. The
best-known ranking comes from US News where the rankings are based upon
multiple criteria (especially research and faculty reputations) where the
rankings are done by deans and other administrators. The Wall Street Journal
rankings of MBA programs rely heavily upon recruiters of graduates. The
Business Week rankings of undergraduate and graduate business programs rely
heavily upon alumni. An the newer rankings of MBA programs in The Economist
are based upon what students enrolled in programs want from those programs.
"The Top Thirty (Global MBA) Programs," The Economist, October
15, 2011, Page 73 ---
http://www.economist.com/node/21532270
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE’S Tuck School of Business takes
first place in The Economist’s ninth annual ranking of full-time MBA
programmes. The New Hampshire school has moved up from second position last
year. Virtually all of its students—who went into a wide range of
industries—found work within three months of graduating. Its MBAs could
expect a basic salary of $107,000, a 65% increase on their pre-degree
earnings. Tuck students also graded the quality of their alumni the best in
the world—an important consideration given the often-repeated claim that who
you meet on an MBA programme is just as important as what you learn.
Chicago drops to second, having come top last year,
while the world’s most famous school, Harvard, also drops a place to fifth.
Europe’s top programme is IMD, a Swiss school, which ranks third. Though
INSEAD has campuses in both France and Singapore, no purely Asian school
makes our top 30. Hong Kong University, at 36th, is the highest-placed. The
China Europe International Business School is the only school from the
mainland to make our top 100. The Indian Institute of Management in
Ahmedabad, India’s sole representative, and the toughest business school in
the world to get into (see article), is 78th.
Continued in article
MBA Programs at the (Expensive and Cheap) Extremes are Doing Well Whereas
Those in the Middle are Struggling for Students and Placements of Graduates
"Trouble in the Middle: Is time running out for business schools that aren't
quite elite," The Economist, October 15, 2011, pp. 71-72 ---
http://www.economist.com/node/21532269
IN 2009, when the American economy was beset by
recession, interest in MBA programmes hit a record high. No one was much
surprised: applications to business schools often rise during the first
years of a recession as people seek shelter from the storm. So perhaps no
one should be surprised that in both succeeding years applications have
fallen. That’s what prolonged doldrums do.
Yet, privately at least, some business schools are
worried that a two-year decline, along with a level of applications from
American students lower than it has been this century, is more than just a
response to the economy. They fear that the established model of business
education may be in trouble, if not for all schools, then definitely for
mid-ranking American institutions offering a traditional two-year MBA.
Two-thirds of schools which offer long, residential programmes saw
applications drop in 2011.
Data taken from The Economist’s latest
ranking of full-time MBA programmes (see article) show that an MBA from a
mid-ranking school is no longer the investment it once was. In 2010 the
average tuition fee charged by American institutions ranked within our top
100, but outside of the top 15, was $81,911 for the full two years. The
average basic salary of those schools’ freshly-minted MBAs was $81,178 a
year. Five years ago tuition at the same cohort of schools was nearly
$22,000 cheaper—$60,247—while the average salary, $78,442, was barely less
than today’s. This price rise comes at a time when enrolment is falling; for
American mid-level schools it is down 20% over the decade.
In comparison, the schools at the ends of the
spectrum look more appealing. Lower-level programmes, which harbour no
ambitions to be international players and are not covered in our ranking,
are seeing applications rise. They are much cheaper to attend and often
offer a discount for local students. For those taking the increasingly
popular part-time or online programmes, there is no reason even to leave
their jobs. (Disclosure: The Economist has an online business-education
business, but not one that offers an MBA.)
Elite business schools still look like a fair deal.
MBA students attending a top-15 institution may be charged an average of
$92,262 for their tuition, but they can expect a basic salary of $110,879
once they graduate. Payscale, a company that collects pay data, claims that
graduates from Harvard’s MBA programme will earn $3.6m over a 20-year career
(although it is not able to compare this with the rewards that go to equally
smart cookies who haven’t bothered with an MBA).
. . .
High Costs of New and Pampered Faculty
Schools with names that send a less sexy signal,
though, may be in trouble. For one thing,
wages have become a huge drain on their resources. An AACSB survey of 503
American business schools found that a newly-hired academic can expect a
salary of $169,000. At a mid-ranking
school, salaries of $250,000 and above are common. That’s just for nine
months: plenty of time for books, consulting and visiting professorships
during the long summer vacation.
Another strain is that
pampered faculty and
high-paying students expect to be housed in posh buildings with nice
gardens. Few schools enjoy the resources of Stanford, which recently opened
a $345m campus. But many feel the need to splurge millions on new facilities
in the hope of poaching applicants from their peers.
