Tidbits on May 10, 2012
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Featured
Photographs This Week are Houses
Set 1
of Photographs of Houses Near Our Cottage
Includes photographs of the dairy barn that film star Bette Davis hauled
from Vermont
and reassembled as her house on nearby Butternut Farm
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Houses/Set01/HousesSet01.htm
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 May 10, 2012
Bob Jensen
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/.
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Supermassive Black Hole Shreds a Star, and You Get to Watch
---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/supermassive_black_hole_shreds_a_star_and_you_get_to_watch_.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
TED Video: Drew Curtis: How I beat a patent troll ---
Click Here
http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_curtis_how_i_beat_a_patent_troll.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TEDTalks_video+%28TEDTalks+Main+%28SD%29+-+Site%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
Just How Small are Atoms? Mind Blowing TEDEd Animation Puts It
All Into Perspective ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/04/just_how_small_are_atoms_mind_blowing_teded_animation_puts_it_all_into_perspective.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Reveille (warning: this is patriotic humor) ---
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2487638612433437293&q=Vetera
Wild Gorillas ---
http://www.youtube.com/v/1eXS0o6r-Wk%26rel%3d0%26hl%3den_US%26feature%3dplayer_embedded%26version%3d3
Betty White's (age 90) Tribute to Morgan Freeman
---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=b4S7T05zTqY
Here is a politically incorrect tax loophole costing billions
---
http://www.wthr.com/video?clipId=7054149&topVideoCatNo=103348&autoStart=true
The Amazing Skidboot (dog) ---
http://silverandgoldandthee.net/V/Sk.html
Cooking Sweet Corn Without a Mess---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=YnBF6bv4Oe4&feature=youtu.be
Warning:
This could be an urban legend.
I've not yet tried this "practical" innovation out in our microwave.
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Chicago Jazz ---
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/cja/jazzmaps/ctlframe.htm
Jazz Old Time Online ---
http://www.jazz-on-line.com/index.htm
There's a vast collection here. Some choices are free; Others are not
free.
Red Hot Jazz Archive ---
http://www.redhotjazz.com/
Now What a Time: Blues, Gospel and the Fort
Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943 ---
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ftvhtml/ftvhome.html
All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808
Drum Machine Changed Pop Music ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/04/iall_hail_the_beati_how_the_1980_roland_tr-808_drum_machine_changed_pop_music.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive
Melody)” Performed on Traditional Chinese Instruments ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/04/talking_heads_this_must_be_the_place_naive_melody_performed_on_traditional_chinese_instruments.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
What a Wonderful World ---
http://www.youtube.com/embed/auSo1MyWf8g?rel=0
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
Venice in a Day: From Daybreak to Sunset in
Timelapse ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/04/venice_in_a_day_from_daybreak_to_sunset_in_timelapse.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
What a Wonderful World ---
http://www.youtube.com/embed/auSo1MyWf8g?rel=0
The Anatomical Drawings of Renaissance Man,
Leonardo da Vinci ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/the_anatomical_drawings_of_renaissance_man_leonardo_da_vinci.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Figge Art Museum Grant Wood Digital Collection ---
http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/grantwood/
Celestial Lights: Spectacular Auroras Move Across
the Scandinavian Skies ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/04/icelestial_lightsi_spectacular_auroras_move_across_the_scandinavian_skies.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
MoMA: Print/Out (print making) ---
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/printout/
Some 70 Year Old Kodachorme Photographs ---
http://pavelkosenko.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/4x5-kodachromes/
American Experience: Grand Coulee Dam ---
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/coulee/
Truth vs. Twilight - Burke Museum (Native
American) ---
http://www.burkemuseum.org/static/truth_vs_twilight/index.php
From Duke University (business history)
R.C. Maxwell Company Records, 1904-1990s and undated ---
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/rcmaxwellco/
Advertising Age ---
http://adage.com/
The Museum of Printing History ---
http://www.printingmuseum.org/
Richard Benson: The Printed Picture (historical alternatives for
printing pictures) ---
http://www.benson.readandnote.com
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
From Tulane University Natalie V. Scott Exhibit (Essays, New
Orleans, Newspapers) ---
http://larc.tulane.edu/collections/dig_init/exhibits/nvs/
Pew Internet & American Life Project: The Rise of E-Reading
---
http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/04/04/the-rise-of-e-reading/
Free Electronic Literature ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on May 10, 2012
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2012/TidbitsQuotations051012.htm
The booked National
Debt on January 1, 2012 was over $15 trillion ---
U.S. National Debt Clock ---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Also see
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
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
Monty Hall Paradox Video ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhlc7peGlGg
Monty Hall Paradox Explanation ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Hall_paradox
Jensen Comment
Of course the paradox in real life decision making, that takes it out of the
real of the Monty Hall solutions and game theory in general, is that in the real
world the probabilities of finding what's behind closed doors are unknown.
An alternate solution when probabilities are unknown for paths leading to
closed doors is the Robert Frost solution to choose the door least opened.---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2007/tidbits070905.htm
What the Monty Hall Paradox teaches us, at least symbolically, is that
sometimes the most obvious common sense solutions to problems are not
necessarily optimal. The geniuses in life discover better solutions that most of
would consider absurd at the time --- such as that time is relative and not
absulute ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity
Richard Sansing forwarded the link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_restricted_choice_(bridge)
April 30, 2012 reply from Paul Williams
Bob, This problem produced one of the greatest
volumes of mail that Marilyn vos Savant ever received (for you non-Parade
Magazine readers she has a column titled Ask Marilyn and also has the
distinction of having the highest tested IQ). Professional statisticians
disagreed with her answer (which is the one given in the video). She had a
devil of a time convincing readers that her answer was correct.
May 3, 2012 reply from David Johnstone
Dear all, there is quite a literature on this
problem and it has an interesting history, having apparently been featured
on the front page of New York Times some years ago. It is in the book
(called Herd on the Street I think) which contains questions that have been
used in interviews by Wall Street firms (to assess peoples' intuitive
strengths). It was little known for years because it was only in Bayesian
textbooks, that for a long while were "banned" in many places. This has now
completely changed and the Bayesian influence in statistics is everywhere.
Bob's point about some probabilities being known
and others not, as if there is a neat dichotomy, is frowned upon by the
mainstream (subjectivist) Bayesian camp. This camp follows Savage and de
Finnetti where everything is subjective to a greater or lesser degree. For
those who hate this, the proof of the pudding is still there in that
subjectivist decision making still leads to decisions and hence
consequences. The subjectivist position was very much that of Markowitz and
basically all portfolio theorists. Empirical estimates of parameters are
just one input into their subjective estimation. When this is forgotten
people tend to take them as given and as if they themselves are not
uncertain. This is called estimation risk in finance and there is a Bayesian
literature on it there. The effects are false belief in one's results and
GFC type overconfidence.
You can get different answers to Monte Hall by
invoking different subjective beliefs. e.g. maybe you believe that the host
has a bias towards putting the prize in one of the boxes, which you will
then allow for (subjectively) in your calculations.
I have never seen this problem called a paradox
before. Its just a case where generally people are not wired to produce
coherent probabilities (i.e. ones which are consistent with each other via
Bayes theorem). There are exceptions, and they are often very good at
bookmaking and investment banking.
There was a paper in the JoF in 2004 using the
Monte Hall problem as a basis for behavioral tests of peoples' ability to
price "convertible bonds". There was an earlier similar paper in economics
cited in that paper.
I hope this is of interest.
May 3, 2012 reply from Paul Williams
You can get different answers to Monte Hall by
invoking different subjective beliefs. e.g. maybe you believe that the host
has a bias towards putting the prize in one of the boxes, which you will
then allow for (subjectively) in your calculations.
Good point since the solution provided is based on
the supposition that Monty Hall knows behind which doors the car and goats
are located. If he doesn't know any more than you and simply picks a door at
random and is "lucky" enough to have picked a goat door, wouldn't this
change the solution to the one most people thought was the case in the
original, i.e., fifty/fifty? Isn't the solution contingent on the certain
knowledge that Monty possesses? Statistically sophisticated AECMers, please
respond.
I have never seen this problem called a paradox
before. Its just a case where generally people are not wired to produce
coherent probabilities (i.e. ones which are consistent with each other
via Bayes theorem). There are exceptions, and they are often very good
at bookmaking and investment banking.
There was a paper in the JoF in 2004 using the
Monte Hall problem as a basis for behavioral tests of peoples' ability to
price "convertible bonds". There was an earlier similar paper in economics
cited in that paper.
I hope this is of interest.
Here is a politically incorrect tax loophole costing billions ---
http://www.wthr.com/video?clipId=7054149&topVideoCatNo=103348&autoStart=true
The MOOC Model Revisited
"Massive Open Online Courses: How: 'The Social” Alters the Relationship
Between Learners and Facilitators'," by Bonnie Stewart, Inside Higher Ed,
April 30, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university-venus/massive-open-online-courses-how-%E2%80%9C-social%E2%80%9D-alters-relationship-between
We're getting close to the tail end of the
36-week-long experiment called #change11, or “the mother of all MOOCs.”
How can I tell?
First, I'm getting ready to facilitate my week, exploring Digital
Identities. I'm second-last in the lineup, so the fact that I'm on deck
means the whole undertaking is drawing to a close.
But it's also clear we're winding down because the #change11 conversation
hubs have begun to resemble, uh, ghost-towns. Once there were lively
debates and intense exchanges. As the winter wore into the spring of the
year, though, the tumbleweeds began to tickle.
Note to self: next time you facilitate a MOOC module, pick Week #2, not Week
#35.
Any course that runs from September through May requires stamina. When that
course is voluntary on the part of both learners and facilitators, and runs
as a series of totally separate modules, the drop-off can be fairly
significant. Erm, even my own participation as a student has crawled to a
stop over the last month or two.
I find myself wondering if the other learners will be keener than I've been?
Am I going to throw a MOOC and have nobody show up?
I suppose it doesn't matter. I'm a teacher at heart. I'll put the work into
developing my one-week course whether there are going to be 3 students or
300. But as I'm preparing, I'm thinking about what it means to facilitate in
a truly social, networked, voluntary environment like #change11.
Or the internet.
As the awareness of the MOOC experiment grows, the term is being
increasingly applied to grand-scale enterprises like the Stanford AI course
and MITx. While heady, this blurs some very important distinctions.
The MOOC model from which #change11 originates was built on the connectivist
learning theory of George Siemens and Stephen Downes. Highly social in
format, these courses tend to be experimental, non-linear, and deeply
dialogic and participatory. Contributions from participants frequently
direct the course of discussion, and the connections and ideas built between
learners can be considered as valuable as the knowledge expounded by the
facilitator.
On the other hand, the MOOC models offered by the big universities tend
towards formalized curricula, content delivery, and verification of
completed learning objectives.
Far more embedded in traditional paradigms of knowledge and teaching, these
courses only harness the connectivity of social media insofar as they enable
masses of people to link themselves to the prestige of a big-name
institution. They offer discussion boards, but their purpose is
content-focused, not connection-focused.
If I were teaching in an MITx-style course, I'd have a very different module
ahead of me, one far more familiar to me as a higher ed instructor.
I've been teaching for eighteen years. I profess to be in favour of
learner-centered classrooms. But until this MOOC module, every single course
I've taught has on some level obliged the students to be there. I am
accustomed to having the institutional powers of status, credentialism, and
grading backing me in the classroom.
In the connectivist MOOC model, I don't.
There is no bonus for learners who participate in my week of #change11. They
won't get a badge at the end, and there is no certification announcing they
completed anything. There's nothing specific for them to complete, unless I
design an exit goal as part of the week's activities. But that would be MY
exit goal: not theirs. They don't get to put the word MIT on their CV. And
while some weeks of the #change11 MOOC have allowed participants to connect
with leaders in the learning and technologies field – Howard Rheingold,
Pierre Levy – I'm among the less well-known of the 30-plus facilitators in
the year's lineup. They won't even get the relational perk of engaging with
somebody famous.Continued in article
"‘Free-Range Learners’: Study Opens Window
Into How Students Hunt for Educational Content Online," by Marc Parry,
Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/free-range-learners-study-opens-window-into-how-students-hunt-for-educational-content-online/36137?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
April 29, 2012 message from Mark Lewis
This is an
interview with Sebastian Thrun, formerly of Stanford and still
associated with Google. In my ideal world, every faculty member and a
large fraction of the administration and staff would watch the last half
of this video. The first half is worth watching if you have an interest
in Google Glass, autonomous cars, or Google X projects in general. The
second half talks about his views and what he is doing in education. He
is the person who taught an AI course online that had 160,000 students
enroll and had 23,000 students complete it. In this interview he
describes how this impacted him so much that he left his tenured
position at Stanford. The lack of personal contact he talks about in his
classroom does not apply in most Trinity classrooms, however, a cost of
$0 for something that many students find as more personal than a large
lecture hall does have the potential to change the economics of higher
education.
Bob Jensen's threads on these issues are
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Especially note
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#MITx
Higher Education Bubble ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_bubble
Educating the Masses: From MITx to EDX
Harvard and MIT Create EDX to Offer Free Online Courses Worldwide ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/harvard_and_mit_create_edx_to_offer_free_online_courses_worldwide.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
It all started early last fall. Sebastian Thrun
went a little rogue (oh the audacity!) and started offering
free online courses under Stanford’s banner to mass audiences,
with each course promising a “statement of
accomplishment” at the end. Hundreds of thousands of students signed up, and
universities everywhere took notice.
Since then we have witnessed universities and
startups scrambling fairly madly to create their own MOOCs (Massive Open
Online Courses), hoping to gain a foothold in a new area that could
eventually disrupt education in a major way. In December,
MIT announced the creation of MITx, promising
free courses and a “certificate of completion” to students worldwide.
Sebastian Thrun left Stanford to create Udacity, and another Stanford
spinoff,
Coursera, gained instant traction when it
announced in April that it had raised $16 million in venture capital and
signed partnerships with Princeton, Penn and U Michigan.
Now comes the latest news. MIT has teamed up with
its Cambridge neighbor, Harvard, to create
a new non profit venture, EDX. To date, Harvard
has barely dabbled
in open education. But it’s now throwing
$30 million behind
EDX (M.I.T. will do
the same), and together they will offer free digital courses worldwide, with
students receiving the obligatory certificate of mastery at the end. The EDX
platform will be open source, meaning it will be open to other universities.
Whether EDX will replace MITx, or sit uncomfortably beside it, we’re not
entirely sure (though it looks like it’s the former).
Classes will begin next fall. And when they do,
we’ll let you know … and, of course, we’ll add them to our massive
collection of 450 Free
Online Courses.
For more information, you can watch the
EDX press conference
here and read an
FAQ here.
"Will MITx Disrupt Higher Education?" by Robert Talbert, Chronicle
of Higher Education, December 20, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2011/12/20/will-mitx-disrupt-higher-education/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
MIT & Khan Academy Team Up to Develop Science Videos for Kids.
Includes The Physics of Unicycling ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/mit_khan_academy_team_up_to_develop_science_videos_for_kids.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's threads on MITx and Khan Academy and other free videos from
prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Saylor.org: Free Education ---
http://www.saylor.org/
"Innovations in Higher Education? Hah! College leaders need to move
beyond talking about transformation before it's too late," by Ann Kirschner,
Chronicle of Higher Education, April 8, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Innovations-in-Higher/131424/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Bob Jensen's threads on free courses, lectures, videos, and course
materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
"Western Governors University embezzler is sentenced: Courts »
Check forger bought home with cash; still owes school $288K," by Cimaron
Neugebauer, The Salt Lake Tribune, April 27, 2012 ---
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53997971-78/wilkinson-university-jail-checks.html.csp
A woman who forged checks worth more than half a
million dollars while working for Western Governors University — using a
majority of the stolen cash to buy a house — was sentenced Friday to
probation, community service and eight days in jail.
Shelley Ann Wilkinson, 45, of Belgrade, Mont., was
charged last year with one count of theft, a second-degree felony, and three
counts of forgery, all third-degree felonies.
Last month, Wilkinson pleaded guilty to two
third-degree felony forgery counts and the other charges were dismissed.
On Friday, Wilkinson stood in tears as 3rd District
Judge Elizabeth Hruby-Mills ordered the jail time, 200 hours of community
service, along with 36 months probation. Wilkinson also must continue paying
restitution.
Prosecutor Vincent Meister said that of the roughly
$526,700 embezzled by Wilkinson, she used some to buy a $350,000 house in
Canada.
"The embezzlement in itself is selfish," Meister
said, refuting the defense’s claims that Wilkinson always gave and helped
others. "What she stole wasn’t something she needed for subsistence. She
bought [another] house and she got caught."
Defense attorney Taylor Hartley said that after a
few weeks after buying the home, Wilkinson’s guilt got to her and she tried
to sell it. She later turned the deed to the home over to the university and
Wilkinson started paying money back, but still owes the school about
$288,000.
