Tidbits on May 23, 2013
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Set 1 of My Favorite Adjoining Golf Course Photographs
The First Nine-Hole Course in New Hampshire (1897)
www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/GolfCourse/GolfCourseSet01.htm

 

 

More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

 

Tidbits on May 23, 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/

"100 Websites You Should Know and Use (updated!)," by Jessica Gross, Ted Talk, August 3, 2007 ---
http://blog.ted.com/2007/08/03/100_websites_yo/

 




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

New HD Video Of Oklahoma Tornado Gives The Clearest View Yet ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-hd-video-of-oklahoma-tornado-2013-5

Cody Green, Honorary Marine --- http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/codygreen.asp

Hand Sign for Thank You ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=gr9Zb3sTfYg&feature=player_embedded

ABC News About Catching Baby Ducks ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=9hnbmml8fOY&hd=1

Stanford University Linear Accelerator: Videos --- http://www.youtube.com/user/slac


Free music downloads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

Spring For Music: National Symphony Orchestra At Carnegie Hall ---
http://www.npr.org/event/music/182037876/spring-for-music-national-symphony-orchestra

Detroit Symphony Orchestra At Carnegie Hall ---
http://www.npr.org/event/music/180098557/spring-for-music-detroit-symphony-orchestra-at-carnegie-hall

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

Pandora (my favorite online music station) --- www.pandora.com
TheRadio
(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 (with commercials) --- www.pandora.com 

Bob Jensen's threads on nearly all types of free music selections online ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm

Bob Jensen listens to music free online (with commercials) --- http://www.slacker.com/ 

Bob Jensen's threads on nearly all types of free music selections online ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm


Photographs and Art

From the University of Pittsburgh
Birds of America (435 birds mounted online) --- http://digital.library.pitt.edu/a/audubon/
The Darlington Digital Library (bird photographs) --- http://digital.library.pitt.edu/d/darlington
Audubon Magazine - Multimedia --- http://archive.audubonmagazine.org/multimedia/index.html

America in Color from 1939-1943 --- http://extras.denverpost.com/archive/captured.asp

32 Photos That Will Make Your Stomach Drop:  Whatever you do, don’t look down ---
http://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/these-photos-will-make-your-stomach-drop

British Museum: Life and death: Pompeii and Herculaneum
http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/pompeii_and_herculaneum.aspx

Watch Picasso Create Entire Paintings in Magnificent Time-Lapse Film (1956) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/watch_picasso_create_entire_paintings_in_short_time_lapse_film.html

Texas Fashion Collection --- http://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/collections/TXFC/

Illustrated Quixote --- http://library.brown.edu/cds/quixote/

Photographer Revisits Abandoned Movie Sets for Star Wars and Other Classic Films in North Africa ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/abandoned_movie_sets_for_star_wars.html

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revisit Her Sketches, Self-Portraits, Drawings & Illustrated Letters --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/the_art_of_sylvia_plath_revisit_her_sketches_self-portraits_drawings_illustrated_letters_.html

Virginia Memory (documents and photographs) ---  http://www.virginiamemory.com/

Liturgy and Life Artifacts Collection (Roman Catholic faith artifacts and photographs) --- 
http://dcollections.bc.edu/R/?func=collections-result&collection_id=1128

U.S. Army Center of Military History --- http://history.army.mil/ 

Centenary of the First World War, 1914-1918 --- http://www.awm.gov.au/1914-1918/

World War One ( World War I ) Color Photos --- http://www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com/

World War I Photographic History in a French Village
Remember Me: The Lost Diggers of Vignacourt --- http://www.awm.gov.au/exhibitions/remember-me/

World War (I &II) Propaganda Posters --- http://bir.brandeis.edu/handle/10192/23520

World War II Poster Collection --- http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/wwii-posters/

Australian War Memorial: This Company of Brave Men: The Gallipoli VCs --- http://www.awm.gov.au/exhibitions/bravemen

Iowa Digital Library: University Communication and Marketing Photographs --- http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/ucmp/

Historic Images of Wellesley College --- http://insight.wellesley.edu:8180/luna/servlet/WELLESLEYwcm~4~4

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 European Association for Digital Humanities --- http://www.allc.org/

HERA: Humanities in the European Research Area (research funding and news) ---
http://www.heranet.info/

The University of Michigan Digital Humanities Series---
 
http://www.digitalculture.org/books/book-series/digital-humanities-series/

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revisit Her Sketches, Self-Portraits, Drawings & Illustrated Letters --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/the_art_of_sylvia_plath_revisit_her_sketches_self-portraits_drawings_illustrated_letters_.html

On 50th Anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s Death, Hear Her Read ‘Lady Lazarus’ ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/02/on_50th_anniversary_of_sylvia_plaths_death_hear_her_read_lady_lazarus.html

Henry Miller Talks Writing and the Expat Life with Anaïs Nin, Lawrence Durrell, and Others (1969) --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/henry_miller_talks_writing_and_the_expat_life_with_anais_nin_lawrence_durrell_and_others_1969.html

Illustrated Quixote --- http://library.brown.edu/cds/quixote/

The Short Literary Life of Sylvia Plath --- http://www.sylviaplath.de/ "Our acknowledged Queen of Sorrows"
For Sylvia Plath’s 80th Birthday, Hear Her Read ‘A Birthday Present’ --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/10/for_sylvia_plaths_80th_birthday_hear_her_read_a_birthday_present.htmlPaul Laurence Dunbar Digital Collection of Poetry ---  http://www.libraries.wright.edu/special/dunbar/Robert Frost Recites ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/03/robert_frost_recites_stopping_by_woods_on_a_snowy_evening.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

 

Free Electronic Literature --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI




Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on May 23, 2013
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2013/TidbitsQuotations052313.htm      

U.S. National Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Also see http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Peter G. Peterson Website on Deficit/Debt Solutions ---
http://www.pgpf.org/

Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm




Download a Windows 8 Keyboard Shortcuts Cheatsheet ---
http://whitepapershg.tradepub.com/free/w_makb05/prgm.cgi

How to Get Rid of the Modern Environment on a Windows 8 PC --- Click Here
http://www.howtogeek.com/163424/how-to-get-rid-of-the-modern-environment-on-a-windows-8-pc/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=200513


"Make Presentations and Publish on the Web with Flowboard," by Anastasia Salter, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 20, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/presentations-with-flowboard/49393?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


The Good News West, the No News Midwest, and the Bad News East and South
Housing Prices Since 2009 on a USA Map --- http://www.businessinsider.com/map-of-us-housing-market-growth-2013-5


"10 Great Sci-Fi Films That Got The Future All Wrong," by Brian Hall, ReadWriteWeb, May 10, 2013 ---
http://readwrite.com/2013/05/10/10-great-sci-fi-films-that-got-the-future-all-wrong


"Microsoft YouTube App Is A Rule Breaker; It Strips Ads, Downloads Video," by Dan Rowinski, ReadWriteWeb, May 9, 2013 ---
http://readwrite.com/2013/05/09/microsoft-youtube-app-rule-breaker-strips-ads-downloads-video


"10 Things The Samsung Galaxy S4 Can Do That The iPhone Can't," by  Steve Kovach, Business Insider, May 14, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-samsung-galaxy-s4-features-2013-5


"PayPal or Credit Card—Which is Safer?" by Laura Adams, Money Girl, May 14, 2013 ---
http://moneygirl.quickanddirtytips.com/paypal-or-credit-card.aspx

"The Law About Debt Collections Harassment," by Laura Adams, Money Girl, May 21, 2013 ---
http://moneygirl.quickanddirtytips.com/debt-collections-harassment.aspx

Bob Jensen's helpers for personal finance ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers


The MITx home page link is at
http://www.mitx.org/

The EdX (edX) home page link is at
https://www.edx.org/

"What Professors Can Learn From 'Hard Core' MOOC Students," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 20, 2013 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/article/What-Professors-Can-Learn-From/139367/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

"MOOC Provider edX More Than Doubles Its University Partners," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 21, 2013 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/mooc-provider-edx-more-than-doubles-its-university-partners/43917?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

 


How to Lie With Statistics and Mislead Readers

"Missing the (Grade) Point," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, May 20, 2013 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/20/study-challenges-data-and-ideas-behind-grade-inflation-higher-education

. . .

Stuart Rojstaczer, a retired professor at Duke University who has written extensively about grade inflation (arguing that it is a real problem), said his data and other studies show a different story. The period in which the authors argue for grade deflation was one in which "every published paper" has found grade inflation, Rojstaczer said. He said that he doesn't "know where the error is," but believes there is a "huge error" in the data. Rojstaczer said via e-mail that he believes the new paper has "no value."

