Tidbits on November 28, 2012
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Set 3 of Favorite Cartoons
and Humor Pictures
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Humor/Set03/HumorSet03.htm
Tidbits on November 28, 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
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
---
http://plato.stanford.edu/
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: Historic GM Automobiles ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?feature=endscreen&=R=1&v=RvVmDsWnMOk
Shark Dance (watch to the end) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=WK2LpUoqX6A&vq=medium
Adorable Penguins ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#compose
Monkey Displeased by Unfairness ---
http://www.upworthy.com/2-monkeys-were-paid-unequally-see-what-happens-next
Thanks to Jagdish Gangolly for the heads up.
Venice ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice
Video: Venice is Way Under Water… (worst flooding in 150 years) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/venice_is_way_under_water.html
Video: Nobel laureate and Stanford Professor Myron S. Scholes
says some countries are likely to leave the euro so they can become more
competitive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwGHcrjs3iE&utm_source=Stanford+Business+Re%3AThink&utm_campaign=1451d355ee-RTIssue2&utm_medium=email
Myron Scholes is also one of two Nobel laureates brought down by the largest
hedge fund failure in history (what Nova called The Trillion Dollar Bet)
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#LTCM
Monterey Bay Aquarium: Podcast, Videos & Web Cams ---
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/efc/cam_menu.aspx?c=dd
The History of Film — 2000 Movies Across 100 Years — Presented
in One Big Zoomable Graphic ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/the_history_of_film_--_2000_movies_across_100_years_--_presented_in_one_big_zoomable_graphic.html
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
It's Called Christmas! ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAckfn8yiAQ
How Great Thou Art - HD - Barbershop Multitrack - YouTube ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=dxCRIF0m79w&feature=related
Johnny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First
Time, 1971 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/johnny_cash_sings_man_in_black_for_the_first_time_1971.html
Sixteen year old Australian, Chooka
Parker, taught himself to play the piano on a sheep farm ---
http://www.chookaparker.com.au/
‘The Needle and the Damage Done’: Neil
Young Plays Two Songs on The Johnny Cash Show, 1971 ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/the_needle_and_the_damage_done_neil_young_plays_two_songs_on_ithe_johnny_cash_showi_in_nashville_1971.html
John Eliot Gardiner Leads Beethoven's 'Missa
Solemnis' At Carnegie Hall ---
http://www.npr.org/event/music/164957592/carnegie-hall-live-gardiner-leads-beethovens-missa-solemnis
The Best Music to Write By, Part II: Your
Favorites Brought Together in a Special Playlist ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/the_best_music_to_write_by_part_ii_a_playlist_of_your_favorites.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
Photography of Ludwig Wittgenstein Released by Archives at
Cambridge ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/photography_of_ludwig_wittgenstein.html
Neue Gallerie: Online Collection (Germany, Austria) ---
http://www.neuegalerie.org/collection
Video: Historic GM Automobiles ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?feature=endscreen&=R=1&v=RvVmDsWnMOk
Forgotten Detroit (buildings) ---
http://www.forgottendetroit.com/
Ansel Adams: Photography from the Mountains to the Sea - at
the National Maritime Museum, London until 28 April 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20304829
Thank you Roger Collins for the heads up.
Poetic Likeness: Modern American Poets (Portraits of Great
Artists) ---
http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/poets/
Google Revisits the Fall of the Iron Curtain in New Online
Exhibition ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/google_fall_of_the_iron_curtain.html
Savannah College of Art and Design: Museum of Art
--- http://www.scadmoa.org/
From the Ground Up (Kansas student art history
studies) ---
http://www.groundsite.org/
A Tourist's Album of Japan ---
http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?pid=japanesetourist&title=A
Tourist's Album of Japan
Jack Sheaffer Collection (Arizona) ---
http://www.library.arizona.edu/contentdm/jsheaffer/
Arizona Regional Image Archive ---
http://aria.arizona.edu
Knitting Industry
http://www.knittingindustry.com/
Knitting Together (yarn, lace, fabrics, cloth) ---
http://www.knittingtogether.org.uk/cat.asp?cat=599
Boston University Digital Common (wide ranging topics, including travel and
hospitality) ---
http://dcommon.bu.edu/xmlui/
Includes the School of Management
Communities in DCommon
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
The Ten Best American (Liberal) Essays Since 1950, According
to Robert Atwan ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/the_ten_best_american_essays_since_1950.html
Poetic Likeness: Modern American Poets (Portraits of Great
Artists) ---
http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/poets/
British Women Romantic Poets (1789-1832) ---
http://digital.lib.ucdavis.edu/projects/bwrp/
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 November 28, 2012
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2012/TidbitsQuotations112812.htm
The booked National
Debt in August 2012 went over $16 trillion ---
U.S. National Debt Clock ---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Also see
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Question
How does the U.S. government hide its true debt total?
Answer
Firstly, there are $100-$200 trillion in unbooked entitlements. Nobody has an
accurate estimate of those future obligations, especially for the Medicare
gorilla.
The U.S. currently has "booked" National Debt slightly over $16 trillion that
is a more accurate estimate of the debt coming due soon?
Or is this an accurate number by any stretch of the imagination?
"Why $16 Trillion Only Hints at the True U.S. Debt: Hiding the
government's liabilities from the public makes it seem that we can tax our way
out of mounting deficits. We can't," by Chris Cox (former SEC Director) and
Bill Archer (PwC), The Wall Street Journal, November 26, 2012 ---
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323353204578127374039087636.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t&mg=reno64-wsj
A decade and a half ago, both of us served on
President Clinton's Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, the
forerunner to President Obama's recent National Commission on Fiscal
Responsibility and Reform. In 1994 we predicted that, unless something was
done to control runaway entitlement spending, Medicare and Social Security
would eventually go bankrupt or confront severe benefit cuts.
Eighteen years later, nothing has been done. Why?
The usual reason is that entitlement reform is the third rail of American
politics. That explanation presupposes voter demand for entitlements at any
cost, even if it means bankrupting the nation.
A better explanation is that the full extent of the
problem has remained hidden from policy makers and the public because of
less than transparent government financial statements. How else could
responsible officials claim that Medicare and Social Security have the
resources they need to fulfill their commitments for years to come?
As Washington wrestles with the roughly $600
billion "fiscal cliff" and the 2013 budget, the far greater fiscal challenge
of the U.S. government's unfunded pension and health-care liabilities
remains offstage. The truly important figures would appear on the federal
balance sheet—if the government prepared an accurate one.
But it hasn't. For years, the government has gotten
by without having to produce the kind of financial statements that are
required of most significant for-profit and nonprofit enterprises. The U.S.
Treasury "balance sheet" does list liabilities such as Treasury debt issued
to the public, federal employee pensions, and post-retirement health
benefits. But it does not include the unfunded liabilities of Medicare,
Social Security and other outsized and very real obligations.
As a result, fiscal policy discussions generally
focus on current-year budget deficits, the accumulated national debt, and
the relationships between these two items and gross domestic product. We
most often hear about the alarming $15.96 trillion national debt (more than
100% of GDP), and the 2012 budget deficit of $1.1 trillion (6.97% of GDP).
As dangerous as those numbers are, they do not begin to tell the story of
the federal government's true liabilities.
The actual liabilities of the federal
government—including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees'
future retirement benefits—already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP.
For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, the annual accrued expense of Medicare
and Social Security was $7 trillion. Nothing like that figure is used in
calculating the deficit. In reality, the reported budget deficit is less
than one-fifth of the more accurate figure.
Why haven't Americans heard about the titanic $86.8
trillion liability from these programs? One reason: The actual figures do
not appear in black and white on any balance sheet. But it is possible to
discover them. Included in the annual Medicare Trustees' report are separate
actuarial estimates of the unfunded liability for Medicare Part A (the
hospital portion), Part B (medical insurance) and Part D (prescription drug
coverage).
As of the most recent Trustees' report in April,
the net present value of the unfunded liability of Medicare was $42.8
trillion. The comparable balance sheet liability for Social Security is
$20.5 trillion.
Were American policy makers to have the benefit of
transparent financial statements prepared the way public companies must
report their pension liabilities, they would see clearly the magnitude of
the future borrowing that these liabilities imply. Borrowing on this scale
could eclipse the capacity of global capital markets—and bankrupt not only
the programs themselves but the entire federal government.
These real-world impacts will be felt when
currently unfunded liabilities need to be paid. In theory, the Medicare and
Social Security trust funds have at least some money to pay a portion of the
bills that are coming due. In actuality, the cupboard is bare: 100% of the
payroll taxes for these programs were spent in the same year they were
collected.
In exchange for the payroll taxes that aren't paid
out in benefits to current retirees in any given year, the trust funds got
nonmarketable Treasury debt. Now, as the baby boomers' promised benefits
swamp the payroll-tax collections from today's workers, the government has
to swap the trust funds' nonmarketable securities for marketable Treasury
debt. The Treasury will then have to sell not only this debt, but far more,
in order to pay the benefits as they come due.
When combined with funding the general cash
deficits, these multitrillion-dollar Treasury operations will dominate the
capital markets in the years ahead, particularly given China's de-emphasis
of new investment in U.S. Treasurys in favor of increasing foreign direct
investment, and Japan's and Europe's own sovereign-debt challenges.
When the accrued expenses of the government's
entitlement programs are counted, it becomes clear that to collect enough
tax revenue just to avoid going deeper into debt would require over $8
trillion in tax collections annually. That is the total of the average
annual accrued liabilities of just the two largest entitlement programs,
plus the annual cash deficit.
Nothing like that $8 trillion amount is available
for the IRS to target. According to the most recent tax data, all
individuals filing tax returns in America and earning more than $66,193 per
year have a total adjusted gross income of $5.1 trillion. In 2006, when
corporate taxable income peaked before the recession, all corporations in
the U.S. had total income for tax purposes of $1.6 trillion. That comes to
$6.7 trillion available to tax from these individuals and corporations under
existing tax laws.
In short, if the government confiscated the entire
adjusted gross income of these American taxpayers, plus all of the corporate
taxable income in the year before the recession, it wouldn't be nearly
enough to fund the over $8 trillion per year in the growth of U.S.
liabilities. Some public officials and pundits claim we can dig our way out
through tax increases on upper-income earners, or even all taxpayers. In
reality, that would amount to bailing out the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon.
Only by addressing these unsustainable spending commitments can the nation's
debt and deficit problems be solved.
Neither the public nor policy makers will be able
to fully understand and deal with these issues unless the government
publishes financial statements that present the government's largest
financial liabilities in accordance with well-established norms in the
private sector. When the new Congress convenes in January, making the
numbers clear—and establishing policies that finally address them before it
is too late—should be a top order of business.
Mr. Cox, a former chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee
and the Securities and Exchange Commission, is president of Bingham
Consulting LLC. Mr. Archer, a former chairman of the House Ways & Means
Committee, is a senior policy adviser at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
Jensen Comment
Let's forget about this debt and entitlement nonsense.
President Obama should appoint Nobel Laureate Professor Paul Krugman as his only
economic advisor and print all the money we owe without having to worry about
taxes and spending and cliffs. It's called Quantitative Easing but by any other
name it's just printing greenbacks to scatter over the money supply ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing
Not because we will need the money, but let's also confiscate the wealth of the
top 25% as punishment for their abuses of the tax and regulation laws. Greed is
a bad thing, and they need to be knocked to ground level because of their greed.
Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of governmental accounting (it's all
done with smoke and mirrors) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#GovernmentalAccounting
Bob Jensen's threads on entitlements ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Whether or not you love or hate the scholarship and media presentations of
the University of Chicago's Milton Friedman, I think you have to appreciate his
articulate response on this historic Phil Donohue Show episode. Many of the
current dire warnings about entitlements were predicted by him as one of the
cornerstones in his 1970's PBS Series on "Free to Choose." We just didn't listen
as we poured on unbooked national debt (over $100 trillion and not
counting) for future generations to deal with rather than pay as we went so to
speak! .
The Grand Old Scholar/Researcher on the subject of greed in economics
Video: Milton Friedman answers Phil Donohue's questions about
capitalism.---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/MiltonFriedmanGreed.wmv
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
But having a
good idea is only the start. What you have to do is make it
into a story. Some people think that all they need in order to be a writer is
inspiration. Not a bit of it! Plenty of people have good ideas, but very few of
them
actually go on and write story. That's where the hard work starts.
Phillip Pullman, "How do Writers Think of Their
Ideas?"
Big Questions From Little People, Edited by Gemma Elwin Harris, Faber &
Faber, Ltd., ISBN 978-0-16-222322-7, 2012, Page 168
Also see the video at
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/adam_savage_host_of_mythbusters_explains_how_simple_ideas_become_great_scientific_discoveries.html
Every today that is, and that will be, Is sculptured by all that was
Bob
Schlag - January 24, 1982
Thank
you Auntie Bev for the heads up
"Holiday Gadget Wish List 2012," by Terri Eyden, AccountingWeb,
November 19, 2012 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/article/holiday-gadget-wish-list-2012/220246?source=technology
This great item comes from
Roku and is
a new format for their streaming media device. Simply plug in the USB
stick to the HDMI port of your Roku Ready TV, and the self-powered unit
will allow access to numerous services.
Netflix,
Hulu Plus, and
Amazon Video (including prime video access) are all available, among
hundreds of other apps for streaming movies, music, news content, games,
and more. For the money, Roku's products give you more flexibility than
the equivalent
Apple TV line.
Another new "cut-the-cable" addition in the
streaming media category is the new version of the
Boxee TV box,
which for the first time offers a DVR function. This first-of-its-kind
service is currently boasting unlimited online storage for recorded
media from your antenna or cable. The service fee of $15 (currently
discounted at $10) is comparable to other
TiVo style services,
but the unlimited storage will be a tempting offer for many users who
would like to start cataloging their media online. It remains to be seen
how this offer holds up and what limitations exist to file access.
The most recent offering from Amazon, the
Kindle Paperwhite, is a great upgrade over the previous units.
Eliminating one of the few downfalls of their previous e-readers,
low-light reading, the new Paperwhite technology allows for low or no
light use. This front-lit screen gives the reader the ability to read in
complete darkness while maintaining the e-ink-enabled benefit of reading
for long periods with limited eye strain. Granted, some users may not be
prone to reading over long periods; this is a great product for readers
who seek to get lost in a good read.
If that's not your preference, Apple's
newest toy might suit you for a lower price than its previous tablets.
Still not matching the price of the
Kindle Fire HD (another new viable option in this category), the
iPad
mini takes a new shape to Apple's tablet line. Shrinking the 9.7
inch screen of previous iPads to 7.9 inches, Apple has answered a common
request for a smaller version of their market-dominating line.
Interestingly, the iPad mini is actually a smaller version of multiple
generations of the iPad that combines the display quality and processor
of the second gen, with the camera of the third/fourth gen iteration. As
such, the retina display is missing, but the mini is much lighter and
slimmer than previously available versions. Additionally, cellular
versions are available, giving flexibility to users on the go.