Meister said the most "aggravating factor" is that
she had the money to pay back the school right away.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
"Zipping Through Airport Security," by David Pogue, The New York
Times, April 27, 2012 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/
May 1, 2012 reply from Denny Beresford (Uniersity of Georgia)
I signed up for this through the Government's
Global Entry program about a year ago. To date, only Atlanta has been of
much value to me as it was one of the four airports in the pilot program.
But the recently announced expansion to several other major airports will
make this a real asset for fairly frequent flyers. It cuts down what could
be a 30 minute or more wait for security to usually less than 5. Even if
lots of others sign up, I think this will still be a major improvement in
the air travel experience.
Denny Beresford
"Talking With Your Fingers," by John McWhorter, The New York Times,
April 23, 2012 ---
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/talking-with-your-fingers/?emc=eta1
Jensen Comment
In this era of texting with smart phones, perhaps the title of this article
should've been "Talking With Your Thumbs."
I love the TV commercial that has an Old West gunslinger standing in a face off
to draw his pistol from a holster. Then the scene shifts to 2012 where instead
he draws his smart phone from his belt. Words indeed may be more powerful than
bullets in the grand scheme of power structures in the 21st Century.
"Why Women Leave Academia," by Curt Rice, Inside Higher Ed,
April 26, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university-venus/why-women-leave-academia
Jensen Comment
I don't buy into any arguments of gender differences of salary that are based
upon sex discrimination. Only if differences in discipline (e.g. English versus
Eduacion versus Accounting) and research performance records are factored
out will I seriously consider charges of gender discriminations in pay.
There is some evidence, especially among physicians, that women are paid less
because they work fewer hours.
Be that as it may, there are many reasons why women leave academia. What I've
not investigated is whether this varies significantly by discipline. My priors
are that among PhD graduates in the last ten years, there are fewer women
accounting professors that leave academia than in most other disciplines. There
are various reasons for my unsubstantiated opinion in this regard. Firstly,
women accounting professors who earned their PhD degrees are probably the
highest paid assistant or associate professors on campus. Secondly, the gauntlet
for earning a PhD in accounting probably took them an equivalent of five or more
full-time years of study and research. Thirdly, these women graduating from PhD
programs in accounting are not 26 year old "youngsters." In addition to spending
five or more years in a doctoral program, they probably had three or more years
of full-time professional experience in corporate or public accounting. These
women put in a lot of years of sacrifice to become assistant and associate
professors of accounting.
Is there any evidence that women accounting professors leave academia in
lower percentages than women in other academic disciplines?
"At Yale, Online Lectures Become Lively Books," by Jennifer Howard,
Chronicle of Higher Education, April 26, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/at-yale-online-lectures-become-lively-books/36162?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford
University, and other institutions are old hands now at taking course
material from the classroom and lab and putting it online for learners
anywhere to use. Yale University may be the first to reverse the process,
using its Open
Yale Courses as the basis for an
old-fashioned
book series.
This month, Yale University Press released the
first batch of paperbacks based on lecture courses featured in the
online-learning program. Priced at $18 and available in e-format too, the
books are meant to expand the audience for the course material even further,
according to Diana E.E. Kleiner. A professor of art history and classics at
Yale, Ms. Kleiner is the founding project director of Open Yale Courses.
“It may seem counterintuitive for a digital project
to move into books and e-books, because these are a much more conventional
way of publishing,” she says. But the Open Yale Courses are about “reaching
out in every way that we could.” That includes posting audio and video
versions online (via Yale’s Web site, YouTube, and iTunes), and providing
transcripts and now book versions of the lectures.
Having transcripts of their lectures to work with
gives faculty authors a jump-start. “It was incomparably the easiest book I
have ever written,” says Shelly Kagan, a Yale professor of philosophy whose
lecture course on death has become one of the Open Yale program’s most
popular offerings. “I just started with the transcripts and treated that as
a first draft.” The book that resulted, also called
Death, has already been
reviewed in the Wall Street Journal.
Other books have taken him 10 years, Mr. Kagan
says. This one took only a few months. Talk to him in detail about the
process, though, and it’s clear he put a lot of fresh labor into the
project, in addition to the years of work that went into creating the
lectures in the first place.
Even very good lectures contain grammatical
mistakes, jokes or asides, or physical cues that don’t work on the page, and
other unfelicities that might distract or annoy a reader. Mr. Kagan polished
those away and restructured some of the discussion so that it followed a
more logical order. He changed some descriptive details.
He preserved the freewheeling, more personal style
he uses in the lecture hall. “Although I changed the setting, and some of
the examples, cleaned up the grammar, moved points around, and so forth and
so on, I tried very hard to keep the conversational tone from the lectures,”
he says. ” The subject matter is heavy—I am talking about death, after
all—but I don’t think we have to discuss it in a ponderous, inaccessible,
‘academic’ fashion.”
He doubts he would have turned his lectures on
death into a book at all without the transcripts and the feedback from
people outside Yale “suggesting there’s a hunger for this stuff.” Since his
lectures went online, he’s heard from people all over the world. He’s even
become a kind of philosopher-guru in China, where volunteers created
Mandarin subtitles for his videotaped lectures.
“I’ve just had the most amazing experiences with
it,” he says of his participation in Open Yale. “I get e-mails from people
in all walks of life, from literally all corners of the globe.” Some want to
engage him in philosophical debate; others share stories about their own
grappling with life-and-death issues. In many cases, “people were striking a
deeply personal note,” he says. “The whole range of it has been humbling and
gratifying.”
Laura Davulis, associate editor for history and
large digital projects at the Yale press, edits the series. Because the
authors are so steeped in their material, and because the idea is to
preserve the original spirit of the lectures, “I definitely have a lighter
hand” in editing, she says. “My role is really more guidance in terms of how
to take material that’s spoken and turn it into something that’s appropriate
for a reading audience but still has that friendliness and accessibility of
sitting in a course and listening to the lecture.”
The books in the series aren’t peer-reviewed as
outside manuscripts would normally be, according to Ms. Davulis, but they’re
approved by the press’s acquisitions panel and its faculty committee.
Although the series is aimed at readers beyond Yale, it makes for a nice
on-campus partnership between Yale’s press and the online-education project.
“One of the things we wanted to play up was the Yale connection,” she says.
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on free courses, lectures, videos, and course
materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Pew Internet & American Life Project: The Rise of E-Reading ---
http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/04/04/the-rise-of-e-reading/
Copyright Troll ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_troll
TED Video: Drew Curtis: How I beat a patent troll ---
Click Here
http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_curtis_how_i_beat_a_patent_troll.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TEDTalks_video+%28TEDTalks+Main+%28SD%29+-+Site%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
Bob Jensen's threads on copyrights ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Copyright
Accountics Scientists Seeking Truth?
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
title:
Science Warriors' Ego Trips
(Accountics)
journal/magazine/etc.:
The Chronicle Review
publication date:
April 25, 2010
article text:
It is the
mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without
accepting it.
Aristotle"Science Warriors' Ego
Trips," by Carlin Romano, Chronicle of Higher Education's The
Chronicle Review, April 25, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Science-Warriors-Ego-Trips/65186/
Standing up for science excites some intellectuals the way beautiful
actresses arouse Warren Beatty, or career liberals boil the blood of
Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. It's visceral. The thinker of this ilk
looks in the mirror and sees Galileo bravely muttering "Eppure si
muove!" ("And yet, it moves!") while Vatican guards drag him away.
Sometimes the hero in the reflection is Voltaire sticking it to the
clerics, or Darwin triumphing against both Church and Church-going
wife. A brave champion of beleaguered science in the modern age of
pseudoscience, this Ayn Rand protagonist sarcastically derides the
benighted irrationalists and glows with a self-anointed superiority.
Who wouldn't want to feel that sense of power and rightness?
You
hear the voice regularly—along with far more sensible stuff—in the
latest of a now common genre of science patriotism, Nonsense on
Stilts: How to Tell Science From Bunk (University of Chicago Press),
by Massimo Pigliucci, a philosophy professor at the City University
of New York. Like such not-so-distant books as Idiot America, by
Charles P. Pierce (Doubleday, 2009), The Age of American Unreason,
by Susan Jacoby (Pantheon, 2008), and Denialism, by Michael Specter
(Penguin Press, 2009), it mixes eminent common sense and frequent
good reporting with a cocksure hubris utterly inappropriate to the
practice it apotheosizes.
According to Pigliucci, both Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxist
theory of history "are too broad, too flexible with regard to
observations, to actually tell us anything interesting." (That's
right—not one "interesting" thing.) The idea of intelligent design
in biology "has made no progress since its last serious articulation
by natural theologian William Paley in 1802," and the empirical
evidence for evolution is like that for "an open-and-shut murder
case."
Pigliucci offers more hero sandwiches spiced with derision and
certainty. Media coverage of science is "characterized by allegedly
serious journalists who behave like comedians." Commenting on the
highly publicized Dover, Pa., court case in which U.S. District
Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent-design theory is not
science, Pigliucci labels the need for that judgment a "bizarre"
consequence of the local school board's "inane" resolution. Noting
the complaint of intelligent-design advocate William Buckingham that
an approved science textbook didn't give creationism a fair shake,
Pigliucci writes, "This is like complaining that a textbook in
astronomy is too focused on the Copernican theory of the structure
of the solar system and unfairly neglects the possibility that the
Flying Spaghetti Monster is really pulling each planet's strings,
unseen by the deluded scientists."
Is it
really? Or is it possible that the alternate view unfairly neglected
could be more like that of Harvard scientist Owen Gingerich, who
contends in God's Universe (Harvard University Press, 2006) that it
is partly statistical arguments—the extraordinary unlikelihood eons
ago of the physical conditions necessary for self-conscious
life—that support his belief in a universe "congenially designed for
the existence of intelligent, self-reflective life"? Even if we
agree that capital "I" and "D" intelligent-design of the scriptural
sort—what Gingerich himself calls "primitive scriptural
literalism"—is not scientifically credible, does that make
Gingerich's assertion, "I believe in intelligent design, lowercase i
and lowercase d," equivalent to Flying-Spaghetti-Monsterism?
Tone
matters. And sarcasm is not science.
The
problem with polemicists like Pigliucci is that a chasm has opened
up between two groups that might loosely be distinguished as
"philosophers of science" and "science warriors." Philosophers of
science, often operating under the aegis of Thomas Kuhn, recognize
that science is a diverse, social enterprise that has changed over
time, developed different methodologies in different subsciences,
and often advanced by taking putative pseudoscience seriously, as in
debunking cold fusion. The science warriors, by contrast, often
write as if our science of the moment is isomorphic with knowledge
of an objective world-in-itself—Kant be damned!—and any form of
inquiry that doesn't fit the writer's criteria of proper science
must be banished as "bunk." Pigliucci, typically, hasn't much
sympathy for radical philosophies of science. He calls the work of
Paul Feyerabend "lunacy," deems Bruno Latour "a fool," and observes
that "the great pronouncements of feminist science have fallen as
flat as the similarly empty utterances of supporters of intelligent
design."
It
doesn't have to be this way. The noble enterprise of submitting
nonscientific knowledge claims to critical scrutiny—an activity
continuous with both philosophy and science—took off in an admirable
way in the late 20th century when Paul Kurtz, of the University at
Buffalo, established the Committee for the Scientific Investigation
of Claims of the Paranormal (Csicop) in May 1976. Csicop soon after
launched the marvelous journal Skeptical Inquirer, edited for more
than 30 years by Kendrick Frazier.
Although Pigliucci himself publishes in Skeptical Inquirer, his
contributions there exhibit his signature smugness. For an antidote
to Pigliucci's overweening scientism 'tude, it's refreshing to
consult Kurtz's curtain-raising essay, "Science and the Public," in
Science Under Siege (Prometheus Books, 2009, edited by Frazier),
which gathers 30 years of the best of Skeptical Inquirer.
Kurtz's
commandment might be stated, "Don't mock or ridicule—investigate and
explain." He writes: "We attempted to make it clear that we were
interested in fair and impartial inquiry, that we were not dogmatic
or closed-minded, and that skepticism did not imply a priori
rejection of any reasonable claim. Indeed, I insisted that our
skepticism was not totalistic or nihilistic about paranormal
claims."
Kurtz
combines the ethos of both critical investigator and philosopher of
science. Describing modern science as a practice in which
"hypotheses and theories are based upon rigorous methods of
empirical investigation, experimental confirmation, and
replication," he notes: "One must be prepared to overthrow an entire
theoretical framework—and this has happened often in the history of
science ... skeptical doubt is an integral part of the method of
science, and scientists should be prepared to question received
scientific doctrines and reject them in the light of new evidence."
Considering the dodgy matters Skeptical Inquirer specializes in,
Kurtz's methodological fairness looks even more impressive. Here's
part of his own wonderful, detailed list: "Psychic claims and
predictions; parapsychology (psi, ESP, clairvoyance, telepathy,
precognition, psychokinesis); UFO visitations and abductions by
extraterrestrials (Roswell, cattle mutilations, crop circles);
monsters of the deep (the Loch Ness monster) and of the forests and
mountains (Sasquatch, or Bigfoot); mysteries of the oceans (the
Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis); cryptozoology (the search for unknown
species); ghosts, apparitions, and haunted houses (the Amityville
horror); astrology and horoscopes (Jeanne Dixon, the "Mars effect,"
the "Jupiter effect"); spoon bending (Uri Geller). ... "
Even
when investigating miracles, Kurtz explains, Csicop's intrepid
senior researcher Joe Nickell "refuses to declare a priori that any
miracle claim is false." Instead, he conducts "an on-site inquest
into the facts surrounding the case." That is, instead of declaring,
"Nonsense on stilts!" he gets cracking.
Pigliucci, alas, allows his animus against the nonscientific to pull
him away from sensitive distinctions among various sciences to
sloppy arguments one didn't see in such earlier works of science
patriotism as Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a
Candle in the Dark (Random House, 1995). Indeed, he probably sets a
world record for misuse of the word "fallacy."
To his
credit, Pigliucci at times acknowledges the nondogmatic spine of
science. He concedes that "science is characterized by a fuzzy
borderline with other types of inquiry that may or may not one day
become sciences." Science, he admits, "actually refers to a rather
heterogeneous family of activities, not to a single and universal
method." He rightly warns that some pseudoscience—for example,
denial of HIV-AIDS causation—is dangerous and terrible.
But at
other points, Pigliucci ferociously attacks opponents like the most
unreflective science fanatic, as if he belongs to some Tea Party
offshoot of the Royal Society. He dismisses Feyerabend's view that
"science is a religion" as simply "preposterous," even though he
elsewhere admits that "methodological naturalism"—the commitment of
all scientists to reject "supernatural" explanations—is itself not
an empirically verifiable principle or fact, but rather an almost
Kantian precondition of scientific knowledge. An article of faith,
some cold-eyed Feyerabend fans might say.
In an
even greater disservice, Pigliucci repeatedly suggests that
intelligent-design thinkers must want "supernatural explanations
reintroduced into science," when that's not logically required. He
writes, "ID is not a scientific theory at all because there is no
empirical observation that can possibly contradict it. Anything we
observe in nature could, in principle, be attributed to an
unspecified intelligent designer who works in mysterious ways." But
earlier in the book, he correctly argues against Karl Popper that
susceptibility to falsification cannot be the sole criterion of
science, because science also confirms. It is, in principle,
possible that an empirical observation could confirm intelligent
design—i.e., that magic moment when the ultimate UFO lands with
representatives of the intergalactic society that planted early life
here, and we accept their evidence that they did it. The point is
not that this is remotely likely. It's that the possibility is not
irrational, just as provocative science fiction is not irrational.
Pigliucci similarly derides religious explanations on logical
grounds when he should be content with rejecting such explanations
as unproven. "As long as we do not venture to make hypotheses about
who the designer is and why and how she operates," he writes, "there
are no empirical constraints on the 'theory' at all. Anything goes,
and therefore nothing holds, because a theory that 'explains'
everything really explains nothing."
Here,
Pigliucci again mixes up what's likely or provable with what's
logically possible or rational. The creation stories of traditional
religions and scriptures do, in effect, offer hypotheses, or claims,
about who the designer is—e.g., see the Bible. And believers
sometimes put forth the existence of scriptures (think of them as
"reports") and a centuries-long chain of believers in them as a form
of empirical evidence. Far from explaining nothing because it
explains everything, such an explanation explains a lot by
explaining everything. It just doesn't explain it convincingly to a
scientist with other evidentiary standards.
A
sensible person can side with scientists on what's true, but not
with Pigliucci on what's rational and possible. Pigliucci
occasionally recognizes that. Late in his book, he concedes that
"nonscientific claims may be true and still not qualify as science."
But if that's so, and we care about truth, why exalt science to the
degree he does? If there's really a heaven, and science can't (yet?)
detect it, so much the worse for science.