Continued in article

 

Jensen Comment
The first way to lie with statistics is to cherry pick the data to be sampled. Excluding two-year colleges and all colleges and universities that have at least one masters or doctoral program pretty much excludes the world of higher education.

Secondly, many students who leave a college before completing ten credits do so because they are failing or received very low grades in the first course or two. Including, for example, a student who failed three courses and withdrew from a college skews the mean way down due to the F grades.

Indeed this research paper has negative value because it is so misleading. It's like the authors completely ignored the research demonstrating grade inflation in higher education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GradeInflation


"What’s at Stake With Grade Inflation?" by Robert Zaretsky, Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, May 13, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/05/13/whats-at-stake-with-grade-inflation/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on the great tragedy of grade inflation ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GradeInflation 


"8 Ways Hardware Manufacturers Are Deceiving You," How-to-Geek, May 2013 ---
http://www.howtogeek.com/163285/8-ways-hardware-manufacturers-are-deceiving-you/

"30+ Web-Based Alternatives to Traditional Desktop Apps for Chromebooks and PCs," How-to-Geek, May 2013 --- Click Here
http://www.howtogeek.com/163162/30-web-based-alternatives-to-traditional-desktop-apps-for-chromebooks-and-pcs/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=170513


"9 More Super-Controversial Math Facts That People Refuse To Believe Are True (Slide Show)," by Walter Hickey, Business Insider, May 13, 2013 ---
 http://www.businessinsider.com/controversial-math-problems-markov-chain-cantor-coin-flip-2013-5

Jensen Comment
When does the gin in the tonic take up half of the glass?


The 3 Secrets Of Highly Successful Graduates (Slide Show)
"Amazing Career Advice For College Grads From LinkedIn's Billionaire Founder," by  Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider, May 12, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazing-career-advice-for-college-grads-from-linkedins-billionaire-founder-2013-5 

Jensen Comment
I'm not sure I agree with all of this. If you search long enough and hard enough almost everything appears somewhere in the library and/or in Web documents. The problem is sorting out the wheat from the chaff beforehand in the context of your particular talent, skills, determination, family circumstances, living environment, health, opportunities, and constraints.

Millionaires and billionaires, like Reid Hoffman, often feel they have the answers to success when in fact much of their success is a matter of luck along the serendipitous road in life. I grant them the fact that sometimes you help to make your own luck, but by it's very definition taking "risks" with careers means that there will be many losers as long as a few winners along that serendipitous road.

Also most people really do not have the talent for and drive to becoming successful entrepreneurs. Advising most graduates to become entrepreneurs may be setting them on a road to failure.

To illustrate my point, I think that many accounting graduates are better off to become lifelong employees as public accountants, internal auditors, governmental accountants, FBI agents, etc. Most of them are likely to fall on very hard times if they quit their jobs and leverage up to create a startup company.

Hopefully, some of them will take the plunge and form a new venture in a quest for the American Dream. But this is not good advice for the majority of those graduates looking down the road at their lifelong careers. Tell most of those graduates that they may find great careers as public accountants, internal auditors, governmental accountants, FBI agents, professors, etc.  At the same time tell them to keep their eyes open to opportunities and to be willing, if they have the inspiration to do so, to take the plunge. But also tell them not to become victims of get-rich-quick frauds.

Bob Jensen's threads on careers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers


Brookings Institution --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution "

Jensen Comment
Technically Brookings is bipartisan and has an excellent reputation among liberal and conservative economists, If anything, it probably leans slightly to the left.

Why some senators need some lessons in economics
"Think tank The Brookings Institute laid down each plan one by one. The only one it doesn't take seriously at ALL is Warren's,"  by Linette Lopez, Business Insider, May 20, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/brookins-slams-warren-student-loan-plan-2013-5

(Senator) Elizabeth Warren made headlines last week for saying that she believed students should pay the same rate for loans as big Wall Street banks, 0.75%.

The Obama administration extended 3.4% interest rate on subsidized federal student loans last year, but that measure is set to expire in July leaving room for reform. The House Republicans, The President's Office, Democratic Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Think tank The Brookings Institute laid down each plan one by one. The only one it doesn't take seriously at ALL is Warren's.

From Brookings:

Sen. Warren’s proposal should be quickly dismissed as a cheap political gimmick. It proposes only a one-year change to the rate on one kind of federal student loan, confuses market interest rates on long-term loans (such as the 10-year Treasury rate) with the Federal Reserve’s Discount Window (used to make short-term loans to banks), and does not reflect the administrative costs and default risk that increase the costs of the federal student loan program.

Setting aside this one embarrassingly bad proposal, the remaining proposals raise a set of questions that need to be answered in order to select the ideal policy...

Ultimately, Brookings advocates for (shocking) a compromise. The Obama plan allows the rate to move with market conditions (as do the House Republicans). The two plans differ in that Obama does not want the rate to vary over the life of the loan (House Republicans do).

Durbin and Reed's plan looks a lot like the House Republican plan, but puts a cap on interest rates and uses a different benchmark for the rate — the 91-day Treasury rate plus a percentage determined by the Education Secretary to cover administrative costs rather than 10-year Treasury Bonds.

But again — Warren proposal is nowhere.

Jensen Comment
This reminds me of the time two first-year and naive Congressional representatives proposed, in an effort to reduce fuel prices, that the U.S. Government buy the oil refineries from the profit-mongering big oil companies like Exxon, Shell, and BP. What they failed to understand is that the oil companies would like nothing better than to unload their refineries on the U.S. government. Profits are made in the production of oil and in the retailing of oil products. Refineries tend to be high risk in the supply chain and are somewhat losing operations when risks are factored into the equation. I forget the details, but when oil companies proposed supporting their proposal they dropped it like a hot potato.


From the CFO.com Morning Ledger on May 21, 2013

Apple  paid little to no corporate income tax to any national government on tens of billions of dollars in overseas income over the past four years, Senate investigators found. Today’s WSJ reports that the Senate panel has put out a 40-page report and is expected to air its findings at a hearing today.

Tim Cook is expected to testify and propose changes to a tax code that provides American companies strong incentives to keep overseas earnings bottled up at foreign subsidiaries.

The investigation found no evidence that Apple did anything illegal. The panel’s new report focuses on Apple units in Ireland, where Apple has long based its overseas operations. These units are beyond the reach of the IRS. But Irish tax law only considers companies residents of the small European country if they are managed and controlled there, and Apple manages them from the U.S. The result: Apple pays little or no taxes to either country on much of its revenue earned outside the U.S., according to the report.

Although Ireland is often used as a corporate tax haven, ahead of some of the questions it expects on Tuesday, Apple said it has a base of operations there with 4,000 people, reports Emily Chasan in CFOJ. The company said its tax payments account for $1 of every $40 in corporate income tax the U.S. Treasury collects. It also said it doesn’t use “tax gimmicks,” and that its overseas funds are primarily derived from overseas sales.

"Apple Avoids Paying $17 Million In Taxes Every Day Through A Ballsy But Genius Tax Avoidance Scheme," by Walter Hickey, Business Insider, May 21, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-apple-reduces-what-it-pays-in-taxes-2013-5


"19 Lottery Winners Who Blew It All," by Mandi Woodruff and Michael Kelley, Business Insider, May 19, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/17-lottery-winners-who-blew-it-all-2013-5


2012 Internet Crime Report
IC3 via FBI, May 14, 2013
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/may/internet-crime-in-2012/internet-crime-in-2012

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm


Cody Green, Honorary Marine --- http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/codygreen.asp


The limits of academic freedom are not distinct
"
Florida Atlantic U. Chief Cites Crushing Media Scrutiny in Resignation," by Jack Stripling, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 15, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Florida-Atlantic-U-Chief/139279/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Jensen Comment
For the past two days a handsome bluebird (with an orange breast) has been trying to peck his way through the window in front of my desk. He's at it again this morning. Yesterday I don't think he took time off to eat or help his mate build the nest inside the bird house.  He and his mate just took over one of our various rental houses, but he seems preoccupied with upgrading to our entire cottage.

The window is a barrier through which this bluebird dare not cross. Similarly there are limits to academic freedom even though they sometimes seem invisible. They do exist, and often somebody pays the penalty when this barrier is shattered.