Continued in article
Lake Wobegone (Illusory
superiority) Rankings of European Universities --- All of Them are Above
Average
It's like a kids' fair where everybody earns a blue ribbon
"A New European Ranking: Prizes for All!" by Ben Wildavsky, Chronicle of
Higher Education, June 13, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/a-new-european-ranking-prizes-for-all/28377
Bob Jensen's threads on Higher Education Controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Global Executive MBA Program Rankings
"EMBA Rankings 2011," as ranked by the Financial Times, 2011 ---
http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/emba-rankings-2011
Bob Jensen's threads on media rankings controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
Videos Illustrating How to Make Videos Using Camtasia Version 7.1
October 13, 2011 message from Rick Newmark
Here are three videos that I made
to show my colleagues
how to use Camtasia to make a class video for when you
go out of town, or to create a tutorial for your class.
I figured that some of you might be interested, so here they are. Please
note that these are not Richard Campbell-quality videos. I shot these
quickly and without any script. I made only a couple of minor edits.
Also, please note I used
Screencast-O-Matic to make the first part of Part 1 so that I could capture
setting up Camtasia Recorder. Pay attention to before and after I press the
Record button to see the differences between the two applications.
How to record a class using
Camtasia 7
http://youtu.be/PdSsVcLBsMM Part 1 - Setting up Camtasia Recorder and
recording a class video.
http://youtu.be/aqUd8kD4VM8 Part 2 - Producing your Camtasia recording
for posting in BlackBoard.
http://youtu.be/4KLNlxZOleE Part 3 - Posting your video in BlackBoard.
FYI, In Part 1, I used the
following to demonstrate different ways to use Camtasia
1.
Running virtual machines on your PC using Virtual Box
·
Apple Snow Leopard 10.6
·
Linux Ubuntu 11.04
2.
Creating a two-table query in Access 2010
3.
Demonstrating how to use Windows Journal with a Tablet PC—also
applies to using the Sympodium on a classroom computer.
·
I showed how to use the REA Enterprise Ontology, t-accounts,
and journal entries to explain the following
i.
The nature of accounts receivable and unearned revenue, including the
duality imbalance that creates them
ii.
How to use t-accounts to design database queries to compute accounts
receivable and unearned revenue.
Rick
----------------------------------------
Richard Newmark
Professor, School of Accounting and Computer Information Systems
Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business
2004 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
Winner
University of Northern Colorado
Campus Box 128, Kepner Hall 2095D
Greeley, CO 80639
(970)
351-1213 (office)
(970)
351-1068 (fax)
http://PhDuh.com/unc
Bob Jensen's threads on Camtasia are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
Note that I find the F9 toggle key very useful for pausing for periods of
rest and preparation during the recording of a relatively long video.
Many of my old videos will not run in Windows 7 because Microsoft dropped an
an audio codec.
"Far From Honorable," by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed,
October 25, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/25/online-students-might-feel-less-accountable-honor-codes
Much of the urgency around creating a “sense of
community” in online courses springs from a desire to keep online students
from dropping out. But a recent paper suggests that strengthening a sense of
social belonging among online students might help universities fight another
problem: cheating.
In a series of experiments, researchers at Ohio
University found that students in fully online psychology courses who signed
an honor code promising not to cheat broke that pledge at a significantly
higher rate than did students in a “blended” course that took place
primarily in a classroom.
“The more distant students are, the more
disconnected they feel, and the more likely it is that they’ll rationalize
cheating,” Frank M. LoSchiavo, one of the authors, conjectured in an
interview with Inside Higher Ed.
While acknowledging the limitations inherent to a
study with such a narrow sample, and the fact that motivations are
particularly hard to pin down when it comes to cheating, LoSchiavo and Mark
A. Shatz, both psychology professors at Ohio University's Zanesville campus,
said their findings may indicate that meeting face-to-face with peers and
professors confers a stronger sense of accountability among students. “Honor
codes,” LoSchiavo said, “are more effective when there are [strong] social
connections.”
Honor codes are not, of course, the only method of
deterring cheating in online courses. The proliferation of online programs
has given rise to a
cottage industry of
remote proctoring technology, including one product that takes periodic
fingerprint readings while monitoring a student’s test-taking environment
with a 360-degree camera. (A 2010 survey by the Campus Computing Project
suggests that a minority of institutions authenticate the identities of
online students as a rule.)
But LoSchiavo said that he and Shatz were more
interested in finding out whether honor codes held any sway online. If so,
then online instructors might add pledges to their arsenal of anti-cheating
tools, LoSchiavo said. If not, it provides yet an intriguing contribution to
the discussion about student engagement and “perceived social distance” in
the online environment.
They experimented with the effectiveness of honor
codes in three introductory psychology courses at Ohio University. The first
course had 40 students and was completely online. These students, like those
in subsequent trials, were a mix of traditional-age and adult students,
mostly from regional campuses in the Ohio University system. There was no
honor code. Over the course of the term, the students took 14
multiple-choice quizzes with no proctoring of any kind. At the end of the
term, 73 percent of the students admitted to cheating on at least one of
them.
The second trial involved another fully online
introductory course in the same subject. LoSchiavo and Shatz divided the
class evenly into two groups of 42 students, and imposed an honor code --
posted online with the other course materials -- to one group but not the
other. The students “digitally signed the code during the first week of the
term, prior to completing any assignments.” The definition of cheating was
the same as in the first trial: no notes, no textbooks, no Internet, no
family or friends. There was no significant difference in the self-reported
cheating between the two groups.