As an
epigram to his chapter titled "From Superstition to Natural
Philosophy," Pigliucci quotes a line from Aristotle: "It is the mark
of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without
accepting it." Science warriors such as Pigliucci, or Michael Ruse
in his recent clash with other philosophers in these pages, should
reflect on a related modern sense of "entertain." One does not
entertain a guest by mocking, deriding, and abusing the guest.
Similarly, one does not entertain a thought or approach to knowledge
by ridiculing it.
Long
live Skeptical Inquirer! But can we deep-six the egomania and
unearned arrogance of the science patriots? As Descartes, that
immortal hero of scientists and skeptics everywhere, pointed out,
true skepticism, like true charity, begins at home.
Carlin Romano, critic at large
for The Chronicle Review, teaches philosophy and media theory at the
University of Pennsylvania.
Jensen Comment
One way to distinguish my conceptualization of science from pseudo
science is that science relentlessly seeks to replicate and validate
purported discoveries, especially after the discoveries have been made
public in scientific journals ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTar.htm
Science encourages conjecture but doggedly seeks truth about that
conjecture. Pseudo science is less concerned about validating purported
discoveries than it is about publishing new conjectures that are largely
ignored by other pseudo scientists.
Accountics Scientists Seeking
Truth:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The
Accounting Review I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to
change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
Why Pick on The Accounting Review (TAR)?
The Accounting Review (TAR) since 1926 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm
Jensen Comment
Occasionally I receive messages questioning why I pick on TAR when in fact my
complaints are really with accountics scientists and accountics science in
general.
Accountics is the mathematical science of values.
Charles Sprague [1887] as quoted by McMillan [1998, p. 1]
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm
Major problems in accountics science:
Problem 1 --- Control Over Research Methods Allowed in Doctoral
Programs and Leading
Academic Accounting Research Journals
Accountics scientists control the leading accounting research journals and
only allow archival (data mining), experimental, and analytical research
methods into those journals. Their referees shun other methods like case
method research, field studies, accounting history studies, commentaries,
and criticisms of accountics science.
This is the major theme of Anthony Hopwood, Paul Williams, Bob Sterling, Bob
Kaplan, Steve Zeff, Dan Stone, and others ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm#Appendix01
Since there are so many other accounting research journals in academe and
in the practitioner profession, why single out TAR and the other very "top"
journals because they refuse to publish any articles without equations
and/or statistical inference tables. Accounting researchers have hundreds of
other alternatives for publishing their research.
I'm critical of TAR referees because they're symbolic of today's many
problems with the way the accountics scientists have taken over the research
arm of accounting higher education. Over the past five decades they've taken
over all AACSB doctoral programs with a philosophy that "it's our way or
the highway" for students seeking PhD or DBA degrees ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
In
the United States, following the Gordon/Howell and Pierson reports in the
1950s, our accounting doctoral programs and leading academic journals bet
the farm on the social sciences without taking the due cautions of realizing
why the social sciences are called "soft sciences." They're soft because
"not everything that can be counted, counts. And not everything that counts
can be counted."
Be Careful What You
Wish For
Academic accountants wanted to become more respectable on their campuses by
creating accountics scientists in literally all North American accounting
doctoral programs. Accountics scientists virtually all that our PhD and DBA
programs graduated over the ensuing decades and they took on an elitist
attitude that it really did not matter if their research became ignored by
practitioners and those professors who merely taught accounting.
One of my complaints
with accountics scientists is that they appear to be unconcerned that they
are not not real scientists. In real science the primary concern in
validity, especially validation by replication. In accountics science
validation and replication are seldom of concern. Real scientists react to
their critics. Accountics scientists ignore their critics.
Another complaint is
that accountics scientists only take on research that they can model. The
ignore the many problems, particularly problems faced by the accountancy
profession, that they cannot attack with equations and statistical
inference.
"Research
on Accounting Should Learn From the Past" by Michael H. Granof and
Stephen A. Zeff, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 21, 2008
The
unintended consequence has been that interesting and researchable
questions in accounting are essentially being ignored.
By confining the major thrust in research to phenomena that can be
mathematically modeled or derived from electronic databases, academic
accountants have failed to advance the profession in ways that are
expected of them and of which they are capable.
Academic research has unquestionably broadened the views of standards
setters as to the role of accounting information and how it affects the
decisions of individual investors as well as the capital markets.
Nevertheless, it has had scant influence on the standards themselves.
Continued in
article
Problem 2 --- Paranoia Regarding Validity Testing and Commentaries on
their Research
This is the major theme of Bob Jensen, Paul Williams, Joni Young and
others
574 Shields Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
Problem 3 --- Lack of Concern over Being Ignored by Accountancy Teachers and Practitioners
Accountics scientists only communicate through their research journals that
are virtually ignored by most accountancy teachers and practitioners. Thus
they are mostly gaming in Plato's Cave and having little impact on the
outside world, which is a major criticism raised by then AAA President Judy
Rayburn and Roger Hermanson and others
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
Some accountics scientists have even
warned against doing research for the practicing profession as a
"vocational virus."
Joel
Demski steers us away from the clinical side of the accountancy
profession by saying we should avoid that pesky “vocational virus.”
(See below).
The (Random House) dictionary defines
"academic" as "pertaining to areas of study that are not primarily
vocational or applied , as the humanities or pure mathematics."
Clearly, the short answer to the question is no, accounting is not
an academic discipline.
Joel Demski, "Is Accounting an Academic Discipline?"
Accounting Horizons, June 2007, pp. 153-157
Statistically there are a few youngsters
who came to academia for the joy of learning, who are yet relatively
untainted by the vocational virus.
I urge you to nurture your taste for learning, to follow your joy.
That is the path of scholarship, and it is the only one with any
possibility of turning us back toward the academy.
Joel Demski, "Is Accounting an Academic Discipline?
American Accounting Association Plenary Session" August 9, 2006 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm
Too
many accountancy doctoral programs have immunized themselves against
the “vocational virus.” The problem lies not in requiring doctoral
degrees in our leading colleges and universities. The problem is
that we’ve been neglecting the clinical needs of our profession.
Perhaps the real underlying reason is that our clinical problems are
so immense that academic accountants quake in fear of having to make
contributions to the clinical side of accountancy as opposed to the
clinical side of finance, economics, and psychology.
Problem 4 --- Ignoring Critics: The Accountics Science Wall of Silence
Leading scholars critical of accountics science included Anthony Hopwood,
Paul Williams Roger Hermanson, Bob Sterling, Judy Rayburn, Bob Kaplan, Steve
Zeff, Joni Young, Bob Sterling, Jane Mutchler, Dan Stone, Bob Jensen,
and many others. The most frustrating thing for these critics is that
accountics scientists are content with being the highest paid faculty on
their campuses and their monopoly control of accounting PhD programs
(limiting outputs of graduates)
to a point where they literally ignore they critics and rarely, if ever,
respond to criticisms.
See
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The
Accounting Review I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
CONCLUSION from
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm
In the first 40 years of
TAR, an accounting “scholar” was first and foremost an expert on accounting.
After 1960, following the Gordon and Howell Report, the perception of what
it took to be a “scholar” changed to quantitative modeling. It became
advantageous for an “accounting” researcher to have a degree in mathematics,
management science, mathematical economics, psychometrics, or econometrics.
Being a mere accountant no longer was sufficient credentials to be deemed a
scholarly researcher. Many doctoral programs stripped much of the accounting
content out of the curriculum and sent students to mathematics and social
science departments for courses. Scholarship on accounting standards became
too much of a time diversion for faculty who were “leading scholars.”
Particularly relevant in this regard is Dennis Beresford’s address to the
AAA membership at the 2005 Annual AAA Meetings in San Francisco:
In my eight years in teaching I’ve concluded that way too many of
us don’t stay relatively up to date on professional issues. Most of
us have some experience as an auditor, corporate accountant, or in some
similar type of work. That’s great, but things change quickly these days.
Beresford [2005]
Jane Mutchler made a similar appeal for accounting professors
to become more involved in the accounting profession when she was President
of the AAA [Mutchler, 2004, p. 3].
In the last 40 years, TAR’s
publication preferences shifted toward problems amenable to scientific
research, with esoteric models requiring accountics skills in place of
accounting expertise. When Professor Beresford attempted to publish his
remarks, an Accounting Horizons referee’s report to him contained the
following revealing reply about “leading scholars” in accounting research:
1. The paper provides specific recommendations for things that
accounting academics should be doing to make the accounting profession
better. However (unless the author believes that academics' time is a free
good) this would presumably take academics' time away from what they are
currently doing. While following the author's advice might make the
accounting profession better, what is being made worse? In other words,
suppose I stop reading current academic research and start reading news
about current developments in accounting standards. Who is made better off
and who is made worse off by this reallocation of my time? Presumably my
students are marginally better off, because I can tell them some new stuff
in class about current accounting standards, and this might possibly have
some limited benefit on their careers. But haven't I made my colleagues in
my department worse off if they depend on me for research advice, and
haven't I made my university worse off if its academic reputation suffers
because I'm no longer considered a leading scholar? Why does making
the accounting profession better take precedence over everything else an
academic does with their time?
As quoted in Jensen [2006a]
The above quotation illustrates the consequences of editorial
policies of TAR and several other leading accounting research journals. To
be considered a “leading scholar” in accountancy, one’s research must employ
mathematically-based economic/behavioral theory and quantitative modeling.
Most TAR articles published in the past two decades support this contention.
But according to AAA President Judy Rayburn and other recent AAA presidents,
this scientific focus may not be in the best interests of accountancy
academicians or the accountancy profession.
In terms of citations, TAR
fails on two accounts. Citation rates are low in practitioner journals
because the scientific paradigm is too narrow, thereby discouraging
researchers from focusing on problems of great interest to practitioners
that seemingly just do not fit the scientific paradigm due to lack of
quality data, too many missing variables, and suspected non-stationarities.
TAR editors are loath to open TAR up to non-scientific methods so that
really interesting accounting problems are neglected in TAR. Those
non-scientific methods include case method studies, traditional historical
method investigations, and normative deductions.
In the other account, TAR
citation rates are low in academic journals outside accounting because the
methods and techniques being used (like CAPM and options pricing models)
were discovered elsewhere and accounting researchers are not sought out for
discoveries of scientific methods and models. The intersection of models and
topics that do appear in TAR seemingly are borrowed models and uninteresting
topics outside the academic discipline of accounting.
We close with a quotation
from Scott McLemee demonstrating that what happened among accountancy
academics over the past four decades is not unlike what happened in other
academic disciplines that developed “internal dynamics of esoteric
disciplines,” communicating among themselves in loops detached from their
underlying professions. McLemee’s [2006] article stems from Bender [1993].
“Knowledge and competence increasingly developed out of the
internal dynamics of esoteric disciplines rather than within the context of
shared perceptions of public needs,” writes Bender. “This is not to say that
professionalized disciplines or the modern service professions that imitated
them became socially irresponsible. But their contributions to society began
to flow from their own self-definitions rather than from a reciprocal
engagement with general public discourse.”
Now, there is a definite note of sadness in Bender’s narrative –
as there always tends to be in accounts
of the
shift from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft.
Yet it is also clear that the transformation from
civic to disciplinary professionalism was necessary.
“The new disciplines offered relatively precise subject matter and
procedures,” Bender concedes, “at a time when both were greatly confused.
The new professionalism also promised guarantees of competence —
certification — in an era when criteria of intellectual authority were vague
and professional performance was unreliable.”
But in the epilogue to Intellect and Public Life,
Bender suggests that the process eventually went too far. “The risk now is
precisely the opposite,” he writes. “Academe is threatened by the twin
dangers of fossilization and scholasticism (of three types: tedium, high
tech, and radical chic). The agenda for the next decade, at least as I see
it, ought to be the opening up of the disciplines, the ventilating of
professional communities that have come to share too much and that have
become too self-referential.”
For the good of the AAA membership and
the profession of accountancy in general, one hopes that the changes in
publication and editorial policies at TAR proposed by President Rayburn
[2005, p. 4] will result in the “opening up” of topics and research methods
produced by “leading scholars.”
Picking on TAR is merely symbolic of my concerns with the larger problem of
the what I view are much larger problems caused by the take over of the research
arm of academic accountancy.
Accountics
is the mathematical science of values.
Charles Sprague [1887] as quoted by McMillan [1998, p. 1]
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
574 Shields Against Validity Challenges
in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
How did academic accounting research become a pseudo science?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting
Review I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
Thomas Kuhn ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn
On its 50th anniversary, Thomas Kuhn’s "The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions" remains not only revolutionary but
controversial.
"Shift Happens," David Weinberger, The Chronicle Review, April 22, 2012
---
http://chronicle.com/article/Shift-Happens/131580/
April 24, 2012 reply from Jagdish Gangolly
Bob,
A more thoughtful analysis of Kuhn is at the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This is one of the best resources apart
from the Principia Cybernetika (
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ ).
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/
Regards,
Jagdish
April 24, 2012
Excellent article. It omits one aspect of Kuhn's
personal life (probably because the author thought it inconsequential).
Apparently Kuhn liked to relax by riding roller coasters.In a way, that's a
neat metaphor for the impact of his work.
Thanks Bob.
Roger
Roger Collins
TRU School of Business & Economics
April 24, 2012 message from Zane Swanson
One of the unintended consequences of a paradigm shift may have meaning for
the replication discussion which has occurred on this list. Consider the
relevance of the replications when a paradigm shifts. The change permits an
examination of replications pre and post the paradigm shift of key
attributes. In accounting, one paradigm shift is arguably the change from
historical to fair value. For those looking for a replication reason of
being, it might be worthwhile to compare replication contributions before
and after the historical to fair value changes.
In other words, when the prevailing view was that “the world is flat” …
the replication “evidence” appeared to support it. But, when the paradigm
shifted to “the world is round”, the replication evidence changed also. So,
what is the value of replications and do they matter? Perhaps, the
replications have to be novel in some way to be meaningful.
Zane Swanson
www.askaref.com accounting
dictionary for mobile devices
April 25, 2012 reply from Bob Jensen
Kuhn wrote of science that "In a science, on the
other had, a paradigm is rarely an object for replication. Instead like a
judicial decision in the common law, it is an object for further
articulation and specification under new and more stringent conditions."
This is the key to Kuhn's importance in the development of law and science
for children's law. He did seek links between the two fields of knowledge
and he by this insight suggested how the fields might work together ...
Michael Edmund Donnelly, ISBN 978-0-8204-1385 ---
Click Here
http://books.google.com/books?id=rGKEN11r-9UC&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=%22Kuhn%22+AND+%22Replication%22+AND+%22Revolution%22&source=bl&ots=RDDBr9VBWt&sig=htGlcxqtX9muYqrn3D4ajnE0jF0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=F9WXT7rFGYiAgweKoLnrBg&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22Kuhn%22%20AND%20%22Replication%22%20AND%20%22Revolution%22&f=false
My question Zane is whether historical cost (HC) accounting versus fair
value (FV) accounting is truly a paradigm shift. For centuries the two
paradigms have worked in tandem for different purposes where FV is used by
the law for personal estates and non-going concerns and HC accounting has
never been a pure paradigm for any accounting in the real world. Due to
conservatism and other factors, going-concern accounting has always been a
mixed-model of historical cost modified in selected instances for fair value
as in the case of lower-of-cost-or-market (LCM) inventories.
I think Kuhn was thinking more in terms of monumental paradigm
"revolutions" like we really have not witnessed in accounting standards that
are more evolutionary than revolutionary.
My writings are at
574 Shields Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
Respectfully,
Bob Jensen
Question
Do you know of any blog of a leading accountics scientist that is devoted to
issues of research and accountics science?
I present an ad hoc listing of some of the leading accountics scientists at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
"The Virtues of Blogging as Scholarly Activity," by Martin Weller,
Chronicle of Higher Education, April 29, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Virtues-of-Blogging-as/131666/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
I have been an active blogger since 2006, and I
often say that becoming one was the best decision I have ever made in my
academic life.
In terms of intellectual fulfillment, creativity,
networking, impact, productivity, and overall benefit to my scholarly life,
blogging wins hands down. I have written books, produced online courses, led
research efforts, and directed a number of university projects. While these
have all been fulfilling, blogging tops the list because of its room for
experimentation and potential to connect to timely intelligent debate. That
keeps blogging at the top of the heap.
My academic identity—I'm a professor of educational
technology at the Open University in the United Kingdom—is strongly allied
with my blog. Increasingly we find that our academic identities are
distributed. There was a time when you could have pointed to a list of
publications as a neat proxy for your academic life, but now you might want
to reference not only your publications, but also a set of videos,
presentations, blog posts, curated collections, and maybe even your social
network. All of these combine to represent the modern academic. My blog sits
at the heart of these, the place where I reference the other media and
representations.