The Big Four Accounting Firms Are All in the Ten:  Who dares say that accounting is a dull career?
"Fifty Most Popular Employers for Business Students," Bloomberg Businessweek, May 9, 2013 ---
http://images.businessweek.com/slideshows/2013-05-09/fifty-most-popular-employers-for-business-students

Bob Jensen's threads on careers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers


Years later, here I am, with a Ph.D. and years of experience behind me, writing regularly for three different blogs--one of them a blog of my own. I haven't published a paper in an academic journal yet (for now, the standard currency for academic credibility) . . .
Liana Silva whose blog at Inside Higher Ed is called University of Venus

"So You Want to Blog (Academic Edition)," by Liana Silva, Inside Higher Ed, May  12, 2013 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com//blogs/university-venus/so-you-want-blog-academic-edition

When I was a Master's student (almost a decade ago), I started blogging. It was a messy endeavor: a Blogger site with some random posts that didn't amount to much. I worked more on the layout than the content. I didn't get many page views, and I felt no motivation to continue working on it.

Years later, here I am, with a Ph.D. and years of experience behind me, writing regularly for three different blogs--one of them a blog of my own. I haven't published a paper in an academic journal yet (for now, the standard currency for academic credibility), but I believe that my writing chops across genres have improved, my voice comes through my writing, and my awareness of audience is sharper. As a result, I am invested in my online presence as a blogger, and more broadly as a writer. Moreover, I believe that blogs can help writers, especially academic writers, become better communicators.

As an editor for two academic blogs, I thrive off of helping writers hone their ideas, but more importantly helping them get their voices online, as clearly as possible. My years of experience working as an editor and at a University writing center have taught me that writers need not just someone to clean up their prose (which is the more common interpretation of editor) but also someone who can find the idea they are trying to convey. In other words, they need someone who can help make those ideas crystal clear. For academic writers, this can be tough because of the supposed conventions of academic writing (even though most of the scholars I know prefer the kind of writing that is clear, concise, and striking). For better or for worse, we learn how to write in our disciplines mostly through example, and the examples we are presented with are most often found in traditional academic journals.

Academic blogging can coexist with these academic journals and help writers develop their ideas by taking them for a trial run with readers before committing them to a journal article. However, traditional academic writing, with its lengthy paragraphs, heavy footnotes, and discipline-specific jargon, may not translate well to blogging. Here are some suggestions (which solely reflect my experience as a blogger and as an editor for blogs):

You don't have to have an airtight argument. We're taught to think in terms of arguments, of polished prose. But in blogging, you can explore a question, and not answer it. The conversation that arises in the comments section could help you get to an answer. Think about the length. Technically, a blog post can be as long as you want it to be, but be aware of when you drone on and on about a subject. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Consider whether a post is better off broken up into two posts--or several. Moreover, some blogs have word limits: here at U Venus we aim for the 750 word range; at Sounding Out! we tell writers to aim for 1500 words. Reading does not have to always be an endurance test--and length does not testify for the complexity of ideas. Consider language. If you feel comfortable writing in a casual tone, that's alright in a blog post, even if it is an academic topic. That adds to the voice of the piece. However, this also depends on the subject. Ultimately, don't feel like your posts needs to be serious or stuffy because it is an academic topic. Share your research interests. You don't have to give everything away if you don't want to. I know a lot of academics have a fear of being scooped, and their fears are not unfounded: it has happened. Publishing a blog post doesn't have to lead to that. In fact, it could be a teaser of something you're working on that could bring more readers to that finished product. It can also help you make your mark in your field. You don't have to upload your whole dissertation on a website--if you don't want to. Ask for feedback. Unsure about the subject? Unsure about the tone? Ask your editor. Editors are here to help you; some may not have the time to answer. But some may be able to give you more focused feedback. At both of the blogs I work for we give different kinds of feedback, but we make sure to give writers feedback to help them take their writing to the next level. If you're blogging at your own blog, ask your readers. Share the post with people you hope that give you feedback. Don't be afraid to ask.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university-venus/so-you-want-blog-academic-edition#ixzz2TGiA8BPP Inside Higher Ed

Continued in article

"6 Tips For Building a High Quality Blog Following," by Shane Snow, Marshable, January 3, 2012 ---
http://ht.ly/8gu3L
Thank you Robert Harris for the heads up.

Jensen Comment
Keys to success for a Website are somewhat different than keys to success for a blogging site. For a Website the key to success is content --- lots of it even if the content is narrowly focused. The reason is that the most hits usually come for users of Web crawlers like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. For blog posts, huge-content files can become wearisome.

Bob Jensen's threads on blogs, listservs, and social networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm


"Lack of Financial Literacy Complicates Student-Aid Process, Report Says," by Allie Bidwell, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 13, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Lack-of-Financial-Literacy/139223/

"Teach Financial Literacy," by Steven Bahls, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 13, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/13/essay_on_responsibility_of_colleges_to_teach_financial_literacy

Bob Jensen's advocacy of putting financial literacy in the common core ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#FinancialLiteracy

Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers


This predatory Publisher is from India and the Blogger is a professor at the University of Colorado in Denver
"Publisher Threatens to Sue Blogger for $1-Billion," by Jake New, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 15, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Publisher-Threatens-to-Sue/139243/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en


"New ProPublica Tool Digs Into Nonprofit Tax Forms," by Brock Read, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 10, 2013 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/new-propublica-tool-digs-into-nonprofit-tax-forms?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en


"HTML5 Moodle Mobile App Comes to Android, iOS," by David Nagel, T.H.E. Journal, May 9, 2013 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/05/09/html5-moodle-mobile-apps-comes-to-android-ios.aspx

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


Updates from How-to-Geek on May 15, 2013

How Computer Manufacturers Are Paid to Make Your Laptop Worse --- Click Here
http://www.howtogeek.com/163303/how-computer-manufacturers-are-paid-to-make-your-laptop-worse/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=150513

The entire How-to-Geek newsletter is somewhat interesting today ---
See Below

Peer-to-Peer (P2P)

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems rely on direct system-to-system connections without a central infrastructure or server system facilitating the transmission of data or resources. P2P systems are utilized in situations where it is ideal to distribute loads across many users. In the case of BitTorrent (a type of distributed file sharing system), files are not stored on a central server, but instead are shared piece-by-piece in a distributed network composed of many users. This makes it easy to get popular files quickly and it protects the network from being shut down by outside authorities.

Other examples of P2P include distributed computation projects, like SETI@Home, where thousands of computers share the task of crunching large problems or data sets. The distributed network essentially becomes a super computer by the sum of its computational power.

 

What We're Reading from Around the Web
  • Microsoft: Windows Blue to be named Windows 8.1, will be free [Neowin]
  • Microsoft: Windows 8.1 is an update, not a service pack [Neowin]
  • Download the Misty Landscapes Windows Theme [7 Tutorials]
  • Scan for Open Ports & Evaluate the Security of Your System with Nmap [7 Tutorials]
  • What is a File's Metadata & How to Edit It in Windows 7 & Windows 8 [7 Tutorials]
  •  
    Featured Articles

    How Computer Manufacturers Are Paid to Make Your Laptop Worse

     A laptop is a marvel of engineering. So much work goes into designing and manufacturing all the individual pieces of hardware before combining them with software that’s taken decades to build. After going through all this work, laptop manufacturers are paid to make their laptops slower and more frustrating to use.

    How to Add a Keyboard Shortcut to a Command in Word 2013

     Many commands in Word have keyboard shortcuts assigned to them, making it quicker to apply formatting, save the file, and perform other tasks on your documents. These keyboard shortcuts can be customized, and you can assign shortcuts to commands that do not currently have them.
     

    Geek School: Learn How to Use Excel Macros to Automate Tedious Tasks

    One of the more powerful, but seldom used functions of Excel is the ability to very easily create automated tasks and custom logic within macros. Macros provide an ideal way to save time on predictable, repetitive tasks as well as standardize document formats – many times without having to write a single line of code.

    How Do the Windows 8 Store Apps Stack Up Against Android and iPad?

    So you want to buy a tablet — you have a choice between the iPad, Android tablets, and now Windows 8 or Windows RT tablets. Windows tablets are often the most expensive. Software availability is crucial when using a tablet.

