Tidbits on September 10, 2012
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Bob
and Marshall Jensen's Mt. Washington Cog Railroad Photographic Special:
Part 1 (History)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/CogRailroad/History1/CogRailroadHistory.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Tidbits on January 24, 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/
The Cult of Statistical Significance:
How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"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
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
Video on How to Get a Rover to Mars (this is a wonderful
video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/embed/XRCIzZHpFtY?rel=0
Watch until the narration begins and then watch to the end.
Face to Face with Bertrand Russell: ‘Love is Wise, Hatred is
Foolish’ ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/08/face_to_face_with_bertrand_russell_love_is_wise_hatred_is_foolish.html
Mobile Tour of Harvard University ---
http://www.harvard.edu/visitors/mobile-tour
60-Second Adventures in Economics: An Animated Intro to The
Invisible Hand and Other Economic Ideas ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/i60-second_adventures_in_economicsi_an_animated_intro_to_the_invisible_hand_and_other_economic_ideas.html
Fails to explain externalities very well
The Paradox of Thrift:---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/i60-second_adventures_in_economicsi_an_animated_intro_to_the_invisible_hand_and_other_economic_ideas.html
The Phillips Curve:---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/i60-second_adventures_in_economicsi_an_animated_intro_to_the_invisible_hand_and_other_economic_ideas.html
The Principle of Comparative Advantage ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/i60-second_adventures_in_economicsi_an_animated_intro_to_the_invisible_hand_and_other_economic_ideas.html
The Impossible Trinity:
---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/i60-second_adventures_in_economicsi_an_animated_intro_to_the_invisible_hand_and_other_economic_ideas.html
Rational Choice Theory ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/i60-second_adventures_in_economicsi_an_animated_intro_to_the_invisible_hand_and_other_economic_ideas.html
Dolphins (I think they were dolphins) Run Aground on Brazil Beach ---
http://elcomercio.pe/player/1384898
When the same thing happened in the U.S. with pilot whales only few could be
saved by taking them to a shelter.
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
"I'm Singing in the rain", Gene Kelly ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmCpOKtN8ME
Le Ballet Mécanique: The Historic Cinematic Collaboration Between Fernand
Legér and George Antheil ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/ile_ballet_mecaniquei_the_historic_cinematic_collaboration_between_fernand_leger_and_george_antheil.html
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
Mobile Tour of Harvard University ---
http://www.harvard.edu/visitors/mobile-tour
Earth Science World Image Bank ---
http://www.earthscienceworld.org/imagebank/index.html
Mary Binney Wheeler Image Collection (India and
Sri Lanka) ---
http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/wheeler/index.html
The Second Known Photo of Emily Dickinson Emerges
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/the_second_known_photo_of_emily_dickinson_emerges.html#respond
Treasures in Full: Renaissance Festival Books ---
http://www.bl.uk/treasures/festivalbooks/homepage.html
One Life: Amelia Earthart ---
http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/earhart/
Creative Time ---
http://www.creativetime.org/
Picturing Science: Museum Scientists and Imaging
Technologies
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/picturing-science-museum-scientists-and-imaging-technologies
Long Island Collection ---
http://guides.library.stonybrook.edu/long_island
Set in Stone: Building America's New Generation
of Arts Facilities, 1994-2008 (Chicago) ---
http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/setinstone/
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
Ayn Rand’s Philosophy and Her Resurgence in 2012: A Quick
Primer by Stanford Historian Jennifer Burns ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/ayn_rands_philosophy_and_her_resurgence_in_2012_a_quick_primer_by_stanford_historian_jennifer_burns.html
The Second Known Photo of Emily Dickinson Emerges
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/the_second_known_photo_of_emily_dickinson_emerges.html#respond
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 September 10, 2012
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2012/TidbitsQuotations091012.htm
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
Classrooms and Students From Around the World
September 1, 2012 from Bob Blystone
To all:
Below is a link to a site that is ultimately geared to having you purchase a
book full of pictures. However, this blog/advertisement is very
interesting.
It is a compilation of pictures from around the world of students in their
classrooms. One can look at the unique images for quite a time trying
understand the world in which these young students learn.
I trust you will find it as interesting as I did.
Bob Blystone
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/08/20/classroom-portraits-julian-germain/
"Detecting price artificiality and manipulation in futures markets: An
application to Amaranth," by Atanu Saha and Hans-Jürgen Petersen, Journal
of Derivatives & Hedge Funds (2012) 18, 254–271 ---
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jdhf/journal/v18/n3/full/jdhf20127a.html
In this article we propose a general method to test
whether economic data support the claim of futures market manipulation. We
examine the question of whether or not Amaranth manipulated the market for
natural gas futures using three alternative methods. The first is our
contribution to the existing body of literature on the analysis of
manipulation claims. The subsequent two have previously been discussed in
the literature. All three methods yield the same result: economic data on
futures prices and Amaranth's trades do not support the claim that Amaranth
manipulated the natural gas futures market in 2006.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on how to value interest rate swaps ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133swapvalue.htm
Bob Jensen's free tutorials on accounting for derivative financial
instruments and hedging activities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm
Especially note the FAS 133 and IAS 39 Glossary at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133glosf.htm
This is more than a glossary.
Accounting Students Dropping Out of Accountics Science Doctoral Programs
September 5, 2012 message from Professor XXXXX
Hello Bob:
Thought you might find the
following interesting.
I had a student as an undergrad
that I encouraged to get a PhD. She went out and worked a few years and
came back to get a master’s degree. During the master’s degree she decided
what she really wanted was to be a professor and applied for a PhD degree at
Tennessee. Got accepted and went without finishing her masters. One year
later I found her in my master’s class. She was so fed up with the total
emphasis on what you have been calling accountics that she dropped out and
came back to finish her masters. I have been trying to convince her that it
was just Tennessee and she really did want to become a professor but it has
been an uphill battle and I would say at this point highly unlikely that she
will ever again consider being a professor.
XXXXX
September 5, reply from Bob Jensen
Dear Professor XXXXX,
It's not just Tennessee. Virtually all accounting doctoral programs in
AACSB accredited universities have literally been taken over by accountics
science researchers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
This is one of the main reason the 2012 Pathways Commission Report
appeals for alternative tracks to be commenced in accountancy doctoral
programs.
I had a similar (actually brilliant) student who did complete his masters
degree in accounting at Trinity University. He was a joint accounting and
mathematics undergraduate major. He was admitted to the University of
Texas doctoral program and dropped out for the same reason you mention above
--- too much accountics and too little accounting even though he was doing
well in his accountics science courses. He just was more interested in
accounting than accountics.
Thanks,
Bob Jensen
September 5, 2012 reply from Professor YYYYY
We had a retired Marine who completed our BS and MS
program. He was an extremely good student, so much so that we hired him as a
lecturer when he completed his master's degree. After a few years he decided
at age 45 to go get his PhD. He looked at several programs (RRRRR SSSSS, and
TTTTT because they are all about 3-4 hours away and his family was not going
to move with him).
He finally decided on TTTTT. TTTTT is a good
school, but definitely not elite or one of the Top 10 accountics science
programs. I felt that he could get a decent doctoral program there. He hated
it despite doing well in the classes. He was frustrated at reading nothing
but mathematics and statistical papers that had nothing to do with what he
wanted to pursue; teaching and professional research. He mentioned this in
class on several occasions and was basically told that real accounting
professors were not interested in teaching. The PhD was a research degree
and as such you would not be learning how to teach, it was assumed that you
knew enough of that when admitted to the program and that your real goal
should be to get placed at a school where teaching would not interfere with
research. On several occasions the students took him aside and said to be
careful about being out spoken in class regarding teaching and professional
research. If he continued to mention those things the faculty would not be
amenable to working with him on research projects or help him get through. I
can remember back to my doctoral program in the late 90's and we did the
same thing. To get along with the faculty you never expressed a desire to
teach, it was all about research. Among your fellow students you could be
open about desires to teach, but not faculty. I can remember several faculty
members during my job search admonishing me for the schools where I was
interviewing because they were "teaching schools" and beneath their desires
for where grads of our schools should be applying. (this part of the message
was deleted by Jensen)
What's more, when the doctoral student in question
asked his adviser about application of the research to the profession the
adviser was flummoxed by what he meant. It was not his job to apply his
research to the profession but rather the profession to find what it needed
if they wanted to. He said that personally he didn't feel any need to try to
better the profession and that his profession was not accounting but
academia. Needless to say he was discouraged and left TTTTT before the end
of his first semester. He passed all four parts of his CPA exam (all >90)
and is now working at one of the larger local CPA firms doing quite well.
Thought you might like to her another anecdotal
report on what's going on in the ivory towers. I really enjoy having Steve
Kachelmeyer on the listserv and the debates that go on because of his
willingness to interact. I know he brings a very different perspective from
the majority of us on the list who are not big name researchers.
Hope all is going well with you and Erika. The
weather in Texas is miserably hot, not as abd as last year, but still hot.
Forecast is for 105 tomorrow, September 6th!
September 7, 2012 message from David Johnstone
Dear all, it always seemed to me that statistics in
medicine had a level of earnestness and expert input that you would expect
in a field where results cost so much to produce and often hugely matter,
both in human welfare and potential income/litigation. Many professional
statisticians work in medicine and biology generally, and the journal
Biometrika is extremely high standard. There are many cases of applied
medical statisticians publishing major pure theory papers in stats theory
journals, and also textbooks that become standard references in statistics
departments. In econometrics there are a few such people (e.g. Zellner).
Some techniques apply really well to an applied field and get developed
there rather than in their "home" field. I think discrete choice models were
very largely developed in econometrics (and their software was written there
too).
As a strategy for empirical researchers in accounting, it seems to me that
enlisting help from pure statisticians is a clever way to do new or better
work. If you glance at medical journals you often see joint papers written
by a medico and a statistician from different departments and buildings on
the campus. R.A. Fisher developed much of modern statistical theory because
he was an agricultural scientist who needed to design and interpret
experiments. Gosset of "Student's t-test" was a brewery researcher, who
wanted valid interpretations of his sample observations.
There are suggestions these days that drug companies have got influence over
some medical research programs but the basic laws of nature, and the fact
that a really bad drug will tend to be be found out in a "natural
experiment" once it's on the market, must be in medical researchers minds
constantly. Publication in these circumstances is only the start of the
story.
September 7, 2012 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi David,
I agree fully with everything you said, although outsourcing accountics
science research to non-accounting quants is not likely to happen since
there are virtually no research grants from government or industry for
accountics science research.
And we must face up to the fact that statistical research in medicine (e.g.,
in epidemiology and drug testing) is only part of all of medical research.
In addition there is a tremendous proportion of implementation research in
medicine intended to improve diagnosis (e.g., artificial intelligence
and virus discovery in biology and genetics) and treatment (e.g., new
surgical techniques and prostheses)
What is lacking in accountics science are the components of diagnosis
and treatment of benefit to practicing accountants. This of course
was the main point of Harvard's Bob Kaplan in his fabulous 2010 AAA plenary
session presentation when he implied that accountics scientists only focused
on narrow research akin to epidemiology research in medicine.
In any case, until accountics scientists have access to serious research
grant money (including contributions to university overhead), I don't think
there will be much accountics scientist research outsourcing to statistical
experts.
It is also interesting how anthropology took much of the statistical
research out of the academic side of their discipline.
Anthropology Without Science: A new long-range plan for the American
Anthropological Association that omits the word “science” from the
organization's vision for its future has exposed fissures in the discipline
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#AntropologyNonScience
I'm not proposing that academic accountants go to the extremes of having
accounting research without science. What I am proposing is that we have
some alternate tracks in accountancy doctoral programs and leading
accounting research journals. This is also what the Pathways Commission is
seeking.
Respectfully,
Bob Jensen
The Sad State of Accounting Doctoral Programs in North America
"Exploring Accounting Doctoral Program Decline: Variation and the Search
for Antecedents," by Timothy J. Fogarty and Anthony D. Holder, Issues in
Accounting Education, May 2012 ---
Not yet posted on June 18, 2012
ABSTRACT
The inadequate supply of new terminally qualified accounting faculty poses a
great concern for many accounting faculty and administrators. Although the
general downward trajectory has been well observed, more specific
information would offer potential insights about causes and continuation.
This paper examines change in accounting doctoral student production in the
U.S. since 1989 through the use of five-year moving verges. Aggregated on
this basis, the downward movement predominates, notwithstanding the schools
that began new programs or increased doctoral student production during this
time. The results show that larger declines occurred for middle prestige
schools, for larger universities, and for public schools. Schools that
periodically successfully compete in M.B.A.. program rankings also more
likely have diminished in size. of their accounting Ph.D. programs. Despite
a recent increase in graduations, data on the population of current doctoral
students suggest the continuation of the problems associated with the supply
and demand imbalance that exists in this sector of the U.S. academy.
September 5, 2012 reply from Dan Stone
This is very sad and very true.
Tim Fogarthy talks about the "ghettoization" of
accounting education in some of his work and talks. The message that faculty
get, and give, is that if a project has no chance for publication in a top X
journal, then it is a waste of time. Not many schools are able to stand
their ground, and value accounting education, in the face of its absence in
any of the "top" accounting journals.
The paradox and irony is that accounting faculty
devalue and degrade the very thing that most of them spend the most time
doing. We seem to follow a variant of Woody Allen's maxim, "I would never
join a club that would have me as a member." Here, it is, "I would never
accept a paper for publication that concerns what I do with most of my
time."
As Pogo said, "we have met the enemy and they is
us."
Dan Stone
Jensen Comment
This is a useful update on the doctoral program shortages relative to demand for
new tenure-track faculty in North American universities. However, it does not
suggest any reasons or remedies for this phenomenon. The accounting doctoral
program in many ways defies laws of supply and demand. Accounting faculty are
the among the highest paid faculty in rank (except possibly in unionized
colleges and universities that are not wage competitive). For suggested causes
and remedies of this problem see --- See Below!
Accountancy Doctoral Program Information from Jim Hasselback ---
http://www.jrhasselback.com/AtgDoctInfo.html
Especially note the table of the entire history of accounting doctoral
graduates for all AACSB universities in the U.S. ---
http://www.jrhasselback.com/AtgDoct/XDocChrt.pdf
In that table you can note the rise or decline (almost all declines) for each
university.
Links to 91 AACSB University Doctoral Programs ---
http://www.jrhasselback.com/AtgDoct/AtgDoctProg.html
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"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
The AAA's Pathways Commission Accounting Education Initiatives Make
National News
Accountics Scientists Should Especially Note the First Recommendation
"Accounting for Innovation," by Elise Young, Inside Higher Ed,
July 31, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/07/31/updating-accounting-curriculums-expanding-and-diversifying-field
Accounting programs should promote curricular
flexibility to capture a new generation of students who are more
technologically savvy, less patient with traditional teaching methods, and
more wary of the career opportunities in accounting, according to a report
released today by the
Pathways Commission, which studies the future of
higher education for accounting.
In 2008, the U.S. Treasury Department's Advisory
Committee on the Auditing Profession recommended that the American
Accounting Association and the American Institute of Certified Public
Accountants form a commission to study the future structure and content of
accounting education, and the Pathways Commission was formed to fulfill this
recommendation and establish a national higher education strategy for
accounting.
In the report, the commission acknowledges that
some sporadic changes have been adopted, but it seeks to put in place a
structure for much more regular and ambitious changes.
The report includes seven recommendations:
- Integrate accounting research, education
and practice for students, practitioners and educators by bringing
professionally oriented faculty more fully into education programs.
- Promote accessibility of doctoral
education by allowing for flexible content and structure in doctoral
programs and developing multiple pathways for degrees. The current path
to an accounting Ph.D. includes lengthy, full-time residential programs
and research training that is for the most part confined to quantitative
rather than qualitative methods. More flexible programs -- that might be
part-time, focus on applied research and emphasize training in teaching
methods and curriculum development -- would appeal to graduate students
with professional experience and candidates with families, according to
the report.
- Increase recognition and support for
high-quality teaching and connect faculty review, promotion and tenure
processes with teaching quality so that teaching is respected as a
critical component in achieving each institution's mission. According to
the report, accounting programs must balance recognition for work and
accomplishments -- fed by increasing competition among institutions and
programs -- along with recognition for teaching excellence.
- Develop curriculum models, engaging learning
resources and mechanisms to easily share them, as well as enhancing
faculty development opportunities to sustain a robust curriculum that
addresses a new generation of students who are more at home with
technology and less patient with traditional teaching methods.
- Improve the ability to attract high-potential,
diverse entrants into the profession.
- Create mechanisms for collecting, analyzing
and disseminating information about the market needs by establishing a
national committee on information needs, projecting future supply and
demand for accounting professionals and faculty, and enhancing the
benefits of a high school accounting education.
- Establish an implementation process to address
these and future recommendations by creating structures and mechanisms
to support a continuous, sustainable change process.
According to the report, its two sponsoring
organizations -- the American Accounting Association and the American
Institute of Certified Public Accountants -- will support the effort to
carry out the report's recommendations, and they are finalizing a strategy
for conducting this effort.
Hsihui Chang, a professor and head of Drexel
University’s accounting department, said colleges must prepare students for
the accounting field by encouraging three qualities: integrity, analytical
skills and a global viewpoint.
“You need to look at things in a global scope,” he
said. “One thing we’re always thinking about is how can we attract students
from diverse groups?” Chang said the department’s faculty comprises members
from several different countries, and the university also has four student
organizations dedicated to accounting -- including one for Asian students
and one for Hispanic students.
He said the university hosts guest speakers and
accounting career days to provide information to prospective accounting
students about career options: “They find out, ‘Hey, this seems to be quite
exciting.’ ”
Jimmy Ye, a professor and chair of the accounting
department at Baruch College of the City University of New York, wrote in an
email to Inside Higher Ed that his department is already fulfilling
some of the report’s recommendations by inviting professionals from
accounting firms into classrooms and bringing in research staff from
accounting firms to interact with faculty members and Ph.D. students.
Ye also said the AICPA should collect and analyze
supply and demand trends in the accounting profession -- but not just in the
short term. “Higher education does not just train students for getting their
first jobs,” he wrote. “I would like to see some study on the career tracks
of college accounting graduates.”
Mohamed Hussein, a professor and head of the
accounting department at the University of Connecticut, also offered ways
for the commission to expand its recommendations. He said the
recommendations can’t be fully put into practice with the current structure
of accounting education.
“There are two parts to this: one part is being
able to have an innovative curriculum that will include changes in
technology, changes in the economics of the firm, including risk,
international issues and regulation,” he said. “And the other part is making
sure that the students will take advantage of all this innovation.”
The university offers courses on some of these
issues as electives, but it can’t fit all of the information in those
courses into the major’s required courses, he said.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
This is one of the most important initiatives to emerge from the AAA in recent
years.
I would like to be optimistic, but change will be very slow. President Wilson,
who was also an PhD professor, once remarked that it's easier to move a cemetery
than to change a university.
It is easier to move a
cemetery than to affect a change in curriculum.
Woodrow Wilson
President of Princeton University 1902-1910
President of the United States 1913-1921
And in the 21st Century you can imagine the lawsuits that would clog the courts
if a town tried to move a cemetery.
I think most graduates of accounting doctoral programs that are also chosen
to serve as referees of submissions to TAR, JAR, and JAE are econometricians,
psychometricians, and mathematicians. The problem is not so much the quality of
the referees on accountics submissions.
And some, albeit not all, TAR, JAR, and JAE referees have backgrounds in
accounting. The problem is that their study of accounting ended before they
started accounting doctoral programs. Therein lies the problem with the
incredibly shrinking accounting doctoral programs. These programs are shunned by
students seeking to become accounting PhDs instead of social science and
mathematics PhDs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
It's not so much that accountics science is second rate. It was second rate
in the 1960s and the early 1970s, but that is no longer the case in the 21st
Century. The problem is that accountics science became the only track in
literally all of the accounting doctoral programs if universities accredited by
the AACSB.
And accountings science dominates promotion and tenure tracks of our research
universities since the leading academic accounting research journals will not
publish submissions that are not in accountics science or even accept
commentaries that challenge the findings of submissions that are published ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
The appeal of the 2012 Pathways Commission commission put simply is to open
up alternate research tracks in our doctoral programs to students who want to
study accounting in those programs. Also there's an appeal for our top tenure
track research journals to be more open to alternate research methodology such
as case study research, field study research, and accounting history research.
Dan Stone was correct in his quotation from Pogo. The only thing that stands
in the way of implementation of the 2012 Pathways Commission initiatives is us.
And we're resisting changing doctoral programs in ways that would make
doctoral students and possibly their advisers leave campus to collect and
analyze data. Horrors! Who wants to mingle with real-world practicing
accountants at anything other than cocktail parties?