This is not to argue that a blog should play the
same role for everyone. A key aspect of the digital revolution is not the
direct replacement of one form of scholarly activity with another, but
rather the addition of alternatives to existing forms. In his book From
Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: What You Really Need to Know About the Internet
(Quercus, 2012), my colleague John Naughton argues that this is a lesson we
should learn. "Looking back on the history," he writes, "one clear trend
stands out: Each new technology increased the complexity of the ecosystem."
This trend is evident in academic practice.
Previously if I wanted to convey an idea or a research finding, my choices
were limited to a conference paper or journal article or, if I could work it
up, a book. These choices still remain, but in addition I can create a
video, podcast, blog post, slidecast, and more. It may be that a combination
of these is ideal—a blog post gets immediate reaction and can then be worked
into a conference presentation, shared through SlideShare, or turned into a
paper that is submitted to a journal. In each case the blog or social
network becomes a key route for sharing and disseminating the findings. One
recent study suggests that use of Twitter, for instance, can both boost and
predict citations of journal articles.
So blogging works for me, but it might not work for
you. Maybe you're more of a YouTube person, or a podcaster, or maybe your
skill really lies in acting as a filter and a curator, using a tool such as
Scoop.it, which allows you to curate and share resources on a particular
topic. Or maybe you're the trusted source for finding the valuable research
in your field. It's clear, though, that our academic ecosystem
is a more complex one now. This raises two
difficult questions for academics who are expected to do research: First, do
these new types of activity count as scholarship? And, if so, how do we
recognize and reward them?
In my book The Digital Scholar: How Technology
Is Transforming Scholarly Practice (Bloomsbury USA, 2011;
free online), I argue that if you look
across all scholarly activities, the use of new technology has the potential
to change practice. For example, those who teach now have access to
abundant, free, online content, while in the past teaching resources were
often scarce and expensive.
Scholars no longer need a television series to
engage the public. The academic publishing system is being thrown into
question as we look at open-access approaches and different means of
conducting peer review. And so on. There is hardly an area of scholarly
practice that remains unaffected.
An example I like to cite is that of my colleague
Tony Hirst, who blogs at OUseful.Info. He likes to play with open data,
visualization tools, and mashups. On any one day an idea may occur to him,
such as, '"I wonder how the people who tweet a particular link are
connected? And who are they connected to?" In a short space of time, he will
have experimented with data and tools to provide an answer, and blogged his
results. None of this requires research funds or a peer-review filter, and
it takes place over a much shorter time period than traditional research.
Yet it would be difficult to argue that the blog does not constitute widely
accepted definitions of scholarly research.
So I would argue that the answer to the first
question above, as to whether new approaches such as blogging constitute
scholarly activity, is an emphatic yes. Which leads us to a more problematic
question: How should we recognize it?
This is where the issue of increased complexity
really begins to cause friction. When it comes to tenure and promotion, the
three factors generally considered are teaching, service, and research. The
first two are easily understood by tenure committees. The last, and often
most heavily weighted one for scholars expected to do research, is that of
scholarship. Here tenure committees have increasingly come to rely upon
journal-impact factors to act as a proxy for research quality. In short, we
know what a good publication record looks like. But these criteria begin to
creak and groan when we apply them to blogs and other online media. Simple
metrics are subject to gaming, and because of the removal of the peer-review
filter, may be meaningless anyway. I may have a YouTube clip of a
skateboarding octopus with two million hits, but that doesn't make it
scholarly work.
It's a difficult problem, but one that many
institutions are beginning to come to terms with. Combining the rich data
available online that can reveal a scholar's impact with forms of peer
assessment gives an indication of reputation. Universities know this is a
game they need to play—that having a good online reputation is more
important in recruiting students than a glossy prospectus. And groups that
sponsor research are after good online impact as well as presentations at
conferences and journal papers.
Institutional reputation is largely created through
the faculty's online identity, and many institutions are now making it a
priority to develop, recognize, and encourage practices such as blogging.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting professors who blog ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
"Facing a Robo-Grader? Just Keep Obfuscating Mellifluously," by
Michael Winerip, The New York Times, April 22, 2012 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/education/robo-readers-used-to-grade-test-essays.html?pagewanted=all
A recently released study has concluded that
computers are capable of scoring essays on standardized tests as well as
human beings do.
Mark Shermis, dean of the
College of Education at the University of Akron, collected more than 16,000
middle school and high school test essays from six states that had been
graded by humans. He then used automated systems developed by nine companies
to score those essays.
Computer scoring produced
“virtually identical levels of accuracy, with the software in some cases
proving to be more reliable,” according to a University of Akron news
release.
“A Win for the Robo-Readers” is how an Inside
Higher Ed blog post summed things up.
For people with a weakness
for humans, there is more bad news. Graders working as quickly as they can —
the Pearson education company expects readers to spend no more than two to
three minutes per essay— might be capable of scoring 30 writing samples in
an hour.
The automated reader
developed by the
Educational Testing Service, e-Rater, can grade
16,000 essays in 20 seconds, according to David Williamson, a research
director for E.T.S., which develops and administers 50 million tests a year,
including the SAT.
Is this the end? Are Robo-Readers
destined to inherit the earth?
Les Perelman, a director of
writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says no.
Mr. Perelman enjoys studying
algorithms from E.T.S. research papers when he is not teaching
undergraduates. This has taught him to think like e-Rater.
While his research is
limited, because E.T.S. is the only organization that has permitted him to
test its product, he says the automated reader can be easily gamed, is
vulnerable to test prep, sets a very limited and rigid standard for what
good writing is, and will pressure teachers to dumb down writing
instruction.
The e-Rater’s biggest
problem, he says, is that it can’t identify truth. He tells students not to
waste time worrying about whether their facts are accurate, since pretty
much any fact will do as long as it is incorporated into a well-structured
sentence. “E-Rater doesn’t care if you say the War of 1812 started in 1945,”
he said.
Mr. Perelman found that
e-Rater prefers long essays. A 716-word
essay he wrote that
was padded with more than a dozen nonsensical sentences received a top score
of 6; a well-argued, well-written essay of 567 words was scored a 5.
An automated reader can
count, he said, so it can set parameters for the number of words in a good
sentence and the number of sentences in a good paragraph. “Once you
understand e-Rater’s biases,” he said, “it’s not hard to raise your test
score.”
E-Rater, he said, does not
like short sentences.
Or short paragraphs.
Or sentences that begin with
“or.” And sentences that start with “and.” Nor sentence fragments.
However, he said, e-Rater
likes connectors, like “however,” which serve as programming proxies for
complex thinking. Moreover, “moreover” is good, too.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
GMAT essay questions have been graded by computers for many years. Medical
school admission examinations use similar grading software.
Bob Jensen's threads on software for grading essay questions ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#ComputerBasedAssessment
"Google Stores, Syncs, Edits in the Cloud," by Walter S. Mossberg,
The Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303459004577362111867730108.html
For years, some people who wanted to store files on
remote servers in the cloud have been emailing the files to their Gmail
accounts, or uploading them to Google's GOOG -0.07% lightly used Google Docs
online productivity suite, even if they had no intention of editing them
there.
Now, Google is formally jumping into the
cloud-based file storage and syncing business, offering a service called
Google Drive, which will compete with products like Dropbox and others by
offering lower prices and different features. It works on multiple operating
systems, browsers and mobile devices, including those of Google's
competitors Apple AAPL -0.32% and Microsoft MSFT -0.02% . There are apps for
Windows, Mac and mobile devices that automatically sync files with Google
Drive.
I've been testing Google Drive, which launches
today, and I like it. It subsumes the editing and file-creation features of
Google Docs, and replaces Google Docs (though any documents you have stored
there carry over). In my tests—on a Mac, a Lenovo PC, a new iPad and the
latest Samsung 005930.SE +1.16% Android tablet—Google Drive worked quickly
and well, and most of its features operated as promised. At launch, it's
available for Windows PCs, Macs and Android devices. The version for the
iPhone and iPad is planned for release soon.
Google Drive, which can be found at
drive.google.com, offers users 5 gigabytes of free storage, compared with 2
gigabytes free for the popular Dropbox, and equal to the free offering from
another cloud storage and syncing service I like, SugarSync. That's enough
for thousands of typical documents, photos and songs.
Prices for additional storage drastically undercut
Dropbox and SugarSync. For instance, 100 GB on Google Drive costs $4.99 a
month. By contrast, 100 GB costs $14.99 monthly on SugarSync and $19.99 on
Dropbox. Google Drive will offer huge capacities, in tiers, all the way up
to 16 terabytes. (A terabyte is roughly 1,000 gigabytes.) And if you buy
extra storage for Google Drive, your Gmail quota rises to 25 GB.
But one of Google's biggest rivals isn't standing
still. Microsoft is expanding both the features and capacity of its
little-known SkyDrive cloud storage service as well. That product started
out as a free, fixed-capacity (25 gigabytes) online locker mostly for users
of the stripped-down, cloud-based version of Microsoft Office, though it
also has been available as an app for Windows Phone smartphones and for
iPhones. It's giving away even more free storage than Google—7 GB, though
that is a cut from what it used to offer free. It also is charging less than
Google. For instance, you can add 100 gigabytes for $50 a year. And users of
the old version get to keep their 25-gigabyte free allotment. I wasn't able
to test this new version of SkyDrive for this column. It also is offering
syncing apps for Windows and Mac.
Google Drive is meant as an evolution of Google
Docs. While you could previously upload a file to Google Docs using your Web
browser, for Google Drive, the company is providing free apps for Mac and
Windows that, like Dropbox, do this for you. They create special folders
that sync with your cloud-based repository and with the Web version of the
product. So, you can drag a file into these local folders on your computer
and that file will be uploaded to your cloud account and will rapidly appear
in the Web version of Google Drive, in the Google Drive folders on your
other computers, and in the Google Drive apps on Android, iPhone and iPad
devices. These local apps also sync any changes to the files you make.
One big difference between Dropbox and Google Drive
is you can edit or create files in the latter, rather than merely storing or
viewing them. This is because Google Drive includes the rudimentary word
processor, spreadsheet, presentation and other apps that make up Google
Docs.
But there is a catch. If your stored document is in
a Microsoft Office format, you can only view it. To edit it, you have to
click a command to convert the file to Google's own formats, or choose a
setting that converts Microsoft Office files when uploaded. But this latter
feature only works when uploading from the website.
Google Drive also is missing some features of
SugarSync I like. The latter doesn't require you to place files in a special
folder; it syncs the folders you already use on your PC and Mac. Also,
unlike SugarSync, Google Drive doesn't let you email files directly into
your cloud locker.
Google Drive allows you to share files and folders,
and collaborate with others. You can also email files as attachments. People
with whom you share files can be allowed different rights: to view, comment,
or edit them. You can also keep the files private.
Because Google has run into hot water over keeping
users' information private, some people may be reluctant to trust their
files to Google Drive. But the company insists that, while it does process
and store your files, no human can see them and, at least today, the files
aren't used to target advertising at users. The company notes no file can be
placed in Google Drive unless the user wants it there.
The service does a very good job of searching
files, even finding words inside PDF or scanned documents. The company
claims it can find images when you type in words describing them, like
"bridge" or "mountain"—even if those words don't appear in the image's file
name. But I found this mostly worked with photos of famous places or people
Google has collected via its Google Goggles product. Google Drive failed to
find images with generic file names on almost all of my own pictures, even
when they included things like mountains or other common objects.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on data storage alternatives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#archiving
"A Story For My Students -- Learning to Deal with the Unexpected," by
Joe Hoyle, Teaching Blog, April 24, 2012 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2012/04/story-for-my-students-learning-to-deal.html
There are many times in teaching that a teacher
needs to explain things to students. In many college classes, they are young
people with limited experience. Occasionally, they simply don’t understand,
especially when things are not as they have experienced them in the past.
Part of my job as a teacher is to explain things beyond my subject matter.
There are stories that can sometimes help them come
to a better understanding. I often have students come to my office after I
return a test. They are upset that they didn’t make the grade they had
wanted or expected. It is common for me to hear something like “I cannot
tell you how hard I studied. In fact, I studied with Mr. A and Ms. B and I
knew just as much as they did. We worked every question from class 8 times
apiece. Yet, they made a 95 and I made an 83. What am I supposed to do?”
I guess this is on my mind because one of my
students told me this afternoon that the 83 he got on a recent test was the
first grade he had received in college under 98.
To the student, the facts are clear. He or she did
the same work as Mr. A and Ms. B and they made significantly higher scores
on the test. At this point, the world doesn’t make sense.
Here’s one story that I sometimes use in cases like
this. “Assume you have two tightrope walkers. They both can walk a
tightrope. It is a mechanical skill and they both can do it. But, for
whatever reason, the first person is just more comfortable. Maybe, the first
one practices more carefully. Maybe, the first one thinks more about the
mechanics of tightrope walking. Maybe, the first one sits in his room at
night and thinks of what odd things can happen and then dreams up a proper
response. Or, maybe, tightrope walking just comes more naturally to the
first person. Everyone has different abilities in life.
“So, both people are high up on the tightrope one
afternoon and they both look great. Suddenly, a very unexpected and very
harsh wind blows up. What happens?”
The student realizes the expected answer. “The
first person hangs on and the second person falls off.”
And, my response is: “Yeah, exactly. As long as
things go as expected, they both do fine. It is the ability to react to the
unexpected that usually makes a difference in life between great and
adequate and the same is true on tests.
Continued in article
A scholar going by the name of Centurian comments following the following
article
"One Economist's Mission to Redeem the Field of Finance," by Robert
Schiller, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 8, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Robert-Shillers-Mission-to/131456/
Economics as a "science" is no different than
Sociology, Psychology, Criminal Justice, Political Science, etc.,etc.. To
those in the "hard sciences" [physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics],
these "soft sciences" are dens of thieves. Thieves who have stolen the
"scientific method" and abused it.
These soft sciences all apply the scientific method
to biased and insufficient data sets, then claim to be "scientific", then
assert their opinions and biases as scientific results. They point to
"correlations". Correlations which are made even though they know they do
not know all the forces/factors involved nor the ratio of effect from the
forces/factors.
They know their mathematical formulas and models
are like taking only a few pieces of evidence from a crime scene and then
constructing an elaborate "what happened" prosecution and defense. Yet
neither side has any real idea, other than in the general sense, what
happened. They certainly have no idea what all the factors or human
behaviors were involved, nor the true motives.
Hence the growing awareness of the limitations of
all the quantitative models that led to the financial crisis/financial WMDs
going off.
Take for example the now thoroughly discredited
financial and economic models that claimed validity through the use of the
same mathematics used to make atomic weapons; Monte Carlo simulation. MC
worked on the Manhattan Project because real scientists, who obeyed the laws
of science when it came to using data, were applying the mathematics to a
valid data set.
Economists and Wall Street Quants threw out the
data set disciplines of science. The Quant's of Wall Street and those
scientists who claimed the data proved man made global warming share the
same sin of deception. Why? For the same reason, doing so allowed them to
continue their work in the lab. They got to continue to experiment and "do
science". Science paid for by those with a deep vested financial interest in
the the false correlations proclaimed by these soft science dogmas.
If you take away a child's crayons and give him oil
paints used by Michelangelo, you're not going to get the Sistine Chapel.
You're just going to get a bigger mess.
If Behavioral Finance proves anything it is how far
behind the other Social Sciences economists really are. And if the
"successes" of the Social Sciences are any indication, a lot bigger messes
are waiting down the road.
Centurion
"The Standard Error of Regressions," by Deirdre N. McCloskey and Stephen T.
Ziliak, Journal of Economic Literature, 1996, pp. 97-114
THE IDEA OF statistical significance is old, as old
as Cicero writing on forecasts (Cicero, De Divinatione, I. xiii. 23). In
1773 Laplace used it to test whether comets came from outside the solar
system (Elizabeth Scott 1953, p. 20). The first use of the very word
"significance" in a statistical context seems to be John Venn's, in 1888,
speaking of differences expressed in units of probable error,
They inform us which of the differences in the
above tables are permanent and significant, in the sense that we may be
tolerably confident that if we took another similar batch we should find
a similar difference; and which are merely transient and insignificant,
in the sense that another similar batch is about as likely as not to
reverse the conclusion we have obtained. (Venn, quoted in Lancelot
Hogben 1968, p. 325).
Statistical significance has been much used since
Venn, and especially since Ronald Fisher. The problem, and our main point,
is that a difference can be permanent (as Venn put it) without being
"significant" in o ther senses, such as for science or policy. And a
difference can be significant for science or policy and yet be insignificant
statistically, ignored by the less thoughtful researchers.
In the 1930s Jerzy Neyman and Egon S. Pearson, and
then more explicitly Abraham Wald, argued that actual investigations should
depend on substantive not merely statistical significance. In 1933 Neyman
and Pearson wrote of type I and type II errors:
Is it more serious to convict an innocent man
or to acquit a guilty? That will depend on the consequences of the
error; is the punishment death or fine; what is the danger to the
community of released criminals; what are the current ethical views on
punishment? From the point of view of mathematical theory all that we
can do is to show how the risk of errors may be controlled and minimised.