Though not a new product or a new
technology, the
LG Tone (HBS-700) Wireless Stereo Headset delivers on an idea that
many other brands seem unable to. A favorite around the
Xcentric office, this
would make an excellent gift for anyone looking for wireless flexibility
for both calls and music. Seemingly unconventional, the chosen design
circumvents common complaints with headsets of this kind. They will fit
on anybody, are comfortable, provide the needed control functions, and
are more durable than they seem at first glance. The sound quality while
listening to music won't cut it for an audiophile, but is more than
adequate for most users. Stereo ear buds for calling gives more sound
isolation than the standard Bluetooth headset, and the mic quality seems
to be on par with other headsets. For portable wireless listening on a
larger budget, the
Bose SoundLink® Bluetooth® Mobile
Speaker II was released in September and is an excellent
alternative.
The newly released
Chromebook is another intriguing product available in time for the
2012 holidays. This third gen lighter/smaller version comes with some
great features for a price point just above the Kindle Fire HD and lower
than all Apple tablets. It remains to be seen if Google is creating a
new category or if this line will fade away. However, the newest release
might be worth a look for certain users. Primarily a browser-based
system, the newest Chromebook does include HDMI, USB 3.0, USB 2.0,
Bluetooth, a webcam, and dual band Wi-Fi, while boasting 6.5 hours of
battery, all in a slim, lightweight package. Though primarily based on
using Google's services on the web, a Citrix plug-in is available to
access more complete Cloud services. I'd want to try this out to before
banking on it, but for the price tag, Google is clearly trying to break
into this market.
Other Mentions
Here are a few other great gift ideas:
"A Handheld Projector You Might Actually Want With built-in Roku,
it's like a portable internet TV," by David Zax, MIT's Technology
Review, October 11, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429596/a-handheld-projector-you-might-actually-want/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20121012
Here’s something you probably didn’t know you
wanted. 3M has come up with a handheld projector--or “picoprojector”--with
a Roku Streaming Stick built in. That means that the $300 device can
function as something of a portable TV, with access to Netflix, Amazon
Instant, Hulu Plus, HBO Go, and the like.
BGR was one of the first to spot 3M’s
press release on the topic a few days back. In
it, 3M touted a projector “small enough to fit in your hand, yet able to
project an image up to 120 inches,” one that was “perfect for family
movie nights, sleepovers and evening backyard parties,” with it’s
(claimed) two-hour-forty-five-minute battery life. 3M also called the
device “first-of-its-kind,” promising a shipping date by October 22. (It
can be
preordered here, for now with a promo offering
a $20 credit from Amazon Instant Video.)
The
good people of CNET have already gone hands-on
with the device, which they grant 3.5 stars out of 5: “very good.” They
call it the first mini-projector with “some mainstream appeal.” They
also dub it a “well-thought-out gadget” and especially recommend what
seems to me the delightful experience of projecting video onto the
ceiling while in bed. CNET’s principal quarrels are that the resolution
is merely DVD-level, and that the device only puts out 60
lumens. You’ll need to be in a pitch black room with the whitest of
walls if you really want to get up to that 120-inch screen. (Here, a
deep dive on their image test data.) The
biggest problem CNET identified is that the battery life, in practice,
appeared to actually be closer to one hour and forty-five
minutes--barely enough for a movie.
Technology Review has written a fair
amount on handheld projectors in the past. For more info on the project
of integrating them with smartphones, see “The
Galaxy Beam: 15 Lumens and a Lot of Cheese,”
and “In
Quest for Smartphone Projectors, a Focus on the Lens.” And
for a look at the research that went into the narrowest pocket projector
out there--a mere six millimeters thick--check out Duncan Graham-Rowe’s
article, “An
Even Smaller Pocket Projector.”
The 3M projector isn’t cheap, but I like the
sentiment at the end of this video: “It’s time to share the big screen
together.” In an era in which we would sooner cluster around an iPhone
with friends to share a tiny YouTube video than head out to the Cineplex
for some old-fashioned movie magic, this picoprojector recaptures some
of the cinematic experience in a device not so much larger than the
gadget in your pocket.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology
Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
"McGraw-Hill to Sell Education Arm for $2.5-Billion," Chronicle
of Higher Education, November 26, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/mcgraw-hill-to-sell-education-arm-for-2-5-billion?cid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en
Question
If you wanted to be like my hero David Pogue, what would you buy?
"What Pogue Actually Bought," by David Pogue, The New York Times,
June 8, 2012 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/what-pogue-actually-bought/
Outdoor Lighting for Your House
I used to spend days stringing thousands of lights around my windows, eaves, and
bushes while I lived in San Antonio. In fact our Village Drive neighborhood make
a big deal about decorative lighting on most all the houses. The traffic was
sometimes bumper-to-bumper at night on our streets.
Up here in the mountains we don't really live in a "neighborhood." I've never
decorated the outside because of the wind, the snow, the ice, and the fact that
I just don't want to spend days hanging lights reaching out from a ladder. And
electricity is more expensive up here.
But then my wife discovered the BlissLight
Spright. We now have thousands of twinkling lights on three sides of our
cottage that look like I spent all year stringing lights. With only three 12
volt adapters for the lasers so the power usage is minimal.
It only takes one light for each side of the cottage. On Amazon each light costs
almost $200 with the requisite power adapter, but Erika found them for $159 on
QVC --- maybe she got a deal because she's in the
QVC Hall of Fame.
I takes less than five minutes to install each
Spright light. But you do have to have an outdoor power connection and an
outdoor cord leading on the lawn to each light. However, the light itself only
needs to be 10-20 feet from the side of the house and is mounted on an iron
stake that's easy to drive into the lawn.
I will have to shovel around the light if we should get snow over a foot deep on
the ground, but we usually don't get much over a foot on the ground until
Jan-April when we can have upwards of five feet on the ground.
The lights will not work below -15F, but we usually do not get nights that cold
until Jan-Feb.
The Spright laser lights make look a little better up here than they would in a
brightly lit neighborhood. Up here the only lights we get at night are from the
heavens. It's interesting how the laser light passes through windows without
curtains or sheers. This means that the lights outside are shaped around those
windows. The laser lights pass through the windows and up to the ceilings inside
the house.
Up here we hate bright lights at night except for lights at a great distance. I
can look across the valley to the lights of an alpine village called
Mittersil on the
slopes of Cannon Mountain, but that's 10 miles away.
People who live in non-gated neighborhoods in cities may have to worry about
theft since these laser guns are relatively expensive (from $150 to $1,400).
People who live in cities may want to mount them in high places like like roofs
or tree tops. And there's a worry about ambient lighting being too bright. Up
here in the White Mountains these things are not a worry --- at least not for
me.
On our house in the blackness of light the laser points just look Christmas
lights on the cottage. The lights pass through windows without curtains or
sheers, which is nice because that way the windows look black from the outside
and are framed in laser lights. Light passing through the windows projects onto
the ceilings and walls inside the cottage.
The basic color we purchased is green. Blue may is also available. There's a bit
of a problem with red that is explained in the first video below.
ToolGirl Video ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Posi-vDO0cM
YouTube Video ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7gIY7KoHKk
Portable Units Using Batteries ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZogozE9qbPg
There are so many business school rankings by Bloomberg Business Week that it
boggles my mind, to say nothing of the other media rankings of business schools
by U.S. News, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Economist, etc.
The above link is one of the more interesting rankings because it vividly
illustrates what I call the "Vegetable Problem of Aggregation" in the context of
accounting number aggregations at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
Take a look at how your favorite greens
stack up in the chart below:
|
Green (Raw -
per 100 g serving) |
Vitamin
A |
Vitamin
C |
Fiber |
Folate |
Calories |
|
Arugula |
2,373 IU |
15 mg |
1 g |
97 mcg |
25 |
|
Chicory |
4,000 IU |
24 mg |
4 g |
109.5 mg |
23 |
|
Collards |
3,824 IU |
35.3 mg |
3 g |
166 mcg |
30 |
|
Endive |
2,050 IU |
6.5 mg |
3 g |
142 mcg |
17 |
|
Kale |
8,900 IU |
120 mg |
2 g |
29.3 mcg |
50 |
|
Butterhead
(includes Boston and Bibb) |
970 IU |
8 mg |
1 g |
73.3 mcg |
13 |
|
Romaine |
2,600 IU |
24 mg |
1 g |
135.7 mcg |
14 |
|
Iceberg |
330 IU |
3.9 mg |
1 g |
56 mcg |
12 |
|
Loose leaf
(red, green) |
1,900 IU |
18 mg |
1 g |
49.8 mcg |
18 |
|
Radicchio |
27 IU |
8 mg |
0 g |
60 mcg |
23 |
|
Spinach |
6,715 IU |
28.1 mg |
2 g |
194.4 mcg |
22 |
|
Source: U.S.
Department of Agriculture, 1999 |
Also see
Examination of Front-of-Package Nutrition Rating Systems and Symbols ---
http://iom.edu/Activities/Nutrition/NutritionSymbols.aspx
Systemic Problem: All
Aggregations Are Arbitrary
Systemic Problem: All Aggregations Combine Different Measurements With Varying
Accuracies
Systemic Problem: All Aggregations Leave Out Important Components
Systemic Problem: All Aggregations Ignore Complex & Synergistic Interactions of
Value and Risk
Systemic Problem: Disaggregating of Value or Cost is Generally Arbitrary
While looking at the following diet
guides, it dawned on me that perhaps accounting reports should be more like food
labeling and comparison tables/charts rather than the traditional bottom line
reporting. The problem with accounting is bottom-line reporting of selective
and ill-conceived aggregates such as earnings-per-share or debt/equity. Suppose
spinach has an e.p.s. of 4.67 in comparison to 5.62 for Kale. The aggregations
all depend upon how components are measured, how they are weighted (e.g.,
Vitamin A versus Folate weighting coefficients), and what components are
included/excluded (e.g., Vitamin A is included below, but Vitamin B components
are ignored). The same is true of e.p.s. in financial reporting. The "bottom
line" depends in a complex way upon how components are measured and weighted as
well as upon what components are included/excluded.
In a similar manner, accounting
aggregations all depend upon how components are measured, weighted, and
included/excluded. Cash is measured with great accuracy whereas goodwill
impairment is highly inaccurate, thereby causing greater error range when cash
and goodwill are added together in balance sheets. Similarly, in the "New
Economy" where intangible intellectual capital is soaring in value relative to
traditional tangible assets, the intangibles left off the balance sheet may be
far more important that the combined value of everything included in the balance
sheet.
An even larger problem is that the
value and risk of diet components depend heavily upon complex and synergistic
relationships. For example, research shows that after the body hits its maximum
threshold of Vitamin C, it simply throws off the excess. Kale far surpasses
endive in Vitamin C content, but this is irrelevant in a diet overflowing in
Vitamin C from other sources such as citrus fruits. Some persons may be
allergic to components that are of greater value to other persons.
In a similar manner accounting valuations are greatly complicated by
synergistic complexities. A patent in the hands of one company may be all but
useless in the hands of another company. Indeed some companies buy up patents
just to squelch newer technology that threatens existing products. Similarly,
financial risk is not a fixed thing. It is a very dynamic threat that is based
upon all sorts of contingencies such as world events and media coverage that can
interact heavily with the level of risk at any point in time.
For similar reasons disaggregating of
values/costs is generally arbitrary. Firstly there is the famous problem of
joint production cost allocation arbitrariness noted in the early writings of
John Stuart Mill (The Principles of Political Economy) and Alfred
Marshall (The Principles of Economics). Then there is the problem of
synergistic complexities noted above. For example, suppose spinach sells for $5
per bunch. Any attempt to disaggregate that $5 into additive values of
nutrients will be arbitrary, because nutrients in combination may be worth more
or less than the sum of disaggregated values of each nutrient. This gives rise
to the systemic problem of consolidation goodwill when two or more companies are
combined into one whole.
Bob Jensen's threads on media rankings of colleges and universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
"The Education Giant Adapts: Pearson is the world’s largest book
publisher. Now it wants to be a one-stop shop for digital education," by
Jessica Leber, MIT's Technology Review, November 23, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506361/the-education-giant-adapts/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20121123
Textbook Price Comparisons ---
http://www.gettextbooks.com/
Personally, I recommend that students fist check the used book prices at
Amazon.---
http://www.amazon.com/
Whenever I can I prefer to buy from Amazon just to avoid having my credit card
on hundreds of databases around the world.
"Psychologists Release Emotion-On-Demand
Plug In For Virtual Characters: Downloadable facial expressions for
virtual characters are guaranteed to convey specific emotions, say psychologists,"
MIT's Technology Review, November 22, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/507786/psychologists-release-emotion-on-demand-plug-in-for-virtual-characters/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20121123
Also see
http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.4500
Downloadable Expressions ---
http://www.joostbroekens.com/
Bob Jensen's threads on visualizing multivariate data (including faces) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm
The History of Film — 2000 Movies Across 100 Years — Presented in One
Big Zoomable Graphic ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/the_history_of_film_--_2000_movies_across_100_years_--_presented_in_one_big_zoomable_graphic.html
Jensen Comment
This is one way to get ideas for movies to download from Netflix and other film
sites.
"UCLA Pulls Videos From Course Sites After Copyright Challenge," by
Jill Laster, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 2, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/UCLA-Pulls-Videos-From-Course/21013/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
"Judge Throws Out Copyright Lawsuit Over UCLA's Streaming of Videos to
Students," by Charles Huckabee, Chronicle of Higher Education,
Noivember 26, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Judge-Throws-Out-Lawsuit-Over/135932/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
A federal judge in California has for the second
time thrown out a lawsuit that accused the University of California at Los
Angeles of violating copyright law by streaming videos online.
Judge Consuelo B. Marshall of the U.S. District
Court in Los Angeles had
previously dismissed the lawsuit in October 2011,
but she allowed the plaintiffs, Ambrose Video Publishing Inc. and the
Association for Information Media and Equipment, a trade group, to file a
second amended complaint. In a
ruling issued last Tuesday, she rejected the
second amended complaint.
The
plaintiffs contended that UCLA had acted illegally
in copying DVD's of Shakespeare plays acquired from Ambrose and streaming
them online for faculty and students to use in courses. UCLA argued that
streaming the videos was permissible under the fair-use principle, which can
allow reproductions for teaching, and the Teach Act, which allows limited
use of copyrighted materials for online education.
In her ruling, Judge Marshall said the plaintiffs
had failed to provide adequate support for their infringement claim. The
ruling hinges largely on findings that the plaintiffs lacked standing and
that the defendants had sovereign or qualified immunity. But in a section of
the ruling, Judge Marshall also considered four factors relating to the
fair-use arguments.