    Geek News (from How-to-Geek) on May 16, 2013

    What We're Reading from Around the Web
  • Feds seize a bank account belonging to the biggest BitCoin exchange [ArsTechnica]
  • Google Maps integrates Google Earth and Street View in completely redesigned interface [The Verge]
  • Google+ completely redesigned, now automatically enhances photos and highlights your best shots [The Verge]
  • Google announces Play game services, Android's cross-platform answer to Game Center [The Verge]
  • Google takes on Spotify with Google Play Music All Access subscription service, priced at $9.99 per month [The Verge]
  •  


    Economist Magazine:  The price of a Big Mac over Three Decades

    "Symptoms Don't Lie," by Peter Schiff, Townhall Finance, May 12, 2013 ---
    http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/peterschiff/2013/05/12/symptoms-dont-lie-n1593199?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

    . . .

    n my latest commentary I discussed how the Big Mac Index (The Economist Magazine's 30 year data set on Big Mac prices) provided strong anecdotal evidence that inflation in the United States is higher than official figures. More information has come in since then that tells me the same thing: that Americans are downsizing their lives as their incomes fail to keep pace with rising prices. These symptoms are at odds with the widespread belief in an accelerating recovery that has resulted in braggadocio in Washington and euphoria on Wall Street.

    Earlier this week Tyson Foods, one of the nation's largest providers of packaged meat products, announced that although their top line sales revenue increased by almost 2% (roughly in line with U.S. GDP growth), operating margins collapsed by almost 50%, leading to a 43% decline in profit. Consumer shifts away from relatively higher priced/higher margin beef and pork products to lower cost/lower margin chicken products were to blame. Tyson also noted that cost conscious consumers shifted away from higher margin packaged chicken products to fresh meat cuts, thereby sacrificing convenience for cost.

    According to government statisticians, the Tyson announcement would reveal modest growth and low inflation. After all, revenue at the company grew and spending on their products had increased modestly. But rising prices were obscured by consumers purchasing lower quality products. Not only are consumers avoiding the beef and pork that they otherwise may have preferred, but they are opting out of the convenience of prepared foods. This behavior is symptomatic of diminished consumer purchasing power. This is known as getting poorer.

    See the graph at http://www.europac.net/commentaries/changing_conversation

    Jensen Comment
    Because price changes in food and fuel made the inflation index look bad and resulted in higher inflation adjustments to Social Security recipients, the government took food and fuel prices out of the inflation index. The USA government is very good at lying with statistics.


    How to Backup Your DVD and Blu-Ray Movie Collection --- Click Here
    http://www.howtogeek.com/161498/how-to-backup-your-dvd-and-blu-ray-movie-collection/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=130513


    Download Excel 2013 Quick Reference Guide --- http://whitepapershg.tradepub.com/free/w_cusb31/prgm.cgi


    "Georgia Tech to Offer a MOOC-Like Online Master's Degree, at Low Cost," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 14, 2013 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/Ga-Tech-to-Offer-a-MOOC-Like/139245/

    "Southern Illinois University to Offer Online Accounting Degree," by Gail Perry, AccountingWeb, May 6, 2013 ---
    http://www.accountingweb.com/article/southern-illinois-university-offer-online-accounting-degree/221747?source=education

    Bob Jensen's threads on distance education and training alternatives ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/CrossBorder.htm


    "ACLU Sues the State of California for Failing to Teach 20,000 Students English;  Who is at Fault for Students’ Failure to Learn English in California Schools?" by Accounting Professor Steven Mintz, Ethics Sage, May 9, 2013 --- Click Here 
    http://www.ethicssage.com/2013/05/aclu-sues-the-state-of-california-for-failing-to-teach-20000-students-english-who-is-at-fault-for-students-failure-to.html

    Jensen Questions
    Could this set a precedent for suing for "failing to teach" math and other subjects in the curriculum?
    How about "failing to teach" financial literacy as well as English literacy?


    May 20, 2013 Message from Dennis Huber

    Read about security research as it happens. Obtain in-depth security information including, research & statistics, white papers, presentations and the latest threat maps that display the most recent data collected by Websense Security Labs.

    http://www.antiphishing.org/apwg-news-center/crimeware-map/

    Bob Jensen's threads about computer and networking security ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection


    Applicants for academic jobs, particularly in the humanities, know instinctively—and by the job offers that never materialize—that they face tough competition in trying to get tenure-track positions. And when the odds are sometimes as high as 600 to one, as they were for a recent opening for assistant professor in the department of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, candidates have no way of knowing exactly whom they are up against or how they stack up.
    "The Long Odds of the Faculty Job Search," by Audrey Williams June, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 19, 2013 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/The-Long-Odds-of-the/139361/?cid=wb

    Bob Jensen compares (with data) searching for an accounting faculty position versus a history faculty position at
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#HistoryVsAccountancy


    Question
    Aside from curriculum content, what is the leading difference between MBA degrees and Law degrees?

    Answer
    It used to be that law schools require one more year (two semesters) of additional courses. Most MBA programs require two years or the equivalent of two years of business studies. Although some MBA programs are designed for less than two years of study, those shortcut versions generally require prerequisite business and economics courses before matriculating. Until now, law schools tended not to have short cut versions allowing students to graduate in less than three years.

    "THE TWO - YEAR LAW DEGREE : UNDESIRABLE BUT PERHAPS UNAVOIDABLE," by Stephen Gellers, N.Y.U. Journal of Legislation and Public Policy Quorum, April 3, 2013 ---
    http://nyujlpp.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Quorum-2013-Gillers-Law-School1.pdf


    Is this charity scalping donors?
    "$6 Million Worth Of Hair Donations To Locks Of Love Have Gone Missing," by Megan Willett, Business Insider, May 14, 2013 ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/locks-of-love-could-be-missing-hair-2013-5

    Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm


    University of Mary Hardin-Baylor reported an acceptance rate of 27.4 percent. It was really 89.1 percent ---
    "Another College Fesses Up," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, May 15, 2013 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/15/another-college-admits-it-gave-us-news-incorrect-data

    "Law Deans in Jail," by Morgan Cloud and George B. Shepherd, SSRN, February 24, 2012 ---
    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1990746&download=yes

    Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm


    United We Power, Divided We Waste
    "Building Solar in Spain Instead of Germany Could Save Billions:  Building solar and wind projects in the wrong place is wasting billions of dollars in Europe," by Kevin Bullis, MIT's Technology Review, May 17, 2013 --- Click Here
    http://www.technologyreview.com/view/514991/building-solar-in-spain-instead-of-germany-could-save-billions/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130520


    The question for cost accountants is whether some robot costs should be charged to direct labor rather than manufacturing overhead. For example, suppose that a leased robot has an on-the-job clock with rental fees being paid by the hour. Can a case be made that these rental fees by the hour should be charged to direct labor?

    "It’s Time to Talk about the Burgeoning Robot Middle Class:  How will a mass influx of robots affect human employment?" by Illah Nourbakhsh, MIT's Technology Review, May 14, 2013 --- Click Here
     http://www.technologyreview.com/view/514861/its-time-to-talk-about-the-burgeoning-robot-middle-class/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130515

    Jensen Comment
    Note that robots can do more than physical things in factories. Robots can become teachers, doctors, surgeons, auditors, accountants, soldiers, sailors, pilots, truck drivers, musicians, etc. If we can figure out how to program them to cheat in terms of billions of dollars they can even be elected to office.

    The key to robotics in the service sector is to make them interactive in terms of letting them do what they do best in interaction with humans doing what they do best. Surgery is a good example. Although there is a miniscule margin of error, robotic surgeons can perform delicate surgeries in interaction with human surgeons who might be located thousands of miles away. These robots actually make decisions and are not just hand extensions of the surgeon.

    I've always admired drivers of 18-wheel trucks who can back those big rigs into tight alleys. The day is probably already here when a robot can back a big rig into tight places better than our top truck drivers.

    For years robots have been landing airplanes, and the day may come when robots are better pilots than our top pilots. The automatic pilots are making decisions and are not just hand extensions of the pilots who are there mostly to override the robot when something malfunctions. Years ago I was on an American Airlines flight years ago when the pilot announced that the touch down had been a bit rough because the automatic pilot landed the aircraft. I'm sure robotic landings have smoothed out since then.

    The question for cost accountants is whether some robot costs should be charged to direct labor rather than manufacturing overhead. For example, suppose that a leased robot has an on-the-job clock with rental fees being paid by the hour. Can a case be made that these rental fees by the hour should be charged to direct labor?

    Robotics Displacing Labor Even in Higher Education
    "The New Industrial Revolution," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, March  25, 2013 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-Industrial-Revolution/138015/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

    Baxter is a new type of worker, who is having no trouble getting a job these days, even in a tight economy. He's a little slow, but he's easy to train. And companies don't hire him, they buy him—he even comes with a warranty.