The use of these statistical tools in any given case, in determining
just how the balance should be struck, must be left to the investigator.
(Neyman and Pearson 1933, p. 296; italics supplied)
Wald went further:
The question as to how the form of the weight [that is, loss]
function . . . should be determined, is not a mathematical or
statistical one. The statistician who wants to test certain hypotheses
must first determine the relative importance of all possible errors,
which will depend on the special purposes of his investigation. (1939,
p. 302, italics supplied)
To date no empirical studies have been undertaken
measuring the use of statistical significance in economics. We here examine
the alarming hypothesis that ordinary usage in economics takes statistical
significance to be the same as economic significance. We compare statistical
best practice against leading textbooks of recent decades and against the
papers using regression analysis in the 1980s in the American Economic
Review.
An Example
. . .
V. Taking the Con Out of Confidence Intervals
In a squib published in the American Economic
Review in 1985 one of us claimed that "[r]oughly three-quarters of the
contributors to the American Economic Review misuse the test of statistical
significance" (McCloskey 1985, p. 201). The full survey confirms the claim,
and in some matters strengthens it.
We would not assert that every economist
misunderstands statistical significance, only that most do, and these some
of the best economic scientists. By way of contrast to what most understand
statistical significance to be capable of saying, Edward Lazear and Robert
Michael wrote 17 pages of empirical economics in the AER, using ordinary
least squares on two occasions, without a single mention of statistical
significance (AER Mar. 1980, pp. 96-97, pp. 105-06). This is notable
considering they had a legitimate sample, justifying a discussion of
statistical significance were it relevant to the scientific questions they
were asking. Estimated coefficients in the paper are interpreted carefully,
and within a conversation in which they ask how large is large (pp. 97, 101,
and throughout).
The low and falling cost of calculation, together
with a widespread though unarticulated realization that after all the
significance test is not crucial to scientific questions, has meant that
statistical significance has been valued at its cost. Essentially no one
believes a finding of statistical significance or insignificance.
This is bad for the temper of the field. My
statistical significance is a "finding"; yours is an ornamented prejudice.
Continued in article
Jensen at the 2012 AAA Meetings?
http://aaahq.org/AM2012/program.cfm
A Forthcoming AAA Plenary Session to Note
Sudipta Basu called my attention to the 2012 AAA annual meeting website that
now lists the plenary speakers.
See:
http://aaahq.org/AM2012/Speakers.cfm
In particular note the following speaker
Deirdre McCloskey Distinguished Professor of
Economics, History, English, and Communication, University of Illinois at
Chicago ---
http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/
Deirdre McCloskey teaches economics, history,
English, and communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A
well-known economist and historian and rhetorician, she has written sixteen
books and around 400 scholarly pieces on topics ranging from technical
economics and statistics to transgender advocacy and the ethics of the
bourgeois virtues. She is known as a "conservative" economist,
Chicago-School style (she taught for 12 years there), but protests that "I'm
a literary, quantitative, postmodern, free-market, progressive Episcopalian,
Midwestern woman from Boston who was once a man. Not 'conservative'! I'm a
Christian libertarian."
Her latest book, Bourgeois Dignity: Why
Economics Can't Explain the Modern World (University of Chicago Press,
2010), which argues that an ideological change rather than saving or
exploitation is what made us rich, is the second in a series of four on The
Bourgeois Era. The first was The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of
Commerce (2006), asking if a participant in a capitalist economy can still
have an ethical life (briefly, yes). With Stephen Ziliak she wrote in
2008, The Cult of Statistical
Significance (2008), which criticizes the
proliferation of tests of "significance," and was in 2011 the basis of a
Supreme Court decision.
Professor Basu called my attention to the plan for Professor McCloskey to
discuss accountics science with a panel in a concurrent session following her
plenary session. I had not originally intended to attend the 2012 AAA meetings
because of my wife's poor health. But the chance to be in the program with
Professor McCloskey on the topic of accountics science is just too tempting. My
wife is now insisting that I go to these meetings and that she will come along
along with me. One nice thing for us is that Southwest flies nonstop from
Manchester to Baltimore with no stressful change of flights for her.
I think I am going to accept Professor Basu's kind invitation to be on this
panel.
I think we are making progress against the "Cult of Statistical
Significance."
Accountics
is the mathematical science of values.
Charles Sprague [1887] as quoted by McMillan [1998, p. 1]
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
574 Shields Against Validity Challenges in
Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
How did academic accounting research become a pseudo science?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
Why must all accounting doctoral programs
be social
science (particularly econometrics) "accountics" doctoral programs?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit
for my resume in The Accounting Review I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
This may flip you out!
"New TED-Ed Site Turns YouTube Videos Into ‘Flipped’ Lessons," by Nick
DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-ted-ed-site-turns-youtube-videos-into-flipped-lessons/36109?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
YouTube holds a rich trove of videos that could be
used in the classroom, but it’s challenging to transform videos into a truly
interactive part of a lesson. So the nonprofit group TED has unveiled a new
Web site that it hopes will solve this problem—by organizing educational
videos and letting professors “flip” them to enhance their lectures.
The new Web site, unveiled today, lets professors
turn TED’s educational videos—as well as any video on YouTube—into
interactive lessons inspired by the
“flipped” classroom model. The site’s introduction
is the second phase of an education-focused effort called TED-Ed, which
began last month when
the group released a series of highly produced, animated videos on a new
YouTube channel.
The TED-Ed site is both a portal for finding
education videos and a tool for flipping them. On one page, videos are
organized by themes, such as the pursuit of happiness and inventions that
shaped history. Instructors who want to use videos that are directly related
to the subjects they teach can visit another page, where videos are
organized in more traditional categories such as the arts and health.
TED’s videos are displayed on lesson pages that
include multiple-choice quizzes, open-ended questions, and links to more
information about the material. Professors who don’t want to rely on the
premade content can press a button to flip the videos and customize some of
the questions. With each flipped video, professors receive a unique Web link
that they can use to distribute the lesson to students and track their
answers.
And instructors don’t have to rely only on TED’s
educational videos to make their lessons. A special tool can flip any video
on YouTube, adding sections to a lesson page where professors can write
free-form questions and create links to other resources.
Logan Smalley, TED-Ed’s director, noted that this
feature is truly open—instructors could flip viral videos of cats if they
wanted to, he said. He said his group wanted to leave the possibilities of
flipped videos up to the people building the lessons.
“We didn’t want to limit what people might want to
use to teach,” he said. He added that designers provide a way for users to
flag any published lesson that they feel is inappropriate.
Michael S. Garver, a professor of marketing at
Central Michigan University, has been testing the site and called it a tool
to improve teaching that will bring more voices into the classroom. For the
last seven years, Mr. Garver has been making his own videos, and he said the
site will allow professors to turn videos created by experts into fresh
lessons for class discussions.
“It’s kind of a way to showcase the talent around
the country,” he said.
"Student Veterans of America (SVA) Names For-Profit Schools with
Revoked Charters," Student Veterans of America, April 26, 2012 ---
http://www.studentveterans.org/news/90288/SVA-Names-For-Profit-Schools-with-Revoked-Charters.htm
Today, Student Veterans of America (SVA)
published a list of 26 for-profit institutions whose SVA charters had been
revoked. The removal of SVA chapters resulted from a routine, annual review
of all chapters.
"SVA chapters must be established and led by
student veterans. Student veteran organizations in development, or created
by university administrators, defeats the fundamental spirit of the SVA
chapter,” said
Michael Dakduk, Executive Director of
Student Veterans of America. "In addition to being a peer support
group, SVA chapters exist as campus and community based advocacy
organizations. It appears that some for-profit schools do not understand our
model, or worse –they understand our model and they choose to exploit it for
personal gain.” This is important because:
1) it defrauds veterans seeking advice from
SVA’s student leaders;
2) it deters veterans who would otherwise
form chapters at these campuses;
3) it misrepresents these chapters as being
a point of contact for veterans seeking out their peers who can help them
with transition issues and introduce them to a community of individuals that
share similar experiences;
4) it undermines the legitimacy and
reputation of SVA.
Many military and veteran-friendly school
lists cite having a SVA chapter as a criterion for becoming
‘veteran-friendly’. The term ‘military-friendly’, or ‘veteran-friendly’, as
it relates to academic institutions is ill-defined.
"I am concerned that certain for-profit
schools may be taking advantage of the SVA brand to legitimize their
programs. This may be an example of certain schools establishing fake SVA
chapters to appear on a military-friendly list. By being featured on these
lists, those schools can then advertise their programs as accommodating to
veterans –although the term military and veteran friendly lacks any real
definition. This is an extreme example of misrepresentation. There is a
pattern of impropriety among certain for-profit institutions of higher
learning.”
Facts:
35 chapters at for-profit schools are
currently under review with SVA, representing 8% of SVA’s chapter base.
All chapters submit a statement of
understanding – in part, it states the following:
I attest that my organization is officially
recognized as a student organization at an institution of higher education.
I attest that my organization’s primary
mission is aimed at the general welfare of student veterans who are enrolled
or intend on enrolling at an institution of higher education.
I give authority to SVA to verify my
organization’s eligibility for chapter affiliation.
I understand that SVA reserves the right to
revoke chapter membership at any time. I also understand that my
organization may remove our affiliation with SVA at any time.
The list of revoked schools ---
http://www.studentveterans.org/news/90288/SVA-Names-For-Profit-Schools-with-Revoked-Charters.htm
Especially Note the Graphic: Connect the For-Profit University Dots
"Who Enrolls the Most Students With Post-9/11 GI Benefits?" by Ron
Coddington and Michael Sewall, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 13,
2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Who-Enrolls-the-Most-Students/65923/
Why do you think the private universities are so popular given that online
degrees are available from most state universities?
"Want a Higher G.P.A.? Go to a Private
College: A 50-year rise in grade-point averages is being fueled by private
institutions, a recent study finds," by Catherine Rampell. The New York Times,
April 19, 2010 ---
http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/109339/want-a-higher-gpa-go-to-a-private-college?mod=edu-collegeprep
Bob Jensen's threads on for-profit colleges and universities operating in
the gray zone of fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
"U. of Florida Backs Off Plan on Computer Science," Inside Higher
Ed, April 26, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/04/26/u-florida-backs-plan-computer-science
The University of Florida is backing off a
controversial plan that would have stripped most of the research functions
from its computer science department. Bernie Machen, the university's
president,
issued a statement Wednesday in which he said that
new plans were being developed to preserve the department's research role --
the elimination of which outraged many students, faculty members and alumni.
The cuts are part of large reductions at the university, resulting from
state appropriations cuts. Referring to the computer science proposal,
Machen wrote: "As many of you know, the proposal has been met with
overwhelming negative response, much of which I believe has been based on
misunderstanding." At the same time, he said that some faculty members had
come forward with proposals that would meet budget goals and also preserve
the research mission in the computer science program. While work is needed
to further develop those plans, Machen said that the previous proposal would
be "set aside."
"Protests Over Cuts to Computer Science at U. of Florida" Inside
Higher Ed, April 20, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/04/20/protests-over-cuts-computer-science-u-florida
Students and others are protesting plans at
the University of Florida to move research functions from the computer
science department, allowing it to focus on teaching,
The Gainesville Sun reported. Critics say
that the plan will diminish the quality of the department, while university
officials stress that they must save money to deal with erosion in budget
support.
Jensen Comment
In many instances cutbacks have already taken place in the numbers of faculty
devoted to accounting doctoral programs in the 21st Century compared with those
doctoral programs decades ago. The largest accounting doctoral programs in the
1970s that graduated over 10 accounting PhDs per year have reduced their
graduates to less than five a year and in some cases to one or two per year ---
http://www.jrhasselback.com/AtgDoct/XDocChrt.pdf
title:
YouTube's Interactive Transcripts (Video, Search)
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Harvard Graduate School of Education Looks for Secrets of the Best Education
System in the World (supposedly in Finland)
"From HGSE to Finland," Harvard Graduate School of Education, April 24, 2012
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub
Just as magnolias were starting to bloom in Boston
during spring break, a group of six Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE)
students, accompanied by an intrepid middle-school teen reporter, bundled up
and headed off to the wintry wonders of Helsinki, Finland. The team
consisted of seven members, master’s students Rebecca Conklin, Susan Joo,
Trea Lynch, Tracy Shih, Tracy Tan, and Julianne Viola, and Joo’s nephew,
15-year-old Colin Park from Dexter School, an international student from
Korea. Their mission: to experience firsthand the daily lives of the people
behind the highly successful Finnish education system.
Although hailing from different backgrounds and
programs at HGSE, the seven-member team was drawn by a common fascination
with the Finnish system, one that sees its students consistently score among
the world’s best on the OECD’s PISA exam, despite requiring the fewest
number of hours in the classroom. The HGSE team was seeking an opportunity
to visit schools and speak with students, staff, and policymakers, in the
hopes of distilling the secrets of Finland’s educational success.
“There is a lot of information out there on the
successes of the Finnish system. The issue is that more times than not, the
only people who are hearing about it are already in circles of education,”
says Conklin. “We wanted to bring this experience to a much larger audience,
and hopefully start some new conversations in new circles about what we can
learn from the Finnish system.”
ust as magnolias were starting to bloom in Boston
during spring break, a group of six Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE)
students, accompanied by an intrepid middle-school teen reporter, bundled up
and headed off to the wintry wonders of Helsinki, Finland. The team
consisted of seven members, master’s students Rebecca Conklin, Susan Joo,
Trea Lynch, Tracy Shih, Tracy Tan, and Julianne Viola, and Joo’s nephew,
15-year-old Colin Park from Dexter School, an
international student from Korea. Their mission:
to experience firsthand the daily lives of the people behind the highly
successful Finnish education system.
Although hailing from different backgrounds and
programs at HGSE, the seven-member team was drawn by a common fascination
with the Finnish system, one that sees its students consistently score among
the world’s best on the OECD’s PISA exam, despite requiring the fewest
number of hours in the classroom. The HGSE team was seeking an opportunity
to visit schools and speak with students, staff, and policymakers, in the
hopes of distilling the secrets of Finland’s educational success.
“There is a lot of information out there on the
successes of the Finnish system. The issue is that more times than not, the
only people who are hearing about it are already in circles of education,”
says Conklin. “We wanted to bring this experience to a much larger audience,
and hopefully start some new conversations in new circles about what we can
learn from the Finnish system.”
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
It is not politically correct to conjecture that a huge factor behind education
success in South Korea and Finland is lack of diversity. Among all nations of
Europe, Finland has the least problem with educating immigrants ---
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading
The American Dream ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/SunsetHillHouse/SunsetHillHouse.htm
"Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things (with cartoons),"
by Chana Joffe-Walt and Alix Spiegel, NPR, May 1, 2012 ---
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/01/151764534/psychology-of-fraud-why-good-people-do-bad-things
Thank you Jim McKinney for the heads up.
Jensen Comment
This was a very good broadcast. I've tracked fraud for years --
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
One of the most important aspects of fraud psychology is the
follow-the-herd-mentally when those around you are both committing fraud and
getting away with it. My best illustrations here are tracked in my extensive
timeline of derivative financial instruments frauds ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
Another key ingredient of some large frauds is that white collar crime pays
big even if you get caught ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#CrimePays
For some fraud is a disease like pedophilia in that the worst of the worst
just seem to not be able to help themselves. Recidivism: is very high after
being released from prison.---
http://www.springerlink.com/content/w125216287260u28/
"‘Free-Range Learners’: Study Opens Window
Into How Students Hunt for Educational Content Online," by Marc Parry,
Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/free-range-learners-study-opens-window-into-how-students-hunt-for-educational-content-online/36137?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Milwaukee —
Digital natives? The idea that students are superengaged finders of
online learning materials once struck Glenda Morgan, e-learning
strategist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as “a load
of hooey.” Students, she figured, probably stick with the textbooks and
other content they’re assigned in class.
Not quite. The preliminary
results of a multiyear study of undergraduates’ online study habits,
presented by Ms. Morgan at a conference on blended learning here this
week, show that most students shop around for digital texts and videos
beyond the boundaries of what professors assign them in class.
“It’s almost like
they want to find the content by themselves,” Ms. Morgan said in an
interview after her talk, which took place in a packed room at the
9th
Annual Sloan Consortium Blended Learning Conference & Workshop.
It’s nothing new
to hear that students
supplement their studies with other
universities’ online lecture videos. But Ms. Morgan’s research—backed by
the National Science Foundation, based on 14 focus-group interviews at a
range of colleges, and buttressed by a large online survey going on
now—paints a broader picture of how they’re finding content, where
they’re getting it, and why they’re using it.
