Tidbits on December 8, 2011
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
In 1977, after the Sunset Hill Hotel and Resort was nearly all demolished, our
cottage (before it was ours)
was moved from the golf course across a tennis court and up to where the former
hotel site.
This week I show pictures of the move to the new site
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/CottageHistory/NewSite/Set01/Set01.htm
Echo Lake is at
the base of Cannon Mountain about 10 miles from our cottage
"A Short Gallop to White Horse Ledge," by John Compton, Happy Hiker in
the White Mountains, November 1, 2011 ---
http://1happyhiker.blogspot.com/2011/11/short-gallop-to-white-horse-ledge.html
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
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/
Question
Are their trails in our White Mountains of New Hampshire that have ice in summer
as well as winter?
See "The Ice Gulch, Would I do it Again" by John Compton, August 5, 2011 ---
http://1happyhiker.blogspot.com/2011_08_05_archive.html
Okay, you might ask, is there
really ice in the Ice Gulch, even in August? Yes, there is! The next photo
shows one small patch of ice. There were many larger patches, but they were
at the bottom of some of those deep gaps that I mentioned above. I took some
photos, but none of them really turned out, even with using a flash to
illuminate these dark, dank, deep spots.
White
Mountain News ---
http://www.whitemtnews.com/
Tidbits on December 8, 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
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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
Cultural & Academic Films ---
http://www.archive.org/details/culturalandacademicfilms
Stephen Colbert Talks Science with Astrophysicist Neil
deGrasse Tyson ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/stephen_colbert_talks_science_with_astrophysicist_neil_degrasse_tyson.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Goshawk Flies Through Tiny Spaces in Slo-Mo! ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2CFckjfP-1E
To Infinity and Beyond: A Mind-Bending Documentary from the
BBC ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/ito_infinity_and_beyondi_a_mind-bending_documentary_from_the_bbc.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Why dogs are easier to herd than cats
Walking 16 Dogs ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=qFP28ANXLLA&vq=medium
Fifth grade Yup'ik school kids in Quinhagak and the
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=LyviyF-N23A
The World’s First Mobile Phone (1922) ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/worlds_first_mobile_phone_1922.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
One Ringy Dingy ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9e3dTOJi0o
Holiday Greeting from Ernst & Young ---
http://www.ey.com/GL/en/Home/Holiday_Connection
Change for a Dollar ---
http://www.flickspire.com/m/Share_This/changeforadollar?lsid=161f9da9b7692b6854ca64548e80ab61
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
John Coltrane Plays Only Live Performance of A
Love Supreme ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/coltrane_only_live_performance_a_love_supreme.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Amazing Grace and the Black Keys on the Piano ---
http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=1312
A Tune to Make You Smile (with great jitterbug
dancing) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=oXvJ8UquYoo&vq=large%3E
It takes a while to get to the tune!
Let’s Get Lost: Bruce Weber’s Sad Film of Jazz
Legend Chet Baker ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/ilets_get_losti_bruce_webers_sad_film_of_jazz_legend_chet_baker.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
2011 National Geographic Photo Contest ---
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/photo-contest/
The First Actresses
http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/the-first-actresses/first_actresses_exhibition.php
Cultural & Academic Films ---
http://www.archive.org/details/culturalandacademicfilms
A Day in Venezia ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/a_day_in_venezia.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
National Building Museum ---
http://www.nbm.org/
Great Buildings Collection (architecture) ---
http://www.greatbuildings.com/gbc.html Moving Image Source (history of film) ---
http://www.movingimagesource.us/
Buildings in Cities ---
http://www.emporis.com/en/
National Gallery of Great Buildings ---
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/New_National_Gallery.html
Life on a Train ---
http://www.openmyeyeslord.net/LifeOnTheTrain.htm
The World’s First Mobile Phone (1922) ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/worlds_first_mobile_phone_1922.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Illustrations to Dickens ---
http://digital.libraries.ou.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fdickens2
Pacific Standard Time at the Getty (art history)
---
http://www.getty.edu/pacificstandardtime/
NIST: A Walk Through Time (watches, clocks, timepieces) ---
http://www.nist.gov/pml/general/time
Welcome Home Howard, Or Whatever Became of the
Daring Aviator?
Howard Hughes Aviation Photograph Collection ---
http://digital.library.unlv.edu/hughes/
TIME Photos: Stalin’s daughter Lana Peters
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2100515,00.html
Stanley Kubrick’s Photographs: Browse Them or Buy
Them ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/stanley_kubricks_photographs.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
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
"Poetry: Dos-à-dos With Dickinson," by Lisa Russ Spaar,
Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, December 5, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/spaar-on-poetry-dos-a-dos-with-dickinson/41777?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
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 December 8, 2011
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2011/TidbitsQuotations120811.htm
The booked National
Debt on August 21, 2011 was slightly over $14 trillion ---
U.S. National Debt Clock ---
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
The January 2010 Booked National Debt Plus Unbooked Entitlements Debt
The GAO estimated $76 trillion Present Value in January 2010 unless something
drastic is done.
Click Here |
http://www.pgpf.org/~/media/PGPF/Media/PDF/2010/03/fiscalsustainabilityGAONationsLongTermFiscalOutlook03032010.ashx?pid={97E10657-8193-4455-871C-4E7A6A9EE084}
There are many ways to describe the
federal government’s long-term fiscal challenge. One method for capturing
the challenge in a single number is to measure the “fiscal gap.” The fiscal
gap represents the difference, or gap, between revenue and spending in
present value terms over a certain period, such as 75 years, that would need
to be closed in order to achieve a specified debt level (e.g., today’s debt
to GDP ratio) at the end of the period.2 From the fiscal gap, one can
calculate the size of action needed—in terms of tax increases, spending
reductions, or, more likely, some combination of the two—to close the gap;
that is, for debt as a share of GDP to equal today’s ratio at the end of the
period. For example, under our Alternative simulation, the fiscal gap is 9.0
percent of GDP (or a little over $76 trillion in present value dollars) (see
table 2). This means that revenue would have to increase by about 50 percent
or noninterest spending would have to be reduced by 34 percent on average
over the next 75 years (or some combination of the two) to keep debt at the
end of the period from exceeding its level at the beginning of 2010 (53
percent of GDP).
Peter G.
Peterson Website on Deficit/Debt Solutions ---
http://www.pgpf.org/
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
The World’s First Mobile Phone (1922) ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/worlds_first_mobile_phone_1922.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
One Ringy Dingy ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9e3dTOJi0o
Compare High Speed Internet Providers in Your Zip Code Area ---
http://www.broadbandexpert.com/
Drought's impact beyond Texas and Oklahoma
"Worst drought in 200 years paralyses Danube river shipping," by Bruno
Waterfield, The Telegraph, December 5, 2011 ---
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/hungary/8936080/Worst-drought-in-200-years-paralyses-Danube-river-shipping.html
"Progress but Also Insecurity: An Insider's View of Life in Today's Russia,"
Knowledge@Wharton, November 22, 2011 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2885
Russia experienced one of the largest mass
privatization efforts ever undertaken in the history of the world, says
Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor
Philip M. Nichols. "Virtually everything was at
one time controlled by the state. Now that is no longer true. Virtually all
assets in Russia have been privatized. However, some of the largest and most
valuable assets have been renationalized, or they are privatized in a way
that allows the state to continue to control them."
A prime example is the energy conglomerate,
Gazprom, Russia's biggest company and one in which the Russian government
now holds a controlling stake. Another, very highly publicized example is
the state's seizure of the petroleum company Yukos, whose former head,
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was convicted of acquiring the company illegally and
is currently in prison.
It is against this backdrop that Nichols
recently interviewed Vitali Naishul, president of the Institute for the
Study of the Russian Economy and the Center for the Study of Russian
Socio-Political Language, and widely acknowledged as one of the creators of
the market economy in Russia. During the Soviet era, Naishul worked in the
inner circles of Gosplan, the Soviet Union's central planning agency. In
addition, he was one of the founding members of the Snakehill Group, a
gathering of economists who met regularly to study and develop strategies to
manage the future of the Soviet Union. A paper Naishul wrote for that group,
later published as the book Another Life, became the
blueprint for the Yeltsin-era economic reforms. "Essentially, he is the
architect of the modern Russian state," says Nichols.
In the interview with Nichols, Naishul talks
about privatization in Russia as well as life in Russia today --
improvements in material well-being, but also a renewed awareness of
insecurity about individual and property rights. As Nichols explains it,
"there is no sense that the state cannot take back what it gave you, no
sense that property is inviolate. As long as people still see the state as a
powerful actor that can take property, there is a feeling of unease. Will
your house be your house tomorrow? Will your car be your car tomorrow? That
is the kind of uncertainty that Vitali speaks about." In Russia today,
Nichols adds, "it's not that people worry on a daily basis that some
physical harm will come to them; it's more the sense that physical harm
could come to them."
Naishul remains a well-known figure today in
Russia, adds Nichols, who works with him on projects involving business
ethics and Russian values. He says he has seen strangers come up to Naishul
on the streets of Moscow and ask to shake his hand. "Then they giggle,"
Nichols says, "because in Russia, an intellectual is a rock star. That's how
Vitali continues to be seen in Russia today."
Continued in article
Watch the video
Bob Jensen's neglected threads on acquisitions ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#Pooling
"Undercover Researchers Expose Chinese Internet Water Army: An undercover
team of computer scientists reveals the practices of people who are paid to post
on websites," Technology Review, November 22, 2011 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27357/
Thank you Glen Gray for the heads up
In China, paid posters are known as the Internet
Water Army because they are ready and willing to 'flood' the internet for
whoever is willing to pay. The flood can consist of comments, gossip and
information (or disinformation) and there seems to be plenty of demand for
this army's services.
This is an insidious tide. Positive recommendations
can make a huge difference to a product's sales but can equally drive a
competitor out of the market. When companies spend millions launching new
goods and services, it's easy to understand why they might want to use every
tool at their disposal to achieve success.
The loser in all this is the consumer who is conned
into making a purchase decision based on false premises. And for the moment,
consumers have little legal redress or even ways to spot the practice.
Today, Cheng Chen at the University of Victoria in
Canada and a few pals describe how Cheng worked undercover as a paid poster
on Chinese websites to understand how the Internet Water Army works. He and
his friends then used what he learnt to create software that can spot paid
posters automatically.
Paid posting is a well-managed activity involving
thousands of individuals and tens of thousands of different online IDs. The
posters are usually given a task to register on a website and then to start
generating content in the form of posts, articles, links to websites and
videos, even carrying out Q&A sessions.
Often, this content is pre-prepared or the posters
receive detailed instructions on the type of things they can say. And there
is even a quality control team who check that the posts meet a certain
'quality' threshold. A post would not be validated if it is deleted by the
host or was composed of garbled words, for example.
Having worked undercover to find out how the system
worked, Cheng and co then studied the pattern of posts that appeared on a
couple of big Chinese websites: Sina.com and Sohu.com. In particular, they
studied the comments on several news stories about two companies that they
suspected of paying posters and who were involved in a public spat over each
other's services.
The Sina dataset consisted of over 500 users making
more than 20,000 comments; the Sohu dataset involved over 200 users and more
than 1000 comments.
Cheng and co went through all the posts manually
identifying those they believed were from paid posters and then set about
looking for patterns in their behaviour that can differentiate them from
legitimate users. (Just how accurate were there initial impressions is a
potential problem, they admit, but the same one that spam filters also have
to deal with.)
They discovered that paid posters tend to post more
new comments than replies to other comments. They also post more often with
50 per cent of them posting every 2.5 minutes on average. They also move on
from a discussion more quickly than legitimate users, discarding their IDs
and never using them again.
What's more, the content they post is measurably
different. These workers are paid by the volume and so often take shortcuts,
cutting and pasting the same content many times. This would normally
invalidate their posts but only if it is spotted by the quality control
team.
So Cheng and co built some software to look for
repetitions and similarities in messages as well as the other behaviours
they'd identified. They then tested it on the dataset they'd downloaded from
Sina and Sohu and found it to be remarkably good, with an accuracy of 88 per
cent in spotting paid posters. "Our test results with real-world datasets
show a very promising performance," they say.
That's an impressive piece of work and a good first
step towards combating this problem, although they'll need to test it on a
much wider range of datasets. Nevertheless, these guys have the basis of a
software package that will weed out a significant fraction of paid posters,
provided these people conform to the stereotype that Cheng and co have
measured.
And therein lies the rub. As soon as the first
version of the software hits the market, paid posters will learn to modify
their behaviour in a way that games the system. What Cheng and co have
started is a cat and mouse game just like those that plague the antivirus
and spam filtering industries.
And that means, the battle ahead with the Internet
Water Army will be long and hard.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on computer and network security are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection
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
Bad Habits of Misleading Prospective Students are Hard to Break
"Law Schools Pump Up Classes and Tuition, Though Jobs Remain Scarce,"
Chronicle of Higher Education, July 16, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/law-schools-pump-up-classes-tuition-though-jobs-remain-scarce/34657
"Law Schools Mull Whether They Are Churning Out Too Many Lawyers," by
Katherine Mangan, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 9, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/07/21755n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
"Free to Good Homes: U. of Miami Law Grads," by Don Troop,
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 12, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Free-to-Good-Homes-U-of/124899/
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
ABA Approves New Law School Placement Data Reporting Rules
From Paul Caron's TaxProf Blog on December 6, 2011 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/
National Law Journal,
ABA Gives Ground on Law Schools' Graduate Jobs Data Reporting:
The ABA is
changing the way it collects graduate employment information from law
schools.
The council of the
Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar on
Dec. 3 approved a new annual questionnaire intended to gather more
detailed information about where recent law grads find work. The change
came as law students, graduates and three U.S. senators heaped criticism
on the ABA and law schools for not providing prospective law students
with an accurate picture of graduate employment and salary levels. ...