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on Higher Education Controversies and Need for Change
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
The sad state of accountancy doctoral programs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"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
July 31, 2012 reply from Paul Williams
Bob, A good place to start is to jettison pretenses
of accounting being a science. As Anthony Hopwood noted in his presidential
address, accounting is a practice. The tools of science are certainly
useful, but using those tools to investigate accounting problems is quite a
different matter than claiming that accounting is a science. Teleology
doesn't enter the picture in the sciences -- nature is governed by laws, not
purposes. Accounting is nothing but a purposeful activity and must (as
Jagdish has eloquently noted here and in his Critical Perspectives on
Accounting article) deal with values, law and ethics. As Einstein said, "In
nature there are no rewards or punishments, only consequences." For a social
practice like accounting to pretend there are only consequences (as if
economics was a science that deals only with "natural kinds) has been a
major failing of the academy in fulfilling its responsibilities to a
discipline that also claims to be a profession. In spite of a "professional
economist's" claims made here that economics is a science, there is quite
some controversy over that even within the economic community. Ha-Joon
Chang, another professional economist at Cambridge U. had this to say about
the economics discipline: "Recognizing that the boundaries of the market are
ambiguous and cannot be determined in an objective way lets us realize that
economics is not a science like physics or chemistry, but a political
exercise. Free-market economists may want you to believe that the correct
boundaries of the market can be scientifically determined, but this is
incorrect. If the boundaries of what you are studying cannot be
scientifically determined what you are doing is not a science (23 Things
They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, p. 10)." The silly persistence of
professional accountants in asserting that accounting is apolitical and
aethical may be a rationalization they require, but for academics to harbor
the same beliefs seems to be a decidedly unscientific posture to take. In
one of Ed Arrington's articles published some time ago, he argued that
accounting's pretenses of being scientific are risible. As he said (as near
as I can recall): "Watching the positive accounting show, Einstein's gods
must be rolling in the aisles."
"The global debt clock Our interactive overview of government debt across
the planet," The Economist, Date Warning (see below) ---
http://www.economist.com/content/global_debt_clock?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/globaldebtclock
Jensen Comment
To appreciate the interactive power of this picture go to
http://www.economist.com/content/global_debt_clock?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/globaldebtclock
Pass the mouse over a nation of interest or choose three nations to compare
using the buttons on the right side of the picture.
The Good News --- Interactive Ease of Comparison
The Bad News --- Out of Date Debt Amounts
The top moving "Current Global Public Debt" leads readers to assume that the
debt for each nation is very up to date. Such is not the case in the data for
each country. For example, the debt for the United States is in the database is
$11 trillion of public debt. The current debt for the United States is now over
$16 trillion, thereby, leading us to suspect that the debt amounts for other
nations are also badly out of date. Still the interactive graph is somewhat
useful, especially when comparing debt to population. For example, comparing $11
trillion public debt for the U.S. having 314 million people with $1 trillion
public debt for China having 1,326 million people puts things in perspective.
Another piece of bad news is that the above interactive picture does not show
the unfunded entitlements. Whereas many nations like China have miniscule
unfunded entitlements, the U.S. has $100-$200 trillion in unfunded entitlements.
"It isn't a debt crisis," The Economist, Apr 12th 2012 ---
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/04/sovereign-debt
But it is a debt crisis in reality.
"The cupboard is bare," The Economist, July 19, 2012 ---
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/07/expansionary-austerity
GLENN HUBBARD is by
many accounts a sensible economist. But he is currently advising Mitt
Romney, and political entanglements often nudge sensible people toward
curious arguments. In a recent Financial
Times piece outlining "a conservative
growth agenda for the US economy", Mr
Hubbard writes:
High and rising debt
burdens are a structural impediment to growth. They raise expected
future tax burdens, discouraging investment and limiting
productivity growth. Some recent estimates of this adverse effect
suggest our debt-to-GDP levels would reduce expected growth by half
a percentage point per year over the next decade. How debt reduction
occurs is also important. Recent research by Alberto Alesina of
Harvard, and others, has emphasised that reducing transfer spending
is more likely to lead to long-lasting decrease in debt and support
for growth than raising taxes.
Gradual fiscal
consolidation may also be stimulative in the short run. Research by
Hoover Institution economists concludes that reducing federal
spending relative to GDP to pre-financial-crisis levels over a
decade would increase GDP in the short and long term. This outcome
reflects lower future tax rates and the boost from lower interest
rates to investment and net exports.
The economics of
the growth impacts of austerity is a subject to which this newspaper has
paid considerable attention over the past few years. See
this,
this,
and
this,
for instance. It seems clear that very high debt
loads can have a negative impact on growth, and the taxes needed to
bring down borrowing can also have incentive effects that undermine
growth. These are important things to consider.
But the evidence on the
precise level of debt at which growth impacts become severe is fairly
uncertain, and there is good reason to suspect that America can sustain
higher debt loads at little cost than most other economies. Episodes of
austerity with higher ratios of spending cuts to tax increases are
associated with better growth performance, but—crucially—much of that
effect can be chalked up to difference in central-bank willingness to
accommodate the two strategies: central banks do more to offset spending
cuts than tax rises.
Most importantly,
episodes of expansionary austerity are clearly associated with two
dynamics: large declines in interest rates and big currency
depreciations. America would derive zero benefit from the first effect;
thereal
yield on the 20-year Treasury is
now...0.0%. It couldn't expect to get much of a boost from the second
effect either. Trade is a relatively small share of total American
output. And there is at least some risk that an aggressive campaign to
devalue the dollar could encourage foreign investors to move out of
Treasuries, raising interest rates. Though they might also
simply fight back. At any rate, the only thing conservative politicians
seem to hate more than tax increases is the idea of a
falling dollar. And as recent events
demonstrate, Republican legislators
miss few opportunities to demand tighter
policy from the man who could do most to cushion against the impact of
austerity.
Now, I think you could
get a lot of Democrats, including Barack Obama, to sign on to a broad
tax reform with an eye toward improving the medium-run deficit, so long
as the reform wasn't regressive and raised revenues on net. And that
should have a positive impact on growth over the longer run. But there
is very little reason to think that a conservative plan to come in and
begin slashing deficits would be good for short-run growth.
Bob Jensen on the U.S. National Debt + Unfunded Entitlements ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Metacognition in Learning
To my knowledge, Bob Jensen is the first author to discuss the importance of
metacognition in learning.
That paper focuses on the metacognitive advantages of
self-learning (with blood, sweat, and tears) over memorizing answers given out
by teachers.
"Metacognitive Concerns in Designs and Evaluations of Computer Aided
Education and Training: Are We Misleading Ourselves About Measures of Success?"
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
Now we have a second paper on he importance of metacognition in learning
The paper below focuses on the metacognitive mindset
"Accounting Students' Metacognition: The Association of Performance,
Calibration Error, and Mindset," by Susan P. Ravenscroft, Tammy R. Waymire,
and Timothy D. West, Issues in Accounting Education, Vol. 27, No. 3, August
2012, pp. 707-732 (not free) ---
http://aaajournals.org/doi/full/10.2308/iace-50148
In recognition of the evolving body of knowledge in
the accounting profession, the American Institute of Certified Public
Accountants (AICPA 2010) highlights the importance of viewing learning as a
lifelong process that requires self-awareness and extends beyond the
academic setting. Metacognition, the assessment and regulation of one's own
learning, is a crucial element in lifelong learning. We draw upon judgment
of learning research and introduce mindset theory to explore the
relationship among (1) exam performance, (2) calibration error, measured as
expected minus actual exam scores, and (3) mindset, a person's basic beliefs
about learning and ability (Dweck 2000, 2006) in the accounting classroom.
We find strong evidence that exam performance is inversely related to
calibration error (Kruger and Dunning 1999). We also find modest evidence
that a growth mindset is associated with improved performance and decreased
calibration error. While the mindset results were not entirely consistent
with prior research in educational psychology, we explore possible reasons
and future directions for accounting education research.
. . .
DISCUSSION Limitations
Our sample consisted of students taught by a single
instructor at a single institution who took an elective governmental and
nonprofit accounting course during one of three semesters. This course is
typically viewed as difficult and as needed for the CPA examination. While
this could restrict the generalizability of the results, we do not believe
that it does so seriously. We are aware of no research findings indicating
that judgments of learning or mindsets differ across social demographics.
Instead, the findings on which we relied are found across broad categories
of groups. However, to establish generalizability, we hope to use multiple
institutions, instructors, and courses in future research.
Another limitation is the restriction of range that
we found in the independent variable of mindset. Dweck and Molden (2005)
note that when they assess children or adults, they find that about 40
percent endorse the fixed view of mindset, another 40 percent endorse the
growth view, and about 20 percent are undecided. Given that a majority of
the subjects were categorized as having a growth mindset, the likelihood of
seeing a significant relationship was decreased. Because we did not
manipulate this variable, we could not create a full range of mindsets for
our analysis. Moreover, we have a restricted range of performance. Students
taking the governmental and nonprofit accounting course have all succeeded
in a competitive accounting program, with average GPAs above that required
for remaining the program. Both of these restrictions bias against finding
statistically significant relationships, and we believe that the results
can, therefore, still be of benefit to a broad range of accounting
educators. Discussion of Results
The initial goal of this study was to better
understand why accounting students sometimes lack self-awareness about their
own abilities and skills, and to explore factors that may assist accounting
educators. The study's results point to three implications for accounting
educators. First, consistent with Kruger and Dunning (1999), we found that
students who overestimate their abilities likely do so because they lack the
technical knowledge to evaluate their own performance, as evidenced by lower
performance. We also found, in the first two exams, evidence of a magnitude
effect that suggests that high-performing students calibrate more accurately
than low-performing students do, expressed in absolute terms. This may
affirm observations by accounting faculty and help them in assisting
students with their self-regulated learning and self-insight.
Second, in exploring the average calibration errors
of high- and low-performing students, we found that low-performing students
tend to improve their calibration accuracy, while high-performing students
tend to become increasingly underconfident relative to their performance.
These results demonstrate the concerns that accounting educators may have
for both low performers and high performers. Low performers' lack the
self-awareness of their technical skills to accurately calibrate their own
performance, and this may cause them to continue to underperform. High
performers fail to recognize their strong technical skills and may become
overly critical of their own performance.
Third, in exploring the role of mindset regarding
an individual's approach to learning and response to failure, we predicted
that students with a growth mindset (i.e., those who were motivated by
learning, resilient, and focused on learning from feedback) would
demonstrate higher exam performance, improvement in performance, lower
calibration error, and improvement in their calibration. We find modest
evidence supporting these predictions. Mindset was significantly associated
with performance on only one of three exams, and improvement from Exam 1 to
Exam 2. Mindset was not associated with level of calibration error, but was
associated with improvement in calibration from Exam 1 to Exam 2 and from
Exam 1 to Exam 3. We expected growth mindset to be more consistently
associated with the level of, and improvements in, calibration error;
however, we believe that the short, one-semester timeline may make it more
difficult to capture the impact of mindset. Furthermore, we present evidence
that the final exam (Exam 3) may reflect unique resource allocation
decisions on the part of students that may affect both the performance and
calibration error results. Although inconsistent, the results provide some
modest evidence that encouraging a growth mindset may offer benefits to
students in improving their performance and calibration accuracy.
Mindset theory originated as a way to explain why
students have differing goals and reactions to failure (Dweck and Leggett
1988), but as the research in this area has continued, the significance and
implications of mindset have grown. For instance, more recent work implies
that mindsets—although malleable experimentally—represent a fundamental view
of the world, quoting Piaget to the effect that worldviews of children “can
be as important to their functioning as the logical reasoning he studied for
much of his career,” (Molden and Dweck 2006, 200). Molden and Dweck (2006)
survey research showing that mindset plays a role in many behaviors,
including goal setting, attributions, strategies, grades, perceptions of
others, responses to stereotypes, self-esteem, and self-regulatory
strategies.
In our setting, senior-level and graduate
accounting students who have met stringent admissions criteria and who are
very grade-conscious may hold strong achievement goals. The connection
between mindset and performance may be altered in the presence of strongly
held achievement goals (grade-based as opposed to learning-based). Dweck and
other researchers (e.g., Dweck and Leggett 1988; Shunk 1995) observe that
the positive effect of mindset on achievement can be overridden by the
effect of goals. Shunk (1995, 317) discusses the interaction of goals and
mindset, and notes that sometimes “success-oriented persons who perform
poorly on one occasion will work harder and improve their performance on
another.” The integration of the goals literature may, therefore, be helpful
in future exploration of the role of mindset in the accounting education
setting and extending the results presented in this study. Furthermore,
because research suggests that business students generally approach studying
in a more superficial way than non-business students (Arum and Roska 2011),
future research studies could be conducted across academic disciplines,
preferably including students in and outside the college of business to make
comparisons among groups.
In sum, our study presents evidence of an inverse
relationship between performance and calibration error in an accounting
education setting, and offers an initial step in understanding the role
mindset plays in metacognitive self-awareness of accounting students.
Although this research represents an early effort to introduce mindset
concepts within the accounting education literature, our results and the
underlying research suggest that faculty could introduce the concept of
mindset to students, which could be particularly useful for those students
with fixed mindsets. Introducing the concept of a growth mindset leads
naturally into a discussion of the effort that is necessary for deep
learning, and could motivate a discussion with student involvement about the
students' study approaches and preparation for tests. Finally, recent
research (Anseel et al. 2009) suggests that the beneficial effects of
faculty feedback to students can be amplified if students are appropriately
guided to reflect on their performance. Mindset, in conjunction with
feedback, offers promise as a way to encourage learning and self-awareness.
Bob Jensen's threads on asynchronous versus synchronous learning ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm
Computers and Composition Online ---
http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/english/cconline/home.ht
In preparing the
Spring 2012 issue of Computers and Composition
Online with our ever talented Senior Editor Joe Erickson, I am
struck by the ways in which many of these pieces so strongly connect to
the composition classroom and profile a range of tools that remediate
both the composing process and the writing classroom itself, questioning
not only what writing is but also the spaces in which it is taught and
assessed.
Our
Theory
into Practice section features five
complementary webtexts. First, in “Gender and Games in a First-Year
Writing Class,” Rebekah Shultz Colby reports the results of series of
case studies with women enrolled in a World of Warcraft themed writing
course to determine their gaming literacy practices and the impact of
those practices on their attitudes about the course. Clearly, a
game-based composition course provides alternative composing content and
form, and as Cynthia Davidson addresses in "Cyborg Literacy Acquisition
Through Second Life: Contesting 'Old' School Spaces with vPortfolios,”
students need to develop awareness of the impact of such virtual
environments on their learning process. Davidson argues for SecondLife
as one space among several where students can create eportfolios that
foster such awareness. Just as Davidson documents the ways in which
writerly identity spans a range of virtual contexts, Bryan Lutz’
“Composing to Change Nations: Teaching New Media and the Arab Spring in
First-Year Composition” bridges the gap between the academic and the
political in his call to harness the power of social movements online in
our own writing classrooms through blogs and other Web 2.0 tools.
Virginia Tucker’s "How is a Forum Community Like a Classroom?
Dramatistic Lessons from an Online Community" also makes a compelling
connection between the academy and the community in the analysis of the
various types of knowledge-making discourse that define the community
and how such strategies can and should be implemented in our own online
writing courses. The final piece I discuss in this section, Laura R.
Micciche, Hannah J. Rule, and Liv Stratman’s “Multimodality,
Performance, and Teacher Training,” explores the impact multimodality
had on teacher identity in the context of a graduate-level course
Micciche taught, Teaching College Writing. Such reflection on the part
of both teachers and students is a vital part of successfully
integrating technology into the college-level writing spaces.
This spring’s
Virtual Classroom section includes Joe Bisz’
“Composition Games for the Classroom,” which aligns gaming strategies
with various aspects of the composing process and provides a range of
useful resources. Meanwhile, in “Internationalizing Campus through
Rhetoric, Writing, and Multimodal Compositions,” Erin Laverick profiles
the role multimodal composing played in a project designed to allow
international students at the University of Findlay to have a voice in
plans to make the campus more inclusive. Finally, in “Forming Assessment
of Machinima Video,” Dirk Remley continues his important work with
Second Life and machinima video to help teachers consider “how criteria
with which they are familiar may be reconceptualized to permit
assessment of multimodal products.”
Our
Professional Development section includes
Julie Daoud’s “Probiotics for Composition-Health? Building an Ecology of
Memoir Writing and Blended Learning,” in which Daoud reflects on the
successes and challenges of a semester-long study of memoir writing and
the technologically-supported activities related to the course readings.
Daoud concludes that teachers must be willing to contemplate the
ever-changing factors that provide an optimum ecology for a
learning-centered classroom, including a blended approach between
online-and-face to face activities. Given Daoud’s point, it is fitting
that the section concludes with a video tribute to one of the field’s
founders, Gail Hawisher, as contributors from across the country discuss
the ways in which her groundbreaking work has paved the ways for the
successful integration of technology into the teaching of writing.
Last but not
least, our
Reviews section features three reviews by our
very own: Katherine Fredlund’s review of the interactive slideware tool
VoiceThread, Em Hurford’s review of Bradley Dilger and Jeff Rice’s
award-winning collection From A to <A>: Keywords of
Markup, and Estee Beck’s review of
Multiliteracy Centers: Writing Center Work, New Media, and Multimodal
Rhetoric, edited by David Sheridan and James Inman. Such efforts
by our talented group of current and former Rhetoric and Writing
doctoral students is a powerful reminder to me that the success and
sustainability of both Computers and Composition
Online and now Computers and Composition
print is a collective effort and represents one of the significant
collaborations of my career for which I am eternally grateful.
Kris Blair
Editor
Digital Story Telling at Ohio State University ---
http://digitalstory.osu.edu/
Discover digital
storytelling at Ohio State! Join faculty, staff and students from a variety
of departments who use digital storytelling in academia, research and
outreach. We offer a
workshop
program, coordinate storytelling events and showcase
stories created by the OSU community.
Participate in a
digital storytelling workshop! Plan to attend our
winter workshop. Join in story circles to craft your script, then learn
software to produce your multimedia story. Our next workshop is December
17-19, 2012. Please check back soon for registration information.
Do you belong to a group that would like a custom
workshop? Find out about planning a
workshop for your group.
Learn in a hands-on
workshop or by reviewing our resources and tutorials. Please explore the
site for more information.
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
"Tax Court Rejects Geithner/Turbo Tax Defense"
Bartlett v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo.
2012-254 (Sept. 4, 2012):
http://www.ustaxcourt.gov/InOpHistoric/BartlettMemo.TCM.WPD.pdf
From Paul Caron
Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:
-
Geithner Blames Turbo Tax For His Tax Troubles (Jan. 22, 2009)
-
TurboTax, Geithner Edition (June 30, 2009)
-
Tax Court Rejects Taxpayer's Attempt to Use Geithner's TurboTax Defense
(Aug. 26, 2009)
-
Tax Court Rejects "Geithner Defense," Says Reliance on TurboTax Does Not
Excuse Taxpayer From Penalty for Errors on Tax Return (Apr. 20,
2010)
-
Tax Court Rejects Geithner/TurboTax Defense (June 23, 2010)
-
Tax Court Again Rejects Geithner/TurboTax Defense (Nov. 12, 2010)
-
For First Time, Tax Court Approves Use of Geithner/Turbo Tax Defense
(Nov. 25, 2011)
-
Taxpayers Should be Able to Use Geithner/TurboTax Defense (Apr. 16,
2012)
"Former Harvard Psychologist Fabricated and Falsified, Report Says,"
by Tom Bartlett, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 5, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/report-says-former-harvard-psychologist-fabricated-falsified/30748
Marc Hauser was once among the big, impressive
names in psychology, head of the Cognitive Evolution Laboratory at Harvard
University, author of popular books like Moral Minds. That
reputation unraveled when a university investigation found him responsible
for
eight counts of scientific misconduct, which led
to
his resignation last year.
Now the federal Office of Research Integrity has
released its report on Hauser’s actions,
determining that he fabricated and falsified results from experiments. Here
is a sampling:
- Hauser published “fabricated data” in a paper
on how cotton-top tamarin monkeys learn rules. In one of the graphs
“half of the data” was made up. That paper has since been retracted.
- Hauser falsified coding in two other
experiments with tamarins “making the results statistically significant
when the results coded by others showed them to be nonsignificant.”
Those experiments were not published after members of Hauser’s lab
objected that his coding was wrong.
- Again in an experiment involving tamarin
monkeys, Hauser “falsely described the methodology used to code the
results for experiments” that led to “a false proportion or number of
animals showing a favorable response.”