In a third trial, the professors repeated the
experiment with 165 undergraduates in a “blended” course, where only 20
percent of the course was administered online and 80 percent in a
traditional classroom setting. Again, they split the students into two
groups: one in which they were asked to sign an honor code, and another in
which they were not.
This time, when LoSchiavo and Shatz surveyed the
students at the end of the term, there was a significant difference:
Students who promised not to cheat were about 25 percent less likely to
cheat than were those who made no such promise. Among the students who had
not signed the code, 82 percent admitted to cheating.
LoSchiavo concedes that this study offers no
definitive answers on the question of whether students are more likely to
cheat in fully online courses. Cheating is more often than not a crime of
opportunity, and containing integrity violations probably has much more to
do with designing a system that limits the opportunities to cheat and gives
relatively little weight to those assignments for which cheating is hardest
to police.
“The bottom line is that if there are
opportunities, students will cheat,” he said. “And the more opportunities
they have, the more cheating there will be, and it is incumbent upon
professors to put in a system that, when it’s important, cheating will be
contained.”
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I think universities like Trinity University that expanded their honor codes to
include student courts are generally happy with the operations of those honor
codes. However, Trinity has only full time students and no distance education
courses.
One thing that I hated giving up was grading control. For most of my teaching
career I gave F grades to students who seriously cheated in my courses. Under
the revised Trinity Honor Code, instructors can no longer control the granting
of F grades for cheating.
When I was a student at Stanford the Honor Code included a pledge to report
cheating of other students. I think most universities have watered down this
aspect of their honor codes because, in this greatly increased era of
litigation, student whistle blowers can be sued big time. Universities may
continue to encourage such whistle blowing, but they no longer make students
sign pledges that on their honor they will be whistleblowers if they do not want
to bear the risk of litigation by students they report.
Bob Jensen's threads on assessment ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Why Do Accounting Academics Blog Less Than Other Academics?" by Tom
Selling, The Accounting Onion, October 11, 2011 ---
http://accountingonion.typepad.com/theaccountingonion/2011/10/why-do-accounting-academics-blog-less-than-other-academics.html
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
The phrase "blog less" has two meanings. One is that there are fewer accounting
professor/student bloggers than in other disciplines. This is largely due to the
fact that accounting is a smaller academic discipline than many of our brethren
in humanities, mathematics, and science.
Second is that there might be comparable number of academic accounting
bloggers who post less frequently than their brethren in humanities and science.
At first blush this is a bit surprising to me since accounting is a dynamic
discipline with many things taking place globally every day in media fraud
articles, news from international and national accounting standard setting
bodies, etc. It could be that we, as academic accountants, tend to rely on a
small number of commercial blogs such as those of the Big Four, the AICPA,
SmartPros, AccountingWeb, GoingConcern, re:TheAuditors, etc. These popular
commercial blogs may reduce the need for more accounting professors to blog or
to post multiple messages daily.
Many academic accountants have come to rely on blog aggregators and filters.
For example, I suspect that the AECM listserv has a larger daily audience
reading a larger number of AECM postings than readings of any accounting
professor who blogs. Also intense debates on the AECM reveal more intense and
enduring debates on issues than the commentaries at accounting professor
blogging sites.
The AAA Commons is also becoming increasingly popular among accounting
academics. For example, it could be that more people frequent the postings of
Rick Lillie via the AAA Commons than frequent his blog. I do not, however, know
this for a fact.
We also must consider the fact that social networkings (e.g., Twitter and
Facebook) reduce the blogging traffic.
Be that as it may, I think there are quite a few blogging professors who have
relatively small audiences. The small audiences tend to discourage new entrants
into the blogging arena. For a listing of some of the academic accounting
bloggers go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
There are too many for me to monitor even on a weekly basis.
We've come to expect that lawyers lie --- it's part of their job
responsibilities in some instances
But it's a bit of a shock how much law schools themselves lie (until we make the
connection that law schools are run by lawyers)
"Coburn, Boxer Call for Department of Education to Examine Questions of
Law School Transparency," New Release from the Official Site of Senator
Barbara Boxer, October 14, 2011 ---
http://boxer.senate.gov/en/press/releases/101411.cfm
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators
Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) yesterday asked the Department of
Education’s Inspector General to provide information about key law school
job placement, bar passage and loan debt metrics in light of serious
concerns that have been raised about the accuracy and transparency of
information being provided to prospective law school students.
This letter follows repeated calls from Senator
Boxer to the American Bar Association to provide stronger oversight of
reporting by law schools and better access to information for students.
In their letter, the Senators pointed to media
reports that raise questions about whether the claims law schools use to
lure prospective students are, in fact, accurate. They also cited reporting
that questions whether law school tuition and fees are used for legal
education or for unrelated purposes.
The full text of the Senators’ letter appears
below.