Ms. Morgan borrows the
phrase “free-range learning” to describe students’ behavior, and she
finds that they generally shop around for content in places educators
would endorse. Students seem most favorably inclined to materials from
other universities. They mention lecture videos from Stanford and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology far more than the widely
publicized Khan Academy, she says. If they’re on a pre-med or
health-science track, they prefer recognized “brands” like the Mayo
Clinic. Students often seek this outside content due to dissatisfaction
with their own professors, Ms. Morgan says.
The study should be
welcome news for government agencies, universities, and others in the
business of publishing online libraries of educational content—although
students tend to access these sources from the “side door,” like via a
Google search for a very specific piece of information.
But the study also
highlights the challenge facing professors and librarians. Students
report relying on friends to get help and share resources, Ms. Morgan
says, whereas their responses suggest “much less of a role” for
“conventional authority figures.”
They “don’t want to ask
librarians or tutors in the study center or stuff like that,” she says.
“It’s more the informal networks that they’re using.”
Ms. Morgan confesses to
some concerns about her own data. She wonders how much students are
“telling me what I want to hear.” She also worries that she’s tapping
into a disproportionate slice of successful students.
Bob Jensen's search helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on free courses,
tutorials, videos, and course materials from prestigious universities and Kahn
Academy ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Good Thing Bob Jensen Moved From Texas to New Hampshire
You just "don't mess with Texas"
From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on May 4, 2012
Amazon Softens Stance on Taxes
by:
Stu Woo
Apr 28, 2012
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com
TOPICS: sales tax
SUMMARY: "Amazon.com Inc. reached an agreement with Texas
officials...to begin collecting sales taxes in the state starting in July
[2012] and appears to be backing away from its long-held opposition to tax
collections in states where it has warehouses and other facilities....The
deal with Texas comes as Amazon is fueling its staggering growth...by adding
warehouses across the country....Analysts say much of Amazon's growth comes
from Amazon Prime, a $79-a-year program that gives subscribers unlimited
two-day shipping. More warehouses would let Amazon reduce the cost of
operating the program...."
CLASSROOM APPLICATION: The article is useful in covering sales
taxes in introductory financial accounting classes.
QUESTIONS:
1. (Advanced) How do companies record sales taxes in accounting
systems? When are these taxes collected? When, and to whom, are they
remitted?
2. (Introductory) In what states does Amazon collect sales taxes?
For how long has Amazon been collecting the sales taxes?
3. (Introductory) Refer to the related article. Why does Amazon not
collect sales taxes from customers in all 50 states?
4. (Advanced) How did Amazon's growth fuel the company's need to
settle with states regarding collection and remittance of sales taxes?
5. (Advanced) What do "brick-and-mortar retailers" say about the
different treatment of on-line retailers with respect to sales taxes? Has
this difference in taxes ever affected your buying decision? Explain.
6. (Introductory) Again refer to the related article. What action
may the U.S. Congress take on this matter?
Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island
RELATED ARTICLES:
Mall Landlords Engage in a Taxing Battle
by Kris Hudson and Stu Woo
May 02, 2012
Page: C3
"Amazon Softens Stance on Taxes," by: Stu Woo, The Wall Street Journal,
May 8, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304811304577369943403829820.html?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid
Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.35% reached an agreement
with Texas officials Friday to begin collecting sales taxes in the state
starting in July and appears to be backing away from its long-held
opposition to tax collection in states where it has warehouses and other
facilities.
With the deal, the Seattle-based company is on
track to collect sales taxes in 12 states, which make up about 40% of the
U.S. population, by 2016. Amazon currently collects taxes in five states.
Since 2011, it has reached agreements with seven other states, including
Texas, to begin tax collection over the next four years.
The deal-making with state governments indicates a
new strategy for the world's largest online retailer, which has taken
extraordinary steps to avoid collecting sales taxes nationwide since it was
founded in 1994. Amazon has said it supported a federal solution to taxing
online sales, but had resisted legislation by individual states, citing
"complicated state-by-state tax rules."
A 1992 Supreme Court ruling said retailers don't
need to collect sales taxes in states where they lack a physical presence.
Amazon has said warehouses don't constitute a presence that would require it
to collect sales taxes because the warehouses only ship goods, not sell
them.
Brick-and-mortar retailers have argued that the
tax-free sales gave Amazon and other online stores an unfair edge.
Amazon now appears willing to charge taxes on its
sales in exchange for building new warehouses that will allow it to cut
shipping times and costs to customers. In a statement, Amazon Vice President
of Global Public Policy Paul Misener said the company "looks forward to
creating thousands of new jobs in Texas" by building new facilities.
"This is part of their long-term strategic plan,"
said Texas Comptroller Susan Combs, who negotiated the tax-collection deal
with Amazon.
The deal with Texas comes as Amazon is fueling its
staggering growth—it said Thursday that first-quarter sales rose 34% from a
year earlier—by adding warehouses across the country. The financial results
boosted Amazon's shares, which jumped nearly 16% Friday, ending 4 p.m.
trading at $226.85.
Analysts say much of Amazon's growth comes from
Amazon Prime, a $79-a-year program that gives subscribers unlimited two-day
shipping. More warehouses would let Amazon reduce the cost of operating the
program.
Texas and Amazon argued over sales taxes last year
when Ms. Combs told the company it owed the state $269 million in unpaid
taxes because of the retailer's Dallas-area warehouse. Amazon closed the
facility last year because of what it described as the state's "unfavorable
regulatory environment."
Ms. Combs said Amazon contacted her office about
two weeks ago to seek a deal, and Mr. Misener met with her for 45 minutes in
Austin. Amazon proposed building new facilities and creating 2,500 jobs in
Texas over the next four years, she said, and the two sides agreed that
Amazon would start collecting taxes in July.
Amazon said the agreement announced Friday
"resolves the issue of the disputed $269 [million] assessment."
Ms. Combs declined to comment on whether Amazon
will pay the unpaid taxes, citing state laws that prohibit her from
commenting on individual tax cases. In previous cases involving unpaid taxes
on online sales, state governments have forgiven the unpaid taxes in
exchange for tax collection going forward.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's taxation helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation
Social Security Will Run Out of Money Much Faster Than Last Forecasted
So Will Funds for Disabled People
"Will Social Security Be There For Your Retirement?" by Janet Novak,
Forbes, April 23, 2012
http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2012/04/23/will-social-security-be-there-for-your-retirement/
Jensen Comment
Of course Social Security will be there for your retirement. If Congress never
agrees to increase taxes and decrease government spending to balance the budget,
the one thing they will agree upon is printing all the greenbacks needed to meet
entitlements --- of course your Social Security monthly payment might not even
be enough for one Big Mac at McDonalds. Much depends on how many years before
you can begin collecting your inflated dollars. Sometimes it pays to be old even
there isn't much else that's good about becoming old.
Bob Jensen's threads on entitlements are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
"The Shrinking Law School," by Mitch Smith, Inside Higher Ed,
May 1, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/01/one-law-school-reduces-admissions-says-thats-future-legal-education
Frank Wu doesn’t mince words.
“The critics of legal education are right,” said
Wu, the chancellor and dean of the University of California Hastings College
of the Law. “There are too many law schools and there are too many law
students and we need to do something about that.”
So he is. Starting this fall, Hastings will admit
20 percent fewer students than in years past, a decision that required the
college to eliminate several staff positions. No faculty members lost their
jobs.
It’s not that no one wants to go to Hastings -- the
freestanding law college in San Francisco rejects three-quarters of its
applicants. And Hastings is arguably the most prestigious law school to
announce such a plan,
joining a trio of law colleges that rolled out
reductions last year. Nationally, far fewer students are taking admissions
tests and applying to law schools (applications
were down about 15 percent last year countrywide
and down 7 percent at Hastings). That trend is projected to continue for the
foreseeable future, while those who do attend often graduate with plenty of
debt but few job opportunities.
The remedy, Wu believes, is to “reboot the system.”
The shift comes at a time when law schools are confronting an upending of
their business model and a public relations disaster.
Legal education was once seen as a three-year
training program for cushy jobs and a lifetime guarantee of six-figure
salaries. Now law firms are downsizing,
newspapers are questioning the value of a J.D. and
in some cases frustrated alumni are saying they were misled about their
career prospects and
suing their alma maters.
In some ways, Wu believes legal education follows
an outdated model that wasn’t ever that great to begin with. Instead of its
longtime role as a “refuge for the bright liberal arts student who didn’t
know what he or she wanted to do,” law schools should have a targeted focus
designed to prepare future lawyers for the realities of the job market.
Hastings has programs to prepare lawyers with expertise in health sciences
and engineering among its more traditional offerings. There’s demand for
specialized perspectives, he said.
Given the depressed state of law school
applications, few seem eager to criticize Hastings’ decision. But while some
believe more law schools should and will follow suit with similar student
body reductions, there are questions about how replicable Wu’s model is.
While Hastings is affiliated with the University of
California System, the law school neither gives money to nor receives it
from the system. That grants it more autonomy than most other law schools,
which are attached to universities and often counted on as moneymaking
entities for budget-strapped institutions.
Jim Chen, dean of the University of Louisville’s
law school, can empathize with Wu’s dilemma. Demand from both prospective
students and employers is decreasing, and it makes sense that Hastings is
trying to adjust to the market. But Chen is skeptical that other law
colleges will be rushing to – or even allowed to -- intentionally reduce
their revenues.
“I’m totally understanding of what Hastings is
trying to accomplish and I’m very sympathetic to the idea that you don’t
want to admit more people into a declining [job] market,” Chen said. “How
you manage to do that without the revenue is going to pose a very formidable
challenge for most American law schools.”
But Paul Caron, a visiting law professor at
Pepperdine University and a
legal blogger
who has criticized law schools for failing to make
changes as the job market eroded, believes this is the way of the future.
While few law schools are trumpeting plans to cut enrollment, Caron expects
such practices to become widespread over the next several years. The
alternative, he said, is to accept students with lower qualifications and
even worse job outlooks.
Kyle McEntee, executive director of Law School
Transparency, a policy organization working to reduce the cost of legal
education, lauded Hastings' decision and suggested more schools will be
doing the same in coming years. Those reductions will be either by choice,
McEntee said, or by default as fewer students enroll. Susan Westerberg
Prager, director of the Association of American Law Schools, did not respond
to a message seeking comment.
As Hastings’ situation shows, such plans come with
pain. In preparation for the first reduced class this fall, the college
eliminated 20 staff positions – running the gamut from mail clerks to
program coordinators. Other staffers opted for severance packages, and 11
full-time staff jobs were shifted from full time to part time. Ninety
percent of the payroll remains.
But despite that sacrifice, Wu said Hastings is
doing the right thing. By keeping class size constant while job
opportunities and application numbers fall, the college would be doing a
disservice to itself and its applicants.Continued in article
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on Turkey Times for Overstuffed Law Schools ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#OverstuffedLawSchools
Forwarded by Eileen on April 24, 2012
Tracking Down the Roots of a
"Super" Word
April 23, 2012
By Ben Zimmer
-----------------
So many of us learned
that outrageous mouthful of a word at an early age, when it was truly a
verbal milestone to be able to pronounce it without getting tongue-tied.
And just saying the word is an invitation to start singing the song from
the classic 1964 Disney movie Mary Poppins. But how did the word come to
be? When I heard the news that one of the Mary Poppins songwriters
passed away last month, I set about o answer that question, taking me
down many unexpected alleyways of 20th-century popular culture.
To read the whole article, visit the following URL:
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/3232
Regards,
The Visual Thesaurus Team
April 24, 2012 reply from Jagdish Gangolly
Bob,
The longest non-technical English word is
'Floccinaucinihilipilification'
The longest technical word in the dictionary is
'Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis'
See an interesting article at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_word_in_English
Jagdish
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
"Education Is the Key to a Healthy Economy: If we fail to reform
K-12 schools, we'll have slow growth and more income inequality," by George
P. Shultz and Eric A. Hanushek, The Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2012
---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303513404577356422025164482.html#mod=djemEditorialPage_t
In addressing our current fiscal and economic woes,
too often we neglect a key ingredient of our nation's economic future—the
human capital produced by our K-12 school system. An improved education
system would lead to a dramatically different future for the U.S., because
educational outcomes strongly affect economic growth and the distribution of
income.
Over the past half century, countries with higher
math and science skills have grown faster than those with lower-skilled
populations. In the chart nearby, we compare GDP-per-capita growth rates
between 1960 and 2000 with achievement results on international math
assessment tests. The countries include almost all of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries plus a number of
developing countries. What stands out is that all the countries follow a
nearly straight line that slopes upward—as scores rise, so does economic
growth. Peru, South Africa and the Philippines are at the bottom; Singapore
and Taiwan, the top.
The U.S. growth rate lies above the line
because—despite the more recent shortcomings of our schools—we've long
benefited from our commitment to the free movement of labor and capital,
strong property rights, a limited degree of government intrusion in the
economy, and strong colleges and universities. But each of these advantages
has eroded considerably and should not be counted on to keep us above the
line in the future.
Current U.S. students—the future labor force—are no
longer competitive with students across the developed world. In the OECD's
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings for 2009, the
U.S. was 31st in math—indistinguishable from Portugal or Italy. In
"advanced" performance on math, 16 countries produced twice as many high
achievers per capita than the U.S. did.
If we accept this level of performance, we will
surely find ourselves on a low-growth path.
This doesn't have to be our fate. Imagine a school
improvement program that made us competitive with Canada in math performance
(which means scoring approximately 40 points higher on PISA tests) over the
next 20 years. As these Canadian-skill-level students entered the labor
force, they would produce a faster-growing economy.
How much faster? The results are stunning. The
improvement in GDP over the next 80 years would exceed a present value of
$70 trillion. That's equivalent to an average 20% boost in income for every
U.S. worker each year over his or her entire career. This would generate
enough revenue to solve easily the U.S. debt problem that is the object of
so much current debate.
The drag on growth is by no means the only problem
produced by our lagging education system. Greater educational disparity
leads to greater income-distribution disparity. If we fail to reform our
K-12 education system, we'll be locking in inequality problems that will
plague us for decades if not generations to come.
Take our own state of California. Once a leader in
education, it is now ranked behind 40 other U.S. states in math achievement,
placing it at the level of Greece and foreshadowing a bleak future of
ballooning debt and growing income disparity.
But the averages mask the truly sad story in the
Latino population, soon to become California's dominant demographic group.
Hispanics attending school in California perform no better than the average
student in Mexico, a level comparable to the typical student in Kazakhstan.
An alarming 43% of Hispanic students in California did not complete high
school between 2005 and 2009, and only 10% attained a college degree.
Anyone worried about income disparity in America
should be deeply disturbed. The failure of the K-12 education system for so
many students means that issues associated with income
distribution—including higher taxes and less freedom in labor and capital
markets—will be an ever-present and distressing aspect of our future.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Reform's easy and cheap. Just dumb down the tests and give higher grades.
There's nothing at all wrong with NYC schools where nearly all students are
outstanding in terms of grades
Wow: 97% of Elementary NYC Public Students Get
A or B Grades ---
"City Schools May Get Fewer A’s," by Jennifer Medina, The New York Times,
January 28, 2010 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/education/30grades.html?hpw
Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United
Federation of Teachers, criticized the decision to reduce the number of
schools that receive top grades.
Continued in article
"Study Critiques Disproportionately High Grades for Education Students,"
Inside Higher Ed, August 23, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/23/qt#268520
Students in education courses are given
consistently higher grades than are students in other college disciplines,
according to
a study
published by the American Enterprise Institute for
Public Policy Research Monday. The study, by Cory Koedel, an assistant
professor of economics at the University of Missouri at Columbia, cites that
and other evidence to make the case that teachers are trained in "a larger
culture of low standards for educators," in line with "the low evaluation
standards by which teachers are judged in K-12 schools."
Jensen Question
Egads --- let's blame the people who wanted Phyllis Brown's children to be able
to read for forcing Atlanta's teachers to cheat.
Why doesn't anybody care that New York City teachers give A and B grades to over
97 percent of the children attending public schools?
Harvard Graduate School of Education Looks for Secrets of the Best Education
System in the World (supposedly in Finland)
"From HGSE to Finland," Harvard Graduate School of Education, April 24, 2012
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub
Bob Jensen's threads on controversies in education are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on May 4, 2012
Postal Rescue Passes Senate
by:
Corey Boles
Apr 26, 2012
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com
TOPICS: Governmental Accounting
SUMMARY: "Even in its current reduced state, [the U.S. Postal
Service is] carrying 165 billion pieces of mail a year..." but the operation
is currently unsustainable. The Postal Service has said it will close
distribution centers in rural locations and discontinue Saturday delivery to
lower costs if the U.S. Congress does not act to improve its funding
assistance. Legislation will "...trigger early retirement for as many as
100,000 postal workers as part of a plan to save $20 billion a year...but a
congressional rescue...remains in doubt as another bill languishes in the
[Republican controlled] House."