One of those factors weighed in favor of not
finding fair use, she wrote, "because the entire works were streamed, not
just portions." But, on balance, she wrote, "the court concludes that there
is, at a minimum, ambiguity as to whether defendants' streaming constitutes
fair use." She added: "Notably, no court has considered whether streaming
videos only to students enrolled in a class constitutes fair use, which
reinforces the ambiguity of the law in this area."
A lawyer for the defendants, who include the
Regents of the University of California and several individuals, said the
ruling was "a complete victory."
The lawyer, R. James Slaughter of Keker & Van Nest
LLP, told the news
service Law360 that the ruling "confirms what UCLA
has long believed: that streaming previously purchased video content over
its intranet for educational purposes is not a copyright violation or a
violation of any contract."
Lawyers for the plaintiffs were not immediately
available for comment.
The case is Association for Information Media and Equipment et al. v.
Regents of the University of California et al. (No. 2:10-cv-09378-CBM),
in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
Bob Jensen's threads on the dreaded DMCA ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Copyright
1200 Years of Housing Bubbles ---
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/11/grantham-biggest-housing-bubble-since-807-a-d-has-burst/
Dumber Lawyers
"Another Drop in LSAT Test-Takers," Inside Higher Ed, November 20, 2012
---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/11/20/another-drop-lsat-test-takers
"Not a New Problem: How the State of the Legal Profession Has Been
Secretly in Decline for Quite Some Time," by Marc Gans, SSRN, June 24, 2012
---
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2173144
My goal was to provide an in-depth
analysis of the job market for new law graduates over time, as well as
the state of the legal field as a whole. Using historical records, I
reached the following results:
- Depending on which dataset is used, of the
1.4 million law graduates of the last 40-years, 200,000-600,000 are
not working as attorneys.
- Using NALP data, I calculate a True
Employment Percentage (full-time, JD-required jobs excluding those
who start their own practice) and find that it has been bad for a
long time, not just recently. Over the last 25 years this percentage
has averaged 68%, meaning 1 out of every 3 graduates couldn't find
legal work. I also use regression to show that it is not correlated
with bar passage rates.
- Using this True Employment Percentage, I
found that the ABA should have stopped accrediting law schools in
the mid-1970's.
- The ABA dataset shows that overall, these
"newer" law schools have worse employment outcomes, especially for
the most desirable jobs. For example, 16% of graduates of schools
accredited before 1975 found employment in firms of 100 attorneys,
while under 4% of graduates of schools accredited after this time
did.
- Income inequality for starting salaries
has been widening dramatically. Over the last 16 years, the 75th
percentile real starting salary has increased 73%, while the 25th
percentile real starting salary has increased just 11% (almost all
of it occurring before 2000).
Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
From the Scout Report on November 23, 2012
New study claims humans are evolving to become less intelligent
Dumb and Dumber - Study Says Humans Are Slowly Losing Their Smarts
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/11/13/dumb-and-dumber-study-says-humans-are-slowly-losing-their-smarts?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews
Our Fragile Intellect, Parts I and II
http://www.cell.com/trends/genetics/searchresults?searchText=gerald+crabtree&submit_search=Search&searchBy=fulltext
17 Things That Make You Dumber
http://www.businessinsider.com/17-things-that-make-you-dumber-2012-8?op=1
The Movie Hollywood Doesn’t Want You to See
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2006/09/the_movie_hollywood_doesnt_want_you_to_see.html
Are Humans Getting Dumber?
http://io9.com/5960176/are-humans-getting-dumber
Synthetic Synapse Could Take Us One Step Closer to an Artificial Brain
http://io9.com/5917334/synthetic-synapse-could-take-us-one-step-closer-to-an-artificial-brain
"We're Probably Not Getting Dumber," NeuroSkeptic, November 16,
2012 ---
Click Here
http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2012/11/were-probably-not-getting-dumber.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Neuroskeptic+%28Neuroskeptic%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
Visualizing Global Corruption (Infographic) ---
http://globalsociology.com/2012/11/14/visualizing-corruption-infographics-compared/
Hit the arrow button to start the video.
Visualization of Multivariate Data (including faces) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm
"Making Sense of All the New (2012) Laptop Flavors," by Walter
Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2012
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323713104578131092136289494.html
"Mossberg’s Annual Holiday Laptop Buyers’ Guide (Video)," The Wall
Street Journal, November 23, 2012
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/11/23/mossbergs-annual-holiday-laptop-buyers-guide/?mod=WSJBlog&mod=
Bob Jensen's technology links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm
Tax ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax
"Tax Time: Why we pay," by Jill Lepore, The New Yorker,
November 26, 2012 ---
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/11/26/121126fa_fact_lepore
Bob Jensen's taxation helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation
"A Trillion-Dollar Transfer Of Wealth Is About To Hit Silicon Valley,"
by Dan Lyons, ReadWriteWeb, November 20, 2012 ---
http://readwrite.com/2012/11/20/a-trillion-dollar-transfer-of-wealth-is-about-to-hit-silicon-valley
Jensen Comment
Perhaps this article is a bit naive. Those cash-rich long-time Silicon Valley
firms are instead more likely to buy up the competition. In a sense this is a
"transfer of wealth," but this is not the context of the article regarding
smaller and more innovative companies.
"Sky City: China to Build World's Tallest Building, 220 Stories, in 90
Days," by Mike Shedlock, Townhall, November 2012 ---
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/mikeshedlock/2012/11/21/sky_city_china_to_build_worlds_tallest_building_220_stories_in_90_days
Jensen Comment
Building a building in 90 days? Hummm. Does this count the years of building
prefabricated modules that will only take 90 days to assemble?
This reminds me of the unique Hilton Palacio Del Rio Hotel in San Antonio. It
too was assembled in record time in 1968. But assembling merely entailed lifting
modularized concrete rooms into place with a crane. The rooms contained all the
plumbing fixtures, carpets, curtains, and furniture.
Hilton Palacio Del Rio Hotel ---
http://www3.hilton.com/en/hotels/texas/hilton-palacio-del-rio-SATPDHF/index.html
Note the pictures.
"21-Story Modular Hotel Raised The Roof for Texas World Fair in 1968,"
modular.org ---
http://www.modular.org/htmlpage.aspx?htmlpageid=400
The Hilton Palacio del Rio Hotel is a milestone,
not only for the City of San Antonio, but for the modular construction
industry as well. Built by H.B. Zachry Company (now Zachry Construction
Corporation) across the street from the site of HemisFair, the Texas World's
Exposition of 1968, the 500-room deluxe hotel was designed, completed and
occupied in an unprecedented period of 202 working days. This is an
achievement of which H.B. Zachry Sr. and each of his workers can well be
proud.
Of the Palacio del Rio's 21 stories, the first four
were built of conventional, reinforced concrete for support facilities. At
the same time, an elevator and utility core, also of reinforced concrete,
were slip formed to a full height of 230 feet. From the fifth floor to the
20th, modules were stacked and connected by welding of steel embedments.
The 496 rooms were placed by crane in 46 days.
The 21st floor, an area which contains a grand ballroom and other required
public space, was constructed of light steel and enclosed by an aluminum
window hall. The building is served by six elevators (four public and two
freight), has a swimming pool on its fifth floor and occupies a half an acre
site in downtown San Antonio.
By giving the room a pre-determined magnetic
heading and by "feathering" the vertical propeller, the operator atop the
"flying" room controlled the direction of each unit as it was being hoisted
to a precise location.
The hotel's room modules were pre-cast from
light-weight structural concrete. Before arriving on the construction site,
each room was fully decorated, including color TV, AM/FM radios, beds,
carpeting, bottle openers, automatic coffee makers, ash trays, etc. The
units are 32 feet 8 inches and 29 feet 8 inches long, 13 feet wide and 9
feet 6 inches high. They weigh 35 tons each and were manufactured at a plant
located eight miles from the project site.
Zachry set up a production line consisting of two
rows of eight room-size forms that produced eight complete units daily. The
working crews were composed, as an average, of more than 100 men who
completed a designated task 496 times.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
When "building" a high rise where does the start time begin?
Student Project
It would be interesting for students in teams to tackle the costing differences
between modularization construction versus more conventional construction. For
example, modularization probably entails more inventory and inventory financing
costs since many of those modules have to sit idle after completion while
awaiting the construction and furnishing of the other modules.
I assume at first blush that at the time the Hilton Palacio Del Rio
Hotel was built, modularization was not cost effective. Otherwise the many
hotels build since then would've adopted modularization. Since they did not, I
assume that modularization has, until now at least, been too expensive.
"Never Lose Your Wallet: Your iPhone could help you find your wallet.,"
by David Zax, MIT's Technology Review, November 20, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/507701/never-lose-your-wallet/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20121121
Jensen Comment
If the iPhone can find your wallet, finding your car keys and your kids can't be
far behind. Maybe the wives of generals will even find their husbands. San
Antonio car owners might even locate their stolen cars before they cross the Rio
Grande --- but that only takes about three hours and then the cars are gone
forever. Interestingly, many stolen cars flow through Mexico into the sink hole
of Belize just like Saudi Arabia is the sink hole for stolen luxury cars in
Europe.
Coal is Still King, Sober Look, November 19, 2012 ---
http://soberlook.com/2012/11/rail-freight-prices-rise-firms-able-to.html
Video
How a Crossword Puzzle is Made: Behind the Scenes with The New York Times
---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/how_a_crossword_puzzle_is_made_behind_the_scenes_with_the_new_york_times_.html
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting crossword puzzles and other edutainment
games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Make Your Own Crosswords for Fun and Learning
June 4. 2008 message from Andrew PRIEST
[a.priest@ECU.EDU.AU]
I thought I would share this email which came
from one of our librarians. It may be of interest.
Regards
Andrew
Hi Andrew
I came across this free website
http://www.eclipsecrossword.com/samples.html
which allows you (anyone) to make up a
crossword on any topic.
They had examples of crosswords which have
been setup for Accounting which I thought was rather cute & an
alternative to quizzes
http://www.accountingcrosswords.com /
Regards
Maureen
Jensen Comment
Here's a neat interactive Javascript crossword made using Eclipse ---
http://lschwake.tripod.com/crosswords/acc22cross.html
Click on one of the boxes to get started.
Some of Bob Jensen's Former Tidbits:
Somewhat related is the Crossword Construction Kit (not free) ---
http://www.crosswordkit.com/
Other word games ---
http://www.puzzleconnection.com/
Discovery Channel School's PuzzleMaker (free) ---
http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com
This puzzle-generation tool helps create and print customized word search,
crossword and math puzzles using your own word lists.
AccountingCrosswords.com
(with many subtopics) ---
http://www.accountingcrosswords.com/
Example: Payroll Accounting Crossword Puzzle ---
http://www.accountingcoach.com/crossword-puzzles/payroll-empty.html
Brenda Kennedy's k-12
Accounting Crosswords ---
http://ww2.nps.k12.va.us/education/components/docmgr/default.php?sectiondetailid=34838
Crossword Bank (with a
section on taxation) ---
Click Here
Payroll Accounting
Crossword Puzzle ---
http://www.accountingcoach.com/crossword-puzzles/payroll-empty.html
Basic Accounting Example
---
Click Here
Computer
defeats humans at the NYT’s crossword Puzzles
Crossword-solving computer program WebCrow has
defeated 25 human competitors in a puzzle competition in Riva del Garda,
Italy. The program took both first- and second-place honors in the contest,
which was staged as part of the European Conference on Artificial
Intelligence, New Scientist reported Thursday. The two English puzzles were
taken from The New York Times and The Washington Post, while two Italian
puzzles were taken from newspapers in the country. A fifth puzzle featured
clues in both languages taken from all four sources. "It exceeded our
expectations because there were around 15 Americans in the competition,"
said Marco Ernandes, who created WebCrow along with Giovanni Angelini and
Marco Gori. "Now we'd like to test it against more people with English as
their first language."
"Computer defeats humans at crossword," PhysOrg, September 1, 2006
---
http://physorg.com/news76345125.html
Question
Will daily working of crossword puzzles and similar mental exercise
deter the rate of cognitive decline in older brains?
The last two paragraphs below are
important.
"Oops! Mental Training, Crosswords Fail
to Slow Decline of Aging Brain," by Sharon Begley, The Wall Street
Journal, April 21, 2006; Page B1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/science_journal.html
If you thought
recent clinical trials of reduced-fat diets and breast cancer, or
calcium/vitamin D and hip fractures, were disappointing when the
intervention failed to live up to its billing, you haven't seen
studies of whether mental training slows the rate of cognitive
decline resulting from aging.
The largest such
study, called Active, was launched in 1998 and is still going. It
trained 2,832 adults, aged 65 years old to 94, in memory, reasoning
or visual attention and perception. Disappointment ensued. Though
the trainees did better on the skill they practiced, that didn't
translate to improvement on the others (memory training didn't
sharpen reasoning, for instance).
Worse, when the
trainees were tested years later, performance fell more than it did
in the untrained group, according to a new analysis by Timothy
Salthouse of the University of Virginia, a veteran of studies on
aging and cognition. That probably reflects the fact that if
performance rises it has further to fall, he says.
But there is a
larger issue. "There is no convincing empirical evidence that mental
activity slows the rate of cognitive decline," he concludes from an
exhaustive review of decades of studies. "The research I reviewed is
just not consistent with the idea that engaging in mentally
stimulating activities as you age prevents or slows cognitive
decline."
Many scientists, not
to mention the rest of us, believe it does. The "mental exercise"
hypothesis has been around since 1920, and studies find that higher
mental activity -- more hours per week spent reading, doing
crossword puzzles, learning a language or the like -- is associated
with better cognitive function. That has spawned the idea that, to
keep your brain young(ish), you should partake of intellectual
challenges.
But this logic
has a hole big enough to drive a truck through. Just because older
adults who are more mentally active are sharper than peers who are
cognitive couch potatoes doesn't mean mental activity in old age
raises cognitive performances, let alone slows the rate of decline.
To conclude that it does confuses
correlation with causation.
Consider an
alternative that is gaining scientific support. Say you enter old
age (by which I mean your 30s, when mental functioning starts
heading south, accelerating in your 50s) with a "cognitive reserve"
-- a cushion of smarts. If so, you are likely to be able to remember
appointments, balance a checkbook and understand Medicare Part D
(OK, maybe not) well into your 60s and 70s. But not because your
brain falls apart more slowly. Instead, you started off so far above
the threshold where impaired thinking and memory affect your ability
to function that normal decline leaves you still all right.
The Active study
isn't the only reason scientists are rethinking the
use-it-and-you-won't-lose-it idea. In the Seattle Longitudinal
Study, older adults received five hours of training on spatial
rotation (what would a shape look like if it turned?) or logic
(given three patterns, which of four choices comes next?). As in
Active, people got better on what they practiced.
But seven years
later, their performance had declined just as steeply (though,
again, from a higher starting point) as the performance of people
with no training, scientists reported last year. That supports the
cognitive reserve idea -- if you enter middle age with a good memory
and reasoning skills you stay sharp longer -- not the
mental-exercise hypothesis.