October 13, 2011
Ms. Kathleen Tighe
Inspector General
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Ave., S.W.
Washington, DC 20202-1500
To help better inform Congress as it prepares to
reform the Higher Education Act, we write to request an examination of
American law schools that focuses on the confluence of growing enrollments,
steadily increasing tuition rates and allegedly sluggish job placement.
Recent media stories reveal concerning challenges
for students and graduates of such schools. For example, The New York Times
reported on a law school that “increased the size of the class arriving in
the fall of 2009 by an astounding 30 percent, even as hiring in the legal
profession imploded.” The New York Times found the same school is ranked in
the bottom third of all law schools in the country and has tuition and fees
set at $47,800 a year but reported to prospective students median starting
salaries rivaling graduates of the best schools in the nation “even though
most of its graduates, in fact, find work at less than half that amount.”
Other reports question whether or not law schools
are properly disclosing their graduation rates to prospective students.
Inside Higher Ed recently highlighted several pending lawsuits which “argue
that students were essentially robbed of the ability to make good decisions
about whether to pay tuition (and to take out student loans) by being forced
to rely on incomplete and inaccurate job placement information.
Specifically, the suits charge the law schools in question (and many of
their peers) mix together different kinds of employment (including jobs for
which a J.D. is not needed) to inflate employment rates.”
Media exposes also reveal possible concerns about
whether tuition and fees charged by law schools are used directly for legal
education, or for purposes unrelated to legal education. For example, The
New York Times reports “law schools toss off so much cash they are sometimes
required to hand over as much as 30 percent of their revenue to
universities, to subsidize less profitable fields.” The Baltimore Sun
recently reported on the resignation of the Dean of the University of
Baltimore (UB) Law School, who said he resigned, in part, over his
frustration that the law school’s revenue was not being retained to serve
students at the school. In his resignation letter, UB’s Dean noted: “The
financial data [of the school] demonstrates that the amount and percentage
of the law school revenue retained by the university has increased,
particularly over the last two years. For the most recent academic year (AY
10-11), our tuition increase generated $1,455,650 in additional revenue. Of
that amount, the School of Law budget increased by only $80,744.”
To better understand trends related to law schools
over the most recent ten-year window, we request your office provide the
following information:
1. The current enrollments, as well as the
historical growth of enrollments, at American law schools – in the
aggregate, and also by sector (i.e., private, public, for-profit).
2. Current tuition and fee rates, as well as the
historical growth of tuition and fees, at American law schools – in the
aggregate, and also by sector (i.e., private, public, for-profit).
3. The percentage of law school revenue generated
that is retained to administer legal education, operate law school
facilities, and the percentage and dollar amount used for other, non-legal
educational purposes by the broader university system. If possible, please
provide specific examples of what activities and expenses law school
revenues are being used to support if such revenue does not support legal
education directly.
4. The amount of federal and private educational
loan debt legal students carried upon graduation, again in the aggregate and
across sectors.
5. The current bar passage rates and graduation
rates of students at American law schools, again in the aggregate and across
sectors.
6. The job placement rates of American law school
graduates; indicating whether such jobs are full- or part-time positions,
whether they require a law degree, and whether they were maintained a year
after employment.
In your final analysis, please include a
description of the methodology the IG employed to acquire and analyze
information for the report. Please also note any obstacles to acquiring
pertinent information the agency may encounter.
We thank you in advance for your time and attention
to this matter. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions
concerning this request.
Sincerely,
Tom A. Coburn,
M.D. United States Senator
Barbara Boxer
United States Senator
Jensen Comment
Faculty urged not to be “too choosy” in admitting new cash-cow graduate students
"Not So Fast," by Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Ed, August
29, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/08/29/essay_suggesting_faculty_members_should_be_dubious_of_drive_for_new_graduate_programs
Bob Jensen's threads on Turkey Times for Overstuffed Law Schools ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#OverstuffedLawSchools
From the Scout Report on October 14, 2011
Kibin ---
https://kibin.com/
Kibin is a rather interesting peer-editing review
service, and it is worth a
look. Essentially, users can submit papers for review and they receive
assistance from someone in the Kibin community. Visitors can sign up to try
the service for free and they can also purchase points that can be used to
have someone edit their document. The site contains a FAQ area and more
information about the service. This service is compatible with all operating
systems.
QuickScreenShare ---
http://quickscreenshare.com/
Want to share your computer screen with someone? It
can be done quite simply
with QuickScreenShare. Visitors can just use the start up screen to begin,
and there's no installation required. Users can remotely control the mouse
and keyboard of the other computer, and there's even a demonstration video
here. This application is compatible with all operating systems, including
Linux
From the Scout Report on October 21, 2011
Liferea 1.7 ---
http://liferea.sourceforge.net/
Many operating systems have news aggregators, but
persons who use Linux may find fewer options. Fortunately there is Liferea,
which stands for "Linux Feed Reader". The program gives users the ability to
bring together their various news sources and updates into one convenient
location. The Liferea website also contains an FAQ area and several
screenshots. This version is compatible with all computers running Linux.