CLASSROOM APPLICATION: The article is useful for governmental
accounting courses to highlight the difference between governmental services
and for-profit delivery services.
QUESTIONS:
1. (Introductory) What were the results of the U.S. Postal Service
operations in the fiscal quarter ended December 31? Why should that period
typically be its strongest?
2. (Advanced) What does it mean to say that the U.S. Postal service
operations are "unsustainable"?
3. (Introductory) With what entities must the U.S. Postal service
compete as a business?
4. (Advanced) Why is it in our nation's interest to operate postal
services in rural locations?
5. (Advanced) How do these rural operations make it challenging for
the post office to compete with for-profit businesses?
Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island
"Postal Rescue Passes Senate," by: Corey Boles, The Wall Street
Journal, April 26, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304811304577366341665567810.html?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid
The Senate approved a bill that would avert
closings of post offices and distribution centers for two years and continue
Saturday mail delivery.
It also would trigger early retirement for as many
as 100,000 postal workers, as part of a plan to save $20 billion a year at
the financially distressed U.S. Postal Service.
But a congressional rescue of the 237-year-old
service remains in doubt as another bill languishes in the House.
Senators voted 62-37, on a bipartisan basis, for
the legislation, which took shape during months of negotiations. Thirteen
Republicans, mainly centrists and lawmakers from rural states, voted with
the Democratic majority, while four Democrats, who voiced concerns about the
impact on rural states, joined most Republicans in opposing the bill.
Republicans in general were critical of the bill's impact on the federal
budget deficit.
Under the bill, the early retirements would save $8
billion a year, and the Postal Service would receive $10.9 billion from the
U.S. Treasury, money the service has overpaid to the federal employee
pension system. The bill would allow current Postal Service retirees to opt
out of the federal employee health-benefits system and use Medicare, which
is generally cheaper, as their primary source of health-care coverage. It
also would allow the Postal Service to set up its own health-care plan if
management and labor unions agreed to do so.
"The financial situation facing the U.S. Postal
Service is dire, but it is not hopeless," said Sen. Tom Carper (D., Del.),
one of the bill's main backers. "The time to act is now, and this
legislation will provide the Postal Service with much-needed flexibility so
it can rightsize, modernize and remain competitive for decades to come."
If Congress doesn't act, the Postal Service has
warned, it would embark on its cost-savings plan, one that could see as many
as 3,700 post offices and 223 distribution centers closed and overnight
first-class mail delivery stopped in many rural areas of the country.
In a statement, the Postal Service's board of
governors said the Senate action "falls far short" of a plan to return to
financial viability. "It is totally inappropriate in these economic times to
keep unneeded facilities open," the statement said. "There is simply not
enough mail in our system today."
Legislation in the House, which takes a
significantly different approach, has stalled because Democrats oppose it,
many rural Republicans worry that it would curb mail service in their
districts and some say it would make matters worse for the Postal Service,
its employees and customers. A senior House Republican leadership aide said
there have been no discussions among leaders about bringing a House bill to
the floor soon.
"Instead of finding savings to help the Postal
Service survive, the Senate postal bill has devolved into a special-interest
spending binge that would actually make things worse," said Rep. Darrell
Issa (R., Calif.), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee, which approved the House postal bill.
The Postal Service is under intense financial
pressure as email and package-delivery services have been on the rise. The
service lost $3.3 billion in its fiscal first quarter, ended Dec. 31, its
worst loss ever in a period that is generally its strongest.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
This takes me back to the days when
Bob Eliott, eventually as President of the AICPA, was proposing great changes in
the profession, including SysTrust, WebTrust, Eldercare Assurance, etc. For
years I used Bob’s AICPA/KPMG videos as starting points for discussion in my
accounting theory course. Bob relied heavily on the analogy of why the
railroads that did not adapt to innovations in transportation such as Interstate
Highways and Jet Airliners went downhill and not uphill. The railroads simply
gave up new opportunities to startup professions rather than adapt from
railroading to transportation.
Bob’s underlying
assumption was that CPA firms could extend assurance services to non-traditional
areas (where they were not experts but could hire new kinds of experts) by
leveraging the public image of accountants as having high integrity and
professional responsibility. That public image was destroyed by the many
auditing scandals, notably Enron and the implosion of Andersen, that surfaced in
the late 1990s and beyond ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm
I wonder what would've happened to the U.S. Postal service had it beat Google
to the punch in introducing G-Mail. This might be analogous to U.S. Railroads
starting up airline companies in the 1950s.
I've never studied whether G-Mail is money winner or money loser for Google.
If the U.S. Postal Service owned G-Mail it would then stand for "Government
Email."
"Minnesota Accounting Professor's Real World
Experience Proves To Be a Double-Edged Sword," Going Concern, April
25, 2015 ---
http://goingconcern.com/post/minnesota-accounting-professors-real-world-experience-proves-be-double-edged-sword
Joseph Traxler was the
CFO of Centennial Mortgage and Funding Inc. in Bloomington. He helped run an
$8 million fraud by misleading banks that allowed Centennial to obtain more
loans. He also hid defaults and double-funded mortgages from lenders, as
well as little check kiting in order to keep the business afloat (rather
than enrich himself [?]). For this hodge-podge of fraudulent activity, he
was sentenced to five years in prison, which is a shame, especially since he
was such a popular guy at the Minnesota School of Business in
Shakopee.
Traxler joined the
faculty of the Minnesota School of Business in Shakopee in January
2009 as chair of its accounting program and has taught the fraud
course there three times. That year he was voted the school's top
faculty member. The school kept him on even after the charges were
filed last September. In January, after the guilty plea, Faculty
Dean Linda VanDuzee and Campus Director Bruce Christman wrote to the
court: "It would be a significant blow to our students and staff if
Mr. Traxler were to leave our school."
Jensen Comment
It's ironic that today, on April 25, 2012 a trial is going on where former
Senator and 2008 Presidential Candidate John Edwards in on trial for alleged
financial fraud ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edwards
The issue in both instances is how allegedly
good guys succumb to engage in financial fraud at a given time and place largely
because unique opportunities and circumstances arise in their lives. The
rhetorical question is whether they would engage in such frauds in a countless
variety of circumstances or whether their frauds depended upon a highly unique
set of circumstances?
Moral absolutism ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_absolutism
Moral Relativism ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism
"Financial matters are top cause of couples’ arguments, survey shows,"
by Ken Tysiac, Journal of Accountancy, May 4, 2012 ---
http://journalofaccountancy.com/News/20125634.htm
Jensen Comment
I've been a long-time advocate of adding financial literacy in some way, shape,
or form in the required Common Curriculum of every college ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#FinancialLiteracy
Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
"BLOWING THE WHISTLE ON FRAUDULENT REPORTING," by Anthony H. Catanach and J.
Edward Ketz, Grumpy Old Accountants, April 23, 2012 ---
http://blogs.smeal.psu.edu/grumpyoldaccountants/archives/634
Some insiders of business corporations know when
others are carrying out untoward actions or are neglecting their affirmative
duties with respect to the securities laws. To crack down on fraudulent
accounting, society needs to elicit information from these insiders to learn
what actually took place. We need to find ways to convert these insiders
into whistleblowers!
Jordan Thomas recently spoke at the mid-year
meeting of the Forensic and Investigative Accounting section of the American
Accounting Association on this topic. Mr. Thomas currently is a partner at
Labaton Sucharow, and is the chair of the firm’s Whistleblower
Representation practice. Previously, he was an Assistant Director at the
SEC, where he had a leadership role in the development of the Commission’s
Whistleblower Program. He also led fact-finding visits to other federal
agencies with whistleblower programs, ultimately drafted legislation and
implementation rules, and briefed House and Senate staffs on the proposed
legislation.
Jordan Thomas began his March 30 speech by noting
that regulators have a hard time fighting crimes on their own. “The reality
is that securities fraud schemes are often difficult to detect and prosecute
without inside information or assistance from participants in the scheme, or
their associates.” The issue is how to bring these individuals to the table
with regulators and prosecutors.
There are always people who observe the shenanigans
of these schemers. Whether the fraud was Enron, Fannie Mae, Citicorp, MF
Global, or Olympus, there were witnesses to the crime. The point is that we
need to protect these witnesses from the fear of retaliation, and we must
provide incentives to get them to testify about what they know.
Mr. Thomas noted that after Sarbanes-Oxley, many
managers and independent auditors reported compliance with its requirements,
and claimed that the scandals of the past were indeed in the past. As we all
now know, these assurances were hollow, as evidenced by the Madoff, MF
Global, and other recent scandals.
Continued in article
Question
What became of the Lehman employee that blew the whistle on the Repo 105 frauds
that are at the center of controversy for both former Lehman executives and the
auditing firm Ernst & Young?
Answer is shown below.
Ernst & Young Takes Another Big (CBS Sixty Minutes) Hit for Putting
Client Interests Above Investor Interests
The SEC and the Department of Justice Also Get Hammered for Doing Nothing
Against Lehman and E&W in a "Debt Masking" Scandal
"The case against Lehman Brothers," CBS Sixty Minutes, April 22, 2012
---
Click Here
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57417397/the-case-against-lehman-brothers/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
Steve Kroft talks to the bank examiner whose
investigation reveals the how and why of the spectacular financial collapse
of Lehman Brothers, the bankruptcy that triggered the world financial
crisis. Web Extras
The case against Lehman Brothers Kroft: When to
give up on accountability Inside the SEC More »
Update: A statement from Ernst and Young: Lehman's
bankruptcy occurred in the midst of a global financial crisis triggered by
dramatic increases in mortgage defaults, associated losses in mortgage and
real estate portfolios, and a severe tightening of liquidity.
We firmly believe that our work met all applicable
professional standards, applying the rules that existed at the time.
Lehman's demise was caused by the global financial crisis that impacted the
entire financial sector, not by accounting or financial reporting issues.
It's hard to overstate the enormity of the 2008
collapse of Lehman Brothers. It was the largest bankruptcy in history;
26,000 employees lost their jobs; millions of investors lost all or almost
all of their money; and it triggered a chain reaction that produced the
worst financial crisis and economic downturn in 70 years.
Yet four years later, no one at Lehman has been
held responsible. Steve Kroft investigates the collapse of Lehman Brothers:
what the SEC did and didn't know about the firm's finances, the role of a
top accounting firm, and why no one at Lehman has been called to account.
The following script is from "The Case Against
Lehman" which originally aired on April 22, 2012. Steve Kroft is the
correspondent. James Jacoby and Michael Karzis, producers.
On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, the fourth
largest investment bank in the world, declared bankruptcy -- sparking chaos
in the financial markets and nearly bringing down the global economy. It was
the largest bankruptcy in history -- larger than General Motors, Washington
Mutual, Enron, and Worldcom combined. The federal bankruptcy court appointed
Anton Valukas, a prominent Chicago lawyer and former United States attorney
to conduct an investigation to determine what happened.
Included in the nine-volume, 2,200-page report was
the finding that there was enough evidence for a prosecutor to bring a case
against top Lehman officials and one of the nation's top accounting firms
for misleading government regulators and investors. That was two years ago
and there have been no prosecutions. Anton Valukas has never given an
interview about his report until now.
Steve Kroft: This is the largest bankruptcy in the
world. What were the effects?
Anton Valukas: The effects were the financial
disaster that we are living our way through right now.
Steve Kroft: And who got hurt?
Anton Valukas: Everybody got hurt. The entire
economy has suffered from the fall of Lehman Brothers.
Steve Kroft: So the whole world?
Anton Valukas: Yes, the whole world.
When Lehman Brothers collapsed, 26,000 employees
lost their jobs and millions of investors lost all or almost all of their
money, triggering a chain reaction that produced the worst financial crisis
and economic downturn in 70 years. Anton Valukas' job was to provide the
bankruptcy court with accurate, reliable information that the judges could
use to resolve the claims of creditors picking over Lehman's corpse.
Steve Kroft: Had you ever done anything like this
before?
Anton Valukas: I've never done anything like Lehman
Brothers. I don't think anybody else has ever done anything like Lehman
Brothers.
Steve Kroft: So your job, I mean, in some ways,
your job was to assess blame?
Anton Valukas: Our job is to determine what
actually happened, put the cards face up on the table, and let everybody see
what the facts truly are.
Valukas' team spent a year and a half interviewing
hundreds of former employees, and pouring over 34 million documents. They
told of how Lehman bought up huge amounts of real estate that it couldn't
unload when the market went south -- how it had borrowed $44 for every one
it had in the bank to finance the deals -- and how Lehman executives
manipulated balance sheets and financial reports when investors began losing
confidence and competitors closed in.
Steve Kroft: Did these quarterly reports represent
to investors a fair, accurate picture of the company's financial condition?
Anton Valukas: In our opinion, they did not.
Steve Kroft: And isn't that against the law?
Anton Valukas: It certainly, in our opinion, was
against civil law if you will. There were colorable claims that this was a
fraud, yes.
By colorable claims Valukus means there is
sufficient evidence for the Justice Department or the Securities and
Exchange Commission to bring charges against top Lehman executives,
including CEO Richard Fuld, for overseeing and certifying misleading
financial statements, and against Lehman's accountant, Ernst and Young, for
failing to challenge Lehman's numbers.
Anton Valukas: They'd fudged the numbers. They
would move what turned out to be approximately $50 billion of assets from
the United States to the United Kingdom just before they printed their
financial statements. And a week or so after the financial statements had
been distributed to the public, the $50 billion would reappear here in the
United States, back on the books in the United States.
Steve Kroft: And then the next financial statement,
they would move it overseas again, and file the report, and then move it
back?
Anton Valukas: Right.
Steve Kroft: It sounds like a shell game.
Anton Valukas: It was a shell game. It was a
gimmick.
Lehman misused an accounting trick called Repo 105
to temporarily remove the $50 billion from its ledgers to make it look as
though it was reducing its dependency on borrowed money and was drawing down
its debt. Lehman never told investors or regulators about it.
Steve Kroft: This is really deception to make the
company look healthier than it was?
Anton Valukas: Yes.
Steve Kroft: Deliberate?
Anton Valukas: Yes.
Steve Kroft: How are you so sure of that?
Anton Valukas: Because we read the emails in which
we observed the people saying that they were doing it. We interviewed the
witnesses who wrote those emails, or some of those emails, and asked them
why they were doing it, and they told us they were doing it for purposes of
affecting the numbers.
Steve Kroft: Do you think that Lehman executives
knew that this was wrong?
Anton Valukas: For some of 'em, certainly. There
was concerns being expressed by-- at high levels about whether this is
appropriate, what happens if the street found out about it. So, you know,
there was a concern that there's a real question about whether we can do
this, whether this was right or not.
One of those people was Matthew Lee who had been a
senior executive at Lehman and the accountant responsible for its global
balance sheet. Lee was one of the first to raise objections inside Lehman
about the accounting trick known as Repo 105.
Matthew Lee: It sounded like a rat poison, Repo
105, when I first heard it. So I investigated what it was, and I didn't like
what I saw.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Lehman executives took an interesting tack when defending themselves from the
SEC. Their defense is that the SEC knew in advance about the Repo 105 and Repo
108 transactions and could've prevented those deceptions from happening in the
first place. Hence if the SEC sues over these deceptions the SEC will end up
bringing a lawsuit against itself.
In any case who cares about an SEC lawsuit. Director Mary Shapiro only throws
marshmallows. Only the Department of Justice can throw people in Jail, which is
what the Lehman Bankruptcy Examiner (Valukas) really wants in this case. But the
DOJ is too busy trying to get itself out of the mess its in for sending
terrifying weapons to the Mexican Drug Cartels.
Question
Were the Ernst & Young's auditors negligent or cleverly deceived or
complicit in the deception by the Lehman Brothers?
More from the examiner’s report:
Lehman never publicly disclosed its use of
Repo 105 transactions, its accounting treatment for these
transactions, the considerable escalation of its total Repo 105
usage in late 2007 and into 2008, or the material impact these
transactions had on the firm’s publicly reported net leverage ratio.
According to former Global Financial Controller Martin Kelly, a
careful review of Lehman’s Forms 10‐K and 10‐Q would not reveal
Lehman’s use of Repo 105 transactions. Lehman failed to disclose its
Repo 105 practice even though Kelly believed “that the only purpose
or motive for the transactions was reduction in balance sheet”; felt
that “there was no substance to the transactions”; and expressed
concerns with Lehman’s Repo 105 program to two consecutive Lehman
Chief Financial Officers – Erin Callan and Ian Lowitt – advising
them that the lack of economic substance to Repo 105 transactions
meant “reputational risk” to Lehman if the firm’s use of the
transactions became known to the public. In addition to its material
omissions, Lehman affirmatively misrepresented in its financial
statements that the firm treated all repo transactions as financing
transactions – i.e., not sales – for financial reporting purposes.