Even in the most
mentally engaged elderly -- chess experts, professors, doctors --
mental function declines as steeply as in people to whom mental
exercise means choosing which TV show to watch. Again, profs and
docs enter old age with a brain functioning so far above the minimum
that even with the equal rate of decline they do better than folks
with no cognitive cushion.
Crossword puzzles do
not live up to the hope people invest in them, either. Age-related
decline is very similar in people whether or not they wrestled with
24 Downs, Prof. Salthouse and his colleagues find in a recent study.
There is "no evidence" that puzzle fans have "a slower rate of
age-related decline in reasoning," he says.
Evaluating
use-it-and-you-won't-lose-it in a new journal, Perspectives on
Psychological Science, he ends on a grim note: There is "little
scientific evidence that engagement in mentally stimulating
activities alters the rate of mental aging." He regards the belief
as "more of an optimistic hope than an empirical reality."
But don't write
off mental exercise yet. True, neither one-time training nor regular
mental challenges such as crosswords slow the rate of cognitive
decline. But they do show that "older adults can be made to perform
better on almost anything they can be trained on," says Michael
Marsiske of the University of Florida, who helped run the Active
study. "We're still detecting differences seven years after the
training."
In practical
terms, although mental function continues to decline even after
mental training, the latter can give old brains enough of a boost
that they nevertheless remain higher functioning than untrained
brains. A number of scientists think they understand what kind of
training provides the biggest, most enduring boost. Next week, I'll
look at their ideas.
Does anybody think this is potentially scary? Much depends upon potential
privacy data in the Big Data collected
From Jerry Trite's E-Business Blog on November 16, 2012 ---
http://trites-e-business.blogspot.com/
Location Based Marketing Moves Ahead
Cisco announced last week a new technology that can
be used to track customers in or near their stores. It uses the customers'
cell phone signals, transforming them into WiFi signals, which can then be
transmitted back to the store WiFi and analyzed. The technology can track
their location quite accurately. In addition, if the customer has previously
purchased at that store and agreed to a store promotional campaign, the
technology can bring up their past history of shopping and their
preferences. All of this big data is then analyzed and used to offer the
shoppers special deals on the spot. It's a classic location-based marketing
exercise using big data analysis techniques. It's a technology that has a
very bright future, since smart phones are holding more and more information
and are about to be used for payments, adding additional information to the
mix
Cisco Brings Location-Based Big Data To Shopping ---
http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/cisco-brings-locationbased-big-data-to-shopping/240142146
"Content Discovery Demystified," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed,
November 21, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/11/21/essay-study-how-researchers-get-access-scholarly-articles
Scholarly publishing consultants Tracy Gardner and Simon Inger
recently concluded a large-scale study of how researchers navigate the
flood of digitized scholarly content.
Renew Training, the British
company they run, will sell you the complete data set for a mere £1000
(that's $1,592), or the same information in a deluxe Excel spreadsheet,
outfitted with specially designed an analytic features, for £2,500 (a
cool $3,981). Anyone whose curiosity is merely idle or penniless must
settle for the
“survey edition” of the consultants' own analysis, in PDF, which is
free.
As you would expect, it's more of an advertisement than a
report, with graphs that hint at how much data they have, and how many
kinds of it, from around the world. Gardner and Inger’s own report, “How
Readers Discover Content in Scholarly Journals,” is available in
e-book format at a reasonable price – so I sprang for a copy and
have culled some of their findings for this week’s column.
The key word here being some, because even the consultants’
non-exhaustive crunching of the numbers is pretty overwhelming. Between
May and July of this year, they collected responses from more than
19,000 interview subjects spanning the populated world. The questions
covered various situations in which someone might go looking for
scholarly articles in a digital format and the considerable range of
ways of going about it. Two-thirds of respondents were from academic
institutions – with a large majority (three out of four) identifying
themselves as researchers.
Roughly two-thirds of the respondents were from North America and
Europe, and the interview itself was conducted in English. But enough
participants came from the medical, corporate, and government sectors,
and from countries in Africa, Oceania, and South America, to make the
study something other than a report on Anglo-American academe. In
addition, Gardner and Inger conducted a similar survey in 2008 (albeit
with a much smaller harvest of data, from around 400 respondents). They
also draw on a study they conducted in 2005 as consultants for another
group.
The trends, then. The range and size of digitally
published scholarship keep growing, and a number of tools or approaches
have developed for accessing material. Researchers rely on university
library sites, abstracting and indexing (A&I) services, compilations of
links assembled by learned societies or research teams, social networks,
and search engines both general (Yahoo) and focused (Google Scholar).
You might bookmark a favorite journal, or sign up for an e-mail alert
when the table of contents for a new issue is out, or use the journal
publisher’s website to find an article.
The survey questions cover three research “behaviors” common across
the disciplines: (1) following up a citation, (2) browsing in the core
journals in a given field, and (3) looking for articles on a specific
subject. As indicated, quite a few ways of carrying out these tasks are
now available. Some approaches are better-developed in one field than
another. The survey shows that researchers in the life sciences use the
National Institutes of Health's bibliographical database
PubMed “almost
exclusively,” while the e-mailed table-of-contents (ToC) notifications
for chemistry journals are rich enough in information for their readers
to find them valuable.
And ease of access to sorting-and-channeling methods varies from one
part of the world to the next. A researcher in a poor country is likely
to use the search feature on a publisher’s website (bookmarked for just
that purpose) for the simple reason that doing so is free – while
someone working in a major research library may have access to numerous
bibliographical tools so well-integrated into the digital catalog that
users barely notice them as such.
North American researchers “are most likely to use an academic search
engine or the library web pages if they have a citation,” the reports
notes, “whilst Europeans are more likely to go the journal’s homepage.”
Humanities scholars “rely much more on library web pages and especially
aggregated collections of journals” than do researchers in the life
sciences.
Comments made by social scientists reveal that they use “a much more
varied list of resources” for following up citations, including one
respondent who relied on “my husband’s library because mine is so bad.”
When browsing around the journals in their field, researchers in the
field of education “are greater users of academic search engines and of
web pages maintained by key research groups” than are people working in
other areas. “Social scientists appear to use journal aggregations less
than those in the humanities for reading the latest articles.” And all
of them rank “library web pages and journal aggregations more highly”
than do people in medicine and the physical and life sciences. One
respondent indicated that it wasn’t really necessary to look through
recent issues of journals in mathematics because “nowadays virtually all
leading research in math is uploaded to
arXiv.”
Specialized bibliographical databases “are still the most popular
resource” for someone trying to read up on a particular topic, “and
allowing for a margin of error [this preference] shows no significant
change over time.” The web pages compiled by scholarly societies and
research groups “have both shown a slight upward trend” in that regard,
“which may be due to changes in publisher marketing strategies resulting
in readers becoming more familiar publisher and society brands.”
Read more:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/11/21/essay-study-how-researchers-get-access-scholarly-articles#ixzz2CrbCVYNO
Inside Higher Ed
Scholarly publishing consultants Tracy Gardner and Simon Inger
recently concluded a large-scale study of how researchers navigate the
flood of digitized scholarly content.
Renew Training, the British
company they run, will sell you the complete data set for a mere £1000
(that's $1,592), or the same information in a deluxe Excel spreadsheet,
outfitted with specially designed an analytic features, for £2,500 (a
cool $3,981). Anyone whose curiosity is merely idle or penniless must
settle for the
“survey edition” of the consultants' own analysis, in PDF, which is
free.
As you would expect, it's more of an advertisement than a
report, with graphs that hint at how much data they have, and how many
kinds of it, from around the world. Gardner and Inger’s own report, “How
Readers Discover Content in Scholarly Journals,” is available in
e-book format at a reasonable price – so I sprang for a copy and
have culled some of their findings for this week’s column.
The key word here being some, because even the consultants’
non-exhaustive crunching of the numbers is pretty overwhelming. Between
May and July of this year, they collected responses from more than
19,000 interview subjects spanning the populated world. The questions
covered various situations in which someone might go looking for
scholarly articles in a digital format and the considerable range of
ways of going about it. Two-thirds of respondents were from academic
institutions – with a large majority (three out of four) identifying
themselves as researchers.
Roughly two-thirds of the respondents were from North America and
Europe, and the interview itself was conducted in English. But enough
participants came from the medical, corporate, and government sectors,
and from countries in Africa, Oceania, and South America, to make the
study something other than a report on Anglo-American academe. In
addition, Gardner and Inger conducted a similar survey in 2008 (albeit
with a much smaller harvest of data, from around 400 respondents). They
also draw on a study they conducted in 2005 as consultants for another
group.
The trends, then. The range and size of digitally
published scholarship keep growing, and a number of tools or approaches
have developed for accessing material. Researchers rely on university
library sites, abstracting and indexing (A&I) services, compilations of
links assembled by learned societies or research teams, social networks,
and search engines both general (Yahoo) and focused (Google Scholar).
You might bookmark a favorite journal, or sign up for an e-mail alert
when the table of contents for a new issue is out, or use the journal
publisher’s website to find an article.
The survey questions cover three research “behaviors” common across
the disciplines: (1) following up a citation, (2) browsing in the core
journals in a given field, and (3) looking for articles on a specific
subject. As indicated, quite a few ways of carrying out these tasks are
now available. Some approaches are better-developed in one field than
another. The survey shows that researchers in the life sciences use the
National Institutes of Health's bibliographical database
PubMed “almost
exclusively,” while the e-mailed table-of-contents (ToC) notifications
for chemistry journals are rich enough in information for their readers
to find them valuable.
And ease of access to sorting-and-channeling methods varies from one
part of the world to the next. A researcher in a poor country is likely
to use the search feature on a publisher’s website (bookmarked for just
that purpose) for the simple reason that doing so is free – while
someone working in a major research library may have access to numerous
bibliographical tools so well-integrated into the digital catalog that
users barely notice them as such.
North American researchers “are most likely to use an academic search
engine or the library web pages if they have a citation,” the reports
notes, “whilst Europeans are more likely to go the journal’s homepage.”
Humanities scholars “rely much more on library web pages and especially
aggregated collections of journals” than do researchers in the life
sciences.
Comments made by social scientists reveal that they use “a much more
varied list of resources” for following up citations, including one
respondent who relied on “my husband’s library because mine is so bad.”
When browsing around the journals in their field, researchers in the
field of education “are greater users of academic search engines and of
web pages maintained by key research groups” than are people working in
other areas. “Social scientists appear to use journal aggregations less
than those in the humanities for reading the latest articles.” And all
of them rank “library web pages and journal aggregations more highly”
than do people in medicine and the physical and life sciences. One
respondent indicated that it wasn’t really necessary to look through
recent issues of journals in mathematics because “nowadays virtually all
leading research in math is uploaded to
arXiv.”
Specialized bibliographical databases “are still the most popular
resource” for someone trying to read up on a particular topic, “and
allowing for a margin of error [this preference] shows no significant
change over time.” The web pages compiled by scholarly societies and
research groups “have both shown a slight upward trend” in that regard,
“which may be due to changes in publisher marketing strategies resulting
in readers becoming more familiar publisher and society brands.”
Read more:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/11/21/essay-study-how-researchers-get-access-scholarly-articles#ixzz2CrbCVYNO
Inside Higher Ed
Scholarly publishing consultants Tracy Gardner and Simon Inger
recently concluded a large-scale study of how researchers navigate the
flood of digitized scholarly content.
Renew Training, the British
company they run, will sell you the complete data set for a mere £1000
(that's $1,592), or the same information in a deluxe Excel spreadsheet,
outfitted with specially designed an analytic features, for £2,500 (a
cool $3,981). Anyone whose curiosity is merely idle or penniless must
settle for the
“survey edition” of the consultants' own analysis, in PDF, which is
free.
Read more:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/11/21/essay-study-how-researchers-get-access-scholarly-articles#ixzz2Crbk96mO
Inside Higher Ed
Scholarly publishing consultants Tracy Gardner and Simon Inger
recently concluded a large-scale study of how researchers navigate the flood
of digitized scholarly content.
Renew Training,
the
British company they run, will sell you the complete data set for a mere
£1000 (that's $1,592), or the same information in a deluxe Excel
spreadsheet, outfitted with specially designed an analytic features, for
£2,500 (a cool $3,981). Anyone whose curiosity is merely idle or penniless
must settle for the
“survey edition”
of the
consultants' own analysis, in PDF, which is free.
As you
would expect, it's more of an advertisement than a report, with graphs that
hint at how much data they have, and how many kinds of it, from around the
world. Gardner and Inger’s own report, “How Readers Discover Content in
Scholarly Journals,” is available in
e-book format
at a
reasonable price – so I sprang for a copy and have culled some of their
findings for this week’s column.
The key word here being some, because even the consultants’
non-exhaustive crunching of the numbers is pretty overwhelming. Between May
and July of this year, they collected responses from more than 19,000
interview subjects spanning the populated world. The questions covered
various situations in which someone might go looking for scholarly articles
in a digital format and the considerable range of ways of going about it.
Two-thirds of respondents were from academic institutions – with a large
majority (three out of four) identifying themselves as researchers.
Roughly two-thirds of the respondents were from North America and Europe,
and the interview itself was conducted in English. But enough participants
came from the medical, corporate, and government sectors, and from countries
in Africa, Oceania, and South America, to make the study something other
than a report on Anglo-American academe. In addition, Gardner and Inger
conducted a similar survey in 2008 (albeit with a much smaller harvest of
data, from around 400 respondents). They also draw on a study they conducted
in 2005 as consultants for another group.
The trends, then.
The range and size of digitally published scholarship keep growing, and a
number of tools or approaches have developed for accessing material.
Researchers rely on university library sites, abstracting and indexing (A&I)
services, compilations of links assembled by learned societies or research
teams, social networks, and search engines both general (Yahoo) and focused
(Google Scholar). You might bookmark a favorite journal, or sign up for an
e-mail alert when the table of contents for a new issue is out, or use the
journal publisher’s website to find an article.
The
survey questions cover three research “behaviors” common across the
disciplines: (1) following up a citation, (2) browsing in the core journals
in a given field, and (3) looking for articles on a specific subject. As
indicated, quite a few ways of carrying out these tasks are now available.
Some approaches are better-developed in one field than another. The survey
shows that researchers in the life sciences use the National Institutes of
Health's bibliographical database
PubMed
“almost exclusively,” while the e-mailed table-of-contents (ToC)
notifications for chemistry journals are rich enough in information for
their readers to find them valuable.
And ease of access to sorting-and-channeling methods varies from one part of
the world to the next. A researcher in a poor country is likely to use the
search feature on a publisher’s website (bookmarked for just that purpose)
for the simple reason that doing so is free – while someone working in a
major research library may have access to numerous bibliographical tools so
well-integrated into the digital catalog that users barely notice them as
such.