Stardock Fences 1.01.143 --- http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/index.asp
If you're looking for a way to clean up your
desktop clutter, Stardock Fences is an application worth checking out. It
gives users the opportunity to create shaded areas on their desktop which
become movable and sizable containers for their icons. Visitors can then
double click on these "fence" areas and they will fade into the background.
Also, visitors can customize the color and opacity of their "fences". This
version is compatible with computers running Windows 2000 and newer
Free eBooks
"How to Download Free Ebooks With just a little searching, you can find and
download free, legal ebooks for your e-reader, smartphone, or tablet," by
Michael King, PC World, Oct 15, 2011 ---
http://www.pcworld.com/article/241717/how_to_download_free_ebooks.html#tk.nl_wbx_t_crawl2
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Library of Online Technology Articles ---
http://www.techcast.org/Library.aspx
Office of Science Education: Life Works [careers, education, health] ---
http://science.education.nih.gov/LifeWorks.nsf/feature/index.htm
Teaching College-Level Science and Engineering ---
http://mit.edu/5.95/
Science Mentoring Research ---
http://ehrweb.aaas.org/sciMentoring/index.php
Boston Science Partnership [middle school]
http://www.bostonscience.org/
John Turturro Reads Italo Calvino’s Animated Fairy Tale ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/john_turturro_reads_italo_calvinos_animated_fairy_tale.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Science Mentoring Research ---
http://ehrweb.aaas.org/sciMentoring/index.php
Office of Science Education: Life Works [careers, education, health] ---
http://science.education.nih.gov/LifeWorks.nsf/feature/index.htm
Science Museum: Brought to Life ---
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife.aspx
Boston Science Partnership [middle school]
http://www.bostonscience.org/
Teaching Resources: Botany and Plant Pathology ---
http://www.ag.purdue.edu/btny/pages/teachingresources.aspx
APSnet: Advanced Plant Pathology Resources ---
http://www.apsnet.org/edcenter/advanced/Pages/default.aspx
Teaching College-Level Science and Engineering ---
http://mit.edu/5.95/
The Futures Channel (Science and Engineering) ---
http://www.thefutureschannel.com/index.php
Kentucky Critter Files ---
http://www.uky.edu/Ag/CritterFiles/casefile/casefile.htm
Environmental Sciences & Sustainability: The NY Academy of Sciences ---
http://www.nyas.org/Topic.aspx?tid=a43f6ad6-0e70-49ce-9f03-afb7b87de3e5
Library of Online Technology Articles ---
http://www.techcast.org/Library.aspx
Earth As Art 3: A Landsat Perspective ---
http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/earthasart/Pages/default.aspx
CENtral Science (chemical and engineering news) ---
http://cenblog.org/
Case Studies in Primary Health Care ---
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/courses/casestudiesinphc/index.cfm
Daguerreotypes at Harvard (photography history) ---
http://preserve.harvard.edu/daguerreotypes/
An Introduction to Cosmology by Sean Carroll (five lectures) ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/an_introduction_to_cosmology_by_sean_carroll.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Solar Cookers International ---
http://solarcooking.org/
From the Scout Report on October 21, 2011
New film takes a look at the legacy of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project
Why the Pruitt-Igoe housing project failed
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2011/10/american-public-housing
Pruitt-Igoe Photographs
http://tjrhino1.umsl.edu/whmc/view.php?description_get=Pruitt+Igoe
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
http://www.pruitt-igoe.com/
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: Journal of Architectural Education [pdf]
http://www.pruitt-igoe.com/temp/1991-bristol-pruitt-igoemyth.pdf
Living St. Louis: Wendell Pruitt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abT8jDrbQpU
William Leo Igoe
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=I000005
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
60 Second Adventures in Thought (animated sequence that highlights six
famous thought experiments) ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/60_second_adventures_in_thought.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Some of these are stupid and funny.