Hauser “neither admits nor denies” any research
misconduct but, according to the report, accepts the findings. He has agreed
to three years of extra scrutiny of any federally supported research he
conducts, though the requirement may be moot considering that Hauser is no
longer employed by a university. Hauser says in a written statement that he
is currently “focusing on at-risk youth”; his LinkedIn profile lists him as
a co-founder of Gamience, an e-learning company.
In the statement, Hauser calls the five years of
investigation into his research “a long and painful period.” He also
acknowledges making mistakes, but seems to blame his actions on being
stretched too thin. “I tried to do too much, teaching courses, running a
large lab of students, sitting on several editorial boards, directing the
Mind, Brain & Behavior Program at Harvard, conducting multiple research
collaborations, and writing for the general public,” he writes.
He also implies that some of the blame may actually
belong to others in his lab. Writes Hauser: “I let important details get
away from my control, and as head of the lab, I take responsibility for all
errors made within the lab, whether or not I was directly involved.”
But that take—the idea that the problems were
caused mainly by Hauser’s inattention—doesn’t square with the story told by
those in his laboratory. A former research assistant, who was among those
who blew the whistle on Hauser, writes in an e-mail that while the report
“does a pretty good job of summing up what is known,” it nevertheless
“leaves off how hard his co-authors, who were his at-will employees and
graduate students, had to fight to get him to agree not to publish the
tainted data.”
The former research assistant points out that the
report takes into account only the research that was flagged by
whistle-blowers. “He betrayed the trust of everyone that worked with him,
and especially those of us who were under him and who should have been able
to trust him,” the research assistant writes.
As
detailed in this Chronicle article,
several members of his laboratory double-checked Hauser’s coding of an
experiment and concluded he was falsifying the results so that those results
would support the hypothesis, turning a failed experiment into a success. In
2007 they brought that and other evidence to Harvard officials, who began an
investigation, raiding Hauser’s lab and seizing computers.
Gerry Altmann believes the report is significant
because it finds that Hauser falsified data—that is, investigators found
that Hauser didn’t just make up findings, but actually changed findings to
suit his purposes. Altmann is the editor of a journal, Cognition,
that published a 2002 paper by Hauser that has since been retracted. When
you falsify data, Altmann writes in an e-mail, “you are deliberately
reporting as true something that you know is not.”
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
To my knowledge cheating by accountics scientists has never once been reported
to the public. Perhaps this is partly due to lack of replication and lack of
importance of many findings to merit whistle blowing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
Corrupted/Biased Experimentation
It would be naive to assume blatant cheating has not taken place in accoutics
science, especially in areas where cheating often takes place in science. When
researchers collect their own experimental data rather than purchase the data,
temptations arise to take scientific shortcuts or to change findings to better
suit the hypotheses under investigation.. Behavioral accounting experiments just
as vulnerable as psychology experiments.
Fabricated Data
Another vulnerable area is survey research where the actual response rate is
disappointing. A researcher becomes tempted to fill out some added survey
instruments. In other instances for ANOVA designs it's tempting to fabricate
data to achieve better balance among the cells.
Plagiarism
It would seem that plagiarism risks among accounting researchers is not less
than plagiarism risk among other researchers. I do know of one instance that
I've mentioned previously. One of my favorite colleagues, Professor S, at
Trinity University (before he moved upward and onward) received his PhD in
management from one of the Big Ten universities. call it University N.
Professor S was notified that he must return immediately to University of N
concerning an investigation regarding whether his PhD diploma would be revoked.
The allegation was that portions of his doctoral thesis were plagiarized from an
article published by accounting professor D at University N. While Professor S
was on campus, it became evident that instead Professor D had instead
plagiarized from a draft of Professor S's dissertation.
The incident was then immediately hushed up by University N. Professor S
retained his diploma. There was never any publicity about the plagiarism of
Professor D. I only know about it because I was a close friend and colleague of
Professor S.
University N did not take action like Columbia University when it fired an
African American female professor of psychology for plagiarizing the some works
of her colleagues.
"Columbia U. Professor Denies Plagiarism, Saying Accusers Instead Stole Her
Work," by Thomas Bartlett, Chronicle of Higher Education, February
22, 2008 --
-
http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/02/1798n.htm
The investigation leading to the firing of
Madonna G. Constantine proved otherwise, and she was fired.
http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/06/3520n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
It is strongly suspected that she secretly hung hanging noose outside her own
door to symbolize that she was being racially persecuted.
Professor D continued to teach at University N until some years later when he
retired at the customary retirement age. I never saw him again at an AAA Annual
Meeting. Perhaps there were some lesser punishments such as taking away his
travel budgets.
One of the dirtiest forms of plagiarism is when journal referees reject
submitted works and later publish those ideas under different wording. I
mentioned previously how a well known mathematician refereeing one of my papers
rejected my paper and later published my proof in his own book. All I ever got
was an apology from the editor of the journal that rejected by paper. For
details see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
A more subtle, yet related, form of cheating is when a referee borrows a
research idea from a paper that he or she rejected. This is not as direct as
plagiarism of text or plagiarism of a mathematical proof, but it is cheating
even if the referee conducts a better experiment.
Ghost Writers in the Ivory Tower
In the Academy there are instances where professors simply hire a ghost writer
or a ghost researcher to secretly do nearly all the work, such as when a
well-paid professor hires a starving, albeit brilliant, student. These days it's
just as easy for a professor to hire a ghost written paper as it is for a
student to hire a ghost written paper. There are many ghost writing outfits on
the Internet who will write papers on virtually any topic (prices of course may
vary).
A related form of cheating is more common among professors who have difficulty
writing in English is to honestly conduct the research and then hire a good
writer to secretly write the paper. There are variations of this type of
cheating where the researcher and the writer are listed as co-authors of the
paper. It is wrong to give the writer credit for the research and wrong for the
researcher to get credit for a complete paper he/she never wrote.
I've encountered instances where Colleague A really wants to have Colleague B
get a promotion. For instance I know of one situation where Accounting
Department Chair B did did not have a good case for being promoted to full
professor. Professor A became very endeared to Professor B, his boss, by adding
Professor B to three papers as a co-author. After Professor B was promoted to
full professor and remained on as head of the department, Professor A always got
the highest pay raises in the department.
Of course there are many more games that accountics researchers play in the gray
zone of gaming for tenure and promotion ---
Gaming for Tenure as an
Accounting Professor ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm
(with a reply about tenure publication point systems from Linda Kidwell)
Conclusion
I think that blowing the whistle of cheating is likely to be more common in the
real sciences rather than in accountics science. Accountics scientists work less
with research hired employees in laboratories where such employees are more
likely to detect laboratory cheating and blow the whistle.
Bob Jensen's threads on professors who cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Can You Train Business School Students To Be Ethical?
The way we’re doing it now doesn’t work. We need a new way
Question
What is the main temptation of white collar criminals?
Answer from
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnronQuiz.htm#01
Jane Bryant Quinn once said something to the effect that, when corporate
executives and bankers see billions of loose dollars swirling above there heads,
it's just too tempting to hold up both hands and pocket a few millions,
especially when colleagues around them have their hands in the air. I tell my
students that it's possible to buy an "A" grade in my courses but none of them
can possibly afford it. The point is that, being human, most of us are
vulnerable to some temptations in a weak moment. Fortunately, none of you
reading this have oak barrels of highly-aged whiskey in your cellars, the
world's most beautiful women/men lined up outside your bedroom door, and
billions of loose dollars swirling about like autumn leaves in a tornado.
Most corporate criminals that regret their actions later confess that the
temptations went beyond what they could resist. What amazes me in this era,
however, is how they want to steal more and more after they already have $100
million stashed. Why do they want more than they could possibly need?
"Can You Train Business School Students To Be Ethical? The way we’re doing
it now doesn’t work. We need a new way," by Ray Fisman and Adam Galinsky,
Slate, September 4, 2012 ---
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2012/09/business_school_and_ethics_can_we_train_mbas_to_do_the_right_thing_.html
A few years ago,
Israeli game theorist
Ariel Rubinstein got the idea of examining how
the tools of economic science affected the judgment and empathy of his
undergraduate students at Tel Aviv University. He made each student the
CEO of a struggling hypothetical company, and tasked them with deciding
how many employees to lay off. Some students were given an algebraic
equation that expressed profits as a function of the number of employees
on the payroll. Others were given a table listing the number of
employees in one column and corresponding profits in the other. Simply
presenting the layoff/profits data in a different format had a
surprisingly strong effect on students’ choices—fewer than half of the
“table” students chose to fire as many workers as was necessary to
maximize profits, whereas three quarters of the “equation” students
chose the profit-maximizing level of pink slips. Why? The “equation”
group simply “solved” the company’s problem of profit maximization,
without thinking about the consequences for the employees they were
firing.
Rubinstein’s
classroom experiment serves as one lesson in the pitfalls of the
scientific method: It often seems to distract us from considering the
full implications of our calculations. The point isn’t that it’s
necessarily immoral to fire an employee—Milton Friedman famously
claimed that the
sole purpose of a company is indeed to maximize profits—but
rather that the students who were encouraged to think of the decision to
fire someone as an algebra problem didn’t seem to think about the
employees at all.
The experiment is
indicative of the challenge faced by business schools, which devote
themselves to teaching management as a science, without always
acknowledging that every business decision has societal repercussions. A
new generation of psychologists is now thinking about how to create
ethical leaders in business and in other professions, based on the
notion that good people often do bad things unconsciously. It may
transform not just education in the professions, but the way we think
about encouraging people to do the right thing in general.
At present, the
ethics curriculum at business schools can best be described as an
unsuccessful work-in-progress. It’s not that business schools are
turning Mother Teresas into
Jeffrey Skillings (Harvard Business School,
class of ’79),
despite some claims to that effect. It’s easy
to come up with examples of rogue MBA graduates who have lied, cheated,
and stolen their ways to fortunes (recently convicted
Raj Rajaratnam is a graduate of the University
of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business; his partner in crime,
Rajat Gupta, is a
Harvard Business School alum). But a huge number of companies are run by
business school grads, and for every Gupta and Rajaratnam there are
scores of others who run their companies in perfectly legal anonymity.
And of course, there are the many ethical missteps by non-MBA business
leaders—Bernie Madoff was educated as a lawyer; Enron’s Ken Lay had a
Ph.D. in economics.
In actuality,
the picture suggested by the data is that
business schools have no impact whatsoever on the likelihood that
someone will cook the books or otherwise commit fraud. MBA programs are
thus damned by faint praise: “We do not turn our students into
criminals,” would hardly make for an effective recruiting slogan.
If it’s too much to expect
MBA programs to turn out Mother Teresas, is there anything that business
schools can do to make tomorrow’s business leaders more likely
to do the right thing? If so, it’s probably not by trying to teach them
right from wrong—moral epiphanies are a scarce commodity by age 25, when
most students start enrolling in MBA programs. Yet this is how business
schools have taught ethics for most of their histories. They’ve often
quarantined ethics into the beginning or end of the MBA education. When
Ray began his MBA classes at Harvard Business School in 1994, the ethics
course took place before the instruction in the “science of management”
in disciplines like statistics, accounting, and marketing. The idea was
to provide an ethical foundation that would allow students to integrate
the information and lessons from the practical courses with a broader
societal perspective. Students in these classes read philosophical
treatises, tackle moral dilemmas, and study moral exemplars such as
Johnson & Johnson CEO James Burke, who took responsibility for and
provided a quick response to the series of deaths from tampered Tylenol
pills in the 1980s.
It’s a mistake to assume
that MBA students only seek to maximize profits—there may be eye-rolling
at some of the content of ethics curricula, but not at the idea that
ethics has a place in business. Yet once the pre-term ethics instruction
is out of the way, it is forgotten, replaced by more tangible and easier
to grasp matters like balance sheets and factory design. Students get
too distracted by the numbers to think very much about the social
reverberations—and in some cases legal consequences—of employing
accounting conventions to minimize tax burden or firing workers in the
process of reorganizing the factory floor.
Business schools are
starting to recognize that ethics can’t be cordoned off from the rest of
a business student’s education. The most promising approach, in our
view, doesn’t even try to give students a deeper personal sense of
mission or social purpose – it’s likely that no amount of indoctrination
could have kept Jeff Skilling from blowing up Enron. Instead, it helps
students to appreciate the unconscious ethical lapses that we commit
every day without even realizing it and to think about how to minimize
them. If finance and marketing can be taught as a science, then perhaps
so too can ethics.
These ethical
failures don’t occur at random – countless experiments in psychology and
economics labs and out in the world have documented the circumstances
that make us most likely to ignore moral concerns – what social
psychologists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrusel call our moral
blind spots. These result from numerous
biases that exacerbate the sort of distraction from ethical consequences
illustrated by the Rubinstein experiment. A classic
sequence of studies illustrate how readily
these blind spots can occur in something as seemingly straightforward as
flipping a fair coin to determine rewards. Imagine that you are in
charge of splitting a pair of tasks between yourself and another person.
One job is fun and with a potential payoff of $30; the other tedious and
without financial reward. Presumably, you’d agree that flipping a coin
is a fair way of deciding—most subjects do. However, when sent off to
flip the coin in private, about 90 percent of subjects come back
claiming that their coin flip came up assigning them to the fun task,
rather than the 50 percent that one would expect with a fair coin. Some
people end up ignoring the coin; more interestingly, others respond to
an unfavorable first flip by seeing it as “just practice” or deciding to
make it two out of three. That is, they find a way of temporarily
adjusting their sense of fairness to obtain a favorable outcome.
Jensen Comment
I've always thought that the most important factors affecting ethics were early
home life (past) and behavior others in the work place (current). I'm a believer
in relative ethics where bad behavior is affected by need (such as being swamped
in debt) and opportunity (weak internal controls at work). I've never been
a believer in the effectiveness of teaching ethics in college, although this is
no reason not to teach ethics in college. It's just that the ethics mindset was
deeply affected before coming to college (e.g. being street smart in high
school) and after coming to college (where pressures and temptations to cheat
become realities).
An example of the follow-the-herd ethics mentality.
If Coach C of the New Orleans Saints NFL football team offered Player X serious
money to intentionally and permanently injure Quarterback Q of an opposing team,
Player X might've refused until he witnessed Players W, Y, and Z being paid to
do the same thing. I think this is exactly what happened when several
players on the defensive team of the New Orleans Saints intentionally injured
quarterbacks for money.
New Orleans Saints bounty scandal ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_Saints_bounty_scandal
Question
What is the main temptation of white collar criminals?
Answer from
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnronQuiz.htm#01
Jane Bryant Quinn once said something to the effect that, when corporate
executives and bankers see billions of loose dollars swirling above there heads,
it's just too tempting to hold up both hands and pocket a few millions,
especially when colleagues around them have their hands in the air. I tell my
students that it's possible to buy an "A" grade in my courses but none of them
can possibly afford it. The point is that, being human, most of us are
vulnerable to some temptations in a weak moment. Fortunately, none of you
reading this have oak barrels of highly-aged whiskey in your cellars, the
world's most beautiful women/men lined up outside your bedroom door, and
billions of loose dollars swirling about like autumn leaves in a tornado.
Most corporate criminals that regret their actions later confess that the
temptations went beyond what they could resist. What amazes me in this era,
however, is how they want to steal more and more after they already have $100
million stashed. Why do they want more than they could possibly need?
See Bob Jensen's "Rotten to the Core" document at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
The exact quotation from Jane Bryant Quinn at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#MutualFunds
Why white collar crime pays big time even if you know you will eventually
be caught ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#CrimePays
Bob Jensen's threads on professionalism and ethics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001c.htm
Bob Jensen's Rotten to the Core threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
September 5, 2012 reply from Paul Williams
Bob,
This is the wrong question because business schools
across all disciplines contained therein are trapped in the intellectual box
of "methodological individualism." In every business discipline we take as a
given that the "business" is not a construction of human law and, thus of
human foible, but is a construction of nature that can be reduced to the
actions of individual persons. Vivian Walsh (Rationality Allocation, and
Reproduction) critiques the neoclassical economic premise that agent =
person. Thus far we have failed in our reductionist enterprise to reduce the
corporation to the actions of other entities -- persons (in spite of
principal/agent theorists claims). Ontologically corporations don't exist --
the world is comprised only of individual human beings. But a classic study
of the corporation (Diane Rothbard Margolis, The Managers: Corporate Life in
America) shows the conflicted nature of people embedded in a corporate
environment where the values they must subscribe to in their jobs are at
variance with their values as independent persons. The corporate "being" has
values of its own. Business school faculty, particularly accountics
"scientists," commit the same error as the neoclassical economists, which
Walsh describes thusly:
"...if neo-classical theory is to invest its
concept of rational agent with the penumbra of moral seriousness derivable
from links to the Scottish moral philosophers and, beyond them, to the
concept of rationality which forms part of the conceptual scheme underlying
our ordinary language, then it must finally abandon its claim to be a
'value-free` science in the sense of logical empiricism (p. 15)." Business,
as an intellectual enterprise conducted within business schools, neglects
entirely "ethics" as a serious topic of study and as a problem of
institutional design. It is only a problem of unethical persons (which, at
sometime or another, includes every human being on earth). If one takes
seriously the Kantian proposition that, to be rationally ethical beings,
humans must conduct themselves so as to treat always other humans not merely
as means, but also always as ends in themselves, then business organization
is, by design, unethical. Thus, when the Israeli students had to confront
employees "face-to-face" rather than as variables in a profit equation, it
was much harder for them to treat those employees as simply disposable means
to an end for a being that is merely a legal fiction. One thing we simply do
not treat seriously enough as a worthy intellectual activity is the serious
scrutiny of the values that lay conveniently hidden beneath the equations we
produce. What thoughtful person could possibly subscribe to the notion that
the purpose of life is to relentlessly increase shareholder wealth?
Increasing shareholder value is a value judgment, pure and simple. And it
may not be a particularly good one. Why would we be surprised that some
individuals conclude that "stealing" from them (they, like the employees
without names in the employment experiment, are ciphers) is not something
that one need be wracked with guilt about. If the best we can do is prattle
endlessly on about the "tone at the top" (do people who take ethics
seriously get to the top?), then the intellectual seriousness which ethics
is afforded within business schools is extremely low. Until we start to
appreciate that the business narrative is essentially an ethical one, not a
technical one, then we will continue to rue the bad apples and ignore how we
might built a better barrel.
Paul
September 5, 2012 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Paul,
Do you think the ethics in government is in better shape, especially given
the much longer and more widespread history of global government corruption
throughout time? I don't think ethics in government is better than ethics in
business from a historical perspective or a current perspective where
business manipulates government toward its own ends with bribes, campaign
contributions, and promises of windfall enormous job benefits for government
officials who retire and join industry?
Government corruption is the name of the game in nearly all nations,
beginning with Russia, China, Africa, South America, and down the list.
Political corruption in the U.S. is relatively low from a global
perspective.
See the attached graph from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_%28political%29
Respectfully,
Bob Jensen
Question
How does capitalism possibly reduce as well as increase corruption in
government?
Answer
I think it's because some of the more onerous types of governmental corruption,
particularly outright bribery and extortion, are enormous frictions on having
capitalism succeed.. If capitalism is to work at all, some of the most onerous
types of political corruption have to be greatly reduced. Russian never realized
this, and hence Russia remains one of the most violently corrupt and least
successful "capitalist" nations on the planet.
"Mohammed Ibrahim: The Philanthropist of Honest Government Africa's
cellphone billionaire, Mohammed Ibrahim, is offering a rich payoff for African
leaders who don't take payoffs. He says it'll do for development what foreign
aid never has," The Wall Street Journal, September 7, 2012 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444318104577587641175010510.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t&mg=reno64-wsj
Jensen Comment
What struck me in the above how political corruption tends to be lower in many
nations that rely more on capitalism and market distributions. Note in
particular the tiny blue strip of Chile in that map. At one time Chile was one
of the most corrupt nations of the world. Then some students of the Chicago
School are given credit for making Chile literally the most capitalist nation in
South America as well as the world in general (of course not without lingering
inequality problems).- ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys
Chile has the best credit standing in Latin America.
Also note how non-capitalist nations that are wealthy in resources such as
Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Veneszuela are the most corrupt in the world.
The real test over the next 50 years will be China. China is a very corrupt
nation, especially at the local levels of government. It will be interesting to
see if the continued rise in capitalism can work a miracle somewhat like that in
Chile ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile#Economic_policies
"Charles G. Koch: Corporate Cronyism Harms America:
When businesses feed at the federal trough, they threaten public support for
business and free markets," by Charles G. Koch, The Wall Street Journal,
September 9, 2012 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443847404577629841476562610.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t&mg=reno-wsj
"We didn't build this business—somebody else did."