    Baxter is a robot, not a human, though human workers in all kinds of industries may soon call him a colleague. His plastic-and-metal body consists of two arms loaded with sensors to keep his lifeless limbs from accidentally knocking over anyone nearby. And he has a simulated face, displayed on a flat-panel computer monitor, so he can give a frown if he's vexed or show a bored look if he's waiting to be given more to do.

    Baxter is part of a new generation of machines that are changing the labor market worldwide—and raising a new round of debate about the meaning of work itself. This robot comes at a price so low—starting at just $22,000—that even businesses that never thought of replacing people with machines may find that prospect irresistible. It's the brainchild of Rodney Brooks, who also designed the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, which succeeded in bringing at least a little bit of robotics into millions of homes. One computer scientist predicts that robots like Baxter will soon toil in fast-food restaurants topping pizzas, at bakeries sliding dough into hot ovens, and at a variety of other service-sector jobs, in addition to factories.

    I wanted to meet this worker of the future and his robot siblings, so I spent a day at this year's Automate trade show here, where Baxter was one of hundreds of new commercial robots on display. Simply by guiding his hands and pressing a few buttons, I programmed him to put objects in boxes; I played blackjack against another robot that had been temporarily programmed to deal cards to show off its dexterity; and I watched demonstration robots play flawless games of billiards on toy-sized tables. (It turns out that robots are not only better at many professional jobs than humans are, but they can best us in our hobbies, too.)

    During a keynote speech to kick off the trade show, Henrik Christensen, director of robotics at Georgia Tech, outlined a vision of a near future when we'll see robots and autonomous devices everywhere, working side by side with humans and taking on a surprisingly diverse set of roles. Robots will load and unload packages from delivery trucks without human assistance—as one company's system demonstrated during the event. Robots will even drive the trucks and fly the cargo planes with our packages, Christensen predicted, noting that Google has already demonstrated its driverless car, and that the same technology that powers military drones can just as well fly a FedEx jet. "We'll see coast-to-coast package delivery with drones without having a pilot in the vehicle," he asserted.

    Away from the futuristic trade floor, though, a public discussion is growing about whether robots like Baxter and other new automation technologies are taking too many jobs. Similar concerns have cropped up repeatedly for centuries: when combines first arrived on farms, when the first machines hit factory assembly lines, when computers first entered businesses. A folk tune from the 1950s called "The Automation Song" could well be sung today: "Now you've got new machines for to take my place, and you tell me it's not mine to share." Yet new jobs have always seemed to emerge to fill the gaps left by positions lost to mechanization. There may be few secretaries today, but there are legions of social-media managers and other new professional categories created by digital technology.

    Still, what if this time is different? What if we're nearing an inflection point where automation is so cheap and efficient that human workers are simply outmatched? What if machines are now leading to a net loss of jobs rather than a net gain? Two professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, raised that concern in Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy (Digital Frontier Press, 2011). A recent report on 60 Minutes featured the book's thesis and quoted critics concerned about the potential economic crisis caused by robots, despite the cute faces on their monitors.

    But robots raise an even bigger question than how many jobs are left over for humans. A number of scholars are now arguing that all this automation could make many goods and services so cheap that a full-time jobs could become optional for most people. Baxter, then, would become a liberator of the human spirit rather than an enemy of the working man.

    That utopian dream would require resetting the role work plays in our lives. If our destiny is to be freed from toil by robot helpers, what are we supposed to do with our days?

    To begin to tackle that existential question, I decided to invite along a scholar of work to the Automate trade show. And that's how my guest, Burton J. Bledstein, an expert on the history of professionalism and the growth of the modern middle class, got into an argument with the head of a robotics company.

    It happened at the booth for Adept Technology Inc., which makes a robot designed to roam the halls of hospitals and other facilities making deliveries. The latest model­—a foot-tall rolling platform that can be customized for a variety of tasks­—wandered around the booth, resembling something out of a Star Wars film except that it occasionally blasted techno music from its speakers. Bledstein was immediately wary of the contraption. The professor, who holds an emeritus position at the University of Illinois at Chicago, explained that he has an artificial hip and didn't want the robot to accidentally knock him down. He needn't have worried, though; the robot is designed to sense nearby objects and keep a safe distance.

    The company's then-CEO, John Dulchinos, assured us that on the whole, robots aren't taking jobs—they're simply making life better for human employees by eliminating the most-tedious tasks. "I can show you some very clear examples where this product is offloading tasks from a nurse that was walking five miles a day to allow her to be able to spend time with patients," he said, as the robot tirelessly circled our feet. "I think you see that in a lot of the applications we're doing, where the mundane task is done by a robot which has very simple capability, and it frees up people to do more-elaborate and more-sophisticated tasks."

    The CEO defended the broader trend of companies' embracing automation, especially in factory settings where human workers have long held what he called unfulfilling jobs, like wrapping chicken all day. "They look like zombies when they walk out of that factory," he said of such workers. "It is a mind-numbing, mundane task. There is absolutely no satisfaction from what they do."

    "That's your perception," countered Bledstein. "A lot of these are unskilled people. A lot of immigrants are in these jobs. They see it as work. They appreciate the paycheck. The numbness of the work is not something that surprises them or disturbs them."

    "I guess we could just turn the clock back to 1900, and we can all be farmers," retorted Dulchinos.

    But what about those displaced workers who can't find alternatives, asked Bledstein, arguing that automation is happening not just in factories but also in clerical and other middle-class professions changed by computer technology. "That's kind of creating a crisis today. Especially if those people are over 50, those people are having a lot of trouble finding new work." The professor added that he worried about his undergraduate students, too, and the tough job market they face. "It might be a lost generation, it's so bad."

    Dulchinos acknowledged that some workers are struggling during what he sees as a transitional period, but he argued that the solution is more technology and innovation, not less, to get to a new equilibrium even faster.

    This went on for a while, and it boiled down to competing conceptions of what it means to have a job. In Bledstein's seminal book, The Culture of Professionalism, first published in 1976, he argues that Americans, in particular, have come to define their work as more than just a series of tasks that could be commodified. Bledstein tracks a history of how, in sector after sector, middle-class workers sought to elevate the meaning of their jobs, whether they worked as athletes, surgeons, or funeral directors: "The professional importance of an occupation was exaggerated when the ordinary coffin became a 'casket,' the sealed repository of a precious object; when a decaying corpse became a 'patient' prepared in an 'operating room' by an 'embalming surgeon' and visited in a 'funeral home' before being laid to rest in a 'memorial park.'"

    The American dream involves more than just accumulating wealth, the historian argues. It's about developing a sense of personal value by connecting work to a broader social mission, rather than as "a mechanical job, befitting of lowly manual laborer."

    Today, though, "there's disillusionment with professions," Bledstein told me, noting that the logic of efficiency is often valued more than the quality of service. "Commercialism has just taken over everywhere." He complained that in their rush to reduce production costs, some business leaders are forgetting that even manual laborers have skills and knowledge that can be tough to simulate by machine. "They want to talk about them as if these people are just drones," he said as we took a break in the back of the exhibit hall, the whir of robot motors almost drowning out our voices. "Don't minimize the extent of what quote-unquote manual workers do—even ditch diggers."

    In Genesis, God sentences Adam and Eve to hard labor as part of the punishment for the apple incident. "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life" was the sentence handed down in the Garden of Eden. Yet Martin Luther argued, as have other prominent Christian leaders since, that work is also a way to connect with the divine.

    Continued in article

    "Rethink Robotics invented a $22,000 humanoid (i.e. trainable) robot that competes with low-wage workers," by Antonio Regalado, MIT's Technology Review, January 16, 2013 --- Click Here
    http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509296/small-factories-give-baxter-the-robot-a-cautious-once-over/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130116

    "Rise of the Robots," by Paul Krugman, The New York Times, December 8, 2012 ---
    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robots/

    Catherine Rampell and Nick Wingfield write about the growing evidence for “reshoring” of manufacturing to the United States. They cite several reasons: rising wages in Asia; lower energy costs here; higher transportation costs. In a followup piece, however, Rampell cites another factor: robots.

    The most valuable part of each computer, a motherboard loaded with microprocessors and memory, is already largely made with robots, according to my colleague Quentin Hardy. People do things like fitting in batteries and snapping on screens.

    As more robots are built, largely by other robots, “assembly can be done here as well as anywhere else,” said Rob Enderle, an analyst based in San Jose, Calif., who has been following the computer electronics industry for a quarter-century. “That will replace most of the workers, though you will need a few people to manage the robots.”

    Robots mean that labor costs don’t matter much, so you might as well locate in advanced countries with large markets and good infrastructure (which may soon not include us, but that’s another issue). On the other hand, it’s not good news for workers!