North American researchers “are most likely to use an academic search engine
or the library web pages if they have a citation,” the reports notes,
“whilst Europeans are more likely to go the journal’s homepage.” Humanities
scholars “rely much more on library web pages and especially aggregated
collections of journals” than do researchers in the life sciences.
Comments made by social scientists reveal that they use “a much more varied
list of resources” for following up citations, including one respondent who
relied on “my husband’s library because mine is so bad.”
When
browsing around the journals in their field, researchers in the field of
education “are greater users of academic search engines and of web pages
maintained by key research groups” than are people working in other areas.
“Social scientists appear to use journal aggregations less than those in the
humanities for reading the latest articles.” And all of them rank “library
web pages and journal aggregations more highly” than do people in medicine
and the physical and life sciences. One respondent indicated that it wasn’t
really necessary to look through recent issues of journals in mathematics
because “nowadays virtually all leading research in math is uploaded to
arXiv.”
Specialized bibliographical databases “are still the most popular resource”
for someone trying to read up on a particular topic, “and allowing for a
margin of error [this preference] shows no significant change over time.”
The web pages compiled by scholarly societies and research groups “have both
shown a slight upward trend” in that regard, “which may be due to changes in
publisher marketing strategies resulting in readers becoming more familiar
publisher and society brands.”
The rise of academic search engines is a new factor -- and while there are
others, such as Microsoft Academic Search, the bar graphs show Google
Scholar looming over all competitors like a skyscraper over huts. And that’s
not even counting the general-purpose Google search engine, which remains a
standard tool for academic researchers.
One interesting point that the authors extract from the comments of
participants is that many scholars remain unclear on the difference between
a search engine and, say, a specialized bibliographical database.
Unfortunately the survey seems not to have included information on
respondents’ ages, though it would be interesting to know if that is a
factor in recognizing such distinctions.
As I said,
the e-book version is reasonably priced, and well within reach of anyone
intrigued by this column's aerial survey. The publishers and information
managers who can afford the full-dress, all-the-data version, which will
allow comparison between the research preferences of Malaysian physicists
and German historians, and so forth, will be able to extract from it
information on how better to engineer access to their content by the
specific research constituencies using it.Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on how scholars search the Web ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars
Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
"Big Data "Eurekas!" Don't Just Happen," by Jill Dyche, Harvard
Business Review Blog, November 20, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/eureka_doesnt_just_happen.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
The common thread running through many of big
data's most promising explorations is discovery. Traditional database
inquiry requires some level of hypothesis, but mining big data reveals
relationships and patterns that we didn't even know to look for. In this
taxonomy of analytics, which comes from my book e-Data (Addison Wesley,
2000). the bottom layer represents the most common type of database inquiry,
the standard business intelligence report, evolving toward more advanced
types of analytics requiring individuals with more sophisticated skills
working with successively lower levels of hypothesis:
View graphic
The pyramid is capped by Knowledge Discovery, the
detection of patterns in data. As I wrote, "These patterns are too specific
and seemingly arbitrary to specify, and the analyst would be playing a
perpetual guessing-game trying to figure out all the possible patterns in
the database. Instead, special knowledge discovery software tools find the
patterns and tell the analyst what--and where--they are."
Hence, you could be mining data on breast cancer
cells expecting to see trends in cell proliferation rates. But, to your
surprise, you also discover that surrounding non-cancerous cells are also
contributing to cancer cell growth. The Stanford University researchers who
made this discovery didn't know to look at the non-cancerous cells. But
through low-hypothesis exploration, they found it.
Most companies have mastered the pyramid's bottom
two layers. Indeed many senior managers cite the third tier, representing
predictive analytics, as the logical next step in their quest to be
data-driven. But few companies possess the right combination of skills,
technologies, and new delivery models to reach the pinnacle.
Executives too frequently assume there's no time
(let alone budget) for knowledge discovery. Indeed, the very term suggests
an academic exercise with no tangible business payback. But big data
discovery efforts can result in startling and highly actionable findings. A
retailer we work with loaded 12 years' worth of purchase transactions into a
Hadoop cluster to uncover relationships in the data that had gone unnoticed.
The company discovered new correlations between products that ended up
together in shoppers' carts. The findings drove innovative product placement
and shelf space management decisions. The result was a 16% jump in revenue
per shopping cart in the first month of the trial.
This kind of "eureka" doesn't just happen. Business
leaders have to foster a culture of discovery, allotting resources for big
data proofs-of-concept and surrendering expectations for their outcomes. It
also means training the new batch of data scientists to leverage the
technologies that enable such discovery, and then translating the findings
into business actions whose outcomes are then measured. Running discovery
trials on big data should be a continuous process, where the results may
feed more traditional business intelligence or drive additional discovery
tests.
Sometimes this means isolating big data efforts
from traditional analytics programs where delivery processes and
organizational roles are already entrenched. Recently a commercial lines
insurer reassigned senior data analysts from various business units to staff
an initiative aimed at exploring the attributes of fraudsters, mining
hundreds of terabytes of social network interactions, customer profiles, and
claims history. The team found that "loose affiliations" with low-income
friends was an indicator a higher propensity to file fraudulent claims. The
group of analysts evolved into an informal knowledge discovery SWAT team
that reconvened whenever new data types or business processes invited fresh
discovery efforts.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on what went wrong in accountics research are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm
"MOOCs on the Move: How Coursera Is Disrupting the Traditional Classroom,"
Knowledge@Wharton, November 7, 2012 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=3109
During the past decade, the distribution of content
over the Internet and its consumption on computers and mobile devices has
disrupted several industries -- newspapers, book publishing, music and
films, among others. Now education joins that list, thanks to the emergence
of massive open online courses, or MOOCs. These courses, which are offered
for free to tens of thousands of students, cover topics ranging from
artificial intelligence and computer science to music and poetry
appreciation. As millions of students around the world flock to participate
in MOOCs, universities are being compelled to rethink what it means to teach
and to learn in a networked, globally connected world. During the past 18
months, many educational institutions have initiated or joined ventures that
can help them explore, experiment in and gradually understand this
phenomenon.
Among the most active MOOC providers today is
Coursera, a start-up that offers some 200 online courses to 1.5 million
students. It does so by providing a technical platform to 33 educational
institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania. Other MOOC
initiatives include Udacity, which originated at Stanford, and edX, a
venture of Harvard and MIT. How do MOOCs deal with the challenge of scale
posed by the massive numbers of students they attract? How do they retain
and evaluate their students? How can they monetize their free content?
Knowledge@Wharton posed these questions and more to Daphne Koller,
co-founder of Coursera, during her recent campus visit.
Watch the Video
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs, MITx, and EdX courses given free online by
prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Those courses offered for grades and credit are not free.
"Video: Self Taught Teen Prodigy from Sierra Leon Wows MIT Engineers
," by Uveal Blues, November 20, 2012 ---
http://uvealblues.blogspot.com/2012/11/self-taught-teen-prodigy-from-sierra.html
"Elite Online Courses for Cash and Credit," by Steve Kolowich ,
Inside Higher Ed, November 16, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/11/16/top-tier-universities-band-together-offer-credit-bearing-fully-online-courses
A consortium of 10 top-tier universities will soon
offer fully online, credit-bearing undergraduate courses through a
partnership with 2U, a company that facilitates online learning.
Any students enrolled at an “undergraduate
experience anywhere in the world” will be eligible to take the courses,
according to Chip Paucek, the CEO of 2U, which until recently was called
2tor. The first courses are slated to make their debut in the fall.
After a year in which the top universities in the
world have clambered to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs) for no
credit, this new project marks yet another turning point in online
education. It is the first known example of top universities offering fully
online, credit-bearing courses to undergraduates who are not actually
enrolled at the institutions that are offering them.
“We want to be part of the experiment, and we feel
that the time is right,” says J. Lynn Zimmerman, senior vice provost for
undergraduate and continuing education at Emory University, which will be
part of the consortium.
“I don’t think the idea of offering credit online
is, anymore at least, such a strange one,” says Ed Macias, the provost at
Washington University in St. Louis, another member. “I think the issue
everybody is facing is how to do it.”
The elite-branded, massive courses now being rolled
out through Coursera and edX have set the stage for the 2U consortium, but
the online courses from the consortium will not be MOOCs. The idea is to
replicate not only the content and assessment mechanisms of traditional
courses, but also the social intimacy.
Like 2U’s existing credit-bearing graduate programs
— at Georgetown University, the University of Southern California and
elsewhere — the new undergraduate courses will include a mix of recorded
lectures and online course materials and live, instructor-led, video-based
discussion sections. The sections will aim to mimic a seminar-like
environment where students can look their classmates and instructors in the
face and engage with them directly.
There will be selective admissions criteria for
each course, and the students who enroll will have to pay. The universities,
not the company, will set the admissions criteria for each course, says
Jeremy Johnson, president of undergraduate programs at 2U.
Same with prices. In some cases students may pay
roughly market rate. Duke University, for example, does not calculate its
tuition on a credit-hour basis, but the price of taking one of its 2U
courses will probably work out to about the equivalent of an on-campus
course, says Peter Lange, the provost. (At Duke, that is about $5,500 per
course.) Lange and others say the details of pricing have not been set.
In return 2U and its partners are promising a
high-touch virtual classroom experience that approaches, if not equals, the
social and intellectual rigor of a typical course at Duke or any of the
company’s other partners. And upon completion the students will receive the
equivalent number of credits — with the institution’s seal of approval. The
company and the universities will share any revenue that comes from the
project.
In addition to Duke, Emory and Washington
University, the institutions currently on board as of today’s announcement
are Brandeis University, Northwestern University, the Universities of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, Notre Dame, and Rochester, Vanderbilt University,
and Wake Forest University.
2U says it plans to add “a handful” of partners
prior to the formal opening next fall. But ultimately the extent of the
consortium’s growth, like the admissions standards and the prices, will be
the purview of a governing body within the consortium itself, according to
Johnson. And he expects them to keep selective company.
“This is really intended to be a consortium of
like-minded institutions that have a similar approach to academic integrity
and rigor,” he says. “They intend for it to be small. I can’t imagine it
growing to any more than two or two-and-a-half times its current size.”
Something else that will be left in the hands of
individual universities is how the availability of credit-bearing online
courses could affect under-enrolled courses on their local campuses.
Several of 2U’s institutional partners say they
expect their own students to take online courses from other universities in
the consortium — particularly if the timing of an offering does not jibe
with a student’s own schedule. The official name for the consortium is
Semester Online, which emphasizes the parallels to study-abroad programs.
Students “will be able to work, travel, participate in off-campus research
programs or manage personal commitments that in the past would have meant
putting their studies on hold,” says a news release.
At the same time, the slate of online courses could
also make it easier for some members to farm out certain low-demand courses
to peer schools.
“We’ve definitely had faculty members ask about
that,” says Johnson. “My understanding, from the existing consortium
members, is that is not their intent,” he adds. “But I couldn’t say one way
or another whether that is or is not going to happen.”
One way many institutions are planning to use the
consortium is as a research project. Keith E. Whitfield, the vice provost
for academic affairs at Duke, has been appointed to head a new task force on
assessing the university's new online ventures -- including both the 2U
courses and the MOOCs that Duke is offering through Coursera.
The mouse-click data logged by 2U’s online platform
will generate rich data sets from which Duke’s task force — which draws
heavily from Whitfield’s own psychology and neuroscience department — hopes
to learn more than the university ever has about how its students learn,
according to the vice provost.
For example, “Is there a minimum amount of time on
task, or time reviewing course materials, where people were able to do well
on the assessments?” he says. “Which resources work best? Are there things
that work in the online world and not in class? … And what are the things in
a traditional class that we can’t repeat online?”
Although they are not designed to achieve the scale
of MOOCs, if successful the Semester Online courses could allow their home
institutions to gradually expand their enrollments, and tuition revenue,
without having to buy new property and build new buildings. And although the
first courses will be taught by regular professors at the universities, the
faculty that might eventually be hired to teach online "would not have to be
hired in the same mode or set of expectations" as are those who typically
teach on campus, says Zimmerman.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs, MITx, and EdX courses from prestigious
universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
"Fight in New Zealand Over a University's Priorities," Inside
Higher Ed, November 18, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/11/19/fight-new-zealand-over-universitys-priorities
A study reveals that many Twitter followers might in fact not be human
From the Scout Report
on November 16, 2012
Beware the tweeting crowds
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/social-media-followers
How fake are your Twitter followers?
http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/how-fake-are-your-twitter-followers-8211517.html
Analysis of Twitter followers of leading international companies
http://www.camisanicalzolari.com/MCC-Twitter-ENG.pdf
Status People Fake Follower Check
http://fakers.statuspeople.com/
Twitter Guide Book
http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/
The Beginner's Guide to Social Media
http://mashable.com/2012/06/12/social-media-beginners-guide/
Bob Jensen's threads on social networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
When you adopt the standards and the values of
someone else … you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of
your surrender, less of a human being.
Eleanor Roosevelt (see below)
The following link would make an interesting debate, especially in the
context of Kant's Categorical Imperative---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperitive
It is of interest in accounting theory where we are confronted with
conformity (standards) issues that sometimes stand in the way of innovation and
utility maximization.
"Eleanor Roosevelt on Happiness, Conformity, and Integrity," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, November 16, 2012 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/16/eleanor-roosevelt-on-happiness-conformity-and-integrity/
R Project ---
http://www.r-project.org/
Free Download for Windows ---
http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/
“R is really important to the point that it’s hard
to overvalue it,” said Daryl Pregibon, a research scientist at Google, which
uses the software widely. “It allows statisticians to do very intricate and
complicated analyses without knowing the blood and guts of computing systems.”
Ashley Vance, "Data Analysts Captivated by R’s Power," The New York Times,
January 6, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.html?_r=0
"You Too Can Be Nate Silver ," Bloomberg Business Week,
November 9, 2012 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-09/you-too-can-be-nate-silver
Well, it would seem we
have identified the week in which being a big data wonk became
cool. After all, there’s Nate Silver—the Electoral College
Oracle—being feted on The Daily Show and across the Web
for collecting polling data and then massaging it with a clever
algorithm. Now everyone wants to hang out with the skinny, kinda
nervous dude who knows his way around R. (R? Look it up. You’ll
need this for cocktail
parties from here on out.)
If you don’t have time to
attend the soon-to-be-planned Nate Silver’s Datapalooza, you can
still have a crack at becoming the big data star around the
office. That’s because the data fiends in Silicon Valley have
been hard at work creating software that lets mere mortals run
complex information analysis jobs. Some of the best examples of
this type of technology can be seen at the
Alteryx
Analytics Gallery,
where you can find ready-made apps for poring over data ranging
from census figures to how a merger between two companies may
play out.