So reads a sign outside a small roadside craft
store in Utah. The message is clearly tongue-in-cheek. But if it hung next
to the corporate offices of some of our nation's big financial institutions
or auto makers, there would be no irony in the message at all.
It shouldn't surprise us that the role of American
business is increasingly vilified or viewed with skepticism. In a Rasmussen
poll conducted this year, 68% of voters said they "believe government and
big business work together against the rest of us."
Businesses have failed to make the case that
government policy—not business greed—has caused many of our current
problems. To understand the dreadful condition of our economy, look no
further than mandates such as the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "affordable
housing" quotas, directives such as the Community Reinvestment Act, and the
Federal Reserve's artificial, below-market interest-rate policy.
Far too many businesses have been all too eager to
lobby for maintaining and increasing subsidies and mandates paid by
taxpayers and consumers. This growing partnership between business and
government is a destructive force, undermining not just our economy and our
political system, but the very foundations of our culture.
With partisan rhetoric on the rise this election
season, it's important to remind ourselves of what the role of business in a
free society really is—and even more important, what it is not.
The role of business is to provide products and
services that make people's lives better—while using fewer resources—and to
act lawfully and with integrity. Businesses that do this through voluntary
exchanges not only benefit through increased profits, they bring better and
more competitively priced goods and services to market. This creates a
win-win situation for customers and companies alike.
Only societies with a system of economic freedom
create widespread prosperity. Studies show that the poorest people in the
most-free societies are 10 times better off than the poorest in the
least-free. Free societies also bring about greatly improved outcomes in
life expectancy, literacy, health, the environment and other important
dimensions.
So why isn't economic freedom the "default setting"
for our economy? What upsets this productive state of affairs? Trouble
begins whenever businesses take their eyes off the needs and wants of
consumers—and instead cast longing glances on government and the favors it
can bestow. When currying favor with Washington is seen as a much easier way
to make money, businesses inevitably begin to compete with rivals in
securing government largess, rather than in winning customers.
We have a term for this kind of collusion between
business and government. It used to be known as rent-seeking. Now we call it
cronyism. Rampant cronyism threatens the economic foundations that have made
this the most prosperous country in the world.
We are on dangerous terrain when government picks
winners and losers in the economy by subsidizing favored products and
industries. There are now businesses and entire industries that exist solely
as a result of federal patronage. Profiting from government instead of
earning profits in the economy, such businesses can continue to succeed even
if they are squandering resources and making products that people wouldn't
ordinarily buy.
Because they have the advantage of an uneven
playing field, crony businesses can drive their legitimate competitors out
of business. But in the longer run, they are unsustainable and unable to
compete internationally (unless, of course, the government handouts are big
enough). At least the Solyndra boondoggle ended when it went out of
business.
By subsidizing and mandating politically favored
products in the energy sector (solar, wind and biofuels, some of which
benefit Koch Industries), the government is pushing up energy prices for all
of us—five times as much in the case of wind-generated electricity. And by
putting resources to less-efficient use, cronyism actually kills jobs rather
than creating them. Put simply, cronyism is remaking American business to be
more like government. It is taking our most productive sectors and making
them some of our least.
The effects on government are equally
distorting—and corrupting. Instead of protecting our liberty and property,
government officials are determining where to send resources based on the
political influence of their cronies. In the process, government gains even
more power and the ranks of bureaucrats continue to swell.
Subsidies and mandates are just two of the
privileges that government can bestow on politically connected friends.
Others include grants, loans, tax credits, favorable regulations, bailouts,
loan guarantees, targeted tax breaks and no-bid contracts. Government can
also grant monopoly status, barriers to entry and protection from foreign
competition.
Whatever form these privileges take, Americans are
rightly suspicious of the cronyism that substitutes political influence for
free markets. According to Rasmussen, two-thirds of the electorate are
convinced that crony connections explain most government contracts—and that
federal money will be wasted "if the government provides funding for a
project that private investors refuse to back." Some 71% think "private
sector companies and investors are better than government officials at
determining the long-term benefits and potential of new technologies." Only
11% believe "government officials have a better eye for future value."
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's Rotten to the Core threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
Video: Ayn Rand’s Philosophy and Her Resurgence in 2012: A Quick
Primer by Stanford Historian Jennifer Burns ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/ayn_rands_philosophy_and_her_resurgence_in_2012_a_quick_primer_by_stanford_historian_jennifer_burns.html
In
2009,
Stanford historian Jennifer Burns
published
Goddess
of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right,
which traced Rand’s intellectual
development and her relationship to
the conservative and libertarian movements. It was
somewhat fortunate timing. Indeed, from the first day
President Obama took office, the defenders of pre-2008
capitalism
began buying Rand’s well-known book, Atlas Shrugged,
by the dozens. Now, with Paul
Ryan, a card-carrying Randian, getting the VP nod from
the Grand Old Party, Burns and her book are getting
another moment back in the spotlight. They’re helping
answer some very basic questions people might have: How
do you pronounce her first name? What is her philosophy
of objectivism all about? Why does the right adore
someone who mercilessly
mocked their core religious beliefs?
And, what would Rand have thought
about a political figure like Paul Ryan? Would the love
have been reciprocated?
They’re all good questions — ones that Burns recently
addressed
on The Colbert Report (above),
in the
Op-Ed pages of The New York Times,
and now in
the latest edition of Stanford Magazine.
We’ve extracted a few of the key Q
& A’s:
First
things first, I always stumble on her name. What is
the correct pronunciation of Ayn?
Here’s a good
trick to remember it. In keeping with her philosophy
of selfishness, “Ayn” rhymes with the word “mine.”
So what
does Rand’s philosophy of objectivism boil down to?
Here is how Rand
summed it up in ten words or less: “metaphysics:
objective reality; epistemology: reason; ethics:
self-interest; politics: capitalism.”
If I was going to
break that down a little bit, metaphysics is
objective reality, which means we can only rely on
our mind and on reason. It’s our only guide to
thought and action. Epistemology, reason. The only
way we can know anything is through the reasoning
mind. Ethics, self-interest. Rand claimed that
selfishness was a virtue. It was virtuous to pursue
your own interests and defend your own interests.
And politics is capitalism because laissez-faire
capitalism for her was the only system that allowed
the individual to realize his or her full potential
and to keep the fruits of his or her labor and not
be obligated to others or punished for success.
Was she
concerned about the less fortunate?
That was not a big
part of her ethics. Her ethics were based on the
individual and on the individual’s right to pursue
his or her goals. The individual was not obligated
to other people. If you chose, because of your own
values, to help other people or to engage in
charity, that was fine, but that did not make you a
moral person. What made you a moral person is
relying on yourself, pursuing your own interests,
and not being a burden on others.
Some of the
characters she depicts the most negatively in her
novels are people like social workers. She thought
social workers were [about] the most evil people
possible because they made their lives on the misery
of others. Morality and ethics, for her, had nothing
to do with helping other people.
Continued in article
Related Content:
Ayn Rand Instructs Johnny Carson on the Virtue of Selfishness, 1967
Ayn Rand’s Philosophy and Her Resurgence in 2012: A Quick Primer by Stanford
Historian Jennifer Burns is a post from:
Open Culture.
Yet another very important study illustrating the problem of correlation
versus unexplained cause ---
http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20120904/household-chemical-linked-heart-disease
"How Stanford wants to Ride the Wave of Online Learning," by Kirsten
Winkler, Big Think, August 31, 2012 ---
http://bigthink.com/disrupt-education/how-stanford-wants-to-ride-the-wave-of-online-learning
Bigwave How Stanford wants to Ride the Wave of
Online Learning Kirsten Winkler on August 31, 2012, 9:53 AM
In January Stanford President John Hennessy said in
a Faculty Senate meeting that online education is a tsunami academia has to
face. He added that
“We want to get ahead of this wave. I want to be
surfing the wave, not drowning in it.”
according to
TechCrunch.
Yesterday Stanford
announced the appointment of Computer scientist
John Mitchell as new vice provost for Online Learning. According to the
article this is only part of a larger initiative that aims to prepare the
university towards the requirements and potential of the 21st century.
The creation of the Office of the Vice Provost for
Online Learning (VPOL) is also a commitment to bring new teaching and
learning methods to Stanford students around the globe. It is planned as a
laboratory for Stanford and its teachers, providing leadership and
information monitoring the evolution of online learning over the next years.
Stanford sees technology also as a mean to widen
its reach and attract and teach students no matter where they are.
In order to bring more and more of its courses
online, Stanford Online will focus on involving faculty in new teaching and
learning methods and supporting course production and online delivery during
the coming academic year.
Stanford already found great success in online
learning through their partnership with Coursera, an online learning
platform founded by two Stanford professors on leave. The courses have
attracted hundreds of thousands of online students in the past year.
A redesigned website of Stanford Online will be
launched on September 21st, making it easy for students to search and find
online courses and information for everyone else interested in the
development of the VPOL and its initiatives.
Of course, the main problem to solve will be the
accreditation of the online courses besides the recent teething problems of
low quality and plagiaris.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on free online courses, tutorials, videos, and course
materials from prestigious universities, especially MITx ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Question
When does affirmative action taken to extremes lead to high turnover?
"Race, Gender and
Careers: Why 'Stuffing the Pipeline' Is Not Enough," Knowledge@Wharton,
August 29, 2012 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=3066
Zoom.us -- An Amazing
Cloud-based, Video-Conferencing Posting the AAA Commons by Rick Lillie
Zoom.us -- An
Amazing Cloud-based, Video-Conferencing...
blog entry posted September 1, 2012 by
Rick Lillie, last edited Yesterday
, tagged
research,
teaching,
technology,
technology tools
103 Views,
3 Comments
title:
Zoom.us -- An
Amazing Cloud-based, Video-Conferencing Service (It's free!)
intro text:
Recently,
I read about
Zoom.us
a new free, cloud-based, video-conferencing service.
Yesterday, three of us used zoom.us to work on a research
project. We are located throughout the U.S. We logged into
the video conference call and worked for more than an hour.
The audio and video were crystal clear. We shared desktops
to work on documents together. Wow! The virtual work
session was very productive and enjoyable.
I use
Skype to work with
colleagues and to offer virtual office hours for my
students. Skype offers a free 1:1 video-conference call
with desktop sharing. To include more than two people in a
Skype video call, you need to subscribe to
Skype's premium service. Skype's
fee is very reasonable; however, it's difficult to beat
"free."
Both
Zoom.us and Skype have features
that meet specific needs. Therefore, both services are
valuable to the teaching-learning experience. The quality
of the zoom.us video-conference call was exceptional. Zoom.us
versus Skype is not an either/or situation. Using one
service or the other is a judgment call regarding features
that best fit the need as hand.
Getting started with zoom.us is quick and easy to do. Their
support page explanations
are easy to follow. The service works with Google and
Facebook, iPad, iPhone, Windows and Mac. When I set up
zoom.us, I had to download a small file to my computer that
includes the zoom.us interface. The download was quick. No
problem.
Below is a
screenshot from the support page indicating key features of
the zoom.us interface screen. Individual members
participating in a video call are shown at the top of the
screen. When a member speaks, the border of the member's
screen turns "green." The speaker's screen displays in the
"big screen" section of the interface window. This process
works as the conversation switches among participants. Wow!
This is amazing and allows each speaker to be the center of
attention.
Check out
zoom.us. I think you'll like this new
video-conference service.
Best wishes,
Rick Lillie
(
CSU San Bernardino)
UPDATED
INFORMATION: DOWNLOADING ZOOM.US TO YOUR DESKTOP -- IMPORTANT
I talked with the developers of zoom.us this afternoon. They explained the simple way to download the small zoom.us file to your computer's desktop.
See the picture below.
- Log into http://zoom.us/
- Click the "Start
Video Meeting" button.
- Follow-up screen
should start the download process. (Allow this to happen.)
- zoom.us file should
download and the "z icon" should display on your desktop.
Unless you change the
"settings" in zoom.us, you will need to double-click on the zoom.us
icon on your desktop to start the program. Once the icon displays
at the bottom of your monitor screen, click the icon to open the
zoom.us screen. Click the Start Video Meeting
button. When the screen displays, click the Invite
option. Enter the email addresses for participants
you wish to invite into the video conference call. Send
the email message. Stay logged into zoom.us. Watch
participants join the video conference call.
I think you will be
amazed by the clarity and crispness of the audio and video call.
Enjoy!
Rick Lillie
(CSU San Bernardino)
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Justice Dept. Joins Complaint Against For-Profit Chain (in Texas),
Inside Higher Ed, September 4, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/09/04/justice-dept-joins-complaint-against-profit-chain
Bob Jensen's threads on for-profit universities operating in the gray zone of
fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
The Full List of NFL Team Valuations ---
http://www.forbes.com/nfl-valuations/
"Dallas Cowboys Lead NFL With $2.1 Billion Valuation," by Mike Ozanian,
Forbes. September 5, 2012 ---
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2012/09/05/dallas-cowboys-lead-nfl-with-2-1-billion-valuation/
The most famous quote attributed to legendary Green
Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi is “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only
thing.” But if Lombardi had coached in this era instead of the 1960s he may
have substituted the word “marketing” for “winning.”
The Dallas Cowboys have not been to the Super Bowl
in 16 years. But the lack of a title game appearance has done nothing to
slow down the money that flows into the arms of Jerry Jones, the oilman who
bought the National Football League team and lease to its stadium in 1989
for $150 million. The Cowboys are now worth $2.1 billion, more than any
sports team on the planet, save Manchester United. And if the English soccer
club, which recently sold shares to the public, stumbles, the Cowboys will
run right past them because nobody in football can match Jones when it comes
to marketing and squeezing cash from a stadium.
Last season the Cowboys generated $500 million in
total revenue, a record for an American sports team, and posted operating
income (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of
$227 million, $108 million more than any other football team and more than
either the entire National Basketball Association or National Hockey League.
A prime example of what separates Dallas from the league’s other 31 teams is
the more than $80 million in sponsorship revenue Cowboys Stadium rakes in
from companies such as Ford Motor, Bank of America, PepsiCo, Dr. Pepper and
Miller Brewing, almost $20 million more than any other football team.
Sponsorship revenue, unlike the NFL’s national television fees with NBC,
Fox, ESPN and CBS, are not shared equally with the other teams.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I think it's more than just marketing. Another factor is location, Texas is a
state where high schools will spend upwards of $60 million for a high school
stadium and books and television shows like Friday Night Lights are
written ---
http://www.nbc.com/friday-night-lights/
It also helps to be in a location where fans do not have to sit outdoors in
below-zero weather and raging blizzards.
Bob Jensen's threads on valuation ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm
Guidelines for Textbook Shopping
I investigated the options a student might find when
searching for the following textbook, Financial Accounting, 7th edition
by Libby, Libby and Short. The first eight providers on the first few pages of
Google results ranged from Amazon to Textbooks.com. I found more than five
prices for the new, hardcover version of this book, from $84.27 to $207.99 and
used hardcover prices from $113.00 to $149.99. Most book rental prices hovered
around $50-55, while e-rentals were more varied.
Dayna Catropa, September 2, 2012 (See below)
"The Good and Bad News About Shopping for Textbooks," by Dayna Catropa,
Inside Higher Ed, September 2, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/stratedgy/good-and-bad-news-about-shopping-textbooks
It’s the time of year when students must gather
their course materials as classes begin. Long gone is the obligatory march
through the campus store purchasing textbooks. These days, students can
start their search online and their options have multiplied.
As IHE blogger Joshua Kim
mentioned
last week, the cost of textbooks continues to climb.
Entrepreneurs have responded to these dynamics by introducing start-ups with
new business models. Audrey Watters recently covered some of the industry’s
most current
announcements. Then there is IHE’s coverage of
Boundless Education,
an organization trying to replace textbooks with
freely available materials.
What does this actually mean for students acquiring
course materials each semester? Students have more options than ever
before, but do all of these choices translate into cost savings and/or
enhanced learning?
I investigated the options a student might find
when searching for the following textbook, Financial Accounting, 7th
edition by Libby, Libby and Short. The first eight providers on the
first few pages of Google results ranged from Amazon to Textbooks.com. I
found more than five prices for the new, hardcover version of this book,
from $84.27 to $207.99 and used hardcover prices from $113.00 to $149.99.
Most book rental prices hovered around $50-55, while e-rentals were more
varied.
It might actually have become harder to decide
which is the best textbook option or to even know if you have found the best
deal. Should you go with print or digital? Rented, new or used? Check it out
from the local library or use the copy on reserve at the college library?
Should you take your chances buying from an unknown Amazon or eBay seller
who says a book is ‘gently used’ with ‘barely any’ marks? Should you buy or
rent an older edition than is required and take your chances? How can you
tell if the version with the supplemental web materials is worth the extra
cost? Is it best to simply go to the campus store?
Continued in article
"With 'Access Codes,' Textbook Pricing Gets More Complicated Than Ever,"
by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 3, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/What-Is-an-Access-Code-Worth-/134048/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
Note that I'm generally opposed to adopting
free textbooks (some of which contain advertising). Firstly, there is little
incentive for authors to update free textbooks when they receive miniscule or
zero royalties. Secondly, if end-of-chapter questions, problems, and cases are
not revised frequently, instructors should not rely on those for course
assignments since the answers are widely available online.
The exception is free course materials (such as cases) provided by
prestigious universities such as MIT ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
The good news is that those materials are often revised frequently. The bad news
for lazy instructors is that those materials often do not contain answers for
instructors or students. Instructors and students must, therefore, actually work
to find answers. Also those materials are generally not as complete as a great
textbook that has extensive end-of-chapter materials, test banks, and multimedia
supplements.
Bob Jensen's threads on how to find the cheapest textbooks that
instructors mandate or recommend for a course ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Textbooks
"Walmart.com's Semantic Search Promises Edge Against Amazon," by Brian
Proffitt, ReadWriteWeb, August 31, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/walmartcoms-semantic-search-is-edge-against-amazon.php
How much of a difference can better search tools make for an e-commerce
site? Wal-Mart is betting on a 10% -15% improvement in sales following the
launch of its new Polaris search engine on Walmart.com, developed by its @WalmartLabs
division.
Location, Location, Location
In the business of retail, it's all about location,
That's true for which aisle in the grocery store you display the milk, and
its even true for ecommerce sites, which rely on product placement on pages
and better search tools to make the difference between a sale and no sale.
The $487.94 question is: will a better search
engine bring more sales for
Walmart.com?
The new semantic search engine is based on
technology from a number of
@WalmartLabs
acquisitions, including social media startup Kosmix,
which was acquired by Wal-Mart in April 2011.
Kosmix' Semantic Web platform, called the
Social
Genome, organized social media data with
algorithms that score social media content and help deliver results for
shoppers that are more in line with what the customer wants.
This varies from the usual method of determining a
customer's potential likes and dislikes: mining transaction data. For
example, if you buy a pink flamingo from the home and garden division, then
you might be tagged as someone who likes kitschy lawn decorations.
That's all well and good, unless you were buying
that lawn ornament as a gag gift for your neighbor down the street.
Retailers that are mining your transaction data will send you the
coupons for garden gnomes, not your neighbor.
The idea behind semantic search is that by
expanding a search engine's knowledge to include social media content, the
search engine can better determine the context of what you're looking for.
This form of social discovery, coupled with better query parsing and synonym
mining, should deliver a more tightly focused set of results to a customer.
Are Semantics Enough?
Looking at Walmart.com in isolation, it's a
no-brainer that a more efficient search engine that can deliver a wider
range of choices around a simple search term will up the odds of completing
a sale.
The key here is how Polaris works with global
Internet search. If consumers are running their searches for goods from
search engines like Google or Bing, or using comparison sites like
BizRate or
PriceGrabber
to get started, it is not yet clear how well the new
Polaris technology will interact with Internet-based queries. If the
semantic search advantage is lost, then Wal-Mart's Polaris advantage will be
moot, and the company will have to compete not on search results but on
price, availability and delivery - just like everyone else.
Availability and delivery are advantages that
Wal-Mart has been able to hold against Amazon, even through the odd price
wars that occastionally break out over certain hot items. Some shoppers seem
to be willing to pay a little more if they know they can go down to the
store today and pick up an item they've ordered online.
But Amazon is
starting to explore same-day delivery, a move that
should challenge Wal-Mart's edge in local availability.
Price as the Ultimate Decider
Wal-Mart's focus on improving its edge in ecommerce
could be seen as sandbagging before the coming Amazon flood. Because once
Wal-Mart and Amazon share a more level playing field on availability (at
least in the U.S.), price becomes a bigger comparison point for shoppers
again.
This could be a problem for Wal-Mart, which has 2.2
million employees to keep paid versus Amazon's 69,100, not to mention the
upkeep of Wal-Mart's store locations. With less overhead, Amazon could be
more nimble than Wal-Mart in selling goods for lower prices over the
long-term.