The updated questionnaire contains
several new elements:
- Law schools will report their graduate
employment and salary data directly to the ABA, rather than through
the NALP.
- Graduate employment information will be
made available to the public faster. Instead of being published two
years after a particular class graduates, the data will be collected
earlier in the year and will be made public approximately one year
after graduation.
- Law schools will have to report whether
graduates are in jobs funded by the schools, themselves. They will
have to stipulate whether graduates are in jobs requiring bar
passage; positions for which J.D.s are an advantage; professional
positions that do not require a J.D., non-professional positions;
and whether jobs are long-term or short-term.
- Employment and salary information must be
reported for each individual graduate rather than in the aggregate,
giving the ABA the ability to audit the figures.
The new
questionnaire does not include all the changes that transparency
advocates have been pushing for. Law School Transparency — a nonprofit
organization that seeks to improve consumer data for law students — has
called upon the ABA to publish school-specific salary data. That would
allow prospective law students to see how much graduates of each school
earn. ...
The new questionnaire is an improvement, said Law School Transparency
co-founder Kyle McEntee. But the ABA made a mistake by temporarily
eliminating some key questions from the 2011 survey, which went out to
law schools this fall, he said. That questionnaire did not ask schools
to report the number of graduates in the class of 2010 in full- and
part-time jobs or in jobs that require a J.D., meaning that less
information will be available about the class of 2010 than for previous
classes. ... "There are still questions about [the changes] took so long
and why it still falls short of providing the best consumer
information," McEntee said.
Bob Jensen's threads on Turkey Times for Overstuffed Law Schools ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#OverstuffedLawSchools
Another CBS Sixty Minutes Blockbuster (December 4, 2011)
"Prosecuting Wall Street"
Free download for a short while
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57336042/prosecuting-wall-street/?tag=pop;stories
Note that this episode features my hero Frank Partnoy
Key provisions of Sarbox with respect to the Sixty Minutes revelations:
The act also covers issues such as
auditor independence,
corporate governance,
internal control assessment, and enhanced financial disclosure.
Sarbanes–Oxley Section 404: Assessment of internal control ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act#Sarbanes.E2.80.93Oxley_Section_404:_Assessment_of_internal_control
Both the corporate CEO and the external auditing firm are to
explicitly sign off on the following and are subject (turns out to be a
ha, ha joke) to huge fines and jail time for egregious failure to
do so:
- Assess both the design and operating
effectiveness of selected internal controls related to significant
accounts and relevant assertions, in the context of material
misstatement risks;
- Understand the flow of transactions,
including IT aspects, in sufficient detail to identify points at
which a misstatement could arise;
- Evaluate company-level (entity-level)
controls, which correspond to the components of the
COSO framework;
- Perform a fraud risk assessment;
- Evaluate controls designed to
prevent or detect fraud, including management override of
controls;
- Evaluate controls over the period-end
financial
reporting process;
- Scale the assessment based on the size and
complexity of the company;
- Rely on management's work based on factors
such as competency, objectivity, and risk;
- Conclude on the adequacy of internal
control over financial reporting.
Most importantly as far as the CPA auditing firms are concerned is
that Sarbox gave those firms both a responsibility to verify that
internal controls were effective and the authority to charge more
(possibly twice as much) for each audit. Whereas in the 1990s auditing
was becoming less and less profitable, Sarbox made the auditing industry
quite prosperous after 2002.
There's a great gap between the theory of Sarbox and its enforcement
In theory, the U.S. Justice Department (including the FBI) is to enforce
the provisions of Section 404 and subject top corporate executives and audit
firm partners to huge fines (personal fines beyond corporate fines) and jail
time for signing off on Section 404 provisions that they know to be false.
But to date, there has not been one indictment in enormous frauds where the
Justice Department knows that executives signed off on Section 404 with
intentional lies.
In theory the SEC is to also enforce Section 404, but the SEC in Frank
Partnoy's words is toothless. The SEC cannot send anybody to jail. And the
SEC has established what seems to be a policy of fining white collar
criminals less than 20% of the haul, thereby making white collar crime
profitable even if you get caught. Thus, white collar criminals willingly
pay their SEC fines and ride off into the sunset with a life of luxury
awaiting.
And thus we come to the December 4 Sixty Minutes module that features
two of the most egregious failures to enforce Section 404:
The astonishing case of CitiBank
The astonishing case of Countrywide (now part of Bank of America)
The Astonishing Case of CitiBank
What makes the Sixty Minutes show most interesting are the whistle
blowing revelations by a former Citi Vice President in Charge of Fraud
Investigations
- What has to make the CitiBank revelations the most embarrassing
revelations on the Sixty Minutes blockbuster emphasis that top
CItiBank executives were not only informed by a Vice President in Charge of
Fraud Investigation of huge internal control inadequacies, the outside U.S.
government top accountant, the U.S. Comptroller General, sent an official
letter to CitiBank executives notifying them of their Section 404 internal
control failures.
- Eight days after receiving the official warning from the government, the
CEO of CitiBank flipped his middle finger at the U.S. Comptroller General
and signed off on Section 404 provisions that he'd also been informed by his
Vice President of Fraud and his Internal Auditing Department were being
violated.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-24/what-vikram-pandit-knew-and-when-he-knew-it-commentary-by-jonathan-weil.html
- What the Sixty Minutes show failed to mention is that the
external auditing firm of KPMG also flipped a bird at the U.S. Comptroller
General and signed off on the adequacy of its client's internal controls.
- A few months thereafter CitiBank begged for and got hundreds of billions
in bailout money from the U.S. Government to say afloat.
- The implication is that CitiBank and the other Wall Street corporations
are just to0 big to prosecute by the Justice Department. The Justice
Department official interviewed on the Sixty Minutes show sounded
like hollow brass wimpy taking hands off orders from higher authorities in
the Justice Department.
- The SEC worked out a settlement with CitiBank, but the fine is such a
joke that the judge in the case has to date refused to accept the
settlement. This is so typical of SEC hand slapping settlements --- and the
hand slaps are with a feather.
The astonishing case of Countrywide (now part of Bank of America)
- Countrywide Financial before 2007 was the largest issuer of mortgages on
Main Streets throughout the nation and by estimates of one of its own
whistle blowing executives in charge of internal fraud investigations over
60% of those mortgages were fraudulent.
- After Bank of America purchased the bankrupt Countrywide, BofA top
executives tried to buy off the Countrywide executive in charge of fraud
investigations to keep him from testifying. When he refused BofA fired him.
- Whereas the Justice Department has not even attempted to indict
Countrywide executives and the Countrywide auditing firm of Grant Thornton
(later replaced by KPMG) to bring indictments for Section 404 violations,
the FTC did work out an absurdly low settlement of $108 million for 450,000
borrowers paying "excessive fees" and the attorneys for those borrowers ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/business/countrywide-to-pay-borrowers-108-million-in-settlement.html
This had nothing to do with the massive mortgage frauds committed by
Countrywide.
- Former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo settled the SEC’s Largest-Ever
Financial Penalty ($22.5 million) Against a Public Company's Senior
Executive
http://sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-197.htm
The CBS Sixty Minutes show estimated that this is less than 20% of what he
stole and leaves us with the impression that Mozilo deserves jail time but
will probably never be charged by the Justice Department.
I was disappointed in the CBS Sixty Minutes show in that it completely
ignored the complicity of the auditing firms to sign off on the Section 404
violations of the big Wall Street banks and other huge banks that failed.
Washington Mutual was the largest bank in the world to ever go bankrupt. Its
auditor, Deloitte, settled with the SEC for Washington Mutual for
$18.5 million. This isn't even a hand slap relative to the billions lost by
WaMu's investors and creditors.
No jail time is expected for any partners of the negligent auditing firms.
.KPMG settled for peanuts with Countrywide for
$24 million of negligence and New Century for
$45 million of negligence costing investors billions.
Bob Jensen's Rotten to the Core threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on how white collar crime pays even if you get caught
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#CrimePays
"Should Some Bankers Be Prosecuted?" by Jeff Madrick and Frank
Partnoy, New York Review of Books, November 10, 2011 ---
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/10/should-some-bankers-be-prosecuted/
Thank you Robert Walker for the heads up!
More than three years have passed since the
old-line investment bank Lehman Brothers stunned the financial markets by
filing for bankruptcy. Several federal government programs have since tried
to rescue the financial system: the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief
Program, the Federal Reserve’s aggressive expansion of credit, and President
Obama’s additional $800 billion stimulus in 2009. But it is now apparent
that these programs were not sufficient to create the conditions for a full
economic recovery. Today, the unemployment rate remains above 9 percent, and
the annual rate of economic growth has slipped to roughly 1 percent during
the last six months. New crises afflict world markets while the American
economy may again slide into recession after only a tepid recovery from the
worst recession since the Great Depression.
n our article in the last issue,1 we showed that,
contrary to the claims of some analysts, the federally regulated mortgage
agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were not central causes of the crisis.
Rather, private financial firms on Wall Street and around the country
unambiguously and overwhelmingly created the conditions that led to
catastrophe. The risk of losses from the loans and mortgages these firms
routinely bought and sold, particularly the subprime mortgages sold to
low-income borrowers with poor credit, was significantly greater than
regulators realized and was often hidden from investors. Wall Street bankers
made personal fortunes all the while, in substantial part based on profits
from selling the same subprime mortgages in repackaged securities to
investors throughout the world.
Yet thus far, federal agencies have launched few
serious lawsuits against the major financial firms that participated in the
collapse, and not a single criminal charge has been filed against anyone at
a major bank. The federal government has been far more active in rescuing
bankers than prosecuting them.
In September 2011, the Securities and Exchange
Commission asserted that overall it had charged seventy-three persons and
entities with misconduct that led to or arose from the financial crisis,
including misleading investors and concealing risks. But even the SEC’s
highest- profile cases have let the defendants off lightly, and did not lead
to criminal prosecutions. In 2010, Angelo Mozilo, the head of Countrywide
Financial, the nation’s largest subprime mortgage underwriter, settled SEC
charges that he misled mortgage buyers by paying a $22.5 million penalty and
giving up $45 million of his gains. But Mozilo had made $129 million the
year before the crisis began, and nearly another $300 million in the years
before that. He did not have to admit to any guilt.
The biggest SEC settlement thus far, alleging that
Goldman Sachs misled investors about a complex mortgage product—telling
investors to buy what had been conceived by some as a losing proposition—was
for $550 million, a record of which the SEC boasted. But Goldman Sachs
earned nearly $8.5 billion in 2010, the year of the settlement. No
high-level executives at Goldman were sued or fined, and only one junior
banker at Goldman was charged with fraud, in a civil case. A similar suit
against JPMorgan resulted in a $153.6 million fine, but no criminal charges.
Although both the SEC and the Financial Crisis
Inquiry Commission, which investigated the financial crisis, have referred
their own investigations to the Department of Justice, federal prosecutors
have yet to bring a single case based on the private decisions that were at
the core of the financial crisis. In fact, the Justice Department recently
dropped the one broad criminal investigation it was undertaking against the
executives who ran Washington Mutual, one of the nation’s largest and most
aggressive mortgage originators. After hundreds of interviews, the US
attorney concluded that the evidence “does not meet the exacting standards
for criminal charges.” These standards require that evidence of guilt is
“beyond a reasonable doubt.”
This August, at last, a federal regulator launched
sweeping lawsuits alleging fraud by major participants in the mortgage
crisis. The Federal Housing Finance Agency sued seventeen institutions,
including major Wall Street and European banks, over nearly $200 billion of
allegedly deceitful sales of mortgage securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac, which it oversees. The banks will argue that Fannie and Freddie were
sophisticated investors who could hardly be fooled, and it is unclear at
this early stage how successful these suits will be.
Meanwhile, several state attorneys general are
demanding a settlement for abuses by the businesses that administer
mortgages and collect and distribute mortgage payments. Negotiations are
under way for what may turn out to be moderate settlements, which would
enable the defendants to avoid admitting guilt. But others, particularly
Eric Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general, are more
aggressively pursuing cases against Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs and
Morgan Stanley, and they may yet bring criminal charges.
Successful prosecutions of individuals as well as
their firms would surely have a deterrent effect on Wall Street’s deceptive
activities; they often carry jail terms as well as financial penalties.
Perhaps as important, the failure to bring strong criminal cases also makes
it difficult for most Americans to understand how these crises occurred. Are
they simply to conclude that Wall Street made well- meaning if very big
errors of judgment, as bankers claim, that were rarely if ever illegal or
even knowingly deceptive?
What is stopping prosecution? Apparently not public
opinion. A Pew Research Opinion survey back in 2010 found that three
quarters of Americans said that government policies helped banks and
financial institutions while two thirds said the middle class and poor
received little help. In mid-2011, half of those surveyed by Pew said that
Wall Street hurts the economy more than it helps it.
Many argue that the reluctance of prosecutors
derives from the power and importance of bankers, who remain significant
political contributors and have built substantial lobbying operations. Only
5 percent of congressional bills designed to tighten financial regulations
between 2000 and 2006 passed, while 16 percent of those that loosened such
regulations were approved, according to a study by the International
Monetary Fund.2 The IMF economists found that a major reason was lobbying
efforts. In 2009 and early 2010, financial firms spent $1.3 billion to lobby
Congress during the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act. The financial
reregulation legislation was weakened in such areas as derivatives trading
and shareholder rights, and is being further watered down.
Others claim federal officials fear that punishing
the banks too much will undermine the fragile economic recovery. As one
former Fannie official, now a private financial consultant, recently told
The New York Times, “I am afraid that we risk pushing these guys off of a
cliff and we’re going to have to bail out the banks again.”