Alteryx’s main business
revolves around selling software that helps people submit big
data sets and then choose from a menu of analytical operations
to perform on the information. The idea is to remove some of the
coding grunt work that has surrounded data analysis jobs for
decades. “This has been the world of statisticians and Ph.D.s
and not the people on the front lines trying to make good
business decisions,” says George Mathew, the president and chief
operating officer at Alteryx. “We wanted to change that.”
Customers using Alteryx’s
software will find some huge, preloaded data sets like
information from the 2010 Census and marketing services company
Experian’s consumer profiling data. Then you can literally drag
and drop analysis functions such as regression models from a
menu to apply them to the data and receive a pretty report at
the end. Companies can, of course, supply their own data, making
it possible for, say, an executive at a retailer to take data
from 900 million point of sale transactions, 2.5 million loyalty
cards, and 500,000 Likes on
Facebook
(FB)
and try to determine what
the value of Facebook Likes might be on a given store.
The Analytics Gallery is a
spot where people can find prepackaged data analytics apps and
have some fun poking around on the information. Ahead of the
presidential election, for example, there were models available
that let you see how particular zip codes might vote based on
polling numbers and things like census data. The
Presidential Election App
predicted Obama’s win with
Silver-like accuracy.
One of the newer apps has been
tuned for Facebook employees trying to cash in on the company’s
initial public offering. It helps you
find the ideal house
based on how many Facebook shares you’re willing to sell, how
close you want to live to the company headquarters, and the
usual bedrooms and bathrooms desired.
Alteryx’s Mathew hopes these
types of apps will prove that more people can become data
analysis whizzes if they’re given the right tools. He says there
are 200,000 so-called data scientists in the world, who
regularly command more than $200,000 per year in salary. These
are your Nate Silvers. Then, there are 2.5 million people in the
workforce that have enough statistics, business, and math
knowledge to do some serious data crunching with a bit of
technological help. “I think there’s a tremendous arbitrage
opportunity here,” Mathew says.
Hear that, Silver?
Probability Resources
http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/61/?pa=newCollection&sa=viewCoursePage&courseId=9
Jensen Comment
To my knowledge, Nate Silver is not a collector of raw data. He is a data
aggregator using databases collected by others. As such he's totally dependent
upon the depth and quality of data points in those databases. He's best known
for aggregating baseball and political poll databases ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver
Insider Trading Issues
Another issue is whether Nate's findings are self-serving in some way in the
sense that players fare better or worse as a result of Nate's predictions. This
seems to be less likely in baseball than in political polls. There are
various degrees of insider trading in life. To the extent that inside
players of a game can alter the databases upon with aggregators like Nate
depend, the more dysfunctional highly publicized predictions such as those of
Nate Silver become.
Herein lies Nate's problem.
Baseball databases are pretty independent, reliable, and very deep about
collecting almost everything about professional baseball games apart from
personal data of players such as most medical data and other very personal data
on players and managers. Players cannot fudge most baseball statistics in a
self-serving way.
But with political poll databases, it's a whole new ballgame.
This is my thread with David Johnstone reported at:
My Free Speech Political Quotations and Commentaries Directory and Log
---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Political/PoliticalQuotationsCommentaries.htm
The dates and messages are in reverse order.
On Wed,
Nov 14, 2012 at 4:01 PM, David
Johnstone <david.johnstone@sydney.edu.au>
wrote:
Dear Bob, I did not know any
of this background, so
thank you for putting things
into clear perspective.
One technical point (that
does not answer your
criticisms totally) is that
the Bayes mechanism of using
likelihood p(signal|event)
to find p(event|signal) is
that built-in bias in the
signal is accounted for
logically in determining
just how strong it is.
I didn’t forward the message
to AECM because I did not
think the crowd is keen for
more Bayesian spruiking from
me, and because I did not
know too much about this
Silver man. Your points make
it clear that caution was
justified.
I did know that you would be
a good barometer though!
One thing I will say on
another point, accounting as
a discipline does not
properly understand Bayes
theorem, despite the amount
of Bayesian
argument/modelling. This is
remarkable given that
accounting is a signalling
discipline. Foster was right
when he started his Fin Stmt
Analysis text with Ch.1 on
Bayes and the value of info.
I am just finishing up a
couple of papers on this, so
will send soon.
All the best, david
From:
Bob Jensen [mailto:rjensen@trinity.edu]
Sent: Wednesday,
November 14, 2012 10:09
PM
To: David
Johnstone
Subject: Re: FW:
print this FW: The real
winner in the US
elections: Thomas Bayes
I have no
suggestions on how
best to leverage
Silver's success
that you've not
thought of already.
Perhaps you should
forward this message
to the AECM.
For me, there's a
huge flaw in
Silver's political
forecasting. That is
the flaw of not
being in control of
the data collection.
He's an aggregator
of polls conducted
by others, and these
polls have a huge
moral hazard of
engineering
elections the way
they conduct their
polls.
Also, there are
bothersome
predictions of
Silver in the past
where he's accused
of lack of
independence himself
--- e.g., his
prediction of that
Scott Brown would
lose when in fact
Scott Brown won in
the first
replacement of Ed
Kennedy's longtime
Senate seat.
I think Silver's on
more solid ground in
baseball where he's
less biased and is
less dependent upon
flawed basic data.'
He may be on more
solid ground if he
pays more attention
to primary elections
within a given party
where the
liberal-conservative
biases are less
pronounced.
Thanks David,
It's always great to
learn from a pro.
On Tue, Nov 13,
2012 at 7:04 PM,
David Johnstone
<david.johnstone@sydney.edu.au>
wrote:
Dear Bob you
might like this.
David
-----Original
Message-----
From: ISBA
Webmaster [mailto:hans@stat.duke.edu]
Sent: Friday,
November 09,
2012 3:34 AM
To:
news@bayesian.org
Subject: The
real winner in
the US
elections:
Thomas Bayes
As we all know,
last night was
the US
presidential
election. In
one sense,
President Obama
was the winner.
But in another
sense, the real
winner was
Bayesian
analysis, which
scored a public
relations coup.
In 2008, Nate
Silver developed
a Bayesian model
to forecast the
U.S.
general election
results. He won
fame for
correctly
predicting 49 of
50 states, as
well as every
Senate race.
This brought
him a New York
Times column and
a much higher
profile.
This time
around, his
consistent
predictions that
Obama was in
front earned him
a considerable
backlash among
pundits. While
a few criticisms
had merit, most
were
mathematically
illiterate,
indignantly
mocking the idea
that the race
was anything
other than a
tossup. Now the
results are in,
and he has
predicted all 50
states
correctly.
People with our
quantitative
background can
easily find
flaws with this
metric. For
example, a
majority of
states were easy
to call --
nobody is
surprised by the
results in Texas
or California.
More seriously,
his "call" for
Florida was a
50.3%
probability,
essentially the
proverbial "coin
toss". Serious
analysis has to
chalk Florida up
to luck.
Nevertheless,
the broader
point is that
Nate's
high-profile
Bayesian model
just experienced
a very visible
success. Even
better, he
recently
authored a
book-length
popular
exposition of
the Bayesian
approach. I
purchased that
book, "The
Signal and the
Noise," on a
recent flight.
It's excellent
reading: more
technical than
McGrayne's
recent entry,
but no less
accessible or
engaging.
How can ISBA
leverage
Silver's success
to bring Bayes
to a wider
audience?
************************************************************************
ISBA now
maintains the
bayes-news and
Valencia email
lists; you are
receiving this
message as you
have opted-in to
receive email
from bayes-news,
the Valencia
list or the ISBA
forums. To opt
out or change
your email
subscriptions
please login at
http://bayesian.org/user.
Go to the My
Account menu and
select Forum
Email
Integration.
Check the forums
to which you
wish to
subscribe, then
save your
settings. You
may view past
and present
content at any
time by visiting
http://bayesian.org/forum
Video: Nobel laureate and Stanford Professor Myron
S. Scholes says some countries are likely to leave the euro so they can become
more competitive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwGHcrjs3iE&utm_source=Stanford+Business+Re%3AThink&utm_campaign=1451d355ee-RTIssue2&utm_medium=email
Myron Scholes is also one of two Nobel laureates brought down by the largest
hedge fund failure in history (what PBS Nova called The Trillion Dollar Bet)
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#LTCM
Jensen Question
Can the same theory apply to having California leave the dollar zone?
Leaning to the Left in the Academy: Generalization to Specialization
Impacts on General Education "Smorgasbord" of Requirements
"Moving Further to the Left," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed,
October 24, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/24/survey-finds-professors-already-liberal-have-moved-further-left
Academics, on average, lean
to the left. A survey being released today suggests that they are moving
even more in that direction.
Obviously the
pushing out of conservatism varies between instructors, courses, curricula,
and universities, but one of the noteworthy impacts not discussed much is the
replacement of generalized economics courses in the Gen Ed requirements and
elective smorgasbord of seminars in the common core.
Stanford Introductory Seminars ---
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/undergrad/cgi-bin/drupal_ual/sites/default/files/common/docs/sis_IntroSemsCatalog1213.pdf
For example note those Introductory Seminar courses in Economics
- Understanding the Welfare System --- Page 20
- Public Policy and Personal Finance --- Page 32
- Economic Inequality --- Page 77
- Energy, the Environment, and the Economy --- Page 100
There are many other Introductory Seminar courses taught by many departments
on the Stanford Campus. See the course index beginning on --- Page 123 of
the above pdf catalog of Introductory Seminar courses for the 2012/13 academic
year at Stanford University. When scanning all those Introductory Seminar
courses I conclude the following
- The majority of courses are not obviously political at all and hence do
not necessarily lean to the left.
- Among the courses that I would deem partly or entirely political, I
suspect all are hot button topics of liberals such as those dealing with
inequality, welfare, feminism, African American women, African American
social movements, ecology, environmentalism, human rights, race, etc.
My Main Points
Prior to the 1990s, the common curriculum in virtually all universities for the
first two years was mostly comprised of generalized overview courses and
introductory courses to many of the disciplines in which students could choose
to major and/or minor. Since the 1990s most universities are following the leads
of top schools like Harvard and Stanford by replacing many of the generalized
overview courses in the common curriculum with what normally would've been more
specialized advanced courses further down the road in a given major.
The goal of replacing general overview common core courses with a smorgasbord
of specialized and narrowly-focused seminars is generally to stimulate young
minds to think more creatively about enormous societal issues early on and to
get away from traditional "common core" understandings to be shared by virtually
all undergraduates.
But the smorgasbord of choices comes at a price.
The most heavy price is that the common building blocks leading into
intermediate and advanced courses in a major have been pushed further up the
education ladder, thereby forcing those intermediate courses to teach more basic
things and advanced courses to teach more intermediate things.
For example, the following two mathematics Introductory Seminar courses
dramatically illustrate my point:
- Capillary Surfaces: Explored and Unexplored Territory --- Page 85
- Mathematics of Knots, Braids, Links, and Tangles --- Page 85
Having these two discussion math seminars in the first or second year of
college may set the gray cells to thinking, but they are not basic introductory
courses for math, science, or engineering majors who must take math-related
intermediate and advanced courses that follow in their chosen majors. Not all
majors (including math majors) will choose either of these courses from among
the vast smorgasbord of other Introductory Seminar courses. Hence, instructors
of intermediate and advanced courses in any discipline cannot really build upon
these seminars since most of the students in their courses will not have even
had either one of those Introductory Seminars. That's the price of having a
smorgasbord instead of a more rigid menu.
Another price is that it's possible for a graduating seniors to share almost
nothing in common. A few graduates may be experts on Shakespeare while most
others have not learned a single thing about Shakespeare since they were in high
school. A few may be experts on the U.S. Constitution while most others have
never studied one line of the Constitution after four or five years of college.
A few may graduate having studied poetry extensively while most others managed
to graduate from college without having studied a single poem.
Perhaps this is as it should be, but I often wonder whether such Introductory
Seminars are more the product of faculty turf wars as much as curriculum
interests of the students. But I will not speculate further down this avenue.
I also suspect that theories of conservatism are not given a fair shake in
any of Stanford's introductory seminars. But I will not speculate further down
this avenue.
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
GM sets the Spark off
"General Motors Raises Its Ante on Electric Cars: The Detroit automaker
will soon debut its first all-electric vehicle, a fast-charging vehicle that
also rides well," by Jessica Leber, MIT's Technology Review, November
16, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/507566/general-motors-raises-its-ante-on-electric-cars/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20121119
Why It Matters
Initial sales of electric cars have been sluggish,
so the next generation of the vehicles will be crucial for the future of the
technology.
Charged up: The compact electric Chevrolet Spark is
due to hit dealerships in 2013.
The Chevrolet Spark EV isn’t General Motors’ first
pure electric vehicle—that would be the EV1, which was quashed in 2003. But
this time around, GM is more serious about these vehicles.
GM showed off the battery-powered car and let
journalists make test drives this week prior to its debut November 28 at the
Los Angeles Auto Show. Compact, powerful, and easy to maneuver, the Spark EV
looks like a good next step for GM into plug-in vehicles. However, its price
has yet to be revealed. That will be crucial, because there has been limited
demand for costly electric cars that can’t go long distances without being
recharged.
The Spark joins a list of all-electric cars that
includes the Nissan Leaf, the Ford Focus Electric, and Tesla’s Model S.
Sales of these plug-in electric vehicles, as well as electric-and-gas models
like the Chevy Volt, are important not only for the carmakers, but also to
establish markets for advanced battery technologies and battery charging
infrastructure.
By 2017, GM wants to build as many as 500,000 cars
a year with electrification technologies, said Mary Barra, senior vice
president for global product development. That’s not trivial, considering
that today GM sells nine million vehicles annually. In addition to the Spark
EV, which will begin with small production runs for limited U.S. and Korean
markets, GM plans to make plug-in hybrids like the Chevy Volt and cars with
“eAssist technology,” which is a form of hybrid technology. However, Barra
says, GM will focus mainly on developing plug-in technologies rather than
the traditional gasoline engine hybrids, where Toyota and Ford have made
larger investments.
Even as GM plans to send the Chevy Spark EV to
dealerships in the middle of next year, the company is still struggling with
the Volt, which, unlike the Spark, has a small gasoline tank to extend its
battery range. The Volt has had a slow start since its 2010 debut (see “As
GM Volt Sales Increase, That Doesn’t Mean It’s Successful”). GM won’t be
close to its goal of selling 60,000 Volts this year. Last month it sold
fewer than 3,000.
But the Spark could help justify GM’s earlier
investments. Its electric powertrain, which will be manufactured in
Maryland, borrows heavily from the Volt. GM engineers tinkered with the
design to achieve more horsepower and faster acceleration. For example, they
custom-shaped each square copper wire inside the motor’s coil. Their goal is
to broaden the car’s appeal by selling its “fun-to-drive factor.” I found
that getting the car from 0 to 45 miles an hour down a short stretch of road
required only a pleasantly light touch on the pedal.
. . .