Jensen Comment
If price is the "ultimate decider," then Amazon may have an edge as long as
Wal-Mart does not have a used-item service comparable to Amazon's tremendous and
vast network of used item vendors where items are shipped by those vendors
directly to customers and Amazon guarantees both delivery and product
satisfaction. I doubt that Wal-Mart will ever compete in terms of price on
things like books and DVDs (including software) where most of us do not care if
a book saving 95% if the price is a used copy. For example, I was recently able
to obtain a virgin installation disk of FrontPage 2003 from somebody who
apparently saves up these new (albeit old) editions that larger software vendors
(including Microsoft) no longer sell.
But the above article is interesting from the standpoint of the future of
semantic searching.
Semantic Web ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web
DBPedia ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dbpedia
Freebase ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebase_(database)
"Wikipedia to Add Meaning to Its Pages The online encyclopedia is
exploring ways to embrace the semantic Web," by Tom Simonite, MIT's
Technology Review, July 7, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/25728/?nlid=3210&a=f
As a global resource built from the spare time of
millions of volunteers, Wikipedia may be the epitome of Web 2.0. But the
Wikimedia Foundation,
a nonprofit organization that runs Wikipedia, among other projects, is now
thinking about how to make it a linchpin of Web 3.0, or the semantic Web.
That means making some of the data on Wikipedia's
15 million (and counting) articles understandable to computers as well as
humans. This would allow software to know, for example, that the numbers
shown in one of the columns in
this table listing U.S. presidents are dates. That
could, in turn, allow applications that draw on Wikipedia to automatically
generate historical timelines or answer the kind of general knowledge
questions that would usually entail a person finding and reading a relevant
entry on the site.
At the
2010 Semantic Technology
conference in San Francisco last month, the foundation's deputy director,
Erik
Möller, and colleague
Trevor Parscal,
a user-experience developer for Wikimedia, showed some first steps taken by
the foundation to explore how more semantic structure might be added to
Wikipedia. They also appealed to the semantic Web community to help develop
ways to make Wikipedia's knowledge more accessible to computers and
software.
"Semantic information already exists in Wikipedia,
and people are already building on it," says Möller. "Unfortunately, we're
not really helping, and they have to use extensive processing to do so."
One example is
DBPedia,
a semantic database built using software collect data
from the site's pages, and maintained by the Free University of Berlin and
the University of Leipzig, both in Germany. Another is
Freebase,
a for-profit knowledge database, much of which was
also sourced by scraping Wikipedia. Freebase is the data source used by
question-answering search engine
PowerSet, which was acquired by Microsoft to be
part of its Bing search engine
"Opening Search to Semantic Upstarts: Yahoo's new open-search platform is
giving semantic search a helping hand," by Kate Greene, MIT's Technology
Review, September 8, 2008 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/21342/?nlid=1322&a=f
LinkedIn and the Semantic Web ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#LinkedIn
Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
TOEFL Test Practice Sets ---
http://www.testpreppractice.net/TOEFL/Default.aspx
"For Spain's Jobless, Time Equals Money," by Matt Moffett, The Wall
Street Journal, August 27, 2012 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443404004577577352038273664.html?mg=reno-wsj
Even though she's one of millions of young,
unemployed Spaniards, 22-year-old Silvia Martín takes comfort in knowing
that her bank is still standing behind her. It's not a lending institution,
but rather a time bank whose nearly 400 members barter their services by the
hour.
Ms. Martín, who doesn't own a car and can't afford
taxis, has relied on other time-bank members to give her lifts around town
for her odd jobs and errands, as well as to help with house repairs. In
return, she has cared for members' elderly relatives, organized children's
parties and even hauled boxes for a member moving to a new house.
The time bank not only saves her cash, she says,
but also lifts her spirits by making her feel "part of a community that's
taking some positive action during hard times."
As Europe's leaders struggle with a five-year-old
economic crunch that has saddled Spain with the industrialized world's
highest jobless rate, young Spaniards are increasingly embracing such
bottom-up self-help initiatives to cope. The diverse measures—some commonly
associated with rural or disaster-zone economies—supplement a public safety
net that is fraying under government austerity programs.
Besides time banks, they include barter markets
springing up in barrios, local currencies designed to spur the flagging
retail economy, and charity networks that repurpose discarded goods. An
environmental group recently launched Huertos Compartidos, or Shared
Gardens, that links up owners of vacant land with those willing to plant
vegetables in them and share the harvest.
The growth of time banks revives a concept
pioneered by 19th-century anarchists and socialists in the U.S. and Europe,
who wanted to test their philosophy that prices of goods and services should
more closely reflect the labor involved in producing them.
The number of such banks in Spain—some run by
neighborhood associations, others by local governments—has nearly doubled to
291 over the past two years, according to a survey by Julio Gisbert, a
banker who runs a website called Vivir Sin Empleo, or Living Without Work,
that tracks mutual-aid initiatives. Some economists worry that the rise of
such informal systems of economic exchange is pushing more of Spain's
economy underground—out of the view of regulators and tax collectors, and
effectively sending the country back in time developmentally.
"It's a step backward not only for a euro country,
but also for a developed country," says José García Montalvo, an economics
professor at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.
Banks and social currencies, he says, can backfire
on the broader economy since the income received from such arrangements
often goes undeclared, therefore depriving the government of tax revenue.
Social currencies and time banks also preclude taking on debt, adds Mr.
García Montalvo, which in moderate levels can help people start businesses
and access beneficial goods and services that they can't afford upfront.
Others, though, say the measures represent a
significant stabilizing force in society. For "people who can't find work,
these kinds of possibilities of exchanges and mutual help can help make
bearable a situation that otherwise would be unsustainable," says José Luis
Álvarez Arce, director of the economics department at the University of
Navarra.
Continued in article
How "employed" people in America evade taxes via the underground cash and
barter economy ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/TaxNoTax.htm
In the Store Point and Click: Another Example of Technology Replacing
Labor
"Walmart Is Testing A Scan-And-Go iPhone App That Could One Day Replace
Cashiers," by Alyson Shontell, Business Insider, September 1, 2012
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-is-testing-a-scan-and-go-iphone-app-that-could-replace-cashiers-2012-9
In Rogers Arkansas,
Walmart recently asked employees and their friends with iPhones to test out
a new self scan-and-go app. It's one of a few
mobile initiatives Walmart is working on that could one day replace or aid
its many cashiers.
The test was put together by Walmart
Labs. The app let employees scan items on their phones but not pay on the
devices. Instead the app transferred all scanned items to a self-checkout
kiosk.
But Walmart has said it's working on a
mobile payment network with other retailers that could rival current
solutions like
Google Wallet.
Walmart spokesman David Tovar tells
Reuters the company is "continually testing new
and innovative ways to serve customers and
enhance the shopping experience in our
stores."
Walmart's US stores spend about
$12 millions on cashier wages per second, so an
app like this could save the company a lot of money.
Google Plus = Google+ ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%2B
"New Google+ Features Target Businesses," by Fruzsina Eördögh,
ReadWriteWeb, August 31st, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2012/08/new-google-features-target-businesses.php
In an effort to boost adoption of its Google+
social network, Google this week announced a slew of new features aimed at
enticing business customers to use the service and "go Google."
Citing the success other Web-based Google Apps like
Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Drive have found amongst
employers and their workers, Google Apps Product Management Director Clay
Bavor detailed a slew of new Google+ features for businesses in an official
Google Enterprise blog post.
"Like Google Apps, we think Google+ can help
colleagues collaborate more easily and get things done – and get to know
each other along the way," wrote Bavor.
Continued in article
Google Plus ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Plus
"Google+ Comes Up Short," by Joshua Ganz, Harvard Business Review
Blog, July 7, 2011 --- Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/google_comes_up_short.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
What problem does
Google+
solve for consumers? The answer appears to be:
nothing. And, therefore, it solves nothing for Google either.
As with many of these social launches — an
exception being the ill-fated Google Buzz — the launch of Google+ was
limited. Like Gmail and Google Wave, Google relied on invites to scale
initial users and work out issues before a wider launch. I, somehow, managed
to score access to Google+ from Day One of its recent launch, and I'm here
to report on it. (I should note that
opinions vary.)
What I found upon signing up was a routine to
search my Google contacts and allocate people to Circles. The idea is that
should any of them sign up to Google+ I could neatly organize my friends
according to whatever category I thought best fit them. I could also find
anyone currently on Google+ and choose to follow them. Ironically, I chose
to follow Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of Facebook, but I also followed Google's
founders. The latter seem to participate regularly and lots of people
comment on their activities. The former, unsurprisingly, not so much
(although Zuckerberg seems to be
the most followed person on the network).
I then spent a little time filling in my profile
(you can
view it here). You can even follow my Google Buzz
feed from there, a legacy of automatic reposting of
my tweets and shared
Google Reader links.
Having done lots of set-up, I waited to see what
happened. The answer to that was: not much. For Google+ to work, it has to
be populated. Specifically, it has to be populated with people the user is
interested in. As it is early days, that crucial feature isn't there.
This (lack of) network effect could do Google+ in
if it can't get a virtuous cycle going. So the question is whether Google+
has the potential to attract a large enough network.
The reasoning why Google itself
might desperately want this to work out is clear.
Facebook and Twitter are grabbing attention and Google is in the business of
getting attention and on-selling it to advertisers. Add to that the fact
that the type of attention that comes from users providing content and
demonstrating their interest by commenting and subscribing to things, and
Google+ (were it to work) could yield important information that helps
advertisers target consumers better.
Continued in article
"3 Steps Google Plus Must Take to Win Against Facebook," by Zubin
Wadia, ReadWriteWeb, June 29, 2011 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/3_steps_google_must_take_to_win_against_facebook.php
Congratulations to the
Google Plus
team for shipping a
superb
beta under conditions which could be considered equal
parts
turmoil and
FUD.
I absolutely love it. If it had 750 million
users on it right now it would be a superior experience to Facebook.
For starters, it looks more cohesive. This isn't
surprising because it is a blank slate product that did not have to deal
with the technical debt Facebook has accumulated since 2004. Beyond the
interface however, Google Plus will be more engaging emotionally for people
because it allows them to be more authentic with one another.
Why? Because Google Plus establishes intuitive
clarity for my social graph.
"What Google+ (Google Plus) Should Have Been: Bing's Linked Pages," by
Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, February 28, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_google_should_have_been_bings_linked_pages.php
Here's one we missed.
Bing launched Bing+ last week, it just skipped all
the unnecessary stuff. (It's not really called Bing+.) There's a
new feature called
Linked Pages
that allows Bing users (U.S. only, for now) to connect
their various websites and profiles to their Bing identities, using Facebook
for authentication. You can also link your Facebook friends to their pages.
Thanks to its relationship with Facebook, Microsoft
has the advantage of not needing to build its own identity provider or
social network. Everyone's already on Facebook. To build good results for
people, Bing will use the same technique Facebook Groups use: get friends to
draw their own graph. Just like with Facebook Groups, if a friend connects
you to something you don't want, you can remove it permanently. We all
thought that feature would suck for Groups, but it worked just fine.
Facebook Groups build themselves, and Bing can build identities the same
way.
Social Network Overkill
The interesting thing is, this is exactly what
Google+ is for, but
the product isn't being pitched that way. Google's
social layer is all about establishing the Google-presence for people and
brands, so they can appear across Google-land, especially in
Search, plus Your World. But Google+ is spun as a
place for "sharing." It has all these pieces of a social network, but
people aren't using them.
It's a shame, because some of these features are
absolutely wonderful.
What could be more social than Hangouts? Google+
is full of great ideas, but it is struggling to bring them together. The
user experience isn't there. And that's all
because Google felt the need to build a full-blown social network itself in
order to act as an identity service.
Couldn't Hangouts have just been a Gmail feature?
Social Search Is All We Needed
There's no need for a new social network, but there
is a reason to put personal identities in search. Searching for
people has always been a terrible experience. It's nearly impossible to find
the person you're looking for, unless they're famous. Search engines need an
identity layer.
Bing is just being honest about that. If you want
to control the way you appear in search, you can connect the sites
and pages that matter to you via Facebook. Your friends can do it, too. When
you use Bing to search for people, now you'll be able to find the content
that's related to them. That's
what Search, plus Your World does for Google, but
Bing does it without requiring this new, extra place to waste time online.
Google could have done that. The Google+ profile
works exactly the way Bing's Linked Pages does, allowing users to
link their outside sites and pages to themselves.
It could have just made a Facebook app, and boom, there are your social
search results. But that's not how the business works. Google and Facebook
can't cooperate. They have to compete for eyeballs around social content,
and
Facebook is winning.
Jensen Comment
I've previously written about why I think Bing Maps is superior to Google Maps.
Sometimes (horrors) Microsoft really does do a better job when it comes late
onto the scene ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Travel
Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
The course involved is "Government 1310: Introduction to Congress." So why is
does cheating in this course come as a surprise?
"Cheating Scandal at Harvard," Inside Higher Ed, August 31,
2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/08/31/cheating-scandal-harvard
Harvard University is investigating about 125 students
-- nearly 2 percent of all undergraduates -- who are suspected of cheating
on a take-home final during the spring semester,
The Boston Globe reported Thursday. The
students who will appear before the college’s disciplinary board over the
coming weeks, seem to have copied each other’s work, the dean of
undergraduate education said. Those found guilty could face up to a one-year
suspension. The dean would not comment on whether students who had already
graduated would have their degrees revoked but he did tell the Globe,
“this is something we take really, really seriously.” Harvard administrators
said they are considering new ways to educate students about cheating and
academic ethics. While the university has no honor code, the Globe
noted, its official handbook says students should “assume that collaboration
in the completion of assignments is prohibited unless explicitly permitted
by the instructor.”
Jensen Comment
The main issue is whether students plagiarized work of other students.
Ironically the course involved is "Government 1310: Introduction to
Congress." So why is does cheating in this course come as a surprise?
"Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted,"
by Richard Perez-Pena, The New York Times, August 31, 2012 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/01/education/students-of-harvard-cheating-scandal-say-group-work-was-accepted.html?_r=1
¶. . .
In years past, the course, Introduction to
Congress, had a reputation as one of the easiest at Harvard College. Some of
the 279 students who took it in the spring semester said that the teacher,
Matthew B. Platt, an assistant professor of government, told them at the
outset that he gave high grades and that neither attending his lectures nor
the discussion sessions with graduate teaching fellows was mandatory.
¶ “He said, ‘I gave out 120 A’s last year, and I’ll
give out 120 more,’ ” one accused student said.
¶ But evaluations posted online by students after
finals — before the cheating charges were made — in Harvard’s Q Guide were
filled with seething assessments, and made clear that the class was no
longer easy. Many students, who posted anonymously, described Dr. Platt as a
great lecturer, but the guide included far more comments like “I felt that
many of the exam questions were designed to trick you rather than test your
understanding of the material,” “the exams are absolutely absurd and don’t
match the material covered in the lecture at all,” “went from being easy
last year to just being plain old confusing,” and “this was perhaps the
worst class I have ever taken.”
¶ Harvard University revealed on Wednesday that
nearly half of the undergraduates in the spring class were under
investigation for suspected cheating, for working together or for
plagiarizing on a take-home final exam. Jay Harris, the dean of
undergraduate education, called the episode “unprecedented in its scope and
magnitude.”
¶ The university would not name the class, but it
was identified by students facing cheating allegations. They were granted
anonymity because they said they feared that open criticism could influence
the outcome of their disciplinary cases.
¶ “They’re threatening people’s futures,” said a
student who graduated in May. “Having my degree revoked now would mean I
lose my job.”
¶ The students said they do not doubt that some
people in the class did things that were obviously prohibited, like working
together in writing test answers. But they said that some of the conduct now
being condemned was taken for granted in the course, on previous tests and
in previous years.
¶ Dr. Platt and his teaching assistants did not
respond to messages requesting comment that were left on Friday. In response
to calls to Mr. Harris and Michael D. Smith, the dean and chief academic
officer of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the university released a
statement saying that the university’s administrative board still must meet
with each accused student and that it has not reached any conclusions.
¶ “We expect to learn more about the way the course
was organized and how work was approached in class and on the take-home
final,” the statement said. “That is the type of information that the
process is designed to bring forward, and we will review all of the facts as
they arise.”
¶ The class met three times a week, and each
student in the class was assigned to one of 10 discussion sections, each of
which held weekly sessions with graduate teaching fellows. The course grade
was based entirely on four take-home tests, which students had several days
to complete and which were graded by the teaching fellows.
¶ Students complained that teaching fellows varied
widely in how tough they were in grading, how helpful they were, and which
terms and references to sources they expected to see in answers. As a
result, they said, students routinely shared notes from Dr. Pratt’s
lectures, notes from discussion sessions, and reading materials, which they
believed was allowed.
¶ “I was just someone who shared notes, and now I’m
implicated in this,” said a senior who faces a cheating allegation.
“Everyone in this class had shared notes. You’d expect similar answers.”
¶ Instructions on the final exam said, “students
may not discuss the exam with others.” Students said that consulting with
the fellows on exams was commonplace, that the fellows generally did not
turn students away, and that the fellows did not always understand the
questions, either.
¶ One student recalled going to a teaching fellow
while working on the final exam and finding a crowd of others there, asking
about a test question that hinged on an unfamiliar term. The student said
the fellow defined the term for them.
¶ An accused sophomore said that in working on
exams, “everybody went to the T.F.’s and begged for help. Some of the T.F.’s
really laid it out for you, as explicit as you need, so of course the
answers were the same.”
¶ He said that he also discussed test questions
with other students, which he acknowledged was prohibited, but he maintained
that the practice was widespread and accepted.
¶
Huge Cheating Scandals at the University of Virginia, Ohio, Duke,
Cambridge, and Other Universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#UVA
Bob Jensen's threads on plagiarism and other forms of cheating are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character
by Paul Tough (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012, 256 pp.)
Reviewed by The Washington Times ---
Click Here
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2012/on_political_books/firstrate_temperaments039435.php?utm_source=Carnegie+Foundation+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=f7df5868bf-Pathways_RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email
Student Assignment on Fraud: Compare the Stockton Versus Orange County
Bankruptcies
The Cause of Stockton's Bankruptcy: Lousy Risk Disclosures on Bond
Sales for Stockton's Pension Funds
"How Plan to Help City Pay Pensions Backfired," by Mary Williams
Walsh, The New York Times, September 3, 2012 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/business/how-a-plan-to-help-stockton-calif-pay-pensions-backfired.html?_r=1
Jeffrey A. Michael, a finance professor in
Stockton, Calif., took a hard look at his city’s
bankruptcy this summer and thought he saw a
smoking gun: a dubious bond deal that bankers had pushed on Stockton just as
the local economy was starting to tank in the spring of 2007, he said.
Stockton sold the bonds, about $125 million worth,
to obtain cash to close a shortfall in its pension plans for current and
retired city workers. The strategy backfired, which is part of the reason
the city is now in Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Stockton is trying to walk away
from the so-called pension obligation bonds and to renegotiate other debts.
After reviewing an analysis of the bond deal,
underwritten by the ill-fated investment bank, Lehman Brothers, and watching
a recording of the Stockton City Council meeting where Lehman bankers
pitched the deal, Mr. Michael concluded that “Stockton is entitled to some
relief, due to deceptive and misleading sales practices that understated the
risk.”
“Lehman Brothers just didn’t disclose all the risks
of the transaction,” he said. “Their product didn’t work, in the same way as
if they had built a marina for the city and then the marina collapsed.”
Financial analysts and actuaries say essentially
the same pitch that swayed Stockton has been made thousands of times to
local governments all over the country — and that many of them were drawn
into deals that have since cost them dearly.
Since virtually all pension obligation bonds turn
on the same basic strategy that Stockton followed, Mr. Michael’s research
could be a road map for avoiding more such problems, or perhaps for seeking
redress. His analysis was part of his August economic forecast for the
region, which he prepares as director of the Business Forecasting Center at
the University of the Pacific.
There are about $64 billion in pension obligation
bonds outstanding, and even though issuance has slowed, more of the bonds
are coming to market, even now.
Officials in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., are scheduled
to vote on a $300 million pension obligation bond on Wednesday, for
instance. Hamden, Conn., has amended its charter to allow for the bonds to
rescue a city pension fund that is wasting away. Oakland, Calif., recently
issued about $211 million of the bonds, following the lead of several other
California cities and counties.
The basic premise of all pension obligation bonds
is that a municipality can borrow at a lower rate of interest than the rate
its pension fund assumes its assets will earn on average over the long term.