The responsibility for reluctance, however, also
lies with the prosecutors and the law itself. A central problem is that
proving financial fraud is much more difficult than proving most other
crimes, and prosecutors are often unwilling to try it. Congress could fix
this by amending federal fraud statutes to require, for example, that
prosecutors merely prove that bankers should have known rather than actually
did know they were deceiving their clients.
But even if Congress does not, it is not too late
for bold federal prosecutors to try to bring a few successful cases. A
handful of wins could create new precedents and common law that would set a
higher and clearer standard for Wall Street, encourage more ethical
practices, deter fraud—and arguably prevent future crises.
Continued in article
Watch the video! (a bit slow loading)
Lynn Turner is Partnoy's co-author of the white paper."Make Markets Be Markets"
"Bring Transparency to Off-Balance Sheet Accounting," by Frank Partnoy,
Roosevelt Institute, March 2010 ---
http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/policy-and-ideas/ideas-database/bring-transparency-balance-sheet-accounting
Watch the video!
The greatest swindle in the history of the world ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Bailout
Bob Jensen's threads on how the banking system is rotten to the core ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#InvestmentBanking
"A Degree of Practical Wisdom:: The Ratio of Educational Debt to Income as
a Basic Measurement of Law School Graduates’ Economic Viability," by Jim
Chen, SSRN, December 3, 2011 ---
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1967266
Abstract:
This article evaluates the economic viability of a
student’s decision to borrow money in order to attend law school. For
individuals, firms, and entire nations, the ratio of debt to income serves
as a measure of economic stability. The ease with which a student can carry
and retire educational debt after graduation may be the simplest measure of
educational return on investment.
Mortgage lenders evaluate prospective borrowers' debt-to-income ratios. The
spread between the front-end and back-end ratios in mortgage lending
provides a basis for extrapolating the maximum amount of educational debt
that a student should incur. Any student whose debt service exceeds the
maximum permissible spread between mortgage lenders' front-end and back-end
ratios will not be able to buy a house on credit.
These measures of affordability suggest that the maximum educational
back-end ratio (EBER) should fall in a range between 8 and 12 percent of
monthly gross income. Four percent would be even better. Other metrics of
economic viability in servicing educational debt suggest that the ratio of
total educational debt to annual income (EDAI) should range from an ideal
0.5 to a marginal 1.5.
EBER and EDAI are mathematically related ways of measuring the same thing: a
student's ability to discharge educational debt through enhanced earnings.
This article offers guidance on the use of these debt-to-income ratios to
assess the economic viability of students who borrow money in order to
attend law school.
. . .
To offer good
financial viability, defined as a ratio of education debt to annual income
no greater than 0.5, post-law school salary must exceed annual tuition by a
factor of 6 to 1. Adequate financial viability is realized when annual
salary matches or exceeds three years of law school tuition. A marginal,
arguably minimally acceptable level of financial viability requires a salary
that is equal to two years’ tuition. The following table compares some
tuition benchmarks with the salary needed to ensure the good, adequate, and
marginal levels of financial viability identified in this article:
Jensen Comment
This type of study, in my viewpoint, has some relevancy for professional schools
beyond the bachelors degree. However, I would not recommend this type of
analysis for students contemplating where to go after high school. In the first
four years, students get much more out of college than career opportunities.
There are liberal education quality considerations, greatness of faculty
considerations, socialization experiences, dating, dorm living, and intimacy
often leading to marriage. Often more expensive schools have more to offer
beyond the classroom experience. By the time students are more mature after
graduation from college, the importance of some of these "extracurricular"
experiences often diminishes.
And if we look at post-graduate law, medicine, engineering, and business
schools, the job opportunities and salary expectations are not independent of
the halo effect of where the candidate graduated. Diplomas from Harvard and Yale
Law Schools add a great deal to salary expectations. And there are huge
advantages of being able to network with alumni who often pave the way for job
opportunities. What I'm saying is going to a law school having a tuition of
$60,000 may well be worth it to graduates who take full advantage of the
"extracurricular" opportunities such as networking with alumni. And for all
practical purposes you can never be a U.S. Supreme Court justice unless you
either graduated from Harvard or Yale law schools or were on the faculty at one
of those law schools.
In other words, if you can swing it go to Yale Law school rather than UCON
(sorry Amy).
EGADS. I'm a snob.
The top hundredth of one percent of compensation in higher education
From the Chronicle of Higher Education on December 5, 2011
Executive Compensation: a Special Report
What
Private-College Presidents Make
The economic divide is not confined to
Wall Street and Main Street. A special Chronicle report
tracks executive pay—and lets you use interactive tools to find your
own stories.
|
Jensen Comment
The Chronicle ignored the salaries and benefits packages offered to newly
minted accountics science professors
The Presidents fire back by pointing out their successes in fund raising. But
they fail to note that much of the credit goes to the title on the door. For
example, the President of Harvard University is going to be a successful fund
raiser even if the job goes to Donald Duck.
Inside
Innovative Law Schools
Financial Times, December 2011 |
|
|
|
Bob Jensen's threads on Turkey Times for
Overstuffed Law Schools ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#OverstuffedLawSchools
Accountancy Doctoral Programs
December 2, 2011 reply from Bob Jensen to Dan Stone
Hi Dan,
You may want to take a look at the terrific BYU database of of information
about accounting doctoral programs ---
http://www.byuaccounting.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=University_Information
Your question is really not clear, because there are core courses in
statistics, econometrics, and probability theory in virtually all accounting
doctoral programs in AACSB accredited universities. In other words, it is
not usually possible to avoid studying econometrics by choosing a behavioral
track or non-quantitative beyond the core requirements. Michigan State many
years ago had no required core courses, but I'd bet my shirt that MSU now
has some core courses that require econometrics, statistics, and probability
theory.
Various programs have archival versus behavioral tracks versus other tracts
(e.g., accounting history at Ole Miss. and Case Western) beyond the core
requirements. For example, look at Question 14 about Cornell University that
is made public on a BYU site ---
http://aaahq.org/temp/phd/StudyMaterials/Questions/CornellUniv.pdf
BYU has a unique masters program (called a PhD Prep Track) to prepare
accounting students for admission into accounting doctoral programs (this
Prep Track program won an AAA Innovation in Accounting Education Award) ---
http://www.byuaccounting.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=So_you_want_to_get_a_Ph.D.?
You may want to take a look at the terrific BYU database of of information
about accounting doctoral programs ---
http://www.byuaccounting.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=University_Information
Respectfully,
Bob Jensen
Bob Jensen's threads on accountancy doctoral programs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
"The Myth of Work-Life Balance," by John Beeson, Harvard Business
Review Blog, December 2, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/the_myth_of_work-life_balance.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
Jensen Comment
This begs the question of "Work-Life Balance" of faculty in research
universities.
The good news is that there is an enormous amount of discretionary time for
university faculty at all ranks given the frequent long breaks for some
holidays, breaks between semesters, and breaks for the summer months for
professors who choose not to teach in summers. There are also sabbatical leaves
and in some universities' like Michigan State, there is a term without teaching
every other year. Also teaching schedules during a term are often worked out so
that the professor only teaches two or three days in a week or in some cases
only one night class each week. Also on a teaching day, the instructor may only
be in class 2-6 hours that day.
The bad news is that many professors work harder on those discretionary time
"breaks" than when they are in the classroom teaching. Firstly, there are duties
connected with teaching such as grading examinations, grading homework, grading
term papers, advising students, preparing for class, preparing online materials
such as technical Camtasia videos, email messaging with students, chat rooms
with students, etc.
The bad news is that a great deal of time is required for keeping scholarship
up to date. Accounting professors have to allow five hours a day reading Bob
Jensen's messages on the AECM and the AAA Commons. An increasing amount of time
is spent in professional and social networks. Also there is a lot of incoming
scholarship messaging from the Big Four firms, from bloggers, and news services
such as the NYT, WSJ. Bloomberg, etc.
Over the course of a decade, a vast amount of time is lost on technical
glitches and problems with software and hardware. Some professors actually time
to locate the campus library while some techie from the computer center is
trying to remove malware from their office computers.
And then there's research which is supposed to require at least half of a
researcher's time in a research university, but often ends up taking more than
20 hours of time in a teaching week and 50 hours of time in week in which the
professor does not have to teach. One huge time taker is the time it takes to
learn new/updated software that becomes a necessary condition for work
life. By the time you've mastered the software it's obsolete.
Is there work-life balance for professors in research universities? Probably
not for younger faculty focused on reputation building and annual performance
reports. Probably not for senior faculty who are committed to research and
consulting that ends up taking an enormous amount of discretionary time.
There probably is more of a life balance for some senior tenured professors
who are pretty much on automatic pilot and tending to their hobbies and
searching for a trophy spouse after their second divorces.
Have a good day!
"End-of-Term Conundrums, Part 1: Plagiarism," by Frank Donoghue,
Chronicle of Higher Education, December 2, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/end-of-term-conundrums-part-1-plagiarism/31005?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
As professors and students approach the end of the
academic term, I thought it appropriate to post about two items that never
fail to factor in the early winter and late spring. The first is plagiarism.
I can’t help feeling that, in recent years, academia has not kept pace with
what I see as a rapidly changing and increasingly hard-to-define concept.
Two important factors to consider: 1) plagiarism has gotten much easier to
commit in the age of the Internet; and 2) students currently in the
undergraduate pipeline either understand intellectual property imperfectly
or they simply don’t care about it.
1) Google and Wikipedia simultaneously constitute a
gold mine and a potential minefield for wannabe plagiarists. As a random
illustration, I looked up “Scarlet Letter essays” and “Scarlet Letter term
papers” on Google, and looked up The Scarlet Letter on Wikipedia. The Google
searches yielded page after page of complete essays, “study guides” which
could easily be transformed into papers with little effort, and
advertisements for paper-writing services. These last were, I must admit,
refreshing and funny. When I was an undergraduate in the late 1970s, I knew
students who bought term papers, but, to hear them talk about it, the
process sounded much like a drug deal, with everything on the QT. Now
paper-writing services are out in the open, and have clearly adopted the
advertising model used by online dating services: that is, they bill
themselves as “free,” and there is a (very) minimal amount of free material
on their sites, but if you want something you can actually turn in for a
grade (the equivalent of “show profile” and “chat” options I guess), you
have to pay. You can even order a customized essay, so that specific,
assigned paper topics pose no problem. But with so many free papers
available—and with so much thematic overlap among them that cut and paste
opportunities are everywhere—why pay money?
The Wikipedia article on The Scarlet Letter also
demonstrated that a paper on the novel was one mouse click away. After a
very detailed plot summary, the author of the article offered an analysis of
what he or she considered its two major themes: sin and the clash between
past and present.
It’s hard to imagine weak students, students
working 50 hours a week, or desperate students getting to their assignments
at the eleventh hour, not availing themselves of these resources,
particularly since they’re universal in all our daily lives. Smartphones
have made bar bets a thing of the past; my students regularly use “Google”
and “Wikipedia” as verbs; and even the new Kindle Touch has a feature that
links key terms in the books one downloads to Wikipedia.
2) Plagiarism aside, these are not bad
developments. Wikipedia in particular is a unique phenomenon, in the sense
that it is slowly but surely transforming itself from a catch-all bin of
information into a legitimate scholarly reference. It can do so in part
because the Internet allows it to be infinitely more agile than, say, the
Encyclopedia Britannica (and when, by the way, was the last time you saw a
citation in a student paper to that once august reference work?). Wikipedia
also adopts a collaborative conception of writing, blurring the notion of
writing as personal, intellectual property. Chris Anderson’s popular and
provocative recent book Free: How Today’s Smartest Businesses Profit by
Giving Something for Nothing (2010), simultaneously released as a
traditional book and as a free downloadable text, blurs that notion even
farther, giving the reader the choice either to acknowledge the book as
Anderson’s intellectual property or to decide that it doesn’t belong to
anyone.
Traditionalists would argue that we need to do a
better job of policing student work and punishing plagiarists. I counted
myself among them and have often pointed out that, unlike my university,
Ohio State, many colleges and universities require students to submit their
papers to the plagiarism-detection service Turnitin.com. I thought that was
a good idea until I began researching this post, only to discover that
(intellectual property concerns aside—Turnitin claims ownership of the
papers fed into it, as those papers make up part of its database), Turnitin
just doesn’t work. I found several articles and even, amazingly, a YouTube
video on the topic of “how to beat Turnitin.”
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Accounting students have a harder time plagiarizing from Wikipedia vis-à-vis
finance and economics students. This is because accountants have been hugely
negligent contributing to Wikipedia relative to their other professional and
academic brethren.
But Google searches by accounting students are alive and well, and hits to my
own Website become more popular late in every semester. Of course most of these
students do not plagiarize my work. But I'll bet the shirt I'm wearing that I
end up having written huge portions of term papers every semester for which I
get no credit ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on plagiarism and cheating are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
"Rethinking the Digital Future: In 1991 a Yale professor David
Gelernter envisioned a lot of what we now do on the Internet. Future computing,
he thinks, may be organized around a concept called 'lifestreams," by Holman
W. Jenkins, Jr., The Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2011 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203833104577072162782422558.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t
Mr. Gelernter, a professor at Yale, is already
destined to be remembered as the man nearly murdered by the Unabomber. After
a painful recovery, he blossomed as a conservative social critic and
continued to pursue his personal vocation of painting. He's also written
books on subjects as diverse as the future of technology, the meaning of
Judaism, and the 1939 World's Fair. Today, the still-revolutionary
opportunities of computing are again taking a central place among his varied
interests.