    This is an old concern in economics; it’s “capital-biased technological change”, which tends to shift the distribution of income away from workers to the owners of capital.

    Twenty years ago, when I was writing about globalization and inequality, capital bias didn’t look like a big issue; the major changes in income distribution had been among workers (when you include hedge fund managers and CEOs among the workers), rather than between labor and capital. So the academic literature focused almost exclusively on “skill bias”, supposedly explaining the rising college premium.

    But the college premium hasn’t risen for a while. What has happened, on the other hand, is a notable shift in income away from labor:.

    "Harley Goes Lean to Build Hogs," by James R. Hagerty, The Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2012 ---
    http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443720204578004164199848452.html?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid&mg=reno64-wsj

    If the global economy slips into a deep slump, American manufacturers including motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson Inc. that have embraced flexible production face less risk of veering into a ditch.

    Until recently, the company's sprawling factory here had a lack of automation that made it an industrial museum. Now, production that once was scattered among 41 buildings is consolidated into one brightly lighted facility where robots do more heavy lifting. The number of hourly workers, about 1,000, is half the level of three years ago and more than 100 of those workers are "casual" employees who come and go as needed.

    All the jobs are not going to Asia, They're going to Hal --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Space_Oddessey
    "When Machines Do Your Job: Researcher Andrew McAfee says advances in computing and artificial intelligence could create a more unequal society," by Antonio Regalado, MIT's Technology Review, July 11, 2012 ---
    http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428429/when-machines-do-your-job/

    Are American workers losing their jobs to machines?

    That was the question posed by Race Against the Machine, an influential e-book published last October by MIT business school researchers Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. The pair looked at troubling U.S. employment numbers—which have declined since the recession of 2008-2009 even as economic output has risen—and concluded that computer technology was partly to blame.

    Advances in hardware and software mean it's possible to automate more white-collar jobs, and to do so more quickly than in the past. Think of the airline staffers whose job checking in passengers has been taken by self-service kiosks. While more productivity is a positive, wealth is becoming more concentrated, and more middle-class workers are getting left behind.

    What does it mean to have "technological unemployment" even amidst apparent digital plenty? Technology Review spoke to McAfee at the Center for Digital Business, part of the MIT Sloan School of Management, where as principal research scientist he studies new employment trends and definitions of the workplace.

    Every symphony in the world incurs an operating deficit
    "Financial Leadership Required to Fight Symphony Orchestra ‘Cost Disease’," by Stanford University's Robert J Flanagan, Stanford Graduate School of Business, February 8, 2012 ---
    http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/symphony-financial-leadership.html

     What if you sat down in the concert hall one evening to hear Haydn’s Symphony No. 44 in E Minor and found 5 robots scattered among the human musicians? To get multiple audiences in and out of the concert hall faster, the human musicians and robots are playing the composition in double time.

    Today’s orchestras have yet to go down this road. However, their traditional ways of doing business, as economist Robert J. Flanagan explains in his new book on symphony orchestra finances, locks them into limited opportunities for productivity growth and ensures that costs keep rising.

    "Patented Book Writing System Creates, Sells Hundreds Of Thousands Of Books On Amazon," by David J. Hull, Security Hub, December 13, 2012 ---
    http://singularityhub.com/2012/12/13/patented-book-writing-system-lets-one-professor-create-hundreds-of-thousands-of-amazon-books-and-counting/

    Philip M. Parker, Professor of Marketing at INSEAD Business School, has had a side project for over 10 years. He’s created a computer system that can write books about specific subjects in about 20 minutes. The patented algorithm has so far generated hundreds of thousands of books. In fact, Amazon lists over 100,000 books attributed to Parker, and over 700,000 works listed for his company, ICON Group International, Inc. This doesn’t include the private works, such as internal reports, created for companies or licensing of the system itself through a separate entity called EdgeMaven Media.

    Parker is not so much an author as a compiler, but the end result is the same: boatloads of written works.

    "Raytheon's Missiles Are Now Made by Robots," by Ashlee Vance, Bloomberg Business Week, December 11, 2012 ---
    http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-11/raytheons-missiles-now-made-by-robots

    A World Without Work," by Dana Rousmaniere, Harvard Business Review Blog, January 27, 2013 --- Click Here
    http://blogs.hbr.org/morning-advantage/2013/01/morning-advantage-a-world-with.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date

    Jensen Comment
    Historically, graduates who could not find jobs enlisted in the military. Wars of the future, however, will be fought largely by drones, robots, orbiting orbiting satellites. This begs the question of where graduates who cannot find work are going to turn to when the military enlistment offices shut down and Amazon's warehouse robotics replace Wal-Mart in-store workers.

    If given a choice, I'm not certain I would want to be born again in the 21st Century.

    The Sad State of Economic Theory and Research ---
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm

     


    "Greek Crackdown on Tax Evasion Yields Little Revenue," by Landon Thomas Jr. and Eleni Varvitsiotsioti, The New York Times, May 12, 2013 --- Click Here
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/business/global/greek-tax-crackdown-yields-little-revenue.html?ref=todayspaper&nl=business&emc=edit_dlbkam_20130513&_r=0

    If ignominy were tax revenue, Greece might be a big step closer to ending its budget problems.

    ¶ Politicians, business executives and bankers are being raked through the headlines or incarcerated in a white-collar crackdown as the Greek government goes after people suspected of tax dodging. Those under questioning include the former finance minister George Papaconstantinou, in a highly charged parliamentary investigation into his handling of a list of Greeks with foreign bank accounts.

    ¶ “Why do you think they are catching all these people?” Mr. Papaconstantinou said in a recent interview, in the suffer-no-fools manner that defined his two years as finance minister until the current government took power last June. “Because we changed the laws to allow the government to do this.”

    ¶ But those changed laws, and the populist pursuit of supposed deadbeat fat cats, have yielded little in additional tax revenue.

    ¶ Tax evasion lies at the heart of the Greek financial collapse, which has resulted in international bailout loans exceeding 205 billion euros, or $266 billion, the size of Greece’s depressed economy. In fact, Greece’s international creditors have made revamping its notoriously lax tax system a primary condition for any additional bailout financing.

    ¶ But even after an overhaul of Greece’s tax collection apparatus — and a politically charged campaign to pursue delinquents — government officials have collected only a tiny fraction of what is owed and potentially collectible.

    ¶ Rather than capture a lot of extra money, the crusade seems mainly to have captured prominent quarry. The net cast by newly empowered prosecutors has snared the former mayor of Salonika, the leader of the Greek national statistical agency and several former cabinet members.

    ¶ Lawyers and tax officials estimate that hundreds of people have been locked up in the last year, suspected of tax evasion. Under the new laws, someone who owes the government more than 10,000 euros in taxes can be arrested on the spot and given the choice between paying up or being put behind bars. While held, the suspect can wait as long as 18 months before the prosecutor decides on a formal charge.

    ¶ Despite those efforts, of the estimated 13 billion euros that government officials say is owed by Greece’s 1,500 biggest tax debtors, only about 19 million euros has been collected in the last two and a half years.

    ¶ Among the few to benefit from the crackdown have been criminal defense lawyers specializing in tax law. Among them is Michalis A. Dimitrakopoulos, who represents many of the top political and business figures under government investigation or behind bars. His clients include the daughter and the former wife of Akis Tsohatzopoulos, a former defense minister and Pasok party official, all of whom are on trial on charges of money laundering and taking kickbacks.

    ¶ Mr. Dimitrakopoulos, who proudly shows visitors to his office a wall covered with framed clippings of his courtroom exploits, says business has never been better. But he also says he has clients with many billions of euros overseas who will never bring their money back to Greece as long as — as he contends — killers have better legal rights than tax offenders.

    ¶ By any measure, that is hyperbole.

    ¶ Legal specialists note, for example, that Mr. Papaconstantinou, the former finance minister, is awaiting the outcome of the parliamentary inquiry in his case from the comfort of his suburban Athens home. They say it is unlikely he will ever serve time.

    ¶Mr. Papaconstantinou declined to discuss the allegations against him: that he doctored the so-called Lagarde list, named for Christine Lagarde. Ms. Lagarde, now managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was the French finance minister in 2010 when she gave Mr. Papaconstantinou a computer disk containing the names of Greeks who had Swiss accounts with HSBC Bank. The file had been stolen by a French former employee of the bank and ended up in the hands of France’s government.

    Continued in article

    Jensen Comment
    The same problem arises from the billions of tax dollars being confiscated in the USA by ID theft. Until the law imposes serious deterrents that are effective in discouraging obtaining of illegal tax refunds the criminals are going to win this game with the hapless IRS.