Critics contend that municipalities that try this are in essence borrowing
money and betting it on the stock market, through their pension funds. The
interest on pension obligation bonds is not tax-exempt for this reason.
Alicia H. Munnell, director of the Center for
Retirement Research at Boston College, looked at outcomes for nearly 3,000
pension obligation bonds issued from 1986 to 2009 and found that most were
in the red. “Only those bonds issued a very long time ago and those issued
during dramatic stock downturns have produced a positive return,” Ms.
Munnell wrote with colleagues Thad Calabrese, Ashby Monk and Jean-Pierre
Aubry. “All others are in the red.” Only one in five of the pension
obligation bonds issued since 1992 has matured, so the results could change
in the future.
Among the places where the strategy has failed
miserably is New Orleans, which sold about $170 million of such debt in 2000
to produce cash to finance the pensions of 820 retired firefighters. Until
then, New Orleans had never funded their benefits and simply paid them out
of pocket, leaving the retirees fearful that in a budget squeeze, the city
might renege.
City officials based the deal on the expectation
that the bond proceeds would be invested in assets that would pay 10.7
percent a year — an unusually aggressive assumption, but one that made the
numbers work. New Orleans’s credit was weak, and its borrowing rate was
expected to be 8.2 percent. To get the rate on the bonds down as much as
possible, New Orleans also issued variable-rate debt, combined with
derivatives in an attempt to hedge against rate increases.
But instead of earning 10.7 percent a year, the
bond proceeds the city set aside for the firefighters’ pensions lost value
over the years, first in the dot-com crash and then in the financial crisis.
And instead of hedging against interest rate increases, the derivatives
failed, leaving New Orleans paying 11.2 percent interest. The city also has
a $115 million balloon payment coming due on the debt in March.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
An interesting assignment for students might be to compare the bad investment
causes of bankruptcy of Stockton, CA versus Orange County , CA,
Listen to Part of a Sixty Minutes video that I made available to my my
students learning how to account for derivative financial instruments ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000overview/mp3/SIXTY01.mp3
Boo to Merrill Lynch
Listen to Part of a Sixty Minutes video that I made available to my my
students learning how to account for derivative financial instruments ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000overview/mp3/SIXTY01.mp3
Merrill Lynch was a major player in the infamous Orange County fraud when
selling derivative financial instruments. You can read more about this at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudCongress.htm#DerivativesFrauds
It constantly amazes me how often the name Merrill Lynch crops up in news
accounts of both outright frauds and concerns over ethics. The latest account
is typical. A senior vic
They were an
admixture of old-fashioned and uncouth, a duo almost as unlikely as Neil Simon's
odd couple. The seventy-year-old had been married to the same woman for forty
years, in the same job for more than twenty, and in the same place--Orange
County, California--forever. The fifty-four-year-old had recently divorced and
remarried, switched jobs often and moved even more frequently, most recently to
a million-dollar home in swanky Moraga, east of Oakland, California. Despite
their obvious differences, they spoke on the phone virtually every day for many
years. They first met in 1975 and had traded billions of dollars of securities
with each other. The elder of the pair was the Orange County treasurer, Robert
Citron; the younger was a Merrill Lynch bond salesman, Mike Stamenson. Together
they created what many officials described as the biggest financial fiasco in
the United States: Orange County's $1.7 billion loss on derivative
Frank Partnoy, Page 157 of Chapter 8 entitled "The Odd Couple"
F.I.A.S.C.O. : The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader
by Frank Partnoy
- 283 pages (February 1999) Penguin USA (Paper); ISBN: 0140278796
A longer passage from Chapter 8 appears at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm#DerivativesFraud
A second passage beginning on Page 166
reads as follows:
Also
on December 5, Orange County filed the largest municipal bankruptcy petition
in history. Orange County's funds covered nearly two hundred schools,
cities, and special districts. The losses amounted to almost $1,000 for
every man, woman, and child in the county. The county's investments,
including structured notes, had dropped 27 percent in value, and the county
said it no longer could meet its obligations.
The
bankruptcy filing made the ratings agencies look like fools.
Just a few months before, in August 1994, Moody's Investors Service had
given Orange County's debt a rating of Aa1, the highest rating of any
California county. A cover memo to the rating letter stated, "Well done,
Orange County." Now, on December 7, an embarrassed Moody's declared Orange
County's bonds to be "junk"--and Moody's was regarded as the most
sophisticated ratings agency. The other major agencies, including S&P, also
had failed to anticipate the bankruptcy. Soon these agencies would face
lawsuits related to their practice of rating derivatives.
On
Tuesday, January 17, 1995, Robert Citron and Michael Stamenson delivered
prepared statements in an all-day hearing before the California Senate
Special Committee on Local Government Investments, which had subpoenaed them
to testify. It was a pitiful display. Citron left his wild clothes at
home, testifying in a dull gray suit and bifocals. He apologized and
pleaded ignorance. He said, "In retrospect, I wish I had more education and
training in complex government securities." Stuttering and subdued,
appearing to be the victim, Citron tried to excuse his whole life: He didn't
serve in the military because he had asthma; he didn't graduate from USC
because of financial troubles; he was an inexperienced investor who had
never even owned a share of stock. It was pathetic.
Stamenson also said he was sorry and cited the enormous personal pain the
calamity had produced. He pretended naivete. He said Citron was a highly
sophisticated investor and that he had "learned a lot" from him.
Stamenson's story was as absurd as Citron's was sad. When Stamenson
asserted that he had not acted as a financial adviser to the county, one
Orange County Republican, Senator William A. Craven, couldn't take it
anymore and called him a liar. Stamenson finally admitted that he had
spoken to Citron often--Citron had claimed every day--but he refused to
concede that he had been an adviser. At this point Craven exploded again,
asking, "Well, what the hell were you talking about to this man every day?
The weather?" Citron's lawyer, David W. Wiechert, was just as angry. He
said, "For Merrill Lynch to distance themselves from this crisis would be
akin to Exxon distancing themselves from the Valdez."
Bob Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments frauds ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
"AIG, Surprise: Moneymaker Its profits for taxpayers cast doubt on
the notion that it behaved recklessly before the panic struck," by Holman W.
Jenkins, Jr., The Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2012 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443618604577623373568029572.html?mg=reno64-wsj#mod=djemEditorialPage_t
AIG's bailout is getting the revisionist treatment.
The rescue hasn't been the dismal federal experience that, say, GM's has
been. Taxpayers are showing a $5 billion profit on their 53% stake in the
insurer, as of yesterday's closing price.
What's more, in the last few days, the New York Fed
liquidated the last of the complex mortgage derivatives it acquired from
AIG's counterparties as part of the bailout. Such transactions and related
fees have netted the government about $18 billion.
This is good news but requires some revising of
theories of the crisis itself. The "toxic" and "shaky" housing derivatives
that got AIG in trouble turn out, even amid the worst housing slump in 70
years, not to have been the crud many assumed they were.
A lot of renditions skip over this part, dismissing
AIG's pre-crash mortgage activities as "reckless," thereby making a mystery
of how the refinancing of AIG could be paying off so handsomely for
taxpayers. Taxpayers are making out because they bought valuable assets on
the cheap.
This is as it should be. But let's remember how AIG
got in trouble. It wrote insurance to guarantee the very senior portions of
securities derived from underlying mortgages—that is, the portions already
designed to withstand a sizeable increase in defaults.
AIG failed not because of the failure of these
securities to keep paying as expected, but because of its own promise to
fork up cash collateral if the market price of these securities fell or if
the rating agencies downgraded what they had previously rated Triple-A.
In the systemic panic that climaxed with the Lehman
failure, both things happened in spades, even as AIG itself no longer could
raise the cash to make good on its commitments. Some now claim AIG could
have waved off the collateral calls, citing exceptional circumstances. But
even that wouldn't have changed the fact that, because of the panic, AIG
itself was no longer trusted despite being chock-full of good assets.
We'll never know if the company might have finessed
its way out of its jam (quite possibly its counterparties, including Goldman
Sachs, would have acted to keep AIG afloat if the alternative of a
government bailout weren't available). Instead AIG turned to taxpayers to
finance the collateral calls it couldn't finance itself, and taxpayers took
advantage.
For all the desire to name villains and blame bad
incentives for the financial crisis, notice that panic itself was the key
player. Panic is a variable about which it's disconcertingly hard for
government to do anything useful in advance.
Panic is systemic—an uncertainty or loss of trust
in how the system will behave. Here's a simple but relevant example: What
happens to the market value of mortgages if investors lose confidence in the
legal system to permit them to foreclose on borrowers who stop paying?
We don't need to retread the history. Letting
Lehman fail was a disaster because the rescue of Bear Stearns had
conditioned the market to believe Washington wouldn't permit major
institutional failures. The mixed signals sent about Fannie and Freddie only
undermined the effort to recruit fresh capital to other financial
institutions distressed by uncertainty over the value of mortgage
securities.
AIG is the most dramatic example of the general
case. A lot of things become good or bad collateral depending on what the
government is expected to do. It's not too strong to say Washington had to
bail out AIG because the market was uncertain whether Washington would bail
out AIG. (An additional complexity we won't go into is how the Fed's QE
exercises subsequently boosted the bailout's profits.)
Let us be careful here: A host of private and
public behaviors contributed to the housing bubble and meltdown, whose
losses were destined to be felt widely. Our system has no problem
accommodating the failure of individual institutions, even very big ones.
But systemic panic always comes to the door of government. It can't be
otherwise.
Governments can try to duck this burden, as
European governments have done, only by renouncing the ability to print
money and so soiling their own credit that substituting their own credit for
the financial system's is no longer an option. Make no mistake: This would
be a real cure for too-big-to-fail if the Europeans were inclined to let the
chips fall. They're not. Instead the self-disabling governments want Germany
to supply the bailout.
Continued in article
Lesson One: What Really Lies Behind the Financial Crisis?
According to Siegel: Financial firms bought, held and
insured large quantities of risky, mortgage-related assets on borrowed money.
The irony is that these financial giants had little need to hold these
securities; they were already making enormous profits simply from creating,
bundling and selling them. 'During dot-com IPOs of the early 1990s, the firms
that underwrote the stock offerings did not hold on to those stocks,' Siegel
says. 'They flipped them. But in the case of mortgage-backed securities, the
financial firms decided these were good assets to hold. That was their fatal
flaw.'
"Lesson One: What Really Lies Behind the Financial Crisis?" Knowledge@Wharton,
January 21, 2009 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2148
Jensen Comment
Lesson Two of what lies behind the financial crisis is that investment banks and
others like AIG wrote credit derivatives on the on the CDO collateralized debt
obligations that used mortgage backed securities as collateral. The companies
that wrote these derivatives did not have the insurance reserves to cover the
melt down of those CDOs. To avoid bankruptcy of giants such as AIG, the U.S.
treasury gave billions in bailout funds to cover the credit derivatives.
See Appendix E ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Bailout
I think there was a hidden agenda with respect to why Hank Paulson's first
billions in bailout funds went to cover the credit derivative obligations.
See Appendix Y ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#HiddenAgendaDetails
Bob Jensen's threads on the bailout ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
"Global curbs loom on offshore corporate tax avoidance," by Chris
Vellacott, Reuters, August 30, 2012 ---
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/30/us-offshoretax-curbs-idUSBRE87T0NT20120830
Cash-strapped governments keen to replenish their
coffers and international bodies such as the OECD are stepping up efforts to
claw back revenue lost when companies shift profit overseas to cut their tax
bills.
A legal and routine practice known as transfer
pricing, whereby subsidiaries of the same company in different countries
trade with each other, is sometimes used by companies to move cash to
jurisdictions with lower tax rates, such as tax havens.
But the process can be abused by inflating the
price of goods and services traded with overseas units in order to shift
more money offshore and evade corporate taxes, and authorities now want to
toughen up their policies and close loopholes.
"Tax base erosion and profit shifting are real
problems, they need to be dealt with," Joe Andrus, head of the transfer
pricing unit at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,
which sets the international guidelines on the practice, told Reuters.
Campaigners say economic damage caused by
aggressive use of transfer pricing extends far beyond depriving governments
of developed countries of revenue in fiscally straightened times.
The charity Christian Aid estimates the world's
poorest countries are deprived of $160 billion in tax revenues every year by
multinationals transferring profit beyond borders. The practice also
distorts the economies of tax havens into which multinationals shift the
profits.
Joao Pedro Martins, a Lisbon-based economist and
author of a book about the Portuguese autonomous region of Madeira, says the
"exports" of hundreds of multinational subsidiaries registered in the island
have distorted its GDP at the locals' expense.
Though unemployment runs at more than 14 percent,
the island's per capita GDP is 103 percent of the EU average, compared with
78 percent for the whole of Portugal, making it the second-richest part of
the country after the capital Lisbon.
This means Madeira loses out on millions of euros
of EU support it might otherwise get under a program of grants for regions
with per capita GDP of less than 75 percent of the European average, Martins
says.
The OECD champions a set of guidelines known as the
"arm's-length" method which permits transfer pricing only when transactions
between affiliates at are struck at market rates.
However, organizations can skirt this rule through
trade in intangible assets or services where pricing can be arbitrary and
much harder to benchmark against a global market rate.
"There is no such thing as an arms length price.
The idea of the arms length price is fundamentally flawed from the outset,"
says John Christensen, director at pressure group Tax Justice Network which
campaigns against aggressive tax avoidance.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
This does not tell college graduates something that they don't already know:
Temporary and Low Wages
"Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds," by Catherine Rampell,
The New York Times, August 30, 2012 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/business/majority-of-new-jobs-pay-low-wages-study-finds.html?_r=1
While a majority of jobs lost during the downturn
were in the middle range of wages, a majority of those added during the
recovery have been low paying, according to a new report from the National
Employment Law Project.
The disappearance of midwage, midskill jobs is part
of a longer-term trend that some refer to as a hollowing out of the work
force, though it has probably been accelerated by government layoffs.
“The overarching message here is we don’t just have
a jobs deficit; we have a ‘good jobs’ deficit,” said Annette Bernhardt, the
report’s author and a policy co-director at the National Employment Law
Project, a liberal research and advocacy group.
The report looked at 366 occupations tracked by the
Labor Department and clumped them into three equal groups by wage, with each
representing a third of American employment in 2008. The middle third —
occupations in fields like construction, manufacturing and information, with
median hourly wages of $13.84 to $21.13 — accounted for 60 percent of job
losses from the beginning of 2008 to early 2010.
The job market has turned around since then, but
those fields have represented only 22 percent of total job growth.
Higher-wage occupations — those with a median wage of $21.14 to $54.55 —
represented 19 percent of job losses when employment was falling, and 20
percent of job gains when employment began growing again.
Lower-wage occupations, with median hourly wages of
$7.69 to $13.83, accounted for 21 percent of job losses during the
retraction.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on the stalled recovery ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
"Amazon Heats Up Gadget Wars," by Greg Bensinger, The Wall Street
Journal, August 31, 2012 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444914904577623690307576820.html?mg=reno64-wsj
Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +0.83% is ratcheting up
pricing pressure in the gadget wars with an advertising-supported tablet
that will be priced lower than similar models, according to people involved
in the discussions.
The tablet will be part of a parade of new devices
expected to hit the market with hopes of appealing to consumers in a tight
economy during the crucial holiday season.
On Wednesday, Nokia Corp. NOK1V.HE +1.07% is set to
give a peek at the first line of smartphones powered by Microsoft Corp.'s
MSFT +1.65% new Windows 8 operating system in New York. Across town that
day, Motorola Mobility is expected to unveil its first major phone since it
was acquired by Google Inc. GOOG +0.50%
And Amazon on Thursday is holding a media event in
Santa Monica, Calif., where it is expected to introduce a new version of its
Kindle Fire tablet.
Those companies are trying to get ahead of rival
Apple Inc., AAPL +0.21% which on Sept. 12 is expected to unveil a new iPhone.
Apple has also been working with suppliers on a
smaller version of its iPad tablet that will be similar in size to the
current Kindle Fire, people familiar with the matter have said, while
Microsoft said it would start selling its new Surface tablet in the coming
months.
"You've got a flood of competitors in tablets,"
said Jeff Kagan, an independent analyst. "Marketers have to figure out how
to differentiate theirs, whether on price or capabilities. That's probably
going to be a few years before we get there."
The cheaper, ad-supported offering from Amazon,
along with other upcoming gadgets from electronics makers, could put
pressure on Apple, which has become the world's most valuable company in
part by pricing its devices at a premium.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
Amazon initially got into the device market in
2007, when it launched a line of Kindle e-readers.
The Seattle company has since dropped the price of
its Kindle e-reader significantly. The device originally was priced at $399,
and soon dropped to $359, then fell to $299 for a later version.
Last year, Amazon launched a slate of Kindle
e-readers that were priced between $109 and $189, with models offered for
$30 to $50 less to readers willing to have advertisements appear on screen
savers and at the bottom of certain screens.
In the tablet arena, Amazon dove in last November
when it released its $199 Kindle Fire. The seven-inch-screen device is
priced aggressively compared with Apple's iPad, which starts at $499.
On Thursday, Amazon said it had sold out of the
Kindle Fire, while promising "an exciting road map ahead."
It is unclear how well Amazon's Kindle Fire has
sold. The company doesn't disclose sales.
Amazon's new ad-supported tablet would come at a
discount to tablets without the advertising subsidy, said the people
involved in the product discussions. Exact pricing and which advertisers are
involved is unclear.
The new tablet would display an ad after the user
"wakes" the gadget, said one person briefed on the matter.
Amazon has discussed how some versions of the new
tablet would connect to the Internet only through Wi-Fi networks, said the
person briefed on the product.
Additionally, Amazon is testing its own smartphone
to take on Apple's iPhone and could release it as soon as the end of this
year, officials at Amazon's parts providers who declined to be named said in
July.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology
Grammar Girl Tip on "Nauseous" Versus "Nauseated" on August 30, 2012
Nauseous" Versus "Nauseated"
Giuseppe M. objected to my use of "nauseous" to mean "feel sick" in a
recent newsletter.
I had written "You're anxious for school to start if you feel nauseous
every time you think about it," and Giuseppe believes "one cannot feel
nauseous" and that I should have written "You're anxious for school to start
if you feel nauseated every time you think about it."
First, Guiseppe is correct that these are the most conservative and
traditional distinctions: "Nauseous" describes something that induces
nausea, and "nauseated" means feeling sick. That's how I suggest people use
the words when they want to be safe, for example, when they are writing
cover letters for jobs (although I have a hard time imagining when you'd use
either word on a job application).
Had I noticed that I had written "nauseous," I would have changed it to
"nauseated" to avoid upsetting anyone. I simply didn't notice. I'm not
perfect, nor have I ever claimed to be.
However, the rules also aren't as black-and-white as Giuseppe believes. It's
more of a style choice than a rule.
I wrote about it way back in 2007 (in an article that also covers the
difference between "octopuses" and "octopi"), and more recently, John E.
McIntyre wrote a blog post summarizing
the current thinking on the nauseous-nauseated debate.
Free Grammar Girl book chapter ---
Click Here
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/static/GG101TroublesomeWordsExcerpt.pdf?et_cid=29431896&et_rid=496441372&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2fstatic%2fGG101TroublesomeWordsExcerpt.pdf&utm_campaign=
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Former Comptroller General David Walker has been saying this all along
"Social Security’s Woes Are Worse Than You Think," by Ramesh Ponnuru,
Bloomberg, August 27, 2012 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-27/social-security-s-woes-are-worse-than-you-think.html
While the Romney and Obama camps have made
increasingly bitter accusations about each other’s plans for Medicare, a
bipartisan consensus on entitlements has emerged in the past few years. Too
bad that consensus is wrong.
On both left and right, the politicians and the
experts are saying the U.S. needs to fix Medicare -- and have made fixing
Social Security an afterthought. President Barack Obama has signed changes
to Medicare into law, but has done nothing about Social Security. For two
years in a row, Republicans in Congress have supported budgets that rein in
the growth of Medicare spending but leave Social Security alone. Expect to
hear a lot more about Medicare than Social Security at the Republican
convention this week.
The main reason Medicare is getting more attention
is that in the long run, it has much higher costs than Social Security.
That’s why it’s often described, accurately, as the driver of America’s
long-term debt problem.
The Social Security gap looks small, though, only
in relation to Medicare. On any other scale, it’s pretty big. The 1983 deal
to fix Social Security is often held up as a model of bipartisan
achievement, with the implication that it just needs to be replicated to
fill the gap: No big deal. Charles Blahous, a Social Security trustee and
the author of a recent book on the program, points out that this model is
actually pretty discouraging. Twice as Large
In 1983, the financing gap over the next 75 years
amounted to 1.8 percent of payroll. Blahous estimates that the gap today,
measured using the same standards as in 1983, is 3.5 percent: almost double
what it was then. And every year that passes without action, that number
gets bigger. Do we think today’s politicians are prepared to solve twice as
large a problem as their predecessors did?