Immigrants in 2010 Metropolitan America ---
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/1013_immigration_wilson_singer.aspx
Office of Science Education: Life Works [careers, education, health] ---
http://science.education.nih.gov/LifeWorks.nsf/feature/index.htm
Philosophy Now: A Magazine of Ideas
http://www.philosophynow.org/
Marshall McLuhan on the Stupidest Debate in the History of Debating (Jimmy
Carter and Gerald Ford) ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/marshall_mcluhan_on_the_stupidest_debate_in_the_history_of_debating.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
North Carolina Exploring Cultural Heritage Online ---
http://www.ncecho.org/
The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920-1925 ---
http://research.hrc.utexas.edu/bookshopdoor/#1
The Real Rosie the Riveter Project (labor, women, feminist, gender) ---
http://dlib.nyu.edu/rosie/
Human Rights ---
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/humanrights/
Witness (Human Rights Causes) ---
http://www.witness.org/
International Museum of Women ---
http://imow.org
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
Witness (Human Rights Causes) ---
http://www.witness.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
International Museum of Women ---
http://imow.org
Science Museum: Brought to Life ---
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife.aspx
Massachusetts Historical Society: Object of the Month ---
http://www.masshist.org/objects/
Massachusetts Historical Society: Object of the Month ---
http://www.masshist.org/objects/
Nantucket Historical Association ---
http://www.nha.org/
Humanities on the Road (Videos in Pennsylvania) ---
http://www.humanitiesontheroad.org/
The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920-1925
---
http://research.hrc.utexas.edu/bookshopdoor/#1
John Turturro Reads Italo Calvino’s Animated Fairy Tale ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/john_turturro_reads_italo_calvinos_animated_fairy_tale.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
The Real Rosie the Riveter Project (labor, women, feminist, gender) ---
http://dlib.nyu.edu/rosie/
Earth As Art 3: A Landsat Perspective ---
http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/earthasart/Pages/default.aspx
The Daily Princetonian Larry DuPraz Digital Archives (media, newspapers) ---
http://theprince.princeton.edu/
Unknown No Longer: Virginia Historical Society (African American History) ---
http://unknownnolonger.vahistorical.org/
The Negro Travelers' Green Book, Spring 1956 (African American History) ---
http://library.sc.edu/digital/collections/greenbook.html
Digital Horizons (North Dakota and Minnesota History) ---
http://digitalhorizonsonline.org
Daguerreotypes at Harvard (photography history) ---
http://preserve.harvard.edu/daguerreotypes/
"A History of Photography from its beginnings till the 1920s," by
Robert Leggat ---
http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/
History of Photography
www.kbnet.co.uk/rleggat/photo
From the Scout Report on October 14, 2011
Big Ben’s tilt now visible to the naked eye
Leaning tower of London? Big Ben is tilting
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44846729/ns/travel-news/t/leaning-tower-london-big-ben-tilting/
Big Ben leaning over: Time's up for tilting clock tower of London
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2047021/Big-Ben-leaning-Times-tilting-clock-tower-London.html
Big Ben: UK Parliament
http://www.parliament.uk/bigben
Big Ben Webcam
http://www.camvista.com/england/london/bigben.php3
Big Ben Strikes 12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9wWBjnaEck&feature=related
Big Ben Dashboard Widget
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/justforfun/bigben_thedashboardwidgetandgadgetdevelopment.html
London’s Historic Buildings Hit: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Parliament
Houses Struck
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=lFNQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=HA4EAAAAIBAJ&dq=big%20ben&pg=6773%2C2000920
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
Legendary Folklorist Alan Lomax: ‘The Land Where the Blues Began’---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/legendary_folklorist_alan_lomax_the_land_where_the_blues_began.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music
Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Writing Tutorials
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
October 13, 2011
October 14, 2011
October 15, 2011
October 17, 2011
October 18, 2011
October 19, 2011
October 20, 2011
October 21, 2011
October 22, 2011
October 24, 2011
October 25, 2011
October 26, 2011
I hope you watched CBS 60 Minutes on October23, 2011
Following an informative segment on the life of Steve Jobs (he was much more of
an unbathing mystic hippie than I realized), there was an even better segment on
the impact of the iPad on many autistic people (not just children, but it's best
to try them on iPads as early as possible). Note that the iPad is not a magic
bullet for all people afflicted with autism. But for some the touch screen using
some amazing autism apps became a miracle that allows them to communicate what
has heretofore been locked inside their heads. The iPad for some is an amazing
way for them to reveal their talents and their emotions. Also note the recent
discoveries using brain scans of autism victims.
I still have no incentive myself to invest the time and money in an iPad,
although I should perhaps begin testing some apps that might be relevant for my
life and work. But for autistic victims and their families, it's grossly
negligent not to try out iPads. Note that it may be best to also have teachers
specially trained in both iPad apps and autism rather than just starting an
autistic person out cold with an iPad.
The video segment entitled "Studying autism and iPads" is for a short time
available free at
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7385702n&tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.1
This is a fantastic module as long as you realize they might've cherry picked
the success cases.
The earlier segment "Steve Jobs: Revelations from a tech giant" us fir a
short time available free at
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-20124391/steve-jobs-revelations-from-a-tech-giant/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
Note that he was not a particularly good manager of people and did some mean
things in his life. This segment illustrates how even our heroes have their
imperfections.
The 60 Minutes Interview with Walter Isaacson, Author of New Steve Jobs
Biography (29 minute video) ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/steve_jobs_biography.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Solar Cookers International ---
http://solarcooking.org/
Case Studies in Primary Health Care ---
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/courses/casestudiesinphc/index.cfm
"Psychiatric Meds: Perils, Promises, and Profits," Chronicle of Higher
Education's Chronicle Review, October 23, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Psychiatric-Meds-Perils/129466/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
John Horgan's piece
"Are Psychiatric Medications Making Us Sicker?" (The
Chronicle Review, September 23) should raise our consciousness on this
profound scientific, societal, and health issue. There are the medication
issues, and there are also the diagnostic issues, and these are of course
related. An increasing number of diagnostic categories, discrete disorders,
and so on, are allegedly being identified, so we can expect new psychiatric
medications to be developed presumably to treat them.