In hopes of reducing “range anxiety,” or the worry
about running out of charge, GM is making the Spark the first car on the
market to use a new North American “fast-charging” standard, approved in
October. In special charging stations equipped with the technology, a driver
could power 80 percent of the battery in 20 minutes—compared to seven hours
for a full charge at home. None of these fast-charging stations are on the
road yet, but General Motors expects some will come online by the time the
Spark gets into dealerships.
Jensen Comment
The Spark may make an excellent commuting alternative for many persons, but for
distance travel there are serious drawbacks. The biggest worry is getting
stranded where there are no power outlets for miles and miles. Tow trucks of the
future may well have emergency charging technology, but it's still a pain
waiting a hour or more for a tow truck to bring you some juice. The Volt looks
like a better alternative except that the luxury-car price of a Volt, the
limited electric power range that drops to less than 30 miles in cold weather,
and the poor gas mileage have virtually eliminated the future of Volt production
and sales.
Cost savings are dubious for people who are single and now get by with only
one car. The only alternatives are to invest in two cars or use gasoline car
rental services when longer trips are planned.
The bottom line is that, at this point in time, the Spark might be more
trouble than it's worth for most car buyers except for commuters who already own
multiple cars for their families.
Possible Cost Accounting Student Projects
Cost accounting students in teams might be assigned the task of comparing the
Spark versus the Volt versus gasoline and diesel automobile alternatives under
various lifestyle scenarios. One uncertainty in this equation is how states will
adjust licensing fees for electric cars and serious hybrids that no longer
contribute toward road maintenance costs with each gallon of gas purchased.
Another complication is the varying cost of electric power across the 50
states. California, with its new carbon tax, will have very high electric
charging rates and gasoline prices. It will be hard to compare the cost of Spark
ownership in California with other states like Delaware. And then there are
states like Texas where there are miles and miles of open spaces having no
towns. It will take a very long time before Texas lines its highways with
emergency charging stations. The same can be said for many other states like New
Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Alaska, etc.
Another complication is the varying cost of electric power across the 50
states. California, with its new carbon tax, will have very high electric
charging rates and gasoline prices. It will be hard to compare the cost of Spark
ownership in California with other states like Delaware. And then there are
states like Texas where there are miles and miles of open spaces having no
towns. It will take a very long time before Texas lines its highways with
emergency charging stations. The same can be said for many other states like New
Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Alaska, etc.
David Johnstone and I have a private thread going on Nate Silver.
He gave me permission to share this with the AECM.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Johnstone <david.johnstone@sydney.edu.au>
Date: Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 4:27 PM
Subject: RE: FW: print this FW: The real winner in the US elections: Thomas
Bayes
To: Bob Jensen <rjensen@trinity.edu>
No of
course go ahead Bob, thankyou.
From:
Bob Jensen [mailto:rjensen@trinity.edu]
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2012 10:22 PM
To: David Johnstone
Subject: Re: FW: print this FW: The real winner
in the US elections: Thomas Bayes
I
think this thread will be of value to the AECM.
Would
you mind if I forward it to the AECM?
On
Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 6:03 PM, David Johnstone <david.johnstone@sydney.edu.au>
wrote:
Dear Bob, will do what you say, and I have
Silver’s book waiting to read.
The Bayes mechansism is the right logic and
still your point remains – i.e. if the
“likelihoods” (their Bayesian name) (here
p(signal|Dems win) and p(signal|Repubs win), for
a given defined signal, can be improved in the
sense that they differ more from each other in
amount, perhaps by better polling devices or
whatever, then the Bayes result will allow for
this, and profit from it, in a stronger
posterior probability.
Cheers again
I agree
that accountants, including me, are
pretty ignorant of anything outside
the GLM and their purchased
databases.
My
priors are that most of the polls
are biased (in varying degrees in
terms of particular polls and a
given poll at certain points in
time). The bias often is not even
deliberate but more of a function of
when voters are sampled on a
cost-benefit basis. For example,
respondents might answer differently
on the phone than when confronted
face-to-face where it's sometimes
easier to detect lying. I know some
folks who lie on the phone to
political pollsters just to add
error to the poll outcomes. It's
malace rather than truth.
A huge
problem is how to deal with randomly
sampled respondents who simply slam
the phone down refusing to
participate in the poll. What error
does this add to the poll outcomes.
I believe that this phone slamming
error varies with geographically and
temporally. For example, voters in
New England or Wyoming may be more
inclined to phone slam than
voters in Cleveland. Also a person
receiving the third phone call in a
week may be more inclined to phone
slam vis-a-vis that first call.
There
are also some mysterious
"weightings" in some polls were
Democrat respondents are weighted
more heavily than Republicans and
vice versa. I think this is common
because of the problem of reaching
some street people, nursing home
patients, and students who are not
easy to contact by phone (e.g., in
dorms). Pollsters sometimes try to
weight to compensate for that type
of polling error.
I'm
also suspicious of those polls that
repeatedly reported 51% for
Candidate X and 48% for Candidate Y.
Do the pollsters really think that
anybody with brains thinks the
uncommitted independents are only 1%
of the voting population? Give us a
break!
There
also is a problem in that there is
probably more voting fraud on
election day where some voting
machines (like those in Cleveland in
the 2012 election) and where those
old Acorn folks give some voters
multiple fake picture IDs and then
pay them $10 for each time they
vote.
I don't
think your Bayesian devices for
detecting bias dig deep enough into
the bad data in the databases
themselves.
Like I
said, if you really want to make a
better case for Silvers and Bayes,
confine yourself to Silver's
marvelous baseball studies having
less biased fundamental data.
Venturing into political polls is
tantamount to being sucked into
quicksand.
I think
you should post some of your
excellent scholarship on this to the
AECM. It would be especially
enlightening if you reveal what you
learned about about Bayes and
baseball after reading Siver's book.
On Wed,
Nov 14, 2012 at 4:01 PM, David
Johnstone <david.johnstone@sydney.edu.au>
wrote:
Dear Bob, I did not know any
of this background, so
thankyou for putting things
into clear perspective.
One technical point (that
does not answer your
criticisms totally) is that
the Bayes mechanism of using
likelihood p(signal|event)
to find p(event|signal) is
that built-in bias in the
signal is accounted for
logically in determining
just how strong it is.
I didn’t forward the message
to AECM because I did not
think the crowd is keen for
more Bayesian spruiking from
me, and because I did not
know too much about this
Silver man. Your points make
it clear that caution was
justified.
I did know that you would be
a good barometer though!
One thing I will say on
another point, accounting as
a discipline does not
properly understand Bayes
theorem, despite the amount
of Bayesian
argument/modelling. This is
remarkable given that
accounting is a signalling
discipline. Foster was right
when he started his Fin Stmt
Analysis text with Ch.1 on
Bayes and the value of info.
I am just finishing up a
couple of papers on this, so
will send soon.
All the best, david
Question
How would this differ from
"The Making of an Accounting
Professor?"
"The Making of a
Philosophy Professor,"
by John Kaag, Chronicle of
Higher Education's
Chronicle Review,
November 26, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Making-of-a-Philosophy/135876/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
An Accounting Review Article is Retracted
One of the article that Dan mentions has been
retracted, according to
http://aaajournals.org/doi/abs/10.2308/accr-10326?af=R
Retraction: A Field Experiment Comparing the
Outcomes of Three Fraud Brainstorming Procedures: Nominal Group, Round
Robin, and Open Discussion
James E. Hunton, Anna Gold Bentley University and
Erasmus University Erasmus University This article was originally published
in 2010 in The Accounting Review 85 (3) 911–935; DOI:
10/2308/accr.2010.85.3.911.
The authors confirmed a misstatement in the article
and were unable to provide supporting information requested by the editor
and publisher. Accordingly, the article has been retracted.
November 15, 2012 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Richard,
Is this the first example of a
retracted TAR, JAR, and JAE article in since the 1960s?
Thank you for the heads up on the Hinton
and Gold article. This is sad, because Steve Kachelmeier pointed
out this article to me last year as an example of where the researchers
used real-world experimentation data using subjects from a large CPA
firm as opposed to students. Another factor that surprised me was was
sample size of supposedly 2,614 auditors.
Bob Kaplan wrote the following in
"Accounting Scholarship that Advances Professional Knowledge and
Practice," AAA Presidential Scholar Address by Robert S. Kaplan,
The Accounting Review, March 2011, pp. 372-373
Some scholars
in public health schools also intervene in practice by
conducting large-scale field experiments on real people in their
natural habitats to assess the efficacy of new health and safety
practices, such as the use of designated drivers to reduce
alcohol-influenced accidents. Few academic accounting scholars,
in contrast, conduct field experiments on real professionals
working in their actual jobs (Hunton and Gold [2010] is an
exception). The large-scale statistical studies and field
experiments about health and sickness are invaluable, but,
unlike in accounting scholarship, they represent only one
component in the research repertoire of faculty employed in
professional schools of medicine and health sciences.
One thing I note is that the article
has not been removed from the TAR database. The article still
exists with a large "Retracted" stamp that appears over every page
of the article
I attached the picture of a sample page.
Would the Techies on the AECM
explain this:
The "Retracted" stamp is transparent in terms of copying any
passage or table in the article. In other words, the article can be
quoted as easily by copy and paste as text without any interference from
the "Retracted Stamp." It cannot, however, be copied as a picture
without interference from the "Retracted Stamp."
Is this the first example of a retracted
TAR, JAR, and JAE article in since the 1960s
Years ago Les Livingstone was the first
person to detect a plagiarized article in TAR (back in the 1960s when we
were both doctoral students at Stanford). This was long before digital
versions articles could be downloaded. The TAR editor published an
apology to the original authors in the next edition of TAR. The article
first appeared in Management Science and was plagiarized in
total for TAR by a Norwegian (sigh).
Not much can be done to warn readers about
hard copy articles if they are subsequently "retracted." One thing
that can be done these days is to have an AAA Website that lists
retracted publications in all AAA journals. The Hunton and Gold
article may be the only one since the 1960s.
Respectfully,
Bob Jensen
"The looming shortfall in public pension costs," by Robert Novy-Marx
and Josh Rauh, The Washington Post, October 10, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-looming-shortfall-in-public-pension-costs/2012/10/19/5b394cdc-0ced-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_story.html?utm_source=Stanford+Business+Re%3AThink&utm_campaign=1451d355ee-RTIssue2&utm_medium=email
How much will the underfunded pension benefits of
government employees cost taxpayers? The answer is usually given in
trillions of dollars, and the implications of such figures are difficult for
most people to comprehend. These calculations also generally reflect only
legacy liabilities — what would be owed if pensions were frozen today. Yet
with each passing day, the problem grows as states fail to set aside
sufficient funds to cover the benefits public employees are earning.
In a recent paper, we bring the problem closer to
home. We studied how much additional money would have to be devoted annually
to state and local pension systems to achieve full funding in 30 years, a
standard period over which governments target fully funded pensions. Or, to
put a finer point on it, we researched: How much will your taxes have to
increase?
Robert Novy-Marx is an assistant professor of finance at the
University of Rochester’s Simon Graduate School of Business. Joshua Rauh is
a professor of finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a
senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
"The Revenue Demands of Public Employee Pension Promises," by Robert
Novy-Marx and Joshua D. Rauh, SSRN, September 16, 2012 ---
http://papers.ssrn.com/SOL3/PAPERS.CFM?ABSTRACT_ID=1973668
We calculate increases in contributions required to
achieve full funding of state and local pension systems in the U.S. over 30
years. Without policy changes, contributions would have to increase by 2.5
times, reaching 14.1% of the total own-revenue generated by state and local
governments. This represents a tax increase of $1,385 per household per
year, around half of which goes to pay down legacy liabilities while half
funds the cost of new promises. We examine sensitivity to asset return
assumptions, wage correlations, the treatment of workers not currently in
Social Security, and endogenous geographical shifts
Bob Jensen's threads on underfunded pensions and bad accounting rules ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#Pensions
Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of governmental accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#GovernmentalAccounting
From the Scout Report on November 16, 2012
SoundGecko ---
http://soundgecko.com/
Want to listen to any article on the go? It's all
very possible with SoundGecko. This application will create an audio version
of web articles, pages, and so on with just a few easy steps. Essentially,
it's a text-to-audio service that lets users enjoy written content on the
go. The free version allows users to listen to up to 30 web articles or
pages per day, and subscribe to one RSS feed. This version is compatible
with all operating systems, and it includes a demonstration and FAQ area.
ResumeBuilder ---
http://www.resumebuilder.org/
Creating a new resume can be a daunting experience,
but Resume Builder is a great way to ease any tensions associated with this
particular activity. Visitors can view a demonstration here, and they will
note that they can get started by just entering their occupation: the
program will suggest the best template for finishing the task. Also,
visitors can search thousands of professional phrases suggested by
ResumeBuilder to enhance their unique document. Finally, visitors can share
their resume via a range of social media tools, such as Facebook and
Twitter. This version is compatible with all operating systems.
A study reveals that many Twitter followers might in fact not be human
Beware the tweeting crowds
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/11/social-media-followers
How fake are your Twitter followers?
http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/how-fake-are-your-twitter-followers-8211517.html
Analysis of Twitter followers of leading international companies
http://www.camisanicalzolari.com/MCC-Twitter-ENG.pdf
Status People Fake Follower Check
http://fakers.statuspeople.com/
Twitter Guide Book
http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/
The Beginner's Guide to Social Media
http://mashable.com/2012/06/12/social-media-beginners-guide/
From the Scout Report on November 23, 2012
ScreenSnag ---
http://www.wolfcoders.com/screensnag/
Looking to grab a slice of your computer screen for
later use? ScreenSnag has got you covered. This version allows users to
capture the entire screen (or just a defined section) with a single click.
Visitors can also use the Timer option to perform captures at select
intervals. This version is compatible with computers running Windows XP and
newer.
WallSwitch 1.2.1 ---
http://wallswitch.codeplex.com/
Maybe you're growing tired of your desktop
wallpaper. Never fear, as WallSwitch can prevent things from getting stale.
Visitors can use their photo folders or other images as fodder for the
WallSwitch program, which will cycle them through at various intervals.
Also, there is a collage mode, which offers another way to display images.
The program also has cross-fading transitions and the ability to apply color
effects to the selected images. This version is compatible with computers
running Windows 2000 and newer.