    From the Scout Report on May 10, 2013

    Poll Code --- http://pollcode.com/

    Are you a pollster? Would you like to be one? PollCode makes all of this quite simple. With this handy application, visitors can type in a poll question and up to 30 possible answers. Visitors can customize the poll with their own colors, font, and settings. After visitors have completed their poll, they can use the HTML code provided here to share their poll with others via social media networks and the like. This version of Poll Code is compatible with all operating systems.


    WhoTalking --- http://whotalking.com/ 

    Who's out there in the world of social media? It can be hard to sort out what topics are of the utmost importance without the right tools. WhoTalking allows visitors to type in a topic to see what's trending on Twitter, Facebook, and so on. The novel thing here is that visitors can type in the topic in any language to see the latest results. After entering a word or phrase, visitors can look over the most recent 25 results from ten different social media networks. This application is compatible with all operating systems.


    As cities continue their economic resurgence, those in the South seem to be doing particularly well The Economic Performance of Cities
    http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21577110-why-recessions-best-and-worst-performers-are-mostly-warmer-southern-half 

    America's Best Performing Cities
    http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/04/americas-best-performing-cities/4528/ 

    2012 Best Performing Cities
    http://bestcities.milkeninstitute.org/ 

    Urban world: Mapping the Economic Power of Cities
    http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/urbanization/urban_world 

    How Should Suburbs Help Their Central Cities?
    http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/economists/haughwout/suburbs_help_central_cities_haughwout.pdf 

    Unlocking Growth in Cities
    http://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/7523/CO_Unlocking_20GrowthCities_acc.pdf


    From the Scout Report on May 17, 2013

    http://www.magpointer.com/ 

    Are you tired of reaching over your PowerPoint presentation with a pencil, pointer, or other device? Now, thanks to MagPointer, there is a simpler way. This application gives users the ability to enlarge, focus, zoom, or highlight specific elements or areas of their slides. It's a great way to enhance an existing presentation and the free trial version here can be used for 30 days. This version is compatible with Windows operating systems.

    Bolide Movie Creator  --- http://movie-creator.com/ 

    The Bolide Movie Creator is a great way for neophytes to get started on a bit of video editing. The application can be used to easily drag and drop video clips and segments, add text comments, incorporate music tracks, and include separate photos as part of the mix. New users will want to check out the Screenshots area to get a sense for how the entire package works. This version is compatible with all computers running Windows XP and newer.


    After a strange journey, dinosaur skeletons are returned to Mongolia
    Dinosaur Skeleton to Be Returned to Mongolia
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/arts/design/dinosaur-skeleton-to-be-returned-to-mongolians.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1368583581-8iqGihyFZvLuKvv3WI169Q

    US to return more smuggled dinosaurs to Mongolia
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22491967

    Mongolia to get dinosaur skeletons back
    http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2013/05/12/mongolia-to-get-dinosaur-skeletons-back.html

    The Dino Directory
    http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/dinosaurs-other-extinct-creatures/dino-directory/index.html

    Dinosaur Videos: Discovery Channel
    http://dsc.discovery.com/video-topics/other/dinosaur-videos

    Dinosaurs Fairyland in Outer Mongolia
    http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/dinosaurs-in-outer-mongolia

     


    Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance, economics, and statistics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks


    Education Tutorials

    Discovery Education: Teacher Resources --- http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/

    The European Association for Digital Humanities --- http://www.allc.org/

    HERA: Humanities in the European Research Area (research funding and news) ---
    http://www.heranet.info/

    The University of Michigan Digital Humanities Series---
     http://www.digitalculture.org/books/book-series/digital-humanities-series/

    Open (Free) Yale Courses --- http://oyc.yale.edu/

    Open Courses and Materials at MIT, Harvard, Yale, Rice, UC Berkeley, and Other Prestigious Universities ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    "Rethinking the Digital Future:  In 1991 a Yale professor David Gelernter envisioned a lot of what we now do on the Internet. Future computing, he thinks, may be organized around a concept called 'lifestreams," by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., The Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2011 ---
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203833104577072162782422558.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t

    Mr. Gelernter, a professor at Yale, is already destined to be remembered as the man nearly murdered by the Unabomber. After a painful recovery, he blossomed as a conservative social critic and continued to pursue his personal vocation of painting. He's also written books on subjects as diverse as the future of technology, the meaning of Judaism, and the 1939 World's Fair. Today, the still-revolutionary opportunities of computing are again taking a central place among his varied interests.

    To him, Facebook and Twitter are partial fulfillment of something he's been writing about and thinking about since the early 1990s, an evolution of the Internet into a form far less chaotic and more useful than today's. His preferred term is "lifestream." Whatever you call it, the cybersphere as it now exists is due for an overhaul.

    Prophecy comes naturally to Mr. Gelernter. He is credited in some circles for having coined the term "the cloud." But what preoccupies him is the inadequacy of our conventions and practices for organizing the wildly expanding array of digital objects that populate the cybersphere.

    On the desktop, he says, "The file system was already broken in the early '90s, the hierarchical system. Namespaces were saturated. I was sick of making up names like nsfproposal319. The file system got too crowded and people started crowding their desktops with icons."

    On top of this complexity soon arrived the complexity of the Web, the mass of digital objects we know today, connected by hyperlinks but organized in a way satisfying to no one, except possibly Google. "The current shape of the Web is the same shape as the Internet hardware," says Mr. Gelernter. "The Internet hardware is lots of computers wired together into a nothing-shaped cobweb. The Web itself is a lot of websites hyperlinked together into a nothing-shaped cobweb."

    The failure of the Internet to organize itself into a more useful metaphor is precisely what needs fixing. "It is impossible to picture the Web. It's a big fuzzy nothing. I sort of tiptoe around tiny areas of it shining a flashlight."

    We sit in his family's modest, woodsy home a few miles north of New Haven. Because the Unabomber experience has so colored the press's interest in him, Mr. Gelernter, in profiles, tends to come across as grim. He's anything but grim. He's a bit of a comedian, in a deadpan sort of way. He cites the "most talked about" part of one of his books, but quickly adds, "not that any part was greatly talked about."

    In that book, 1991's "Mirror Worlds," Mr. Gelernter described a future in which all our activities would be mirrored on the Web. Almost as soon as it was published he began thinking about a radical new way to organize our digital mirror world. He started a company to pursue his vision, but it was not well conceived and went out of business after a few years. Today its patents, now owned by an investor group, are at the center of a major lawsuit with Apple.

    The idea, though, of lifestreams has been catching on. A lifestream is a way of organizing digital objects—photos, emails, documents, Web links, music—in a time-ordered series. A timeline, in essence, that extends into the past but also the future (with appointments, to-do lists, etc.). Facebook, with its "wall" constantly updated with postings by you and your friends, is a lifestream. Twitter's feed is a lifestream. "Chatter," developed by Salesforce.com for internal use by client companies, is a lifestream.

    Mr. Gelernter believes streams are a more intuitive, useful way to organize our digital lives, not least because, as the past and future run off either side of our screen, at the center is now—and now is what the Internet really is about.

    Eventually business models based on streaming will dominate the Internet, he predicts. All the world's data will be presented as a "worldstream," some of it public, most of it proprietary, available only to authorized users. Web browsers will become stream browsers. Users will become comfortably accustomed to tracking and manipulating their digital objects as streams rather than as files in a file system. The stream will become a mirror of the unfolding story of their lives.

    "I can visualize the worldstream," says Mr. Gelernter, explaining its advantages. "I know what it looks like. I know what my chunk of it looks like. When I focus on my stuff, I get a stream that is a subset of the worldstream. So when I focus the stream, by doing a search on Sam Schwartz"—a hypothetical student—"I do stream subtraction. Everything that isn't related to Schwartz that I'm allowed to see vanishes. And then the stream moves much more slowly. Because Sam Schwartz documents are being added at a much slower rate than all the documents in the world. So now I have a manageable trickle of stuff."

    A stream is any stream you care to describe. "These very simple operations, which correspond to physical intuitions, are going to give people a much more transparent feeling about the Net. People will understand it better, and the Net itself will support what is clearly emerging as its most important function, which is to present relevant information in time."

    His son Daniel, a recent Yale graduate, sits in on our interview. His apparent dual mission is to tout the inevitable triumph of a new company the two are working on while making sure Mr. Gelernter doesn't say anything to queer his former company's pending lawsuit against Apple.