To him, Facebook and Twitter are partial
fulfillment of something he's been writing about and thinking about since
the early 1990s, an evolution of the Internet into a form far less chaotic
and more useful than today's. His preferred term is "lifestream." Whatever
you call it, the cybersphere as it now exists is due for an overhaul.
Prophecy comes naturally to Mr. Gelernter. He is
credited in some circles for having coined the term "the cloud." But what
preoccupies him is the inadequacy of our conventions and practices for
organizing the wildly expanding array of digital objects that populate the
cybersphere.
On the desktop, he says, "The file system was
already broken in the early '90s, the hierarchical system. Namespaces were
saturated. I was sick of making up names like nsfproposal319. The file
system got too crowded and people started crowding their desktops with
icons."
On top of this complexity soon arrived the
complexity of the Web, the mass of digital objects we know today, connected
by hyperlinks but organized in a way satisfying to no one, except possibly
Google. "The current shape of the Web is the same shape as the Internet
hardware," says Mr. Gelernter. "The Internet hardware is lots of computers
wired together into a nothing-shaped cobweb. The Web itself is a lot of
websites hyperlinked together into a nothing-shaped cobweb."
The failure of the Internet to organize itself into
a more useful metaphor is precisely what needs fixing. "It is impossible to
picture the Web. It's a big fuzzy nothing. I sort of tiptoe around tiny
areas of it shining a flashlight."
We sit in his family's modest, woodsy home a few
miles north of New Haven. Because the Unabomber experience has so colored
the press's interest in him, Mr. Gelernter, in profiles, tends to come
across as grim. He's anything but grim. He's a bit of a comedian, in a
deadpan sort of way. He cites the "most talked about" part of one of his
books, but quickly adds, "not that any part was greatly talked about."
In that book, 1991's "Mirror Worlds," Mr. Gelernter
described a future in which all our activities would be mirrored on the Web.
Almost as soon as it was published he began thinking about a radical new way
to organize our digital mirror world. He started a company to pursue his
vision, but it was not well conceived and went out of business after a few
years. Today its patents, now owned by an investor group, are at the center
of a major lawsuit with Apple.
The idea, though, of lifestreams has been catching
on. A lifestream is a way of organizing digital objects—photos, emails,
documents, Web links, music—in a time-ordered series. A timeline, in
essence, that extends into the past but also the future (with appointments,
to-do lists, etc.). Facebook, with its "wall" constantly updated with
postings by you and your friends, is a lifestream. Twitter's feed is a
lifestream. "Chatter," developed by Salesforce.com for internal use by
client companies, is a lifestream.
Mr. Gelernter believes streams are a more
intuitive, useful way to organize our digital lives, not least because, as
the past and future run off either side of our screen, at the center is
now—and now is what the Internet really is about.
Eventually business models based on streaming will
dominate the Internet, he predicts. All the world's data will be presented
as a "worldstream," some of it public, most of it proprietary, available
only to authorized users. Web browsers will become stream browsers. Users
will become comfortably accustomed to tracking and manipulating their
digital objects as streams rather than as files in a file system. The stream
will become a mirror of the unfolding story of their lives.
"I can visualize the worldstream," says Mr.
Gelernter, explaining its advantages. "I know what it looks like. I know
what my chunk of it looks like. When I focus on my stuff, I get a stream
that is a subset of the worldstream. So when I focus the stream, by doing a
search on Sam Schwartz"—a hypothetical student—"I do stream subtraction.
Everything that isn't related to Schwartz that I'm allowed to see vanishes.
And then the stream moves much more slowly. Because Sam Schwartz documents
are being added at a much slower rate than all the documents in the world.
So now I have a manageable trickle of stuff."
A stream is any stream you care to describe. "These
very simple operations, which correspond to physical intuitions, are going
to give people a much more transparent feeling about the Net. People will
understand it better, and the Net itself will support what is clearly
emerging as its most important function, which is to present relevant
information in time."
His son Daniel, a recent Yale graduate, sits in on
our interview. His apparent dual mission is to tout the inevitable triumph
of a new company the two are working on while making sure Mr. Gelernter
doesn't say anything to queer his former company's pending lawsuit against
Apple.
Mr. Gelernter himself grew up in the suburbs of New
York, visiting Brooklyn regularly where both sets of grandparents lived. He
believes America, and especially its educational system, has gone downhill
in some ways since then. He recalls a time, in the 1960s, when poets like
Robert Frost and painters like Jackson Pollock were as closely followed by
the "educated middle class" as TV celebrities are today.
Mr. Gelernter's father studied physics and became a
pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence at IBM, so growing up Mr.
Gelernter was "familiar with software and found it a comfortable topic." His
ambition, from a very early age, was to be an important painter, but at Yale
he pursued computing "as a path to supporting a family, which is a very
important obligation in Judaism. Computing in the 70s and early 80s," he
adds, "was not a path to absurd wealth. It was a path to well-paying jobs,
compared to people in the English department."
There followed happy days and nights in the
computing lab, which might have come straight from the memoirs of Bill Gates
or other computing superstars. His early work on parallel computing—in which
many computers cooperate on tasks—made him a superstar too.
His targeting by Theodore Kaczynski, living in a
shack in Montana and waging his deranged war against modernity, has been
told often enough. Mr. Gelernter was lucky to survive a mail bomb that tore
open his chest and abdomen, mangled his right hand and eye. His blood
pressure is said to have been undetectable by the time he stumbled from his
office to a Yale clinic nearby. Today the glove on his right hand, mentioned
in every media account, I learn is not a concession to those around him, but
a prosthesis. "It allows me to get some use out of the hand. It's all ripped
up and stuff, patched together."
He takes medicine for pain and visits a pain
specialist regularly, but he has come to see himself as lucky compared to
other chronic pain sufferers—able to "operate in the world, and do the
things you want to do. It could have been a lot worse," he says.
The question posed at the top was meant
whimsically. Mr. Gelernter, by any measure, is living a rich life. He has
been making paintings since childhood. Lately he has allowed his work to be
sold and next year will bring what he calls "an important event for me," his
first museum show at Yeshiva University Art Gallery. He sees his work
building on the "discoveries" of the New York abstract expressionists as
well as the flat panels of Medieval devotional art. Interestingly, he also
sees a similar new-old artistic potential in the high-definition video
display: "Since the richness of stained glass emerged in the late 12th
century, for the first time there is a new luminous art medium—a medium for
creating glowing art."
Mr. Gelernter sold his first company, Mirror Worlds
Technologies, and its intellectual property to an investor group years ago.
The buyer insisted on giving him a small stake in the outcome of its patent
lawsuits, and last year a jury handed down an eye-popping $625 million
verdict against Apple for infringing lifestream-related patents in its
Macintosh and iPhone operating systems. In April, the judge in the case
overruled the jury and tossed out the award. The matter is now under appeal.
Mr. Gelernter says the former company has no
relation to a new venture he and Daniel are working on—though Daniel is
quick to note that they will be obtaining a license for the Mirror Worlds
technology, as Apple supposedly should have done.
The new venture, for which Mr. Gelernter is just
beginning to seek funding, will focus on developing a lifestream product for
the Apple iPad. "We like the pad," he says. "A particular goal is to create
a lifestream which aggregates the most popular social network streams, and
includes email and stuff like that. It will generate revenues the way
Twitter and Facebook do—by getting huge numbers of users, beginning at the
place we know, Yale University undergraduates, who love glitzy new software.
They tell their parents, who are big shots because their kids are students
at Yale." The new product will spread virally, forming a vast audience that
can be sold to advertisers.
If this sounds familiar, it should. Facebook
started at Harvard and branched out to other universities before conquering
the world. Facebook, which has evolved into a stream by which users tell
their own stories and read each other's stories, is "plugging a very
important gap in the cybersphere, but I don't think it's plugging it in an
elegant way," says Mr. Gelernter. "I don't think Facebook will be around
forever."
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's technology updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
"Teaching Carnival 5.04," by Mikhail Gershovich, Chronicle of
Higher Education, December 1, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-5-04-2/37515?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Know of a blog post (perhaps your own) that should be included in the
next Teaching Carnival…?
- Email the next host directly with the address to the permalink of
your blog post, and/or
- Tag your post in
Delicious (or Diigo
or other bookmarking service) with teaching-carnival.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Hurry, hurry, hurry. Step right up. See the most
amazing, most provocative, most edumacational teaching links on the
Interwebz. Don’t miss your chance to be wowed, amazed, professionally
developed and procrastinated! Step right this way!
This month at the Teaching Carnival:
Edudemic showcases
100
best web 2.0 tools for teachers as chosen by teachers
while Peter Dewitt offers an in-depth discussion of
why educators should join Twitter. Mrs. Ripp suggests
14 steps to meaningful student blogging, George
Siemens shares
a few simple tools he’s like ed-tech startups to build.
and Audrey Watters tells us about
Code Now, a DC area program dedicated to teaching underserved high school
students how to program.
Tom Woodward offers us some things to consider
regarding the instructional use of digital content,
and Jane Hart argues that
while we can manage the use of media that can facilitate informal learning,
we can’t manage informal learning itself.
Stephen Lazar, of Education Week, suggests
how to teach high-school history by facilitating critical inquiry. Liz
Losh discusses the use of
digital role-playing games for a critical engagement with racial history.
Mike Cosgrove explains how to
Game
Reality History. The Christian Cynic considers
analysis of song lyrics as a means of encouraging critical thought.
Andrew Miller argues for
integrating visual art into curricula as a form of
critical thinking.
Ryan Cordell discusses
“speed-dating” peer-review writing workshops, and Dean Shareski
proclaims
lectures good. At cac.ophony.org,
Meechal Hoffman and
Erica Kaufman offer a few thoughts on teaching
with technology, and Sarah Ruth Jacobs traces the genealogy of communication
across the the curriculum courses (part
1 and
part 2.)
At Blogging Pedagogy, we learn how the
Voyeur data visualization tool and the automated text analysis it offers
might be useful for revision and consider a
rumination on
the form of the blog post.
Mark Sample and Shannon Mattern
each present on the digital humanities in the classroom
(videos). Roger Whitson calls on DH teachers and scholars to
engage in digital activism to undercut a “cultural
obsession with individualism” foster an environment where collaborative
digital projects are valued.
You’ve heard of the MOOC, now learn all about it:
The 7 things you should know about MOOCs. Alan
Levine considers
the “course-iness” of MOOCs.
David Kernohan
discusses the mythical #economooc. Michael
Feldstein offers some thoughts on
scaling MOOCs.
Ok, you get the MOOC but
what is this rhizomatic learning? Dave Cormier
explains. If that wasn’t clear,
here’s how he explains it to his 5 year old.
In the spirit of the Occupy Movement, Jose Vilson
offers
James Baldwin’s take on the purpose education:
“The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become
conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.”
Along those lines: Cheryl Smith on
teaching and protest, Jay Cross on
occupying education, and Cathy Davidson on why
this is a
“Gettysburg address moment in higher education.”
Clayton R. Wright gives us a
seemingly comprehensive list of education technology conferences,
January-June 2012. (.doc, courtesy of
Stephen Downes)
Audrey Watters speculates on
whether the Kindle Fire will be popular among educators
and then later discusses
why she sent hers back to Amazon.
At the Chatty Professor, Ellen Bremen reflects on
how college students manage changing relationships and discusses
what students should know about faculty office hours.
Quinn Warnick shares
the list of articles he
asks undergraduates to read before offering advice on grad school.
Delaney Kirk suggests
what students can expect from their profs and
what profs should expect from their students.
Alice Cassidy shares
a wealth of resources on sustainability education and leadership.
Trouble with your IT Department? Here’s
how to work successfully with them.
And, finally, Wired UK explains the science of
why the sound of fingernails on a blackboard makes us cringe.
Earlier Editions
"Teaching Carnival 4.9," by Jill Morris, Chronicle of Higher
Education, May 2, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-4-9/33127?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
"Teaching Carnival 4.10," by Billie Hara, Chronicle of
Higher Education, June 1, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-4-10/33718?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
"Teaching Carnival 4.11," by Billie Hara, Chronicle of Higher
Education, July 1, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-4-11/34455?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
"Teaching Carnival 5.1," by Tonya Howe, Chronicle of Higher
Education, September 1, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-5-1/35698?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
[September’s Teaching Carnival--and the
beginning of year five of the TC--is from Tonya Howe, Assistant Professor of
English at Marymount University. Tonya blogs at
Cerosia
and can be reached at thowe [at] Marymount [dot] edu
or @howet
on Twitter. ProfHacker has become the permanent home of the Teaching
Carnival, so each month you can return for a snapshot of the most recent
thoughts on teaching in college and university classrooms. You can find
previous carnivals on Teaching
"Teaching Carnival 5.02," by Roger Whitson, Chronicle of Higher
Education, October 3, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-5-2/36287
"Teaching Carnival 5.03," by Delaney Kirk, Chronicle of Higher
Education, November 1, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-5-04/37021?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
[October’s Teaching Carnival was compiled by Delaney Kirk, a
management professor at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee.
You can reach her via
email or on
Twitter . Delaney is
both an educator and an edublogger--ask her a question or check out her tips
on teaching effectiveness at
Ask Dr. Kirk. This month she gathers tips on teaching, advice
to share with our students, ways to utilize technology in the classroom, and
suggestions for personal development, along with a challenge to write that
academic book you’ve been putting off. –Billie Hara]
Know of a blog post (perhaps your own) that should be included in the
next Teaching Carnival…?
- Email the next host directly with the address to the permalink of
your blog post, and/or
- Tag your post in
Delicious (or
Diigo or other
bookmarking service) with teaching-carnival.
Tips on Teaching
Tips on Using Technology
Tips for Our Students
Tips on Personal Development
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
And if you’ve been putting off writing that academic book or
dissertation, Charlotte Frost invites us all to participate
in the first
Academic
Book Writing Month challenge (tweet about it using hash tag #AcBoWriMo).