Right now, we spend more money on Social Security
than on Medicare, and that will remain the case for a while. The programs’
trustees project that by 2035 Social Security will consume 6.4 percent of
the economy and Medicare 5.7 percent. The Medicare projection may be
optimistic about recent attempts to impose cost controls, but we shouldn’t
expect Medicare to become vastly larger than Social Security in the next two
decades. After that point, Social Security costs start going down as
demographics play out while Medicare becomes a vastly larger problem.
But our finances will be in what’s technically
called a world of hurt before Social Security costs peak. Under current
projections by the Congressional Budget Office, by 2025 public debt will
have reached 106 percent of gross domestic product. By 2035, it will have
reached 181 percent. What would happen after that point is an academic
question: We can’t allow ourselves to get there.
We need to fix both programs. If anything, it’s
Social Security that ought to be saved first because it’s the more urgent
near-term problem. Some of the steps we can take to make the program
solvent, moreover, would improve Medicare’s finances, too. Raising the
retirement age, for example, would encourage people to work longer and thus
pay more taxes into both programs. Restraining Growth
Perhaps even more important, we have a better sense
of how to restrain the growth of Social Security than of Medicare.
One promising option is to reduce the growth of
Social Security benefit levels, especially for high earners. The program
could be reformed so that high earners who retire in 2040 receive the same
benefit level that high earners who retire in 2020 will -- with an
adjustment for inflation, but nothing more. Under the program as it stands
now, those future retirees will get a bigger benefit.
Benefit levels for people in the middle of the
income spectrum, meanwhile, could be set so that they more than keep up with
inflation but don’t rise as much as currently scheduled.
It’s easy to attack this sort of proposal. In the
past, opponents have said, for example, that it would be a draconian 40
percent cut in benefits for high earners. That’s true, when the proposal is
compared with the benefit levels that the law has scheduled but hasn’t
figured out how to pay for. Compared with today’s benefit levels, though,
it’s not a cut at all.
Democrats will prefer to raise taxes, especially on
high earners, to let benefits grow faster. The drawback to this approach is
that higher payroll taxes, the CBO has found, discourage people from working
and saving. We would be taking a hit to economic growth for a purpose --
boosting benefit levels for relatively well-off seniors -- that shouldn’t be
a high social priority. It seems perverse to raise taxes on high earners to
finance higher benefits for them.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on entitlements are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Another state should withdraw from the Dollar Zone so it can print its own
currency
"A Downgrade for Illinois The worst credit rating aside from California,"
The Wall Street Journal, August 29, 2012 ---
|http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443409904577619800234602824.html?mg=reno64-wsj#mod=djemEditorialPage_t
"Illinois Debt Cut by S&P After No Action on Pension Funding," by
Michelle Kaske, Bloomberg News, August 29, 2012 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-29/illinois-debt-cut-by-s-p-after-lack-of-action-on-pension-funding.html
Illinois, the U.S. state with the worst-funded
pension system, had the rating on its general- obligation debt cut one level
by Standard & Poor’s and may face more downgrades.
The change to an A rating followed state lawmakers’
failure to agree to reduce retirement costs during a special session Aug.
17. The outlook for the state’s debt, which now has S&P’s sixth-highest
grade, is negative. California, with an A-ranking, one level below Illinois,
remains S&P’s lowest-rated state.
Illinois has an unfunded pension liability of at
least $83 billion, according to state figures. It had 45 percent of what it
needed to pay future retiree obligations as of 2010, the lowest among U.S.
states, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“The downgrade reflects the state’s weak pension
funding levels and lack of action on reform measures intended to improve
funding levels and diminish cost pressures associated with annual
contributions,” said Robin Prunty, an S&P analyst, in a report today.
Governor Pat Quinn said today he is inviting
legislative leaders to meet in early September to work on pension changes.
Lawmakers have considered boosting employee contributions, passing some
costs to local school districts and forcing workers to choose between the
current system and receiving free retirement health care. No Surprise
Quinn, a Democrat, said the rating cut wasn’t a
surprise.
Erasing the fifth-most populous state’s unfunded
pension liability “is vital to getting our financial house in order,” Quinn
said in a statement. “Today’s action by Standard & Poor’ is more evidence
that we must act.”
Illinois had about $28 billion of
general-obligation debt as of May 8, according to bond documents. The state
of about 13 million people plans to sell $50 million of debt next month for
technology projects, John Sinsheimer, the state’s director of capital
markets, said in an interview.
Taxpayers will pay more to issue debt because of
the lower rating, state Treasurer Dan Rutherford said in a statement.
“I urge the legislature to act decisively towards
comprehensive, constitutional and fair pension reforms that will reverse
this situation,” he said.
Jensen Comment
Unlike California, Illinois significantly increased corporate tax rates to deal
with its deficit. But this turned into a sham when Gov. Quinn commenced to grant
tax waivers to business firms (like Caterpillar) that threatened to relocate in
other states.
In my opinion, however, Illinois stands a much better chance than California
--- which by most accounts is a basket case.
"Pension Accounting for Dummies New government reporting rules are no
better than the old ones," The Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2012 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304782404577488933765069576.html?mg=reno64-wsj#mod=djemEditorialPage_t
The Government Accounting Standards Board has
issued new rules that aim to crystallize government pension liabilities. It
failed on that count, but it did succeed, albeit inadvertently, in making
the case for defined-contribution plans.
GASB, as it's known in the trade, sets accounting
guidelines for local governments. Since the board is run mainly by former
public officials, its standards are often low. The board also usually takes
several years to finalize rules, so it's often behind the times. Their new
rules concerning how governments discount their pension liabilities are a
case in point.
Financial economists have recommended for decades
that governments calculate pension liabilities using so-called "risk-free"
rates pegged to high-grade municipal bonds or long-term Treasurys. The
argument goes that since pensioners are de facto secured creditors—even
bankruptcy judges have been reluctant to slash retirement benefits—pensions
are riskless and therefore the liabilities should be discounted at risk-free
rates.
GASB's private cousin, the Financial Accounting
Standards Board (FASB), began requiring corporations to discount their
pension liabilities with high-quality fixed income assets in the 1980s.
However, GASB let governments stick with their desired, er, expected rate of
return, which is typically about 8%. Public pension funds have returned 5.7%
on average since 2000. Achieving much higher returns over the long run would
require markets to perform as well as they did in the 1980s and '90s. Would
that be true.
Governments have resisted climbing down from
Fantasyland because using lower discount rates would explode their
liabilities. When the Financial Accounting Standards Board introduced its
risk-free rate guidelines, many companies shifted workers to 401(k)s because
they didn't want to report larger liabilities. Such defined-contribution
plans are by definition 100% pre-funded.
Prodded by economists and investors, GASB began
considering modifying its discount rate rules a few years ago. Public
pension funds, lawmakers and unions, however, pushed back hard against
suggestions that governments use risk-free rates, which could more than
double their liabilities. No surprise, the government troika won.
GASB's new rules allow governments to continue
discounting their liabilities at their anticipated rate of return so long as
they project enough future assets to cover their obligations. At the time
they forecast they'll run out of assets, they must begin discounting their
liabilities with a high-grade municipal bond rate. The idea is that
governments would have to issue bonds to pay retirees when their pension
funds go broke.
But few pension funds project that they'll run dry
since they're hooked up to a taxpayer IV. Those in really bad shape like
Chicago's will likely rig their investment and actuarial assumptions to
circumvent the new rules. FASB rejected similar guidelines in the 1980s
because they were too easy to dodge. The point here is that it's impossible
to get governments to come clean about their pension debt, and not just
because the union allies controlling pension funds have a vested interest in
obfuscating the liabilities.
In reality, nobody knows how much taxpayers will
owe because so much depends on inscrutable actuarial and economic factors
like interest rates 30 years from now (not even the Federal Reserve purports
to be that omniscient). Slight discrepancies in assumptions can yield huge
variations in estimated liabilities. One advantage of defined-contribution
plans is that they don't require governments to calculate their liabilities.
There are none.
GASB Statement No. 68
Accounting and Financial Reporting for Pensions—an amendment of GASB Statement
No. 27 ---
Click Here
http://www.gasb.org/cs/ContentServer?site=GASB&c=Page&pagename=GASB%2FPage%2FGASBSectionPage&cid=1176160042391
Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of governmental accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#GovernmentalAccounting
Bob Jensen's threads on pension accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#Pensions
"Countdown to a Tax Hike," The Wall Street Journal, August 31,
2012 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444772804577619583044242606.html?mod=WSJ_Taxes_Taxes_2&mg=reno64-wsj
The best advice, experts say: make a few important
moves now, and be ready to react quickly in the months ahead.
To recap: At year's end, rates on ordinary income,
interest, capital gains, dividends, gifts and estates are set to jump—in
some cases sharply. Other tax benefits will lapse as well, affecting all
levels of taxpayers. (Please see the tables below and on Page B10.)
Few observers expect any major tax legislation
before the Nov. 6 election. After that, there won't be much time. The House
of Representatives has scheduled only 16 working days before its adjournment
on Dec. 14. While the Senate has more days in session, "they don't have much
incentive to act if the House isn't there," notes Clint Stretch, a lawyer
and former executive at Deloitte Tax LLP in Washington.
Experts foresee two possible outcomes. One is that
after the election both houses of Congress agree to extend the current rules
for up to a year, buying time to make fundamental changes to the tax code
while avoiding the economic consequences of huge tax increases.
The other possibility is that the election changes
the political equation so much that one party blocks a tax-rate extension,
allowing the current rules to expire and pushing tough decisions into 2013.
Lawmakers return in early January, but Mr. Stretch
and others believe it could take them several months to reach an agreement
and make changes retroactive to the beginning of the year.
In that scenario, most Americans would be affected.
Employees could see their take-home pay fall as higher tax rates kick in,
for example, while the heirs of people who die will face a much harsher
estate-tax regime.
Lawrence Carlton, an accountant in Bedford, Mass.,
says he is getting more than a dozen calls a week asking what tax rates will
be next year: "My clients don't believe me when I say, 'I'm sorry, I just
can't tell you.'"
So how should you prepare for the uncertain months
ahead? Tax experts surveyed by the Wall Street Journal offered several dos
and don'ts:
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Summary of Dos and Don'ts
- Do consider the effect of higher taxes on
investment returns next year
- Don't rush to take all of your capital gains
- Do consider whether to accelerate Roth IRA
conversions
- Don't count on an extension of this year's Social
Security tax cut
- Do expect an AMT "patch" for 2012
- Don't take money from your IRA if you are 70½ or
older and want to donate money from it
- Do prepare for the possibility of less-generous
gift- and estate-tax rates and exemptions after 2012
AMT ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Minimum_Tax
Bob Jensen's taxation helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation
"Political Ads: Issue Advocacy or Campaign Activity Under the Tax Code?"
by Erika K. Lunder, BNA, August 29, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://op.bna.com/dt.nsf/id/emcy-8xnkup/$File/Political%20Ads%20-%20Issue%20Advocacy%20or%20Campaign%20Activity%20Under%20the%20Tax%20Code%20%282%29.pdf
How to lie with statistics
"Four Reasons Why: Official Chinese GDP Data Don’t Reflect the Country’s
Slowdown," by Scott Barber and Tim Gaumer, Alpha Now, August 29, 2012
---
http://alphanow.thomsonreuters.com/2012/08/four-reasons-why-official-chinese-gdp-data-dont-reflect-the-countrys-slowdown/
"Electrical and cloud outages: Is it time to bring both on premise?"
IS Assurance Blog by Jerry Trites
July 8, 2012
Amazon
experienced an outage that affected a number of companies that
rely on their cloud service. The company informed its users that its service
went down due to the power outage stating:
"On
June 29, 2012 at about 8:33 PM PDT, one of the Availability Zones (AZ) in
our US-EAST-1 Region experienced a power issue. While we were able to
restore access to a vast majority of RDS DB Instances that were impacted by
this event, some Single-AZ DB Instances in the affected AZ experienced
storage inconsistency issues and access could not be restored despite our
recovery efforts. These affected DB Instances have been moved into the
“failed ” state."
This
notice was actually taken from
CodeGuard (a
start-up that takes snapshots of websites enabling owners to undo unwanted
changes) who was one of the companies affected by the outage.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on computing and networking security ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection
"Money from Friends: Finding the Right Revenue Model for Social Media,"
Knowledge@Wharton , August 29, 2012 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=3064
Mark Zuckerberg's honeymoon with Wall Street did
not last long.
Since Facebook's initial public offering in mid-May,
shares have fallen by 58% to $40.8 billion. Last week,
its stock dipped below $20 a share with the expiration of a lockout barring
the company's initial investors from selling their holdings. Mobile games
developer Zynga also has fallen off a cliff since its IPO; the company's
market cap has plunged by 81% from its peak as flaws in its business model
emerged. Groupon,
whose shares have struggled amid questions about its
viability, fell even further -- down 85% to
$3.1 billion. CEO Andrew Mason might be kicking himself for turning down
Google's $6 billion buyout offer.
Investors, it would seem, are giving a collective
thumbs' down to social networks. Yet investors across the board also tend to
move in tandem, often throwing away the proverbial baby with the bath water.
For example, a single piece of bad news about a company can tank shares of
competitors in the same industry -- a malady that has afflicted social
networks as well. While investors might lump Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and
their ilk together, these companies are not replicas of each other. All
offer an element of social networking, but only Facebook is a pure social
network and, with its nearly one billion users, is a unique entity unto
itself. As such, experts suggest caution when making generalizations
regarding the plight of social networks based on Facebook alone.
What is a social network? At its most basic, it is
a group of individuals wishing to connect to each other digitally in order
to socialize. Facebook users want to know what their friends, relatives and
acquaintances are doing. The company's main purpose, as Zuckerberg himself
has often noted, is to "make the world more open and connected." Zynga is a
developer of games that use social networks to connect players. Its main
purpose is gaming, not socializing, although that can occur through games.
Groupon uses the power of the collective to get bargains. But the purpose of
joining Groupon is to purchase products and services, not to socialize.
Twitter is more similar to Facebook, although its follower approach makes it
a quasi-social network. LinkedIn members use the platform to socialize and
network professionally.
Investors might be punishing most of these
companies too harshly for not getting their financial ducks in a row as they
test different ways to monetize their businesses. Wall Street does hate
uncertainty, experts point out. But the decline could be merely a short-term
effect, given that the concept of social networks is fairly new, and
business models are still being fleshed out. "It's clear Facebook and other
social networks haven't figured it out yet," says Wharton management
professor
Ethan Mollick. "Things
are stacked against them in the short term."
The Facebook Model
Typically, the early focus of social networks is to
build up a base of users quickly by offering their services for free. But
once these networks gain traction, costs to serve the users escalate. The
companies then face the dilemma of figuring out how to make money from their
many followers without alienating them with too many ads or suddenly
charging for basic services. It can be a tricky balancing act. "It's a
double-edged sword for these social networks," notes Wharton management
professor
David Hsu. "Once
consumers are used to a revenue model, it's very difficult to change it."
Social networks, Hsu says, should have a
monetization path in mind at the beginning for a smoother transition. "It's
important to think through how to make money from the start," he adds,
pointing to the digital revenue models of The New York Times and
The Wall Street Journal as examples of how tough it is to switch
business strategies once readers are used to a certain model. The Times
faced a consumer outcry when it decided to charge for online content that
used to be free, he says. The Journal, however, has never
faced such a backlashbecause readers have always had to pay to access its
content on the web.
Facebook is attempting to modify its business model
as well. Currently, nearly all its revenue comes from advertising. Can it
stay that way? "It can work, but it is always a good idea to supplement that
with subscriptions," says Wharton marketing professor
Pinar Yildirim.
Whether or not the social network will implement some sort of paid
subscription plan, it certainly has been busy diversifying its sources of
revenue. In 2009, around 98% of total revenue came from ads. But the
proportion fell to 95% in 2010 and got whittled even more in 2011, to 85%.
Last year, users buying digital or virtual goods on Facebook, along with
fees from other services, generated the remaining 15% of revenue, according
to Facebook's registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange
Commission.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on social networking are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
Why U.S. Medical Costs Are so High: Wastes Caused by Losing Causes
As usual, I preface this by saying that I favor a national health care
insurance system, possibly like the one in Canada where people of all levels of
income pay their fair share for medical services. Having said this, I point out
that in providing basic medical services to all citizens the quality of the
medical services decline in terms of waits for such services, difficulties for
many to get replacement knees, hips, and organs, and the need to come to the
U.S. for some of the great specialty physicians and medical centers.
Two reasons medical costs are higher in the U.S. is that the U.S. spends more
on average per capita on futile extensions of life for a few weeks or
months, which is the most single costly component of Medicare costs according to
CBS Sixty Minutes. The other reason is the hundreds of billions spent in the
U.S. on medical research where other nations become free riders on the the most
successful discoveries.
The High Cost of Dying
On November 22, 2009 CBS Sixty Minutes aired a video featuring experts
(including physicians) explaining how the single largest drain on the Medicare
insurance fund is keeping dying people hopelessly alive who could otherwise be
allowed to die quicker and painlessly without artificially prolonging life on
ICU machines.
"The Cost of Dying," CBS Sixty Minutes Video, November 22, 2009
---
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/19/60minutes/main5711689.shtml?tag=mncol;lst;1
What is really sad is the way Republicans are standing in the way of making
rational cost-benefit decisions about dying by exploiting the "Kill Granny"
political strategy aimed at killing a government option in health care reform.
See the "Kill Granny" strategy at ---
www.defendyourhealthcare.us
Other nations simply do not spend as much on saving extremely premature babies
and the terminally ill.
The High Cost of Research
"How Much Would You Pay for Three More Months of Life?," by Laura Beil,
Newsweek Magazine, September 3, 2012, pp. 40-44 ---
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/26/the-cancer-breakthroughs-that-cost-too-much-and-do-too-little.html
In his more than 35 years of practice, Dr. Lowell
Schnipper has seen a lot of women die from breast cancer. A patient’s
options start to dwindle by the time tumor cells set up outposts in the
bones, lungs, and other organs, defying all attempts to keep them under
control. But in June, when the government approved Perjeta, Schnipper had
something new to offer. The drug is one of an innovative class of drugs
known as “targeted therapies.”
As the chief of oncology at Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center in Boston, Schnipper knew Perjeta was not a cure: added to a
standard treatment with Herceptin—another targeted therapy that was hailed
as a breakthrough in 1998—Perjeta gives the average woman only about six
months more of calm before her disease starts to stir again. Given the
limited benefit, the price was startling. For most women, a full course of
the drug combination will cost $188,000—enough, he says, “to give anybody a
cold sweat.”
Americans spent more than $23 billion last year for
cancer drugs, more than we paid for prescriptions to treat anything else.
But many oncologists are starting to question what we are getting in return
for that bill, whether the war on cancer has become too much of a race to
produce the next blockbuster. “In general, progress for cancer has been
halting and slow,” says David Howard of the Department of Health Policy and
Management at Emory University. So far, most new drugs offer only marginal
extensions of life and few cures. Howard says new so-called breakthroughs
“overpromise and underdeliver.” Consider the popularity of Avastin, a
targeted drug approved for metastatic colon cancer in 2004. A recent study
found that almost 70 percent of patients on chemotherapy were receiving
Avastin within a year of its release. In clinical trials, the drug increased
survival by about five months. The cost? About $10,000 a month.
Treating cancer has never been cheap, but today,
the price of each new treatment seems to outpace the one before, with little
bearing on its efficacy. According to figures from insurer United
Healthcare, a standard cocktail of drugs for treating lung cancer used to
run about $1,000 a month. Today’s regimens cost from more than $6,000 to
almost $10,000—for about two more months of life. “There is no such thing as
a cancer drug coming on the market that is some sort of regular drug price,”
says Dr. Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York,
who studies the impact of cancer costs on U.S. health care. “They’re all
priced at spectacularly high levels.” Which leads to an unsettling question:
how much is a little more time worth? Would you spend $50,000 for four more
months? How about $15,000 for two weeks?
Of three frontiers in cancer treatment, targeted
therapies like Perjeta are widely seen as the best hope for a cure.
Traditional chemotherapy is notorious for side effects because it wields
destruction indiscriminately throughout the body. Targeted therapies are
designed to hit cancer cells only. Perjeta, for example, targets a protein
produced in excess amounts in some breast cancers; Avastin hinders the
ability of a tumor to form new blood vessels to feed itself.
. . .