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Khan Academy ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy
Khan Academy Home Page ---
http://www.khanacademy.org/
Khan Academy Releases New App for iPhone & iPod Touch, Giving You Mobile
Access to 3600 Videos ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/khan_academy_releases_new_app_for_iphone_ipod_touch.html
On March 11, 2012 CBS Sixty Minutes broadcast a great module on the
Khan Academy ---
Khan Academy: The future of education? Click
Here
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57394905/khan-academy-the-future-of-education/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
Introducing 200 Free Educational Resources for K-12 Students: Spread the Word
& Tell Us Your Favorites ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/introducing_200_free_educational_resources_for_k-12_students_video_lessons_web_sites_apps_more.html
Bob Jensen's threads on free educational resources for higher education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ---
http://plato.stanford.edu/
"Why Memorize a Poem?" by Catherine Robson, Chronicle of Higher
Education's Chronicle Review, November 26, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Memorize-a-Poem-/135878/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
I suggest starting out by memorizing a relatively short metered poem such as a Shakespeare
sonnet in iambic pentameter or a Robert Frost poem such as Robert Frost's
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening in iambic tetrameter. I think it's so
much harder to write metered poetry, and believe it when I say that I've
seriously tried in vain to do so ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2007/tidbits070905.htm
Whose woods these
are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
More at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2007/tidbits070905.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Futurity ---
http://www.futurity.org/
The History and Nature of Science ---
http://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=49969
BBC Science in Action: Podcasts & Downloads ---
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/scia
American Chemical Society - Chemistry Education Resources ---
Click Here
http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_TRANSITIONMAIN&node_id=127&use_sec=false&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=53f90531-d56e-491c-9c8b-fae64f0e2f0c
Learn Chemistry: Chemistry Resources for Teachers ---
http://www.rsc.org/learn-chemistry/resource/listing?searchtext=&fcategory=all&filter=all&Audience=AUD00000001&displayname=teachers
Monterey Bay Aquarium: Podcast, Videos & Web Cams ---
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/efc/cam_menu.aspx?c=dd
Berkeley Lab: Center for Science and Engineering Education ---
http://csee.lbl.gov/
Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine ---
http://collections.nlm.nih.gov/ext/pub/HIDDENTREASURE_NLM_BlastBooks.pdf
Solar System Exploration: Fast Lesson Finder ---
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/educ/lessons.cfm
Inventing a Better Mousetrap: Patent Models from the Rothschild Collection
---
http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2011/rothschild/
A Devil of a Disease (Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD), which has
decimated the Tasmanian devil population since 1996) ---
http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/collection/detail.asp?case_id=661&id=661
VetPulse (Veterinary Medicine and
Surgery) --- http://www.vetpulse.tv/
Natural Resources Canada: Earth Sciences ---
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/earth-sciences/home
Venice ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice
Video: Venice is Way Under Water… (worst flooding in 150 years) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/venice_is_way_under_water.html
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
Futurity ---
http://www.futurity.org/
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ---
http://plato.stanford.edu/
Social Media and Political Engagement ---
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Political-Engagement.aspx
International Association for Identification (Crime records) ---
http://iai.lib.wvu.edu/
The Economic Value of Citizenship For Immigrants in the United States
http://carnegie.org/fileadmin/Media/Publications/mpi_econ_value_citizenship_01.pdf
Migration Information Source (immigration) ---
http://www.migrationinformation.org/?mpi
The Underwater Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Submarines and the Risk of
Nuclear War ---
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB399/
Foreign Policy: The Cuban Missile Crises
---
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/cubanmissilecrisis
Mapping Staten Island ---
http://mappingstatenisland.mcny.org/
A Chronicle of the China Trade: The Papers of Augustine Heard & Co.,
1840-1877 ---
http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/heard/
Knitting Industry
http://www.knittingindustry.com/
Knitting Together (yarn, lace, fabrics, cloth) ---
http://www.knittingtogether.org.uk/cat.asp?cat=599
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
Probability Resources
http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/61/?pa=newCollection&sa=viewCoursePage&courseId=9
R Project ---
http://www.r-project.org/
Free Download for Windows ---
http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/
Mathematics Books on FreeBooks.com ---
http://www.freebookcentre.net/SpecialCat/Free-Mathematics-Books-Download.html
“R is really important to the point that it’s hard
to overvalue it,” said Daryl Pregibon, a research scientist at Google, which
uses the software widely. “It allows statisticians to do very intricate and
complicated analyses without knowing the blood and guts of computing systems.”
Ashley Vance, "Data Analysts Captivated by R’s Power," The New York Times,
January 6, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.html?_r=0
"You Too Can Be Nate Silver ," Bloomberg Business Week,
November 9, 2012 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-09/you-too-can-be-nate-silver
"Mechanical Turk and the Limits of Big Data:
The Internet is transforming how researchers perform experiments across the
social sciences," by Walter Frick, MIT's Technology Review, November
1, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/506731/mechanical-turk-and-the-limits-of-big-data/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20121102
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
Futurity ---
http://www.futurity.org/
Historic GM Automobiles ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?feature=endscreen&=R=1&v=RvVmDsWnMOk
Forgotten Detroit (buildings) ---
http://www.forgottendetroit.com/
Ansel Adams: Photography from the Mountains to the Sea - at the National
Maritime Museum, London until 28 April 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20304829
Thank you Roger Collins for the heads up.
The History of Film — 2000 Movies Across 100 Years — Presented in One Big
Zoomable Graphic ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/the_history_of_film_--_2000_movies_across_100_years_--_presented_in_one_big_zoomable_graphic.html
UCLA Film & Television Archive ---
http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/
A Tourist's Album of Japan ---
http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?pid=japanesetourist&title=A
Tourist's Album of Japan
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ---
http://plato.stanford.edu/
Photography of Ludwig Wittgenstein Released by Archives at Cambridge ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/photography_of_ludwig_wittgenstein.html
Neue Gallerie: Online Collection (Germany, Austria) ---
http://www.neuegalerie.org/collection
British Women Romantic Poets (1789-1832) ---
http://digital.lib.ucdavis.edu/projects/bwrp/
Poetic Likeness: Modern American Poets (Portraits of Great Artists) ---
http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/poets/
Spiritual Journeys (Jesuits History) ---
http://libraries.slu.edu/a/digital_collections/spiritual-journeys/index.html
International Association for Identification (Crime records) ---
http://iai.lib.wvu.edu/
Knitting Industry
http://www.knittingindustry.com/
A Chronicle of the China Trade: The Papers of Augustine Heard & Co.,
1840-1877 ---
http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/heard/
California State Archives ---
http://www.sos.ca.gov/archives/
Online Archive of California ---
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/
The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture ---
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/
Shared History: Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas ---
http://scipio.uark.edu/cdm4/index_HappyHollow.php?CISOROOT=/HappyHollow
The Ten Best American (Liberal) Essays Since 1950, According to Robert Atwan
---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/the_ten_best_american_essays_since_1950.html
Farm, Field and Fireside: Agricultural Newspaper Collection ---
http://www.library.illinois.edu/dnc/Default/Skins/FFF/Client.asp?Skin=FFF&AW=1352715795606&AppName=2
Mapping Staten Island ---
http://mappingstatenisland.mcny.org/
Savannah College of Art and Design: Museum of Art ---
http://www.scadmoa.org/
Toledo's Attic ---
http://www.toledosattic.org/
Ohio's Digital Resource Commons
http://drc.ohiolink.edu/
Oury Family Papers (rural Arizona family history) ---
http://www.library.arizona.edu/contentdm/oury/index.php
Morris K. Udall: Oral History Project [pdf, Real Player]
http://content.library.arizona.edu/collections/mo_udall_oralhist/
Jack Sheaffer Collection (Arizona) ---
http://www.library.arizona.edu/contentdm/jsheaffer/
Arizona Regional Image Archive ---
http://aria.arizona.edu
From the Ground Up (Kansas student art history studies) ---
http://www.groundsite.org/
Inventing a Better Mousetrap: Patent Models from the Rothschild Collection
---
http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2011/rothschild/
Google Revisits the Fall of the Iron Curtain in New Online Exhibition ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/google_fall_of_the_iron_curtain.html
Germany Under Reconstruction ---
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/History/subcollections/GerReconAbout.html
The Underwater Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Submarines and the Risk of
Nuclear War ---
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB399/
Foreign Policy: The Cuban Missile Crises
---
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/cubanmissilecrisis
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
Boston University Digital Common (wide ranging topics, including travel and
hospitality) ---
http://dcommon.bu.edu/xmlui/
Includes the School of Management
Communities in DCommon
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
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 links to free electronic literature are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ---
http://plato.stanford.edu/
The Writing Center at Harvard University ---
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/resources.html
Grammar Girl Tips ---
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/
English Grammar Lessons ---
http://www.englishgrammar.org/
From the University of Chicago
Writing in College: A Short Guide to College Writing ---
http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/resources/collegewriting/
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
November 16, 2012
November 17, 2012
November 19, 2012
November 20, 2012
Some Teens Risk Health to Build Muscle
Worst-Ever West Nile Epidemic: What Happened?
Doctor Ethics Survey: What Would Your MD Do?
Unemployment Takes Toll on the Heart
Nanoparticles Show Potential for Treating MS
More Deaths, Illness Linked to Energy Drinks
Does Air Pollution Hurt Memory of Older Adults?
Children's PeaPod Travel Beds Recalled
Smoking Bans Are on the Rise in Big Cities
November 21, 2012
November 22, 2012
November 26, 2012
November 27, 2012
Healthcare Video and Cases From PwC
Why mobile technology may well define the future of healthcare... for
everyone. ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qkm_7XUDqIY
PwC mHealth (read that Mobile Health) Master Site ---
http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/healthcare/mhealth/index.jhtml?WT.ac=vt-mhealth#&panel1-1
Mobile is
accelerating trends in healthcare
Three major trends already
happening in healthcare lend themselves to the revolution in mobile
technology:
Ageing population
Ageing populations and
chronic illness are driving regulatory reform. Public sector healthcare
is seeking better access and quality, and it's looking to the private
sector for innovation and efficiency. mHealth improves access and
quality, and offers dramatic innovation and cost reduction.
Foundations already in
place
The foundations of
industrialisation of healthcare are already in place — electronic
medical records, remote monitoring and communications. ‘Care anywhere’
is already emerging. The platform for mHealth is set.
Personalisation
Healthcare, like other
industries, is getting personal. mHealth can offer personal toolkits for
predictive, participatory and preventative care.
At
another event in the anniversary series, Balanced Scorecard co-founder
Robert Kaplan explained how poor cost measurement is plaguing the U.S. health
care system and what can be done to fix it.
CGMA Magazine (11/6)
Bob Jensen's threads on health care ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
"An Overview of the Affordable Care Act," by Matt Kukla, Scribed,
November 2012 ---
http://www.scribd.com/doc/109391737/An-Overview-of-the-ACA
As you know, health care has been a highly
politicized topic in recent years and become a focal point of theupcoming
elections. Solving our health care crisis is crucial to the survival,
productivity and well being of boththe U.S. economy and all its citizens.
Fortunately, there exists a growing body of evidence from across theworld
offering solutions for fixing our health system – evidence that bridges and
blends the best of bothpolitical parties for those open minded enough to see
it. Yet it is stuck behind the curtain of drama andpartisanship, and I fear
the ongoing political theatre will prevent us from utilizing this body of
knowledge.I recently finished my PhD in Health Systems Financing, Economics
and Policy and returned from working atthe World Health Organization in
Geneva. While my background focuses on the U.S. health care system, mostof
my work involves reforming health systems in other developed and developing
countries. I essentially dealwith (a) how institutional frameworks,
governance, and political systems impact health care and (b) howhealth care
dollars are collected, pooled, and redistributed / paid among the big three
(insurance, individualsand medical providers). Because this is the primary
goal of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and given thetremendous amount
of misinformation circulating about these issues, I have writtena summary of
(a) whatour existing health care system looks like, notably the root causes
of rising costs and the uninsured, (b) thetrue content of the Affordable
Care Act, (c) what the ACA should have done differently, and (d)
someadditional insights into our health care system that you might find
prevalent and interesting.I realize that terms like “Evidence” and “Facts”
are thrown around so frequently in American society,individuals rarely know
which are truly accurate and non-biased. Political parties, special interest
groups, andmany Americans are also willing to utilize sound research when it
supports their arguments but are keen todebunk it as biased when it does
not. As such, I want to ensure your confidence that this write-up is
accurateand non-biased. My data comes from my own work and a range of
sources including the World Bank, WorldHealth Organization, top academic
literature, and the best non-partisan policy think tanks (RAND,Commonwealth
Fund, Health Affairs, Kaiser). I have also been critical of many liberal and
conservative "talkingpoints" as well as the ACA, while providing the most
updated evidence where possible. If you have any questions about these
sources or wish to read them, please don’t hesitate to email me.
The Problem Interestingly, the U.S. health care
system is not actually a system, but something that has been put
togetherpiecemeal over decades of policymaking. Our political system is
built for incremental policymaking at best;thus health care reforms have
built on one another only to fill in any existing gaps. Yet we have never
steppedback, looked at the big picture and restructured the entire system to
be coordinated, efficient or effective. It'slike continuing to put band-aids
on a gushing wound, when what's needed is surgery. Or it's like having
40workers operate an assembly line that's meant for 15 people -- instead of
removing them and simplifying, weadd more people to manage those 40. The
system becomes increasingly layered, inefficient, ineffective,complex and
stagnant. The following is a brief overview of what our existing health care
system looks like as aresult of this reform process. While there is no
silver bullet or single change that will fix our health care system(despite
what people tell you), overwhelming evidence from dozens of developed
countries and the USsuggests that the following factors account for a
significant portion of the growth in our healthcare costs (18percent of GDP
vs. 8-13 percent in most other developed countries) and lack of health care
coverage (19percent of the population / 49 million vs. 1-2 percent in other
countries
Continued in article
Healthcare Video and Cases From PwC
Why mobile technology may well define the future of healthcare... for
everyone ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qkm_7XUDqIY
PwC mHealth (read that Mobile Health) Master Site ---
http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/healthcare/mhealth/index.jhtml?WT.ac=vt-mhealth#&panel1-1
Mobile is
accelerating trends in healthcare
Three major trends already
happening in healthcare lend themselves to the revolution in mobile
technology:
Ageing population
Ageing populations and
chronic illness are driving regulatory reform. Public sector healthcare
is seeking better access and quality, and it's looking to the private
sector for innovation and efficiency. mHealth improves access and
quality, and offers dramatic innovation and cost reduction.
Foundations already in
place
The foundations of
industrialisation of healthcare are already in place — electronic
medical records, remote monitoring and communications. ‘Care anywhere’
is already emerging. The platform for mHealth is set.
Personalisation
Healthcare, like other
industries, is getting personal. mHealth can offer personal toolkits for
predictive, participatory and preventative care.
Adding Pain to Misery in Medicare Funding of the Future
"The Dementia Plague: As the world's population of older people rapidly
grows in the coming years, Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia will become a
health-care disaster," by Stephen S. Hall, MIT's Technology Review, October
5, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/featured-story/429494/the-dementia-plague/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20121005
Bob
Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Don's Send Your Husband Shopping ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=-YFRUSTiFUs#t=65
We Made It ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyAGE8Y7ojc&feature=youtu.be
Having sex with your biographer is more fun than
having sex with your autobiographer.
David Petraus (not really)
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