You can also join
NaNoWriMo to start
that novel you’ve been telling people you plan to write someday. Both
challenges begin on November 1st.
Continued in article
Search Over 400,000 Teacher-Reviewed Lesson Plans & Worksheets from
LessonPlanet ---
http://www.lessonplanet.com/
Bob Jensen's Threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Converting Analog to Digital Video (ADC Analog Digital Conversion) ---
http://www.synchrotech.com/support/analog2dv-conversions.html
Note that some devices will only input analog video camera cartridges.
If you want to convert VCR/VHS tape cartridges you need to make sure that your
converter can read VCR cartridges
You might want to search for "Zone
72-4769 Video Converter"
I don't think this has an analog VCR/VHS tape and camcorder tape reader.
Free Conversion Software ---
http://digital-video-converter.software.informer.com/
You must have a hardware device on your computer that will read camcorder and
VCR tapes.
There are also various service providers that will convert VCR/VHS tapes and
camcorder tapes for a fee. This entails sending the tapes to the vendor.
To Infinity and Beyond: A Mind-Bending Documentary from the BBC ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/ito_infinity_and_beyondi_a_mind-bending_documentary_from_the_bbc.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
"The Man Who Busted the ‘Banksters’," Smithsonian, November 29,
2011 ---
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2011/11/the-man-who-busted-the-%E2%80%98banksters%E2%80%99/
Three years removed from the stock market crash of
1929, America was in the throes of the Great Depression, with no recovery on
the horizon. As President Herbert Hoover reluctantly campaigned for a second
term, his motorcades and trains were pelted with rotten vegetables and eggs
as he toured a hostile land where shanty towns erected by the homeless had
sprung up. They were called “Hoovervilles,” creating the shameful images
that would define his presidency. Millions of Americans had lost their jobs,
and one in four Americans lost their life savings. Farmers were in ruin, 40
percent of the country’s banks had failed, and industrial stocks had lost 80
percent of their value.
With unemployment hovering at nearly 25 percent in
1932, Hoover was swept out of office in a landslide, and the newly elected
president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, promised Americans relief. Roosevelt
had decried “the ruthless manipulation of professional gamblers and the
corporate system” that allowed “a few powerful interests to make industrial
cannon fodder of the lives of half the population.” He made it plain that he
would go after the “economic nobles,” and a bank panic on the day of his
inauguration, in March 1933, gave him just the mandate he sought to attack
the economic crisis in his “First 100 Days” campaign. “There must be an end
to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a
sacred trust the likeness of callous and wrongdoing,” he said.
Ferdinand Pecora was an an unlikely answer to what
ailed America at the time. He was a slight, soft-spoken son of Italian
immigrants, and he wore a wide-brimmed fedora and often had a cigar dangling
from his lips. Forced to drop out of school in his teens because his father
was injured in a work-related accident, Pecora ultimately landed a job as a
law clerk and attended New York Law School, passed the New York bar and
became one of just a handful of first-generation Italian lawyers in the
city. In 1918, he became an assistant district attorney. Over the next
decade, he built a reputation as an honest and tenacious prosecutor,
shutting down more than 100 “bucket shops”—illegal brokerage houses where
bets were made on the rise and fall prices of stocks and commodity futures
outside of the regulated market. His introduction to the world of fraudulent
financial dealings would serve him well.
Just months before Hoover left office, Pecora was
appointed chief counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Banking and
Currency. Assigned to probe the causes of the 1929 crash, he led what became
known as the “Pecora commission,” making front-page news when he called
Charles Mitchell, the head of the largest bank in America, National City
Bank (now Citibank), as his first witness. “Sunshine Charley” strode into
the hearings with a good deal of contempt for both Pecora and his
commission. Though shareholders had taken staggering losses on bank stocks,
Mitchell admitted that he and his top officers had set aside millions of
dollars from the bank in interest-free loans to themselves. Mitchell also
revealed that despite making more than $1 million in bonuses in 1929, he had
paid no taxes due to losses incurred from the sale of diminished National
City stock—to his wife. Pecora revealed that National City had hidden bad
loans by packaging them into securities and pawning them off to unwitting
investors. By the time Mitchell’s testimony made the newspapers, he had been
disgraced, his career had been ruined, and he would soon be forced into a
million-dollar settlement of civil charges of tax evasion. “Mitchell,” said
Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, “more than any 50 men is responsible for
this stock crash.”
The public was just beginning to get a taste for
the retribution that Pecora was dishing out. In June 1933, his image
appeared on the cover of Time magazine, seated at a Senate table, a cigar in
his mouth. Pecora’s hearings had coined a new phrase, “banksters” for the
finance “gangsters” who had imperiled the nation’s economy, and while the
bankers and financiers complained that the theatrics of the Pecora
commission would destroy confidence in the U.S. banking system, Senator
Burton Wheeler of Montana said, “The best way to restore confidence in our
banks is to take these crooked presidents out of the banks and treat them
the same as [we] treated Al Capone.”
President Roosevelt urged Pecora to keep the heat
on. If banks were worried about the hearings destroying confidence,
Roosevelt said, they “should have thought of that when they did the things
that are being exposed now.” Roosevelt even suggested that Pecora call none
other than the financier J.P. Morgan Jr. to testify. When Morgan arrived at
the Senate Caucus Room, surrounded by hot lights, microphones and dozens of
reporters, Senator Glass described the atmosphere as a “circus, and the only
things lacking now are peanuts and colored lemonade.”
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Bob Jensen's American History of Fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
"Reproduction of Hierarchy? A Social Network Analysis of the American Law
Professoriate"
Daniel Martin Katz --- Michigan State University - College of Law
Joshua R. Gubler --- Brigham Young University - Department of Political
Science
Jon Zelner --- University of Michigan at Ann Arbor - Center for Study of Complex
Systems
Michael James Bommarito II --- University of Michigan, Department of Financial
Engineering; University of Michigan, Department of Political Science; University
of Michigan, Center for the Study of Complex Systems
Eric A. Provins --- University of Michigan - Department of Political
Science
Eitan M. Ingall --- affiliation not provided to SSRN
SSRN, August 2011 ---
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1352656
Abstract:
As its structure offers one causal mechanism for the emergence of and
convergence upon a collective conception of what constitutes a sound legal
rule, we believe the social structure of the American law professoriate is
an important piece of a broader model of American common law development.
Leveraging advances in network science and drawing from available
information on the more 7,200 tenure-track professor employed by an ABA
accredited institution, we explore the topology of the legal academy
including the relative distribution of authority among its institutions.
Drawing from social epidemiology literature, we provide a computational
model for diffusion on our network. The model provides a parsimonious
display of the trade off between "idea infectiousness" and structural
position. While our model is undoubtedly simple, our initial foray into
computational legal studies should, at a minimum, motivate future
scholarship.
The authors constructed this network chart, showing the core law schools
feeding the most law school faculty as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Michigan,
Chicago, NYU, Stanford, and UC-Berkeley :
What is WordNet?
http://www.certifiedchinesetranslation.com/WordNet/
WordNet® is a large lexical database of English.
Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive
synonyms (synsets), each expressing a distinct concept. Synsets are
interlinked by means of conceptual-semantic and lexical relations. The
resulting network of meaningfully related words and concepts can be
navigated with the
browser.
WordNet is also freely and publicly available for
download. WordNet's
structure makes it a useful tool for computational linguistics and natural
language processing.
WordNet superficially resembles a thesaurus, in
that it groups words together based on their meanings. However, there are
some important distinctions. First, WordNet interlinks not just word
forms—strings of letters—but specific senses of words. As a result, words
that are found in close proximity to one another in the network are
semantically disambiguated. Second, WordNet labels the semantic relations
among words, whereas the groupings of words in a thesaurus does not follow
any explicit pattern other than meaning similarity.
Structure
The main relation among words in WordNet is
synonymy, as between the words shut and close or car and automobile.
Synonyms--words that denote the same concept and are interchangeable in many
contexts--are grouped into unordered sets (synsets). Each of WordNet’s 117
000 synsets is linked to other synsets by means of a small number of
“conceptual relations.” Additionally, a synset contains a brief definition
(“gloss”) and, in most cases, one or more short sentences illustrating the
use of the synset members. Word forms with several distinct meanings are
represented in as many distinct synsets. Thus, each form-meaning pair in
WordNet is unique.
Relations
The most frequently encoded relation among synsets
is the super-subordinate relation (also called hyperonymy, hyponymy or ISA
relation). It links more general synsets like {furniture, piece_of_furniture}
to increasingly specific ones like {bed} and {bunkbed}. Thus, WordNet states
that the category furniture includes bed, which in turn includes bunkbed;
conversely, concepts like bed and bunkbed make up the category furniture.
All noun hierarchies ultimately go up the root node {entity}. Hyponymy
relation is transitive: if an armchair is a kind of chair, and if a chair is
a kind of furniture, then an armchair is a kind of furniture. WordNet
distinguishes among Types (common nouns) and Instances (specific persons,
countries and geographic entities). Thus, armchair is a type of chair,
Barack Obama is an instance of a president. Instances are always leaf
(terminal) nodes in their hierarchies.
Meronymy, the part-whole relation holds between
synsets like {chair} and {back, backrest}, {seat} and {leg}. Parts are
inherited from their superordinates: if a chair has legs, then an armchair
has legs as well. Parts are not inherited “upward” as they may be
characteristic only of specific kinds of things rather than the class as a
whole: chairs and kinds of chairs have legs, but not all kinds of furniture
have legs.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Why do minority students "opt out" of many professions?
"'Opting Out'," by Allie Grasgreen, Chronicle of Higher Education,
December 2, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/12/02/new-book-says-elite-black-students-dont-try-high-paying-jobs
The
economic and educational disadvantages of low-income black students who
struggle to complete college are well-documented.
While black students at elite universities don’t necessarily fit into that
category, a new book says they face social and institutional obstacles of
their own – obstacles that ultimately drive them away from the high-status,
high-paying jobs that they’re qualified for in fields such as engineering,
science, finance and information technology. And while the reasons are
complex, universities are partly at fault, the book argues.
Black students who graduate from elite colleges
consistently gravitate toward less prestigious – though by no means less
important – jobs in fields perceived as directly addressing social and
racial inequities, such as education, social work and community and
nonprofit organizing, the author found.
In an interview about her controversial new book,
Opting Out: Losing the Potential of America’s Young Black Elite
(University of Chicago Press), Maya A. Beasley
explained the findings of her research and what she believes they mean for
students and the colleges that educate them.
“Not everybody is going to make a great social
worker…. Some are going to be fantastic brain surgeons, and we’re really
missing the potential of these students because they’re not getting the
information they need,” says Beasley, who is also an assistant professor of
sociology and a member of the advisory board of the Institute for African
Studies at the University of Connecticut. “It’s something that hasn’t been
studied, and I think it’s a very important topic, particularly because I
believe in people making choices that are informed and are going to fit well
for them. But that’s not what’s happening, and I think there’s a systematic
problem for African Americans, if a huge proportion of the population has
certain types of careers that – while incredibly valuable – are also
relatively lower paying, lower status, and have lower positions of power.
And it’s shocking to me that students coming out of Harvard and Stanford are
following that pattern.”
The Research
Beasley was inspired to look into the issue while
in graduate school at Stanford University, after the dot-com boom hit. She
was puzzled that none of her black peers from undergrad at Harvard
University seemed to be taking part in the boom. Through a statistical
analysis for her master's thesis, Beasley realized black students were
largely absent from science, technology, engineering and mathematics, as
well as other corporate fields.
Despite civil rights legislation enacted in the
1960s and ’70s, a lack of federal enforcement of and funding for black
employment initiatives kept the parents of today’s college students from
making significant strides, Beasley writes – and their children have modeled
their career preferences accordingly. There is more occupational diversity
among black employees today, but the differences as compared to whites are
still significant.
For example, according to the 2000 Census, the top
20 white-collar careers among both black and white employees include
elementary and secondary education as well as registered nursing. But break
it down further and you’ll find that white people hold proportionately more
high-status positions: lawyers, physicians, surgeons, chief executives and
financial, general and operations managers. Black employees, in contrast,
trend toward “service-oriented, racialized jobs” including counselors,
education administrators, preschool and kindergarten teachers and community
and social service specialists. Taken together, the differences in
employment result in: chief executives being the fifth most common
white-collar occupation among whites, but 35th among blacks; lawyers being
10th among whites but 27th among blacks; and physicians being 19th among
whites but 31st among blacks.
Thus, Beasley concludes that a persistent lack of
black employees within certain fields is the source of “significant economic
and status disparities” between black and white populations in America.
Aiming to figure out why young black people
apparently aren’t pursuing these jobs, Beasley conducted in-depth interviews
with 60 elite students total -- 30 black, 30 white – between Stanford and
the University of California at Berkeley. What she found made sense in light
of previous research and statistics regarding who works what jobs: the
aspirations of most of these students, Beasley writes, “corresponded to what
is effectively the status quo.”
“Black students aspired to careers in which they
have greater numbers and/or to racialized occupations,” she writes, “whereas
white students showed a more diverse range of occupational interests, free
of racialized substance.”
The University Role
Despite the significant role of history and culture
in this trend, colleges are partly responsible as well, Beasley says. And
she says one big thing they should do to remedy that is revisit the idea of
black-themed student residence halls.
“The issue of housing is relatively controversial
because the decision to build black-themed dorms and Hispanic-themed dorms
all over in the ’80s and ’90s – in general, they were very
well-intentioned,” Beasley says. “But the result of having students be so
highly segregated is that they’re missing a lot.”