The diagnostic growth industry represented by the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric
Association increasingly pathologizes human behavior, expanding by more than
200 percent the number of disorders from the original DSM of 1952
to the current fourth edition—a process we can reasonably call "the
sickening of society." Heading into the fifth edition of this influential
document, due in 2013, with yet more disorders expected to make their debut,
a chorus of criticisms about it has arisen, including from the chair of the
fourth edition!
So many scientific and societal questions have
arisen over the DSM in recent years that, in my view, serious
consideration should be given to scrapping this failing manifesto of mental
illness and starting over. But at the very least, a full-scale debate about
the issues raised by Horgan and many others should be joined by scientists,
practitioners, and the public, whose health is on the line.
Frank Farley
Professor of Educational Psychology
Temple University
Philadelphia
Former President (1993)
American Psychological Association
"Peter Wehrwein Astounding increase in antidepressant use by Americans,"
by Peter Wehrwein, Editor, Harvard Health Letter, October 20. 2011 ---
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub
Jensen Comment
Purportedly women are twice as likely to be clinically depressed (on Celexa,
Effexor, Paxil, Zoloft, etc.) as men, although there may be bias in the
detection system. Men might be more likely to keep their disease hidden from
doctors as part of the macho-male syndrome that also keeps many males from
crying in front of other people.
"Memoir About Schizophrenia Spurs Others to Come Forward," by Benedict
Carey, The New York Times, October 22, 2011 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/health/23livesside.html?hpw
Researchers have long wondered how some people with
schizophrenia can manage their symptoms well enough to build full,
successful lives. But such people do not exactly line up to enroll in
studies.
Researchers have long wondered how some people with
schizophrenia can manage their symptoms well enough to build full,
successful lives. But such people do not exactly line up to enroll in
studies. Enlarge This Image Mikel Healey/USC School of Law
For one thing, they are almost always secretive
about their diagnosis. For another, volunteering for a study would add yet
another burden to their stressful lives.
But that is beginning to change, partly because of
the unlikely celebrity of a fellow sufferer. In 2007, after years of
weighing the possible risks, Elyn R. Saks, a professor of law at the
University of Southern California, published a memoir of her struggle with
schizophrenia, “The Center Cannot Hold.” It became an overnight sensation in
mental health circles and a best seller, and it won Dr. Saks a $500,000
MacArthur Foundation “genius” award.
For psychiatric science, the real payoff was her
speaking tour. At mental health conferences here and abroad, Dr. Saks, 56,
attracted not only doctors and therapists, but also high-functioning people
with the same diagnosis as herself — a fellowship of fans, some of whom have
volunteered to participate in studies.
“People in the audience would stand up and
self-disclose, or sometimes I would be on a panel with someone” who had a
similar experience, Dr. Saks said. She also received scores of e-mails from
people who had read the book and wanted to meet for lunch. She told many of
them about the possibility of participating in a research project.
She now has two studies going, one in Los Angeles
and another in San Diego, tracking the routines and treatment decisions of
these extraordinary people. The movie producer Jerry Weintraub has optioned
the book.
It has been a remarkable response, considering that
the book was almost abandoned. Dr. Saks surveyed friends and colleagues for
years before publishing it and got very mixed advice. Her husband was
against it; the risks were too high. Academic colleagues warned her that
coming out with a disorder as serious as schizophrenia could only harm her.
“You want to be known as the schizophrenic with a job?” one said.
Her friend Stephen Behnke, director of ethics at
the American Psychological Association, was supportive of her decision. “I
remember talking about it just on the cusp of when she was going to send off
the manuscript,” Dr. Behnke said. “I said that we needed to sit down and
make sure she was ready for this. It was like she was about to jump off of a
cliff.”
Jump she did. With the MacArthur money, she founded
the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy and Ethics to study mental
health and society. She is now working on another book, “Mad Women: A Most
Uncommon Friendship,” with the author Terri Cheney, who has written about
her struggles with bipolar disorder.
“I was very lucky, being in academia, where people
have been very accepting of this,” Dr. Saks said. “Most people struggling to
manage a severe mental illness do not have the luxury to do what I did.”
Forwarded by Russell
I've
learned....That
the best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.
I've
learned....That
when you're in love, it shows.
I've
learned....That
just one person saying to me, 'You've made my day!' makes my day.
I've
learned....That
having a child fall asleep in your arms is one of the most peaceful
feelings in the world.
I've
learned....That
being kind is more important than being right.
I've
learned....That
you should never say no to a gift from a child.
I've
learned....That I
can always pray for someone when I don't have the strength to help him
in some other way.
I've
learned....That no
matter how serious your life requires you to be, everyone needs a friend
to joke and laugh with.
I've
learned....That
sometimes all a person needs is a hand to hold and a heart to
understand.
I've
learned....That
simple walks with my father around the block on summer nights when I was
a child did wonders for me as an adult.
