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.

 
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12321
 
Mark

 

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)
citation:
"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/
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)
author-source:
YouTube's Interactive Transcripts --- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/06/youtubes-interactive-transcripts.html
description:
You can search video and start the video when a particular word crops up
YouTube's Interactive Transcripts --- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/06/youtubes-interactive-transcripts.html

YouTube added a cool feature for videos with closed captions: you can now click on the "transcript" button to expand the entire listing. If you click on a line, YouTube will show the excerpt from the video corresponding to the text. If you use your browser's find feature, you can even search inside the video. Here's an an example of video that includes a transcript.

Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm

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 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?

The Examiner's Report is not at all kind to Ernst & Young
Lehman’s use of Repo 105 — hidden from the firm’s board but not its auditors at Ernst & Young — helped the investment bank look less indebted than it really was.

As quoted in
Volumes 1-9 of the Examiner's Report --- http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/lehman-directors-did-not-breach-duties-examiner-finds/#reports

 

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

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