Some black students in Beasley’s study reported
self-segregating their social interactions in part to avoid racism or
stigmas they encounter on campus, a habit that has been documented in
previous research on predominantly white campuses. (While black students
make up 10 to 12 percent of Stanford’s undergraduates, they account for only
4 percent at Berkeley. That number has declined significantly since the
system’s Board of Regents eliminated affirmative action in hiring and
admissions in 1995.) Students take ample advantage of various race-based
groups when they are available.
But limiting interaction between students of
different ethnicities is not only harmful in the widely accepted sense that
it hinders development of tolerance and empathy, Beasley argues, it also
puts groups at an informational disadvantage. While she says she’s not
insisting that these dorms should be eliminated, she says administrators
should “acknowledge the consequences of their support for student requests
to segregate themselves.”
Or, to use another word, to see that they may
“ghettoize” the students.
“College offers black students chances to do the
same kinds of networking and to be exposed to the same information that most
white students have had their entire lives,” Beasley writes. Yet, many of
the students she interviewed socialized primarily with other black peers.
“While black students may derive substantial value from these networks,
there is also a considerable downside to their separation from the wider
campus community. Racially integrated networks provide access to information
otherwise unavailable to these students, including the existence of
occupations they had never considered, the awareness of how to obtain
training for them, and connections to professionals (white and nonwhite) who
possess them.”
Other things universities should be doing::
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I think many minority students opt out of some majors that have
certification/licensing examinations because of what professors, older students,
alumni, and even parents are saying about certification examinations in those
professions. In accounting, for example, many white and minority students avoid
accounting majors because of what they hear about the difficulty and low passage
rates on the nationwide uniform CPA examination. Others fear the CFA,
engineering licensing examinations, teaching certification examinations, etc.
Others fear such admission examinations such as the MCAT (for medical school),
the LSAT (for law school) and the GRE for various other professions like
architecture. Graduate school costs are also considerations, especially for
medical school and law school. Even accounting requires five years (150 credits)
with some particular tough course requirements to sit for the CPA examination.
"Whatever Happened to All Those Plans to Hire
More Minority Professors?" by Ben Gose, Chronicle of Higher Education,
September 26, 2008
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i05/05b00101.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Certification Examinations
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#CertificationExams
Question
Why are blacks and Latinos avoiding professions with licensing/certification
examinations?
More than half of the black and Latino students who
take the state teacher licensing exam in Massachusetts fail, at rates that are
high enough that many minority college students are starting to avoid teacher
training programs,
The Boston Globe reported. The failure rates
are 54 percent (black), 52 percent (Latino) and 23 percent (white).
Inside Higher Ed, August 20, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/20/qt
For similar reasons, I think many blacks and Latinos are avoiding other
professions with difficult and color-blind licensing examinations. Nursing may
be an exception, but many of the blacks and Latinos in nursing schools are top
female students in the university. Also nursing school curricula are very
focused on the licensing examinations.
What it takes most is special effort and funding to achieve a higher
proportion of minorities in a profession. Bless Bernie Milano at KPMG for years
and years of determination to raise accounting PhD fellowships and special
programs for minority doctoral students ---
To its credit, the Big Four accounting firm
KPMG, inspired heavily by Bernie Milano at KPMG, years ago created a foundation
(with multiple outside contributors) for virtually five years of funding to
minorities to selected for particular accounting doctoral programs ---
http://www.kpmgfoundation.org/foundinit.asp
Minority Accounting Doctoral Scholarships
The KPMG Foundation Minority Accounting Doctoral
Scholarships aim to further increase the completion rate among
African-American, Hispanic-American and Native American doctoral students.
The scholarships provide the funding for them to see their dreams come to
fruition.
For the 2007-2008 academic year, the Foundation
awarded $10,000 scholarships (annually), for a total of five years, to 9
minority accounting and information systems doctoral students. There are 35
doctoral students who have had their scholarships renewed for 2007-2008,
bringing the total number of scholarships awarded to 44. To date, KPMG
Foundation's total commitment to the scholarship program exceeds $12
million.
Financial support often determines whether a
motivated student can meet the escalating costs of higher education. For
most of those students, a return to school means giving up a lucrative job.
For some, acceptance in a doctoral program means an expensive relocation.
Still others need enough time to study without the burden of numerous
part-time jobs.
Jensen Comment
This is more than just a pot of money. KPMG works with doctoral program
administrators and families of minority candidates to work out case-by-case
solving of special problems such as single parenthood. I think added funding
is provided on an as-needed basis. The effort is designed to help students
not only get into an accounting doctoral program but to follow through to
the very end. It should be noted that although KPMG started this effort,
various competing accounting firms have donated money to this exceptionally
worthy cause. One of the reasons for the shortage
of minority undergraduate students in accounting has been the lack of role
models teaching accounting courses in college.
Watch the video about KPMG ---
http://diversityinc.com/diversity-management/video-of-2011-diversityinc-special-awards-kpmg/
December 2, 2011 reply from Amelia A. Baldwin on
the AAA Commons
:
http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/198bee6d80
Bob,
Thans for sharing that! It's directly relevant to
one of my current research projects which looks at the placement of
accounting doctoral graduates. Our results show that when the initial
placement of those from under-represented minority populations is compared
to the initial placement of all others (controlling for the rank of the
accounting doctoral program) the only significant differences in placements
are found in the top quartile of programs. That is, there's no difference in
placement for those in the middle or bottom ranked programs, regardless of
minority status, but graduates of color from top ranks accounting doctoral
programs do not place as well as other graduates from those same programs.
So, the problem isn't just that few persons of
color elect to pursue accounting degrees in general (which is sadly true),
or that even fewer persons of color elect to pursue accounting doctoral
studies (a big enough problem already) but also that even when they do
pursue accounting doctoral degrees and even if they attend top schools, they
do not initially place as well as their non-minority counterparts.
Shocking!
"British Library Group Sticks With Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell," by
Jenifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 1, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/british-library-group-doesnt-ditch-elsevier-and-wiley-blackwell/34517?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
A major British library group announced today that
it has struck new deals with Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell, two of the
largest publishers of academic journals. The group, Research Libraries U.K.,
had
threatened to discontinue so-called Big Deal
subscription arrangements with the two publishers because of what it called
unsustainable price increases. U.S. libraries have also been
re-examining whether Big Deals are really worth
what they cost.
The new deals with Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell
“serve as new benchmarks for our relations with other publishers, as RLUK’s
members will no longer accept massive unjustified price rises,” Phil Sykes,
chair of the group, said in a statement. “We will continue to scrutinize all
offers carefully in the future to make sure we get best value for money and
to ensure that we do not pay for new, untested journal titles as part of
‘all-or-nothing’ packages.” The new deal was negotiated on behalf of the
group’s 30 member libraries by
JISC
Collections, an organization that helps provide
digital resources for British education and research.
Continued in article
About those nondisclosure agreements in journal
subscription contracts
"Cornell U. Library Takes a Stand With Journal Vendors: Prices Will
Be Made Public," by Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher
Education, March 24, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Cornell-U-Library-Takes-a/126852/
Librarians have long
complained about the nondisclosure agreements, or NDA's, that some
publishers and vendors require them to sign, making it difficult to
share information about how much they pay to subscribe to journal
databases and other scholarly material. Some state universities'
libraries have been able to reveal licensing terms anyway because
their institutions are subject to sunshine laws. Now one major
private institution, Cornell University, has publicly declared it's
had enough of confidentiality agreements, too.
"To promote openness and
fairness among libraries licensing scholarly resources, Cornell
University Library will not enter into vendor contracts that require
nondisclosure of pricing information or other information that does
not constitute a trade secret," the library said in a
statement
posted on its Web site. "The more that libraries are able to
communicate with one another about vendor offers, the better they
are able to weigh the costs and benefits of any individual offer. An
open market will result in better licensing terms."
Anne R. Kenney, Cornell's
university librarian, said that with purchasing decisions under
close scrutiny, it felt like the right moment to take a stand.
Enough major publishers have agreed to drop nondisclosure clauses
"that it was time to bite the bullet and make that a principle
moving forward," she said. "Publishers are beginning to get it."
At the end of its statement,
the Cornell library listed some of the publishers that do not
request confidentiality clauses when they negotiate licenses. They
include the American Physical Society, the American Chemical
Society, Cambridge University Press, EBSCO, Elsevier, Oxford
University Press, ProQuest, Sage, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley. (If a
publisher does not appear on the list, that doesn't necessarily mean
it requires NDA's, just that it hasn't been in recent contract
negotiations with Cornell's library.)
Ms. Kenney said that Cornell
is joining "a groundswell among academic libraries to start to
routinely ask for the removal of NDA's." In June 2009, the
Association of Research Libraries urged its members to steer clear
of
nondisclosure
or confidentiality clauses.
"Part of our rationale in
going public with this is to make evident that private institutions
are also starting to feel that this is not a good way of doing
business," Ms. Kenney said.
Support for the Move
Several librarians at other
universities said their institutions had taken positions similar to
Cornell's, even if they haven't publicly posted their policy on
NDA's. "Yes, we have taken a similar approach for the past year,"
said Winston Tabb, the dean of university libraries and museums at
the Johns Hopkins University. He wrote in an e-mail that "we believe
that transparency is appropriate for libraries generally; and in
particular that we should not agree to withhold information about
how we are spending an increasingly huge—and ever-growing—percentage
of our stretched library budgets."
Continued in article
Commercial Scholarly Journals and Oligopoly Publishers Are Ripping Off
Libraries, and Scholars, Authors, and Students ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ScholarlyJournals
Learning Management System (LMS) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system
"New Course-Management Software Promises Facebook-Like Experience," by
Alexandra Rice, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 29, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-course-management-software-promises-facebook-like-experience/34488?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Three University of
Pennsylvania students who recently dropped out to start an upstart
course-management system today unveiled their software, called
Coursekit, after
having raised more than $1-million in venture capital.
The trio, frustrated
with the systems offered by universities, such as Blackboard,
decided to team up and design their own online
course platform, which emphasizes social networking and an easy-to-use
interface. By May, the founders, Joesph Cohen, Dan Getelman, and Jim
Grandpre, had raised so much start-up cash, from sources including the
Founder Collective and IA Ventures, that they decided to quit school to
focus on developing Coursekit.
Thirty universities
tested Coursekit this fall, including Stanford and the University of
Pennsylvania.
Coursekit offers a
platform for hosting discussions, posting grades and syllabi, sharing
calendars and links, and creating student profiles. The company has
hired 80 student ambassadors to introduce the new course-management
system to students at colleges across the country.
The software is
one of several new challengers to Blackboard, which is used by a
majority of U.S. colleges. In October, Pearson announced
OpenClass, a free
course-management system, and last year a Utah company called
Instructure unveiled Canvas, which
is available under an open-source license.
"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
Bob Jensen's threads on tricks and tools of the trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on the history of Learning Management Systems (LMS)
and Course Management Systems (CMS) are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
Professors Who Cheat (in this case fabricate data and research outcomes)
Dutch begin documenting and trying to explain top social psychologist's massive
fraud.
"A Star's Collapse." Inside Higher Ed, November 28, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/11/28/scholars-analyze-case-massive-research-fraud
Bob Jensen's threads on Professors Who Cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoFabricate
Bob Jensen's threads on the how top accounting research journals don't do
enough to deter accounting professors who (might) cheat
574 Shields Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
December 1, 2011 message from David Albrecht
I'm attaching a link to a pretty interesting
interview of Helen Brown. She is talking about how the search engines are
affecting your search results.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxQShnkhGFg&feature=youtu.be
One of the selling points of for-profit universities is that they are more
open to non-traditional students vis-à-vis nonprofit traditional colleges and
universities. This is thus a "diversity" selling point for for-profit
universities.
However, one of the drawbacks is that when traditional colleges and
universities attempt to be more open to diversity and admission of
non-traditional students, there are huge problems of enforcing academic
standards and serious possibilities that most of the non-traditional students
will not graduate.
Here's how some for-profit universities deal unethically with assessment
issues. It's a small wonder that for-profit universities are very popular with
non-traditional students.
"Undercover Probe Finds Lax Academic Standards at Some For-Profit Colleges,"
by Kelly Field, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 22, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Undercover-Probe-Finds-Lax/129881/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
An undercover investigation by the Government
Accountability Office has found evidence of lax academic standards in some
online for-profit programs.
The probe, which is described in a
report
made public Tuesday, found that staff at six of the 12
colleges that enrolled the investigators tolerated plagiarism or awarded
credit for incomplete or shoddy work.
The release of the report, "For-Profit Schools:
Experiences of Undercover Students Enrolled in Online Classes at Selected
Colleges," comes roughly a year after the accountability office
revised an earlier report on recruiting abuses at
for-profit colleges, acknowledging errors and omissions in its findings. A
coalition of for-profit colleges has
sued the office over that report, accusing its
investigators of professional malpractice.
In that earlier investigation, the office sent
undercover investigators to 15 for-profit colleges to pose as prospective
students. It
found widespread deception in recruiting by the
colleges, with many employees providing students with false or misleading
information about graduation rates, job prospects, or earning potential.
This time, the agents attempted to enroll in online
programs at 15 for-profit colleges using a home-school diploma or a diploma
from a closed high school. Twelve of the colleges accepted them.
The "students" then proceeded to skip class,
plagiarize, and submit "substandard" work. Though several ultimately failed
their classes, some got credit for shoddy or plagiarized work along the way.
At one college, a student received credit for six
plagiarized assignments; at another, a student submitted photos of political
figures and celebrities in lieu of an essay, but still earned a passing
grade. A third student got full credit on a final project, despite
completing only two of the three required components. That same student
received full credit for an assignment that had clearly been prepared for
another class.