The Cancer “Breakthroughs” that Cost Too Much
and Do Too Little
Doctors envision the day when every patient will
have therapy precisely matched to the genetic bull’s-eyes of their own
cancers. The holdup has been that cancer has proven to be more genetically
crafty than researchers once imagined. Scientists may build a drug to hit
one target, but a tumor may also employ lots of yet-undiscovered genetic
tricks to keep itself alive. Instead of a magic bullet, scientists now know
that any particular tumor may need lots of magic bullets. With so many
targets unknown, a lot of patients end up getting drugs that barely touch
their cancers, which is why the effectiveness of many new drugs remains
underwhelming.
Not that this keeps a drug from becoming a
blockbuster. Patients with advanced cancer, and their physicians, are hungry
for progress. As a result, almost all of the 10 bestselling cancer drugs are
targeted therapies, many less than a decade old. All came on the market at
thousands of dollars a month, a trend that continues today with gusto. The
drug Afinitor, a daily pill, was approved in July for patients with breast
cancer. It costs more than $200 a tablet. But price rarely matters to
patients or even doctors, says Dr. Oliver Sartor, medical director of the
Tulane Cancer Center in New Orleans. “People have already been told there is
no cure for their disease,” he says. “Every increment, every improvement,
gives hope, and when options are extremely limited, we all focus on the
positive possibilities.”
In addition to targeted therapies, drugs have come
on the market that can spur the body’s own immune cells to lead the charge.
Significant hurdles have hindered this kind of treatment for years. But they
are finally being overcome. The prostate cancer drug Provenge, which came on
the market in 2010, was the first immune-therapy drug to gain governmental
approval. It was followed the next year by Yervoy, when approved the only
drug ever shown to extend survival in advanced melanoma. Men with a common
kind of advanced prostate cancer who used Provenge lived an average of four
months longer than the comparison group; patients on Yervoy got an average
of 3.6 months. The gains are modest, but not the cost. When Sartor learned
Provenge would run $93,000 per patient, “I was stunned,” he says. And even
that was cheaper than Yervoy, which appeared the following year at $120,000
for four injections. He predicts the pricing of immune therapies may be seen
as “a watershed moment” in the debate over health-care costs.
The third area of touted breakthroughs has been in
radiation, most recently by using protons instead of traditional X-rays to
kill cancer cells. It’s a controversial undertaking: many doctors believe
that protons offer better precision, able to get rid of tumors without
collateral damage to nearby healthy tissues. But whether protons can treat
with fewer side effects than traditional radiation is, to date, a matter of
debate for almost all but pediatric and certain neurological tumors.
As with new drugs, proton-beam radiation is
expensive—it can run roughly twice as much as the current state-of-the-art
form of radiation that uses X-rays. In the case of proton beams, much of
the cost has to do with building a cyclotron to harvest the protons—a
construction project that can cost upwards of $150 million. In 2001 just
three centers in the country offered proton treatment, but that number is
now up to 10, with a half dozen more planned. About three quarters of the
proton patient population covered by Medicare are men with prostate cancer,
which, because of the length of their therapy, are the most lucrative to
treat.
Why do new drugs cost so much? Pharmaceutical
companies say it’s payment for scientific creativity, that high prices are
necessary to recover the expense of developing and manufacturing their
products and to encourage more research. A spokeswoman for Bristol-Myers
Squibb, which makes Yervoy, says the cost of drugs is “based on a number of
factors, including the value they deliver to patients, the scientific
innovation they represent, and the cost to develop them.” Part of the price
is also an investment in drug discovery. “We look at not only the past
research and development, but development in the future,” says Krysta
Pellegrino, a spokeswoman for Genentech, which developed Perjeta.
That said, many cancer experts remain skeptical of
the notion that drug companies are simply passing along the cost of doing
business and funding the incubation of new drugs. In 2004 researchers tried
to test the relationship between a drug’s development and its final asking
price. In the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the scientists concluded “that
the drug companies are not pricing their drugs to recuperate losses
associated with research and development, marketing, and operating prices,
but rather [the average wholesale price] depends on what the market itself
can bear.”
“It’s a marketplace where the seller has all of the
control,” says Bach, from Memorial Sloan-Kettering, because private
insurance companies and Medicare—the largest purchasers of drugs—are
powerless to bargain for a less expensive deal. “Prices are high because
they can be,” Bach says. As one doctor observed, “we are always paying for a
Ferrari but often getting a Ford.” The occasional Ferrari does exist. The
targeted drug Gleevec, which treats certain forms of leukemia and intestinal
tumors, has allowed patients to live for years with their cancer in check.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
At a cost of $150 million each, how many other nations have built 10 cyclotrons
for harvesting proton beams for cancer treatments and research?
Only the most successful findings in the U.S. will motivate other free-rider
nations to invest in such expensive hardware.
If we adopt a national health care plan the medical services will be spread
more evenly across all residents of the U.S. However, we will then have to come
to grips with costs of dying and costs of research that we perhaps can no longer
afford on the same scale.
We will also have to come to grips with controlling punitive damage hundreds
of billions in lawsuits like other nations control such frictions on medical
services. Other nations like Canada provide for damages and lost income, but
they do not turn medical litigation into a legal lottery.
"Canadian Malpractice Insurance Takes Profit Out
Of Coverage," by Jane Akre, Injury Board, July 28, 2009 ---
Click Here
http://www.injuryboard.com/national-news/canadian-malpractice-insurance-takes-profit-out-of-coverage.aspx?googleid=267890
The
St. Petersburg Times takes a look at the cost
of insurance in Canada for health care providers.
A neurosurgeon in Miami pays about $237,000 for medical malpractice
insurance. The same professional in Toronto pays about $29,200, reports
Susan Taylor Martin.
A Canadian orthopedic surgeon pays just over $10,000 for coverage
that costs a Miami physician $140,000. An obstetrician in Canada pays
$36,353 for insurance, while a Tampa Bay obstetrician pays $98,000 for
medical malpractice insurance.
Why the difference?
In the U.S., private for-profit insurance companies extend medical
malpractice coverage to doctors.
In Canada, physicians are covered through
membership in a nonprofit. The
Canadian Medical Protective Association
offers substantially reduced fees for the same coverage, especially
considering that their payout is limited by caps in Canada just as in
some U.S. states.
In 1978, the Canadian Supreme Court limited
pain and suffering awards to just over $300,000, circumventing the
opportunity for a jury to decide on an award depending on the case
before them.
Canadian Medical Protective Association
Here’s how it works.
Fees for membership vary depending on the region of the country in
which the doctor works and their specialty. All neurosurgeons in Ontario
will pay the same, for example. The number of claims they have faced for
medical malpractice does not figure into their premium
"We don't adjust our fees based on individual
experience; it's the experience of the group,'' says Dr. John Gray, the
executive director, "That's what the mutual approach is all about, and
it helps keep the fees down for everyone,” he tells the
St. Petersburg Times.
If a doctor is sued, the group pays the claim
and provides legal counsel.
In the U.S., the push has been on for limiting claims, no matter how
egregious the medical malpractice. President Obama was booed in June
when, before the American Medical Association, he said he would not
limit a malpractice jury award.
"We got a crazy situation where Obama is
talking about the cost of medicine but he said, 'I don't believe in
caps,' " complains Dr. Dennis Agliano, past president of the
Florida Medical
Association. "If you don't have caps, the
sky's the limit and there's no way to curtail those costs.''
But the importance of limiting jury awards may not play into the big
picture on health care reform.
Malpractice lawsuits amount to
less than one percent of both the Canadian and
the U.S. healthcare system, meanwhile between 44,000 and 98,000
Americans die each year due to medical errors in hospitals alone, while
16 times as many suffer injuries without receiving any compensation,
reports the group
Americans for Insurance Reform.
Major Difference
In Canada, an injured patient is often required to pay for the
initial investigation into his case. In the U.S. the contingency fee
basis, usually in the range of 30 percent, allows the injured party to
proceed without a financial downside.
In both the U.S. and Canada, the definition of medical negligence is
that a duty of care was owed to the patient by the physician, there was
a breach h of the standard of care and the patient suffered harm by the
physician’s failure to meet that standard of care.
A bad outcome in itself is not the basis of a lawsuit.
The Canadian Medical Protective Association insures virtually all of
the country’s 76,000 doctors, as opposed to the U.S. where private
for-profit insurance companies cover physicians for medical malpractice.
In Canada, the median damaged paid in 2007 was $91,999 and judgments
favored patients 25 times, doctors 70 times.
In the U.S., many physician groups are
requiring patients to waive their rights to a jury trial, even though
malpractice litigation accounts for just 0.6 percent of healthcare costs.
Public Citizen,
the consumer group, charges that the facts don’t
warrant the “politically charged hysteria surrounding medical
malpractice litigation.”
For the third straight year,
medical malpractice payments were at record
lows finds the group in a study released this month. The decline,
however, is likely due to fewer injured patients receiving compensation,
not improved health safety.
2008 saw the lowest number of medical
malpractice payments since the federal government’s
National
Practitioner Data Bank began compiling
malpractice statistics. In 2008, payments were 30.7 percent lower than
averages recorded in all previous years.
In the report titled,
The 0.6 Percent Bogeyman, the nonprofit
watchdog group states, “between three and seven Americans die from
medical errors for every 1 who receives a payment for any type of
malpractice claim.”
Public Citizen previously reported that about
five percent of doctors are responsible for
half of the medical malpractice in the U.S. that can result in permanent
injury or death. #
Read more:
http://www.injuryboard.com/national-news/canadian-malpractice-insurance-takes-profit-out-of-coverage.aspx?googleid=267890#ixzz0W0Z71JOP
November 12. 2010 message from
Ramesh Fernando
Prof. Jensen,
While it's true our spending on health-care is much lower than the US in
terms of percentage of GDP and we don't have the level of malpractice
suits as in the USA there are severe problems with the healthcare
system. The federal government has a guaranteed I think 6% accelerator,
much higher than inflation, transfer payment to the provinces for health
care. I doubt the federal government can guarantee that kind of spending
in the next negotiations between the provinces and the federal
government.
Then again federal government transfers amount
to only about 15-20% of most provincial health spending and provinces
spend about 40-50% of their budget on the health budget and growing
larger as the boomers age. Provinces especially Ontario and Quebec but
even Alberta with it's oil and natural gas royalties will not be able to
keep this up,
Ontario has a bigger deficit at $21 billion
Canadian than California I think and Ontario only has 12-13 million
people. Quebec which is usually a very socialist province, has actually
liberalized the private element of health care services the most, there
are many Ontarians who go to Quebec to get treated including private MRI
scans etc. British Columbia is also following Quebec and has allowed
private clinics to serve patients.
There are two cures for reducing the deficits
of the provinces, one is to stop the increase in health spending so per
capita spending goes down along with co-payments for superficial
emergencies like colds and coughs to the doctor or emergencies. Other is
to create a two tier system with a fully private one along with the
public system. All three federal parties, even the governing
Conservatives who are most similar to your Republicans and the Bloc
Quebecois (the Quebec nationalists-separatists) are against a private
system but there is a lot of support for it from the more conservative
elements in Canada, including Preston Manning, the former leader of the
populist Reform and former Conservative premier of Ontario Mike Harris.
They wrote a couple booklets published by the
Fraser Insitute
"A Canada Strong and Free"
URL
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/display.aspx?id=1277
and
"Caring for Canadians"
URL
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/display.aspx?id=12928
which basically noted the problems with the Canada Health Act.
Note I am not saying I agree with them or
disagree with either way but they do have some valid points.
Regards,
Ramesh Fernando
CMA Candidate
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
From the Scout Report on August 17, 2012
ShowOrHide 1.0 ---
http://www.deprez.org/folio_0028_en.html
Many Mac users have hidden files located on their
computers that they might not know about. ShowOrHide is a utility designed
to locate invisible files and folders so that users will have more knowledge
about such items. This program is compatible with computers running Mac OS X
10.5 or later.
Lucidchart: Diagramming ---
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/apboafhkiegglekeafbckfjldecefkhn
For all those who have wrestled with creating
charts and diagrams in word processors, the Google Chrome application
Lucidchart may be a long-awaited answer. Users can start using the intuitive
drag-and-drop interface right away, although a free signup is required to
save diagrams. By sharing a link with coworkers, project collaborators can
work on the same diagram at the same time. This application is compatible
with all computers running Google Chrome.
From the Scout Report on August 31, 2012
TweetInsight --- http://tweetinsight.net/
For Twitter users, this helpful application will be
most useful. Interested parties can use TweetInsight to spot the main topics
their Twitter contacts are talking about and also find the most frequently
tweeted hashtags. Also, users can use TweetInsight to find out which URLs
their contacts have been sharing with others. It's quite easy to use and it
is compatible with all operating systems.
Do Share --- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oglhhmnmdocfhmhlekfdecokagmbchnf
Google+ users will find Do Share to be a most
welcome addition to their palette of tools. Visitors can use Do Share to
write and schedule their Google+ posts or share links with others. The site
includes a tutorial, along with suggestions for how to most effectively use
this application. This version is compatible with all operating systems.
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Video on How to Get a Rover to Mars (this is a wonderful
video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/embed/XRCIzZHpFtY?rel=0
Watch until the narration begins and then watch to the end.
Human Body Maps ---
http://www.healthline.com/human-body-maps/
Chemical Reactivity Worksheet ---
http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/chemaids/react.html
Earth Science World Image Bank ---
http://www.earthscienceworld.org/imagebank/index.html
Picturing Science: Museum Scientists and Imaging Technologies
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/picturing-science-museum-scientists-and-imaging-technologies
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ---
http://www.lbl.gov/
Demystifying the Higgs Boson with Leonard Susskind, the Father of String
Theory ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/demystifying_the_higgs_boson_with_leonard_susskind_the_father_of_string_theory.html
Modern Physics: The Theoretical
Minimum
- Modern Theoretical Physics: Classic Mechanics (Video)
– iTunes –YouTube
- Modern Theoretical Physics: Quantum Mechanics (Video) –iTunes – YouTube
- Modern Theoretical Physics: Special Relativity (Video)
– iTunes –YouTube
- Modern Theoretical Physics: Einstein (Video) – iTunes –YouTube
- Modern Theoretical Physics: Cosmology (Video) - iTunes –YouTube
- Modern Theoretical Physics: Statistical Mechanics
(Video) –iTunes – YouTube
MIT Center for Materials Science and Engineering
http://mit.edu/cmse/
Richard and Dion Neutra Papers, 1925-1970 (architecture) ---
http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz0008b9tw
Stephen F. Austin State University: Forest Resources Institute ---
http://www.fri.sfasu.edu/
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
UN News Centre ---
http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/
Minneapolis Labor Review ---
http://www.arcasearch.com/us/lr/initArcaCode.asp?paper=___
Urban Intervention ---
http://thenextfifty.org/urbanintervention/
George McGovern Collection ---
http://dlsd.sdln.net/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2FGMC
American Indians of the Pacific Northwest ---
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/pacific/
American Democracy Project ---
http://www.aascu.org/programs/ADP/
One Life: Amelia Earthart ---
http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/earhart/
60-Second Adventures in Economics: An Animated Intro to The Invisible Hand
and Other Economic Ideas ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/i60-second_adventures_in_economicsi_an_animated_intro_to_the_invisible_hand_and_other_economic_ideas.html
Fails to explain externalities very well
The Paradox of Thrift:---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/i60-second_adventures_in_economicsi_an_animated_intro_to_the_invisible_hand_and_other_economic_ideas.html
The Phillips Curve:---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/i60-second_adventures_in_economicsi_an_animated_intro_to_the_invisible_hand_and_other_economic_ideas.html
The Principle of Comparative Advantage ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/i60-second_adventures_in_economicsi_an_animated_intro_to_the_invisible_hand_and_other_economic_ideas.html
The Impossible Trinity: ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/i60-second_adventures_in_economicsi_an_animated_intro_to_the_invisible_hand_and_other_economic_ideas.html
Rational Choice Theory ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/i60-second_adventures_in_economicsi_an_animated_intro_to_the_invisible_hand_and_other_economic_ideas.html
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Law and Legal Studies
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
Mobile Tour of Harvard University ---
http://www.harvard.edu/visitors/mobile-tour
Video: Ayn Rand’s Philosophy and Her Resurgence in 2012: A Quick Primer
by Stanford Historian Jennifer Burns ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/ayn_rands_philosophy_and_her_resurgence_in_2012_a_quick_primer_by_stanford_historian_jennifer_burns.html
The Second Known Photo of Emily Dickinson Emerges
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/the_second_known_photo_of_emily_dickinson_emerges.html#respond
Treasures in Full: Renaissance Festival Books ---
http://www.bl.uk/treasures/festivalbooks/homepage.html
Mary Binney Wheeler Image Collection (India and Sri Lanka) ---
http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/wheeler/index.html
Long Island Collection ---
http://guides.library.stonybrook.edu/long_island
George McGovern Collection ---
http://dlsd.sdln.net/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2FGMC
Civil War Washington ---
http://civilwardc.org/
Old Maps Online ---
http://www.oldmapsonline.org
Shelby, North Carolina ---
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/shelby/
Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission: State Historic Preservation
Office ---
http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/historic_preservation/3741
Richard and Dion Neutra Papers, 1925-1970 (architecture) ---
http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz0008b9tw
Bridging World History ---
http://www.learner.org/resources/series197.html
Indiana Magazine of History ---
http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/imh/
Set in Stone: Building America's New Generation of Arts Facilities, 1994-2008
(Chicago) ---
http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/setinstone/
American Indians of the Pacific Northwest ---
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/pacific/
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
"I'm Singing in the rain", Gene Kelly ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmCpOKtN8ME
Le Ballet Mécanique: The Historic Cinematic Collaboration Between Fernand
Legér and George Antheil ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/ile_ballet_mecaniquei_the_historic_cinematic_collaboration_between_fernand_leger_and_george_antheil.html
Temple Sheet Music Collections ---
http://digital.library.temple.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fp15037coll1
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/
August 31, 2012
September 3, 2012
September 5, 2012
September 6, 2012
September 7, 2012
September 8, 2012
September 10, 2012
September 8, 2012 message from Bob Blystone
To all:
This communication is not intended to be alarmist but I have found the local
news information about West Nile Virus to be lacking.
I have three references that can be informative.
First by Sejvar. This describes WNV as of 2003. Second is by Murray et al.
and brings the information up to date as of 2010. And finally from Daily
Mail for the end of August and events primarily in the Dallas area.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2192303/West-Nile-virus-West-Nile-epidemic-worst-history-virus-infects-1-118-America-leaves-41-dead.html
The first documented case of West Nile Virus was in 1937. In 1999 the virus
reached the United States. And currently in Texas we have the worst case
load experienced in the US.
So I forward this to you as a matter of public information.
Forwarded by Auntie Bev
If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us
candidates. ~ Jay Leno
The problem with political jokes is they get
elected. ~ Henry Cate, VII
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great
ones to public office. ~ Aesop
If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in
these State of the Union speeches, there wouldn't be any inducement to go to
heaven. ~ Will Rogers
One of the penalties of not participating in
politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors. ~ Plato
Politicians are the same all over. They promise
to build a bridge even where there is no river. ~ Nikita Khrushchev
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could
become President; I'm beginning to believe it. ~ Clarence Darrow
Why pay money to have your family tree traced; go
into politics and your opponents will do it for you. ~ Author unknown
Politicians are people who, when they see light
at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel. ~ John Quinton
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from
the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from
the other. ~ Oscar Ameringer
The Democrats are the party that try to make you
believe more government involvement will make you smarter, taller, richer, and
remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that say
government doesn't work and then, they get elected and prove it. ~ P.J.
O'Rourke
I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop
telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them. ~ Adlai
Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952
A politician is a fellow who will lay down your
life for his country. ~ Tex Guinan
Any American who is prepared to run for president
should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so. ~ Gore
Vidal
I have come to the conclusion that politics is
too serious a matter to be left to the politicians. ~ Charles de Gaulle
Instead of giving a politician the keys to the
city, it might be better to change the locks. ~ Doug Larson
Don't vote; it only encourages them. ~ Author
unknown
There ought to be one day -- just one -- when
there is open season on senators. ~ Will Rogers
Forwarded by Gene and Joan
Annie, 6 years old, gets home from school. She had her first family planning
lesson at school. Her mother, very interested, asks;" How did it go?"
"I died of shame!" She answers! “Why?” Her Mother asked.
Annie said, “Kristi from down the road, says that the stork brings babies.
Sally next door said you can buy babies at the orphanage. Pete in my class says
you can buy babies at the hospital.”
Her mother answers laughingly “But that’s no reason to be ashamed?”
“It is too!!! I can’t tell them that we were so poor that you and daddy had
to make me yourselves!”
Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
The Cult of Statistical Significance:
How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"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
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