"Report Details How Lehman Hid Its Woes as It Collapsed," by Michael de
la Merced and Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times, March 11,
2010 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/business/12lehman.html?src=me
Jensen Comment
Former employees of Big Four firms (alumni) have a blog that is
generally upbeat and tends not to be critical of their former employers
However, with respect to the impact of the Lehman Bankruptcy Examiners
Report, this Big Four Blog is unusually critical of Ernst and Young and
predicts a very tough time for E&Y in the aftermath.
The next few
days will reveal how the regulators, erstwhile shareholders of Lehman and other
stakeholders will move against E&Y. Valukas’ statement that there is sufficient
evidence to show that E&Y was negligent is enough to spur a whole host of law
suits. E&Y is in a very tough spot now, and while it may escape an imploding
collapse like Andersen, the long tail of Lehman is sure to create a strong
whiplash with painful monetary, reputational and punitive
"Ernst and Young Found Negligent in Lehman Report, Tough
Consequences," The Big Four Blog, March 17, 2010 ---
http://bigfouralumni.blogspot.com/2010/03/ernst-and-young-found-negligent-in.html
There’s been so
much press on the recently released report on the spectacular failure of
Lehman Brothers by Anton Valukas, so we’ll just focus on the key elements
which involve Lehman’s auditor Ernst & Young.
Valukas is highly
critical of E&Y’s work, claiming that they did not perform the due diligence
needed by audit firms, the ultimate watchdog of investors’ interests. He
believes there is a case of negligence and professional malpractice against
the firm. Though in a very limited sense Lehman perhaps followed standard
accounting principles, and this is the basis on which E&Y signed off on
their annual and quarterly filings, they wrongly categorized a repo as a
sale to knowingly report a lower leverage ratio, they exceeded internal
limits on the infamous Repo 105, and they found a loophole in the British
system to execute these transactions, and keep them off the public eye.
Lehman was clearly
at fault and grossly fraudulent in hiding this from investors, and then
obfuscating answers to clear questions from analysts. Is Ernst and Young
equally culpable?
E&Y should have
been more rigorous in pursuing this issue, knowing that it was material,
being misrepresented and highly abused. With full knowledge of its usage,
and then signing off on SEC documents is definitely negligent.
E&Y is now being
investigated by the FRC in the UK and very likely in due course by the SEC.
The Saudi government has already cancelled E&Y’s security license in the
kingdom. The law suits are yet to hit the wires, but they are coming. The
key is whether a criminal indictment of the firm is likely, recall that this
is what brought down Andersen. Dealing with civil suits is only a matter of
money, but a criminal charge is going to send clients away in droves. The
critical question is whether the industry can withstand the loss of a $20
billion accounting giant, the consequences of a Big Three are quite hard to
imagine.
E&Y was recently
hit with a $8.5 million fine by the SEC for its involvement with Bally
Fitness, and in that settlement E&Y agreed to tighten internal procedures
and refrain from audit abuse. So the SEC is unlikely to look favorably on
this.
The next few days
will reveal how the regulators, erstwhile shareholders of Lehman and other
stakeholders will move against E&Y. Valukas’ statement that there is
sufficient evidence to show that E&Y was negligent is enough to spur a whole
host of law suits.
E&Y is in a
very tough spot now, and while it may escape an imploding collapse like
Andersen, the long tail of Lehman is sure to create a strong whiplash with
painful monetary, reputational and punitive consequences.
Bob Jensen's threads on the
Examiner's Report aftermath can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#Ernst
Also see "Repo Sales Gimmicks" at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/eitf01.htm#Repo
"Lehman's Demise and Repo 105:
No Accounting for Deception," Knowledge@Wharton, March 31, 2010 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2464
"Auditors Face Fraud Charge: New York Set to Allege Ernst
& Young Stood By as Lehman Cooked Its Books," by Liz Rappaport and Michel
Rapoport, The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704138604576029991727769366.html?mod=djemalertNEWS
"Ernst & Young — Cuomo Initiates Settlement Talks With Filing," by
Walter Pavlo, Forbes, December 24, 2010 ---
http://blogs.forbes.com/walterpavlo/2010/12/24/ernst-young-cuomo-initiates-settlement-talks-with-filing/?boxes=financechannelforbes
From the Scout Report on April 20, 2012
Avidemux 2.5.6 ---
http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/
For those who have grown tired of using expensive
video editors, this handy program may offer a nice alternative. Avidemux is
a video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks.
The program supports a wide range of tile formats, and some of the tasks
here can be automated using projects, job queue, and different scripting
capabilities. This version is compatible with all operating systems,
including Linux.
Focus Writer 1.3.5.2 ---
http://gottcode.org/focuswriter/
In a media-rich environment with a wide range of
entertainment on-demand, it can be hard to focus for more than a few minutes
at a time. Focus Writer provides a simple, distraction-free writing
environment. The program utilizes a hide-away interface that users access by
moving their mouse to the edges of the screen, and it's quite helpful. This
version is compatible with all operating systems, including Linux.
This year's Pulitzer Prize winners include a composer from Michigan, a
dedicated Seattle journalist, and several other notables
Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/16/150745400/pulitzer-prize-winners-announced
Sara Ganim among 2012 Pulitzer winners
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/16/us/pulitzer-prize-winners/index.html
Pulitzer Prize winning composer, a Michigan native, is a frequent visitor to
local concert halls
http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2012/04/pulitzer_prize_winning_compose_1.html
Book world expresses disappointment, outrage over Pulitzer snub
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/0417/Book-world-expresses-disappointment-outrage-over-Pulitzer-snub
And the Winner Isn't…[Free registration may be required]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/opinion/and-the-winner-of-the-pulitzer-isnt.html?_r=1
2012 Pulitzer: Prize Feature Writing
http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2012-Feature-Writing
History of the Pulitzer Prizes
http://www.pulitzer.org/historyofprizes
From the Scout Report on April 27, 2012
Notification Control ---
http://notificationcontrol.com/
Tired of getting so many emails from your various
social networks and the like? Perhaps Notification Control is worth a quick
look. With this program, visitors can reset their notification preferences
quickly. Visitors can just use this site to click on various services (such
as eBay or Facebook) and a new tab will open, allowing them to change
notifications from this single screen. This version is compatible with all
operating systems.
Walk Score ---
http://www.walkscore.com/
If you're looking for a walkable community, is
there a way to determine which neighborhood might be best for you?
Interested parties might use the Walk Score to get a basic sense of nearby
amenities, such as grocery stores, parks, restaurants, and so on. Visitors
can type in a street address or neighborhood, and they can find out the
location's cumulative Walk Score. Also, visitors can use the site to find
out about potential nearby rental properties, if they are so inclined. This
site is compatible with all operating systems.
After a long period of decline, the travel agent makes a comeback Are
Travel Agents Back? [Free registration may be required]
http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/travel/are-travel-agents-back.html?pagewanted=1
Travel Agents Make A Return Trip ---
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/23/travel-agents-make-a-return-trip/
Is the Best Travel Search Engine Around the Corner?
http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/is-the-best-travel-search-engine-around-the-corner/
Shared Heritage Travel Itineraries
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/
American Journeys
http://www.americanjourneys.org/
Better Bidding
http://www.betterbidding.com/
From the Scout Report on May 26, 2006
Trail Runner 1.0
http://www.trailrunnerx.com/english.html
For those who enjoy a run of some distance
across a variety of terrains, this application is definitely worth a
look. With Trail Runner, users can create a geographic display of
their workout area, plan routes interactively, and also export route
descriptions onto their iPod. While the application does not
actually contain digital maps itself, it does offer ample directions
and instructions on where to obtain such maps online. This version
of Trail Runner is compatible with all computers running Mac OS X
10.4 and newer.
June 9, 2005 message from L.J. Urbano - CityTownInfo.com
[citytowninfo@citytowninfo.com]
I noticed that your web site links to
useful reference resources so I am writing to let you know about a
new reference site that may be of interest to you and your site
visitors.
CityTownInfo.com (
http://www.citytowninfo.com/ ) is a
collection of information on U.S. cities and towns. The site
includes almanac-like reference data, property statistics, local
weather reports, links to the official city web sites and maps for
about 3500 cities. The site also includes a summary article on about
50 major cities.
The site will be continually improved. We
have plans for adding info on local schools, airports, libraries,
and places of worship over the coming weeks. We’re open to
suggestion on other information you might find appropriate for this
site.
If you believe that CityTownInfo.com may be
valuable to those who visit your web site, then we ask that you
consider adding a link to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/sanantonio.htm
"Cell Phones Work as
Tour Guides," by Rachel Metz, Wired News, December 8, 2004
---
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,65945,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_6
Canadian Geographical Names
(History, Geography, Travel) ---
http://geonames.nrcan.gc.ca/index_e.php
This is a very educational site.
Bob Jensen's Travel Helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Travel
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
webGURU (undergraduate research) ---
http://www.webguru.neu.edu/
Council on Undergraduate Research on the Web (NCUR) ---
http://www.cur.org/quarterly/webedition.ht
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Pew Internet & American Life Project: The Rise of E-Reading ---
http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/04/04/the-rise-of-e-reading/
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
On its 50th anniversary, Thomas Kuhn’s "The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions" remains not only revolutionary but
controversial.
"Shift Happens," David Weinberger, The Chronicle Review, April 22, 2012
---
http://chronicle.com/article/Shift-Happens/131580/
The Guardian's Science Weekly Podcast ---
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/series/science
Online Curriculum for Science and Engineering Ethics ---
http://www.umass.edu/sts/ethics/online/home.html
Just How Small are Atoms? Mind Blowing TEDEd Animation Puts It All Into
Perspective ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/04/just_how_small_are_atoms_mind_blowing_teded_animation_puts_it_all_into_perspective.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Interactives: The Periodic Table ---
http://www.learner.org/interactives/periodic/index.html
Supermassive Black Hole Shreds a Star, and You Get to Watch ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/supermassive_black_hole_shreds_a_star_and_you_get_to_watch_.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
NOVA: Hunting the Elements
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/hunting-elements.html
Animated Tutorials: General Biology
http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/biology.html
Virtual Laboratory ---
http://virtuallaboratory.colorado.edu/
Cell Biology Education Resources ---
http://www.ascb.org/ivl/design/education.html
Inside the Cell ---
http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/insidethecell/
Flora Delaterre, Plant Detective ---
http://floradelaterre.com/index.php?id=6
webGURU (undergraduate research) ---
http://www.webguru.neu.edu/
Council on Undergraduate Research on the Web (NCUR) ---
http://www.cur.org/quarterly/webedition.ht
Teaching Videos: University of Exeter (science and medicine) ---
http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/medical-imaging/videos/
The Anatomical Drawings of Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/the_anatomical_drawings_of_renaissance_man_leonardo_da_vinci.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
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
HUD User [Housing Data] ---
http://www.huduser.org/portal/index.html
Public Housing Transformation and Crime: Making the Case for
Responsible Relocation ---
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412523-public-housing-transformation.pdf
HUD Archives ---
http://archives.hud.gov/
Housing Policy
http://www.housingpolicy.org/
The Friend of Man (Slavery) ---
http://newspapers.library.cornell.edu/collect/FOM/
webGURU (undergraduate research) ---
http://www.webguru.neu.edu/
Florida Anthropologist ---
http://ufdc.ufl.edu/flant
Council on Undergraduate Research on the Web (NCUR) ---
http://www.cur.org/quarterly/webedition.ht
Advertising Age ---
http://adage.com/
Truth vs. Twilight - Burke Museum (Native American) ---
http://www.burkemuseum.org/static/truth_vs_twilight/index.php
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
Online Curriculum for Science and Engineering Ethics ---
http://www.umass.edu/sts/ethics/online/home.html
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
Exploratorium: Geometry Playground ---
http://www.exploratorium.edu/geometryplayground/
Geometry ---
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/topics/Geometry.html
MathDL: Capsules for One-Variable Calculus ---
http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/20/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=3856
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
American Radio Works: Don't Lecture Me ---
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/lectures/
The Anatomical Drawings of Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/the_anatomical_drawings_of_renaissance_man_leonardo_da_vinci.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Old Time Radio Researchers Group ---
http://www.otrr.org/index.htm
MoMA: Print/Out (print making) ---
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/printout/
Venice in a Day: From Daybreak to Sunset in Timelapse ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/04/venice_in_a_day_from_daybreak_to_sunset_in_timelapse.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
From Tulane University Natalie V. Scott Exhibit (Essays, New Orleans,
Newspapers) ---
http://larc.tulane.edu/collections/dig_init/exhibits/nvs/
Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts from Western Europe ---
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=history&col_id=173
Figge Art Museum Grant Wood Digital Collection ---
http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/grantwood/
The Friend of Man (Slavery) ---
http://newspapers.library.cornell.edu/collect/FOM/
BAD Times (Black Americans for Democracy) ---
http://scipio.uark.edu/cdm4/index_BADTimes.php?CISOROOT=/BADTimes
American Experience: Grand Coulee Dam ---
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/coulee/
Truth vs. Twilight - Burke Museum (Native American) ---
http://www.burkemuseum.org/static/truth_vs_twilight/index.php
The Map Room: Digital Initiatives-The University of Idaho ---
http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/maps/
From Duke University (business history images)
R.C. Maxwell Company Records, 1904-1990s and undated ---
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/rcmaxwellco/
Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) Archives,
1885-1990s ---
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/oaaaarchives/
Advertising Age ---
http://adage.com/
Pew Internet & American Life Project: The Rise of E-Reading ---
http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/04/04/the-rise-of-e-reading/
The Museum of Printing History ---
http://www.printingmuseum.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
Chicago Jazz ---
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/cja/jazzmaps/ctlframe.htm
Jazz Old Time Online ---
http://www.jazz-on-line.com/index.htm
There's a vast collection here. Some choices are free; Others are not
free.
Red Hot Jazz Archive ---
http://www.redhotjazz.com/
Now What a Time: Blues, Gospel and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943
---
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ftvhtml/ftvhome.html
The Blues, Black Vaudeville, and the
Silver Screen, 1912-1930s
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/douglass/
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/
April 23, 2012
April 24, 2012
April 25, 2012
April 26, 2012
April 27, 2012
April 28, 2012
April 30, 2012
May 1, 2012
May 2, 2012
May 3, 2012
May 4, 2012
May 5, 2012
Punographics forwarded by Eileen
I changed my iPod's name to Titanic. It's syncing now.
When chemists die, they barium.
Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.
I know a guy who's addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any time.
How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it.
I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.
This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I'd never met
herbivore.
I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. I just can't put it down.
I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.
They told me I had type-A blood, but it was a Type-O.
PMS jokes aren't funny; period.
Why were the Indians here first? They had reservations.
We’re going on a class trip to the Coca-Cola factory. I hope there's no pop
quiz.
I didn't like my beard at first. Then it grew on me.
Did you hear about the cross-eyed teacher who lost her job because she
couldn't control her pupils?
When you get a bladder infection urine trouble.
Broken pencils are pointless.
I tried to catch some fog, but I mist.
What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus.
England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.
I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.
I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.
All the toilets in New York's police stations have been stolen. The police
have nothing to go on.
I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.
Haunted French pancakes give me the crêpes.
Velcro — what a rip off!
A cartoonist was found dead in his home. Details are sketchy.
Venison for dinner again? Oh deer!
The earthquake in Washington obviously was the government's fault.
Forwarded by Auntie Bev
Why, Why, Why do
we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are getting weak?
Why do banks charge a fee due to insufficient funds when they already know
you're broke?
Why is it that when someone tells you that there are one billion stars in the
universe, you believe them but, if they tell you there is wet paint, you have to
touch it to check?
Why do they use sterilized needles for lethal injections?
Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?
Why does Superman stop bullets with his chest, but ducks when you throw a
revolver at him?
Why did Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
Whose cruel idea was it to put an "s" in the word "lisp"?
If people evolved from apes, why are there still apes?
Why is it that, no matter what color bubble bath you use, the bubbles are always
white?
Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale?
Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something
new to eat will have materialized?
Why do people run over a string a dozen times with their vacuum cleaner, then
reach down, pick it up, examine it, then put it down to give the vacuum one more
chance?
Why is it that no plastic bag will open from the first end you try?
How do those dead bugs get into enclosed light fixtures?
Why is it that whenever you attempt to catch something that's falling off the
table you always manage to knock something else over?
Why, in winter, do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we
complained about the heat?
How come you never hear father-in-law jokes?
Do you ever wonder why you gave me your e-mail address in the first place?
And my FAVORITE¦
The statistics on sanity say that one out of every four persons is suffering
from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends.
If they're OK, then it's you.
FIVE
BEST SENTENCES
1.
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of
prosperity.
2.
What one person receives without working for...another person must work for
without receiving.
3. The
government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first
take from somebody else.
4.
You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
5.
When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the
other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea
that it does no good to work, because somebody else is going to get what they
work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation!
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/
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.
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.
Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for
accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting
education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial
accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing,
doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics)
research, publication, replication, and validity testing.
|
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
|
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's
Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.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