In two cases, instructors confronted students about
their repeated plagiarism but took no disciplinary action against them. One
student received credit for a response that was copied verbatim from other
students' discussion posts.
Instructors at the other six colleges followed
their institutions' policies on grading and plagiarism, and in some cases
offered to help students who appeared to be struggling.
All of the students ultimately withdrew or were
expelled from the programs. Three of the colleges failed to provide the
departing students with federally required exit counseling about their
repayment options and the consequences of default.
Sen. Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, who requested
the report, said its findings "underscore the need for stronger oversight of
the for-profit education industry."
"It is obvious that Congress must step in to hold
this heavily federally subsidized industry more accountable," he said.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
This makes me wish that similar investigations (audits?) be expanded to huge
samples of nonprofit colleges and universities where
grade inflation is also rampant.
Most universities now have financial internal auditors and are subjected to
governmental or independent CPA audits. But few have independent audits of the
variability in academic standards between departments and between individual
faculty members.
Bob Jensen's threads on For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray Zone
of Fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Bob Jensen's threads on assessment are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm
"The Chronicle's special report on Online Learning explores how calls for
quality control and assessment are reshaping online learning," (Not Free),
Chronicle of Higher Education, November 2011 ---
https://www.chronicle-store.com/Store/ProductDetails.aspx?CO=CQ&ID=78602&cid=ol_nlb_wc
The Chronicle's special report on Online Learning explores how calls for
quality control and assessment are reshaping online learning.
As online learning spreads throughout higher
education, so have calls for quality control and assessment. Accrediting
groups are scrambling to keep up, and Congress and government officials
continue to scrutinize the high student-loan default rates and aggressive
recruiting tactics of some for-profit, mostly online colleges. But the push
for accountability isn't coming just from outside. More colleges are looking
inward, conducting their own self-examinations into what works and what
doesn't.
Also in this year's report:
- Strategies for teaching and doing research
online
- Members of the U.S. military are taking online
courses while serving in Afghanistan
- Community colleges are using online technology
to keep an eye on at-risk students and help them understand their own
learning style
- The push to determine what students learn
online, not just how much time they spend in class
- Presidents' views on e-learning
Bob Jensen's threads on asynchronous learning ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on online course and degree programs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
November 28, 2011 reply from David Albrecht
Bob, I agree with your comment that the study could
have been expanded. As it is, the study is hardly scientific. The sample
size is small, and we have no idea whether lax standards, instructor
negligence, or instructor mercy are responsible for the actions. In
traditional schools, whether they be state funded or private, I wonder if
more abuses would be found among tenure-track or non-tenure-track profs.
Dave Albrecht
November 28, 2011 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi David,
In my opinion, grade inflation and lax academic standards may be more of a
problem for tenured professors than probationary (non-tenured) professors on
tenure track and maybe even for adjunct professors (but adjuncts are so
variable it's hard to draw generalizations).
I will provide an example of non-tenured faculty who are on tenure tracks at
Trinity University. Such probationary faculty are under severe scrutiny by
their immediate departmental faculty and upper-level university committees.
There's heavy pressure on all faculty involved to warn probationary faculty
about inadequate versus adequate progress toward tenure. The hope is that
all nontenured faculty not making adequate progress by year six will have
been terminated such that all faculty going up for tenure have highly
probable chances of not being rejected.
Included in what Trinity calls "probationary reviews" as well as final
"tenure applications" are teaching evaluations, grading distributions for
each course, copies of examinations in each course, copies of course
syllabi, and
self-review statements of candidates. There are also external (off-campus)
reviews in tenure applications, but these are mostly focused on research and
publication.
Tenured faculty are not subjected to such rigorous reviews, and hence a few
tenured faculty in my viewpoint become more lax about academic standards.
Hopefully these are just outliers. There is a rigorous review of associate
professors at times when they apply for full professorships. These are much
like tenure applications and require a truckload of teaching evaluations,
grading distributions for each course, copies of examinations in each
course, copies of course
syllabi, and
self-review statements of candidates. There are also external (off-campus)
reviews in full-professorship applications, but these are mostly focused on
research and publication.
In my 24 years at Trinity University I was completely surprised by
proportion of hired tenure track faculty that were terminated before even
reaching the tenure application stage. I was also even more surprised by
some of the tenure applicants and full-professor applicants who were
rejected by the P&T Committee and/or the President of the University.
I was also surprised in some years by the some of the long-term tenured
faculty (some of whom were lifetime associate professors) who had their
tenure contracts bought out by deals made with the President of the
University. In some cases those buyouts were either for lackluster teaching
and/or lackluster academic standards.
Of course there were also a few faculty members who had some other
dysfunctional behavior leading to buyouts. One of my friends had an early
onset of dementia and was somewhat of a problem even after termination (on a
generous early retirement package), because he continued to hang around
computer labs and the campus library and showed off his vanity press
"research" book that was garbage to the point of embarrassment. He claimed
that proper exercise could prevent all forms of cancer.
Some campus officials and faculty, including me, breathed a sigh of relief
when he eventually died and stopped giving his vanity press book away for
free around Texas.
Of course there are also those who will breathe a sigh of relief when one of
their retired faculty members stops sending so many messages to the AECM.
Respectfully,
Bob Jensen
"Historically Black University Looks Online to Raise Enrollment," by
Alexandra Rice, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 30, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/historically-black-university-looks-online-to-raise-enrollment/34498?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
The Southern University system is increasing its
online course offerings through a partnership with a for-profit provider of
online degree programs for historically black colleges and universities.
Education Online Services Corporation, or EOServe,
which specializes in marketing and recruitment, will work with the
university to package its existing degree programs for the Internet and to
develop its online presence, said Southern’s president, Ronald F. Mason Jr.
The financially ailing system, comprising five
campuses in Louisiana, is betting on the effort to attract new students and
additional revenue. “Southern has historically been one of the larger HBCU’s,”
Mr. Mason said, “and that means a lot of noncompleters or graduates of the
university are out there to be tapped.”
Southern is looking to attract those
students—whether finishing an undergraduate degree or returning for an
advanced degree—by offering online classes traditionally provided in a
brick-and-mortar setting.
“We want to help expand the school’s brand,” said
Barry Singer, CEO of EOServe, “and give students the opportunity to go to
Southern who normally wouldn’t be able to do so.”
EOServe is paying to help develop the online
programs, and it will split any profits with the university system. The
company will also recruit and enroll students; Southern will provide the
course material and instruction, Mr. Singer said.
Continued in article
Southern University and A&M College Graduate School
http://web.subr.edu/fileadmin/files/Gradschool/2010_2012_GraduateSchoolBulletin.pdf
Bob Jensen's threads on distance education training and education
alternatives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
"Working Into the Sunset," by Elizabeth Murphy, Inside Higher Ed,
November 29. 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/11/29/survey-documents-retirement-worries-higher-ed-employees
More than 6 in 10 higher education employees fear
their retirement savings will not be enough for a comfortable retirement,
according to a survey released Monday by Fidelity Investments.
The survey found that most employees in academe —
regardless of age — feel like novices when it comes to investing their
money. More than half of those surveyed reported they feel “overwhelmed” by
the investing process and wish they had more guidance from their employers,
according to the survey.
Fidelity officials said this trend seems to be
indicative of the economy as a whole. As the economy dipped, employees were
being asked to take on more responsibility for their own retirement savings,
and many fear for the long-term viability of Social Security.
"It's not all that surprising when you look at the
rollercoaster people have been on in the last 18 to 24 months in the
market," said Lauren Brouhard, senior vice president of marketing of the tax
exempt market at Fidelity Investments, said. "It's not uncommon for people
to be investing more conservatively, especially younger investors who are
skittish based on the markets that they see."
Fidelity surveyed about 600 higher education
employees, including faculty members, administrators, general staff and
executive staff members from private and public institutions, and analyzed
the responses by employee age. (Those surveyed were among all higher
education employees, randomly selected, regardless of whether they are
Fidelity clients.) Most respondents said they do not have a formal
retirement plan, even though they say that is the most important savings
area for them.
And even though the younger groups should be more
aggressive with their investments, the survey found their asset allocations
are on par with those in the baby boomer group. It also found that half of
the employees surveyed considered themselves “conservative” retirement
investors, no matter the age.
Select Fidelity Survey Findings
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
What the article does not stress is that the freedom of time allocation for most
working professors makes their jobs more like retirement than is possible in
most other working careers. Some older professors really abuse their privileges
by teaching on automatic pilot, spending less than 20 hours per week in their
offices, and living like retirees the rest of the time. What's the incentive to
retire?
Of course other older professors live much more stressful lives teaching and
conducting research and maintaining Websites 70 or more hours per week. But many
of these often like their working lives so much that they prefer this working
life to a "boring" retirement.
What professors needed was more parenting time when their children were very
young. Unfortunately, this is often that stage of their careers that was the
most stressful when they were still seeking tenure and/or promotions to full
professorships. After Age 60 their children are grown, and their work on campus
is often less stressful than it was when they were younger.
The article does not mention another thing that keeps older professors on the
job long after retirement age --- newer and younger trophy spouses who lose
their medical insurance their professor spouses retire. This may change when and
if Obamacare kicks in and many universities drop medical insurance plans for
employees. I'm not just being facetious here. I know at least two professors at
Trinity working long beyond retirement age primarily to continue their medical
insurance benefits for younger trophy spouses. Fortunately for me my wife was on
early Medicare when I retired --- no younger trophy spouse. Sigh!
"Journal Editors' Reactions to Word of Plagiarism? Largely Silence,"
by Tom Bartlett, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 20, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Journal-Editors-Reactions-to/129829/
Lior Shamir was surprised to learn that one of his
papers had been plagiarized. He was even more surprised to learn that it had
been plagiarized, by his count, 21 times.
But what really astonished him is that no one
seemed to care.
In July, Mr. Shamir, an assistant professor of
computer science at Lawrence Technological University, near Detroit,
received an anonymous e-mail signed "Prof. Against Plagiarism." That's how
he found out that multiple paragraphs from a paper he had presented at a
2006 conference, titled "Human Perception-Based Color Segmentation Using
Fuzzy Logic," also appeared in a 2010 paper by two professors in Iran. There
was no question of coincidence—the wording was identical—and his paper
wasn't even cited.
Curious, he started to poke around some more. One
of the Iranian professors, Ali Moghani, a professor at the Institute for
Color Science and Technology, in Tehran, appeared to have copied parts of
the paper in eight different publications. (Mr. Moghani did not respond to a
request for comment.) But he wasn't the only one. The more Mr. Shamir
looked, the more he found. Those 21 papers had 26 authors, all of whom had
published Mr. Shamir's work under their names, without credit.
It's not as if the paper was a central part of his
academic work. In fact, he had forgotten about it until he got the anonymous
e-mail. Now, though, he was intrigued, and more than a little annoyed.
So he started contacting journals, indexing
services, conference organizers. He sent, by his estimate, about 30 e-mails.
He expected that the papers, once it was shown that they had been
plagiarized, would be retracted. Maybe he would get an explanation, or an
apology, or a response of some kind.
In fact, he received only a couple of replies.
Among those he did receive was a reply from
Mohammad Reza Darafsheh, the other Iranian academic. Mr. Darafsheh, a
professor of mathematics at the University of Tehran, wrote that "[a]bout
the overlap of some sentences in chapter 4 of our paper with yours we feel
sorry." But he added that it was "only about one page." The e-mail ended
with an offer to collaborate with Mr. Shamir in the future.
When contacted by The Chronicle, Mr. Darafsheh
wrote in an e-mail that only one paragraph was identical to the original,
and that it had "no scientific value." After it was pointed out to Mr.
Darafsheh that, in truth, about 400 words of the eight-page paper appeared
to have been copied directly from Mr. Shamir's paper, he insisted that there
had been no copying, and that it was merely a "co-accident."
Mr. Darafsheh and Mr. Moghani's paper was published
in the Italian Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics. The Chronicle
contacted the editor, Piergiulio Corsini, who in turn asked Violeta Leoreanu
Fotea, a professor of mathematics at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, in
Romania, to investigate. After reviewing both papers, she wrote that she
could "not say that Darafsheh and Moghani have plagiarized the work of
Shamir."
After The Chronicle e-mailed her multiple examples
of just such copying from the paper, Ms. Leoreanu Fotea acknowledged that it
was "a lot of identical text," and said Mr. Corsini would decide how to
handle the matter. But he wrote in an e-mail to The Chronicle that he was
not sure what decision he was supposed to make. "The paper has been already
published, and I cannot cancel it," he wrote. "I'm sorry for what happened."
Later, Ms. Leoreanu Fotea wrote to say that "two
lines on this unpleasant episode of plagiarism" would appear in a future
edition of the journal. 'Deny the Undeniable'
In 2009, another paper that borrowed heavily from
Mr. Shamir's without credit was published in the Proceedings of the Second
International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering & Technology. One
of the co-authors was Preeti Bajaj, president of the G.H. Raisoni College of
Engineering, in India, who was also chair of the conference where the
plagiarized paper was presented.
That plagiarism was first reported this past
September by the journal Nature India, in which Ms. Bajaj acknowledged that
portions were copied but blamed a graduate assistant who was a co-author of
the paper. She told Nature India that the assistant had been fired. What she
did not mention was that the paper was published again this year in the
Journal of Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing. In an e-mail
to The Chronicle, she wrote in uncertain English that as a co-author, "I'm
guilty but I didn't knew my student will do so." In a follow-up message, she
asserted that the "research truth can be known to only those who understands
and work on the technology." Ms. Bajaj did not respond to a request for
further explanation.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on plagiarism are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
Question
Have there been any recent plagiarism incidents detected for American Accounting
Association research journals?
Plagiarism arises when these journal authors plagiarized or when these journal
authors had their own writings plagiarized.