I've
learned....That
money doesn't buy class.
I've
learned....That
it's those small daily happenings that make life so spectacular.
I've
learned....That
love, not time, heals all wounds.
I've
learned....That
the easiest way for me to grow as a person is to surround myself with
people wiser than I am.
I've
learned....That
everyone you meet deserves to be greeted with a smile.
I've
learned....That no
one is perfect until you fall in love with them.
I've
learned....That I
wish I could have told my Mom that I love her one more time before she
passed away.
I've
learned....That a
smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.
I've
learned....That
when your newly born grandchild holds your little finger in his little
fist, you're hooked for life.
If you are fully tenured and your supervisor is becoming increasingly
troublesome or seems to no longer see any humor in the Department, forward this
to him or her (it's up to you whether you forward it anonymously) ---
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/81939659/
Sir Ian McKellen Reads Manual for Changing Tires in Dramatic Voice ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/sir_ian_mckellen_reads_manual_for_changing_tires_in_dramatic_voice.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
JEWISH ZODIAC ---
http://www.jewzo.com/Jewish-Zodiac-Placemat-p/jz-1001.htm
Forwarded by Eric Cohen
You call THAT a test message?
Now THIS is a test message.
1) Why did the Sabbath, observed by Jews beginning on Friday nights, change
to be celebrated by Christians on Sundays?
2) Why was the Western Roman Empire more easily and quickly conquered than
the Eastern Roman Empire?
3) If a urinalysis test comes back with results showing a large amount of
blood and also showing few to no red blood cells seen (per high power field),
what is the likely cause of this otherwise seeming disparity?
4) You're in Miami, Florida. There is great chaos going on around you, caused
by a hurricane and severe floods. There are huge masses of water all around you.
You are a CNN photographer and you are in the middle of this great disaster. The
situation is very dire -- nearly hopeless.
There are houses and people floating by you, disappearing into the swirling
waters. Nature is showing all its destructive power and is ripping everything
away with it. Suddenly you see a man in the water. He is gasping for air,
fighting for his life, trying not to be taken away by the torrents of water and
mud.
You move closer.
Somehow the man looks familiar.
Suddenly it strikes you. You know who the struggling man is! It's the
President!!! At that very same moment, you notice that the raging waters are
about to take him away, forever.
You have two options. You can save him or you can take the best photo of your
life. Again, you can save the life of the President, or you can shoot a Pulitzer
Prize winning photo -- a unique photographic record displaying the death of one
of the world's most powerful men.
Would you (a) select color film, or (b) go with the simplicity of classic black
and white?
5) To which composer and song is it a custom to have the orchestra members
stop playing one by one, get up one by one, blow out a candle, and leave the
stage as the song continues until there is only one person performing...and why?
Humor Between October 1 and October 31, 2011 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q4.htm#Humor103111
Humor Between September 1 and September 30, 2011
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q3.htm#Humor093011
Humor Between August 1 and August 31, 2011 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q3.htm#Humor083111
Humor Between July 1 and July 31, 2011
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q3.htm#Humor073111
Humor Between May 1 and June 30, 2011 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q2.htm#Humor063011
Humor Between April 1 and April 30, 2011
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q2.htm#Humor043011
Humor Between February 1 and March 31, 2011
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q1.htm#Humor033111
Humor Between January 1 and January 31, 2011
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q1.htm#Humor013111
Some of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
Find a College
College Atlas ---
http://www.collegeatlas.org/
Among other things the above site provides acceptance rate percentages
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accountancy Discussion ListServs:
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a
ListServ (usually for free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc
Roles of a ListServ ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
|
CPAS-L (Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo
(Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation
Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
All
my online pictures ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
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
As you might have guessed, the topic I have been asked to speak on is IFRS adoption in the U.S. Later in the day, I will participate in a panel discussion on the same topic with a very senior partner from the KPMG's "Department of Professional Practice" and the current FASB Academic Fellow, Terry Iannaconi and Lynn Rees, respectively. I go way back with Terry and Lynn, and I am looking forward to being on a panel with both of them.
So as not to steal any 'thunder' away from my talk, I'm going to try and keep a lid on my criticisms of IFRS adoption until then. But, I will say that I plan to provide a point-by-point rebuttal of the latest arguments for IFRS adoption, which were made by its paid promoters, Hans Hoogervorst and Harvey Goldschmidt, at the latest AICPA-IASB love fest.
What I would like to address in this post, though, is a question that I have asked myself for a long time now, but now seems like the right time to write a post about it: why are there so few academic accountants who blog?
I decided to blog soon after I took early retirement from academia because it had recently emerged as an extremely convenient and direct approach for generating web content that might lead others to learn about the professional services I could provide. Back in 2007, blogging wasn't nearly as pervasive as it is now, and I was certain that my early mover advantage in the competition for visibility would soon dissipate. Surely, other accounting academics wanted to write about their own pet peeves, or to use the medium to have more of a role in important questions facing the profession and our students.