I know of one back in the 1960s where TAR published a paper in its entirety that
was previously published in Management Science. TAR issued an apology and
the author, from Scandinavia, was not punished in any way to my knowledge other
than to face the embarrassment of being caught. By the way, it was Les
Livingstone who first notified the AAA that this TAR paper was plagiarized.
From the Scout Report on December 2, 2011
Muuter ---
http://muuter.com/
If you are on Twitter for work or pleasure, you may
find that some users are a bit too "noisy". Muuter can help with this
problem, as it gives interested parties the ability to scan their timeline
and mute everyone who uses certain keywords habitually. Visitors can set up
Muuter to mute certain users and their tweets for a set amount of time as
well. This version is compatible with all operating systems.
ArchivedBook ---
http://archivedbook.com/
Looking for a way to locate past information on
your Facebook profile? ArchivedBook is a simple and easy way to do just
that. Visitors just need to sign-in to their own Facebook profile, and after
giving ArchivedBook permission, they can look at all of their Facebook
messages, check-in locations, status updates, and posted links. Visitors
wishing to use the site should note that the program is compatible with all
operating systems.
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Life Sciences Education (Journal) ---
http://www.lifescied.org/
Pathways to Science ---
http://www.pathwaystoscience.org/index.asp
Great Science For Girls ---
http://www.greatscienceforgirls.org/
STEM Resources for Teachers and Students ---
http://www.thinkfinity.org/stem
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Stephen Colbert Talks Science with Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/stephen_colbert_talks_science_with_astrophysicist_neil_degrasse_tyson.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Goshawk Flies Through Tiny Spaces in Slo-Mo! ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2CFckjfP-1E
To Infinity and Beyond: A Mind-Bending Documentary from the BBC ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/ito_infinity_and_beyondi_a_mind-bending_documentary_from_the_bbc.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Life Sciences Education (Journal) ---
http://www.lifescied.org/
Great Science For Girls ---
http://www.greatscienceforgirls.org/
STEM Resources for Teachers and Students ---
http://www.thinkfinity.org/stem
Pathways to Science ---
http://www.pathwaystoscience.org/index.asp
The Science of HIV/AIDS ---
http://bioedonline.org/resources/hivaidsindex.cfm
Welcome Home Howard, Or Whatever Became of the Daring Aviator?
Howard Hughes Aviation Photograph Collection ---
http://digital.library.unlv.edu/hughes/
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
Practical Action (using technology to solve poverty problems) ---
http://practicalaction.org/home
Chronic Poverty Research Centre ---
http://www.chronicpoverty.org/page/index
ReliefWeb (poverty) ---
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/dbc.nsf/doc100?OpenForm
Detroit Public Television's American Black Journal ---
http://abj.matrix.msu.edu/
Great Science For Girls ---
http://www.greatscienceforgirls.org/
United Nations Development Programme: Open Data ---
http://data.undp.org/
National Blood Clot Alliance ---
http://www.stoptheclot.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
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
To Infinity and Beyond: A Mind-Bending Documentary from the BBC ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/ito_infinity_and_beyondi_a_mind-bending_documentary_from_the_bbc.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Great Science For Girls ---
http://www.greatscienceforgirls.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
To Infinity and Beyond: A Mind-Bending Documentary from the BBC ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/ito_infinity_and_beyondi_a_mind-bending_documentary_from_the_bbc.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Cultural & Academic Films ---
http://www.archive.org/details/culturalandacademicfilms
The First Actresses
http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/the-first-actresses/first_actresses_exhibition.php
A Day in Venezia ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/a_day_in_venezia.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
National Building Museum ---
http://www.nbm.org/
Great Buildings Collection (architecture) ---
http://www.greatbuildings.com/gbc.html Moving Image Source (history of film) ---
http://www.movingimagesource.us/
Buildings in Cities ---
http://www.emporis.com/en/
National Gallery of Great Buildings ---
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/New_National_Gallery.html
Illustrations to Dickens ---
http://digital.libraries.ou.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fdickens2
Pacific Standard Time at the Getty (art history) ---
http://www.getty.edu/pacificstandardtime/
The World’s First Mobile Phone (1922) ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/worlds_first_mobile_phone_1922.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
One Ringy Dingy ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9e3dTOJi0o
Stanley Kubrick’s Photographs: Browse Them or Buy Them ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/stanley_kubricks_photographs.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
NIST: A Walk Through Time (watches, clocks, timepieces) ---
http://www.nist.gov/pml/general/time
"Poetry: Dos-à-dos With Dickinson," by Lisa Russ Spaar, Chronicle of Higher
Education's Chronicle Review, December 5, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/spaar-on-poetry-dos-a-dos-with-dickinson/41777?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
Welcome Home Howard, Or Whatever Became of the Daring Aviator?
Howard Hughes Aviation Photograph Collection ---
http://digital.library.unlv.edu/hughes/
From the Scout Report on December 2, 2011
In a small town in Wisconsin, Josef Stalin’s daughter dies
Lana Peters, Stalin’s Daughter, Dies at 85
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/world/europe/stalins-daughter-dies-at-
85.html
Stalin’s daughter dies
http://themoscownews.com/russia/20111129/189244085.html
Portland granddaughter of Josef Stalin remembers her mother as a talented
writer and lecturer in her own right
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/11/portland_granddaughter_of_jose.html
Tea with Stalin’s Daughter
http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/12/01/inigo-thomas/tea-with-stalin%E2%80%99s-
daughter/
Lana about Svetlana: Stalin's daughter on her life in Wisconsin
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/doug_moe/article_85ebc5d0-4978-11df-
b181-001cc4c002e0.html
Twenty Letters to a Father
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1967/11/twenty-letters-to-a-
father/3396/
TIME Photos: Stalin’s daughter Lana Peters
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2100515,00.html
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
What is WordNet?
http://www.certifiedchinesetranslation.com/WordNet/
WordNet® is a large lexical database of English.
Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive
synonyms (synsets), each expressing a distinct concept. Synsets are
interlinked by means of conceptual-semantic and lexical relations. The
resulting network of meaningfully related words and concepts can be
navigated with the
browser.
WordNet is also freely and publicly available for
download. WordNet's
structure makes it a useful tool for computational linguistics and natural
language processing.
WordNet superficially resembles a thesaurus, in
that it groups words together based on their meanings. However, there are
some important distinctions. First, WordNet interlinks not just word
forms—strings of letters—but specific senses of words. As a result, words
that are found in close proximity to one another in the network are
semantically disambiguated. Second, WordNet labels the semantic relations
among words, whereas the groupings of words in a thesaurus does not follow
any explicit pattern other than meaning similarity.
Structure
The main relation among words in WordNet is
synonymy, as between the words shut and close or car and automobile.
Synonyms--words that denote the same concept and are interchangeable in many
contexts--are grouped into unordered sets (synsets). Each of WordNet’s 117
000 synsets is linked to other synsets by means of a small number of
“conceptual relations.” Additionally, a synset contains a brief definition
(“gloss”) and, in most cases, one or more short sentences illustrating the
use of the synset members. Word forms with several distinct meanings are
represented in as many distinct synsets. Thus, each form-meaning pair in
WordNet is unique.
Relations
The most frequently encoded relation among synsets
is the super-subordinate relation (also called hyperonymy, hyponymy or ISA
relation). It links more general synsets like {furniture, piece_of_furniture}
to increasingly specific ones like {bed} and {bunkbed}. Thus, WordNet states
that the category furniture includes bed, which in turn includes bunkbed;
conversely, concepts like bed and bunkbed make up the category furniture.
All noun hierarchies ultimately go up the root node {entity}. Hyponymy
relation is transitive: if an armchair is a kind of chair, and if a chair is
a kind of furniture, then an armchair is a kind of furniture. WordNet
distinguishes among Types (common nouns) and Instances (specific persons,
countries and geographic entities). Thus, armchair is a type of chair,
Barack Obama is an instance of a president. Instances are always leaf
(terminal) nodes in their hierarchies.
Meronymy, the part-whole relation holds between
synsets like {chair} and {back, backrest}, {seat} and {leg}. Parts are
inherited from their superordinates: if a chair has legs, then an armchair
has legs as well. Parts are not inherited “upward” as they may be
characteristic only of specific kinds of things rather than the class as a
whole: chairs and kinds of chairs have legs, but not all kinds of furniture
have legs.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
Let’s Get Lost: Bruce Weber’s Sad Film of Jazz Legend Chet Baker ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/ilets_get_losti_bruce_webers_sad_film_of_jazz_legend_chet_baker.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/
November 28, 2011
November 29, 2011
November 30, 2011
December 1, 2011
December 2, 2011
December 3, 2011
December 5, 2011
December 6, 2011
Hi XXXXX
This one is not only false, but it's false about "checking with Snopes."
http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/radiation.asp
But if you get the corn to pop beside your cell phone, then please let me
know. I've been waiting for years to prove Snopes wrong about something
that's easy to verify.
That does not mean there aren't some risks of holding a cell phone to
your ear for hours each day. The medical dangers, however, are still unknown
--
http://www.webmd.com/cancer/brain-cancer/news/20110727/study-cell-phones-dont-raise-brain-cancer-risk-in-kids
I think kids who spend hours each day on a cell phone are at risk of
becoming morons.
Bob Jensen
Quotations forwarded by Auntie Bev
The are bar room or bathroom signs that are often not politically correct
If life is a waste of time, And time is a waste
of life, Then let's all get wasted together And have the time of our lives.
Armand's Pizza, Washington , DC
No matter how good she looks, Some other guy is
sick and tired Of putting up with her shit.
Men's Room Linda's Bar and Grill, Chapel Hill, NC
You're too good for him.
Sign over mirror in Women's restroom Ed Debevic's, Beverly Hills, CA
It's hard to make a comeback When you haven't
been anywhere.
Written in the dust on the back of a bus, Wickenburg , AZ
Make love, not war. Hell, do both GET MARRIED!
Women's restroom The Filling Station, Bozeman, MT
If voting could really change things, It would
be illegal.
Revolution Books New York, New York.
If pro is opposite of con, then what is the
opposite of progress? Congress!
Men's restroom House of Representatives, Washington, DC
Express Lane: Five beers or less.
Sign over one of the urinals Ed Debevic's, Phoenix, AZ
No wonder you always go home alone.
Sign over mirror in Men's restroom, Ed Debevic's, Beverly Hills, CA
A Woman's Rule of Thumb: If it has tires or
testicles, You're going to have trouble with it.
Women's restroom Dick's Last Resort, Dallas
HAPPINESS
To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand
her at all.
LONGEVITY
Married men live longer than single men do, but married men are a lot more
willing to die.
Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking
me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I
started doing the same thing to them at funerals.
Who put the dick on the snowman? ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaSXa5KmYQw&feature=youtu.be
Forwarded by Paula
The following was
printed in Heloise's column on November 27, 2011:
Want to make
Christmas morning special for your little ones?
Make "Santa's Footprints."
Cut two large
foot-shaped stencils from paper or cardboard. (Or use a large pair of
shoes to draw the outline on the cardboard.)
Lay them on the
floor and sift baking soda around the edge.
Carefully lift and
repeat the process from the fireplace or window to the tree and then
toward the table with the milk and cookies (and carrots for the
reindeer).
In the morning,
your child will wake up to a nice surprise -- "evidence" that Santa
visited in the middle of the night. The baking soda is easily vacuumed
up and will deodorize the carpet.
Alternately, string
out empty beer bottles
but the kids might suspect that Dad rather than Santa drank the beer).
The World’s First Mobile Phone (1922) ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/worlds_first_mobile_phone_1922.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
One Ringy Dingy ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9e3dTOJi0o
Beer Advertisement from Europe ---
http://www.theinspiration.com/2011/09/carlsberg-stunt-in-cinema/
Humor Between
December 1-31, 2011 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q4.htm#Humor123111
Humor Between November 1 and November 30, 2011 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q4.htm#Humor113011
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
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.
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Accounting and Taxation News Sites ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
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://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
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 |
CPAS-L
(Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/ (Closed
Down)
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] |
FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 ---
http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
www.financialexecutives.org/blog
Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB
and the International Accounting
Standards Board on this financial
reporting blog from Financial Executives
International. The site, updated daily,
compiles regulatory news, rulings and
statements, comment letters on
standards, and hot topics from the Web’s
largest business and accounting
publications and organizations. Look for
continuing coverage of SOX requirements,
fair value reporting and the Alternative
Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such
as the subprime mortgage crisis,
international convergence, and rules for
tax return preparers. |
|
|
The CAlCPA Tax Listserv September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@bonackers.com]
Scott has been a long-time contributor to the AECM listserv (he's a techie as
well as a practicing CPA)
I found another listserve
that is exceptional -
CalCPA maintains
http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/
and they let almost anyone join it.
Jim Counts, CPA is moderator.
There are several highly
capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and
the answers are often in depth.
Scott
Scott forwarded the following message from Jim
Counts
Yes you may mention info on
your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of what you say please say [... any
CPA or attorney or a member of the Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is
possible to join without having a free Yahoo account but then they will not
have access to the files and other items posted.
Once signed in on their Yahoo account go to
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTalk/ and I believe in
top right corner is Join Group. Click on it and answer the few questions and
in the comment box say you are a CPA or attorney, whichever you are and I
will get the request to join.
Be aware that we run on the average 30 or move emails per day. I encourage
people to set up a folder for just the emails from this listserve and then
via a rule or filter send them to that folder instead of having them be in
your inbox. Thus you can read them when you want and it will not fill up the
inbox when you are looking for client emails etc.
We currently have about 830 CPAs and attorneys nationwide but mainly in
California.... ]
Please encourage your members
to join our listserve.
If any questions let me know.
Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
Hemet, CA
Moderator TaxTalk
|
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