    Mr. Gelernter himself grew up in the suburbs of New York, visiting Brooklyn regularly where both sets of grandparents lived. He believes America, and especially its educational system, has gone downhill in some ways since then. He recalls a time, in the 1960s, when poets like Robert Frost and painters like Jackson Pollock were as closely followed by the "educated middle class" as TV celebrities are today.

    Mr. Gelernter's father studied physics and became a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence at IBM, so growing up Mr. Gelernter was "familiar with software and found it a comfortable topic." His ambition, from a very early age, was to be an important painter, but at Yale he pursued computing "as a path to supporting a family, which is a very important obligation in Judaism. Computing in the 70s and early 80s," he adds, "was not a path to absurd wealth. It was a path to well-paying jobs, compared to people in the English department."

    There followed happy days and nights in the computing lab, which might have come straight from the memoirs of Bill Gates or other computing superstars. His early work on parallel computing—in which many computers cooperate on tasks—made him a superstar too.

    His targeting by Theodore Kaczynski, living in a shack in Montana and waging his deranged war against modernity, has been told often enough. Mr. Gelernter was lucky to survive a mail bomb that tore open his chest and abdomen, mangled his right hand and eye. His blood pressure is said to have been undetectable by the time he stumbled from his office to a Yale clinic nearby. Today the glove on his right hand, mentioned in every media account, I learn is not a concession to those around him, but a prosthesis. "It allows me to get some use out of the hand. It's all ripped up and stuff, patched together."

    He takes medicine for pain and visits a pain specialist regularly, but he has come to see himself as lucky compared to other chronic pain sufferers—able to "operate in the world, and do the things you want to do. It could have been a lot worse," he says.

    The question posed at the top was meant whimsically. Mr. Gelernter, by any measure, is living a rich life. He has been making paintings since childhood. Lately he has allowed his work to be sold and next year will bring what he calls "an important event for me," his first museum show at Yeshiva University Art Gallery. He sees his work building on the "discoveries" of the New York abstract expressionists as well as the flat panels of Medieval devotional art. Interestingly, he also sees a similar new-old artistic potential in the high-definition video display: "Since the richness of stained glass emerged in the late 12th century, for the first time there is a new luminous art medium—a medium for creating glowing art."

    Mr. Gelernter sold his first company, Mirror Worlds Technologies, and its intellectual property to an investor group years ago. The buyer insisted on giving him a small stake in the outcome of its patent lawsuits, and last year a jury handed down an eye-popping $625 million verdict against Apple for infringing lifestream-related patents in its Macintosh and iPhone operating systems. In April, the judge in the case overruled the jury and tossed out the award. The matter is now under appeal.

    Mr. Gelernter says the former company has no relation to a new venture he and Daniel are working on—though Daniel is quick to note that they will be obtaining a license for the Mirror Worlds technology, as Apple supposedly should have done.

    The new venture, for which Mr. Gelernter is just beginning to seek funding, will focus on developing a lifestream product for the Apple iPad. "We like the pad," he says. "A particular goal is to create a lifestream which aggregates the most popular social network streams, and includes email and stuff like that. It will generate revenues the way Twitter and Facebook do—by getting huge numbers of users, beginning at the place we know, Yale University undergraduates, who love glitzy new software. They tell their parents, who are big shots because their kids are students at Yale." The new product will spread virally, forming a vast audience that can be sold to advertisers.

    If this sounds familiar, it should. Facebook started at Harvard and branched out to other universities before conquering the world. Facebook, which has evolved into a stream by which users tell their own stories and read each other's stories, is "plugging a very important gap in the cybersphere, but I don't think it's plugging it in an elegant way," says Mr. Gelernter. "I don't think Facebook will be around forever."

    Continued in article

    Bob Jensen's technology updates ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

     

    Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

    Bob Jensen's bookmarks for multiple disciplines ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm


    Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

    NOVA's Physics Blog --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/blog/

    Teaching College-Level Science and Engineering ---
    http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/chemistry/5-95j-teaching-college-level-science-and-engineering-spring-2009/index.htm

    Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering --- http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/

    National Science Digital Library: iTunes U --- http://nsdl.org/page/iTunesU/

    Stanford University Linear Accelerator: Videos --- http://www.youtube.com/user/slac

    From the University of Pittsburgh
    Birds of America (435 birds mounted online) --- http://digital.library.pitt.edu/a/audubon/
    The Darlington Digital Library (bird photographs) --- http://digital.library.pitt.edu/d/darlington
    Audubon Magazine - Multimedia --- http://archive.audubonmagazine.org/multimedia/index.html

    USDA: 2012 Census of Agriculture --- http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/index.php

    The Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land --- http://daahl.ucsd.edu/DAAHL/

    National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering
    http://www.nacmebacksme.org

    From the Scout Report on May 17, 2013

    After a strange journey, dinosaur skeletons are returned to Mongolia
    Dinosaur Skeleton to Be Returned to Mongolia
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/arts/design/dinosaur-skeleton-to-be-returned-to-mongolians.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1368583581-8iqGihyFZvLuKvv3WI169Q

    US to return more smuggled dinosaurs to Mongolia
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22491967

    Mongolia to get dinosaur skeletons back
    http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2013/05/12/mongolia-to-get-dinosaur-skeletons-back.html

    The Dino Directory
    http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/dinosaurs-other-extinct-creatures/dino-directory/index.html

    Dinosaur Videos: Discovery Channel
    http://dsc.discovery.com/video-topics/other/dinosaur-videos

    Dinosaurs Fairyland in Outer Mongolia
    http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/dinosaurs-in-outer-mongolia

     

    From the Scout Report on May 10, 2013

    As cities continue their economic resurgence, those in the South seem to be doing particularly well The Economic Performance of Cities
    http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21577110-why-recessions-best-and-worst-performers-are-mostly-warmer-southern-half 

    America's Best Performing Cities
    http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/04/americas-best-performing-cities/4528/ 

    2012 Best Performing Cities
    http://bestcities.milkeninstitute.org/ 

    Urban world: Mapping the Economic Power of Cities
    http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/urbanization/urban_world 

    How Should Suburbs Help Their Central Cities?
    http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/economists/haughwout/suburbs_help_central_cities_haughwout.pdf 

    Unlocking Growth in Cities
    http://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/7523/CO_Unlocking_20GrowthCities_acc.pdf

     

    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

    Discovery Education: Teacher Resources --- http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/

    National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering http://www.nacmebacksme.org

    DC By the Book --- http://dcbythebook.org/

    University of California: Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program --- http://sarep.ucdavis.edu/index.htm

    USDA: 2012 Census of Agriculture --- http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/index.php

    Purdue Agriculture: Botany and Plant Pathology Teaching Resources ---
    https://ag.purdue.edu/btny/pages/teachingresources.aspx

    Agriculture in the Classroom --- http://agclassroom.org/

    USDA Agricultural Projections to 2022
    http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/oce-usda-agricultural-projections/oce131.aspx#.UVHuhI7WczY

    Rural Information Center: Historic Preservation Resources --- http://www.nal.usda.gov/ric/ricpubs/preserve.html

    CAST (agricultural science) --- http://www.cast-science.org/

    Oral History: Oregon State University Extension Service ---
    http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/digitalcollections/extensionoralhistory/index.html

    University of Illinois Extension --- http://web.extension.illinois.edu/state

    Cornell University Cooperative Extension --- http://www.cce.cornell.edu/Pages/Default.aspx

    Food Research And Action Center --- http://www.frac.org/index.html

    Food: Transforming the American Table, 1950-2000 --- http://americanhistory.si.edu/food-introduction

    Pennsylvania State University: Advanced Classroom Experiments and Resources in Food Science ---
     http://foodscience.psu.edu/youth/classroom 

    Muncie City Improvement Resolutions --- http://libx.bsu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/MnCtImpRes

    Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and Philosophy tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social


    Law and Legal Studies

    Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law


    Math Tutorials

    Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics


    History Tutorials

    British Museum: Life and death: Pompeii and Herculaneum
    http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/pompeii_and_herculaneum.aspx

    Virginia Memory (documents and photographs) ---  http://www.virginiamemory.com/

    Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition Centennial --- http://content.lib.washington.edu/extras/ayp100.html

    Alaska's Digital Archives --- http://vilda.alaska.edu/cdm/index

    Reconnaissance Survey for the Alaska Railroad: James L. McPherson's Kuskowim Reconnaissance Collection
    http://content.lib.washington.edu/alaskawcanadaweb/kuskokwim.html

    DC By the Book --- http://dcbythebook.org/

    Illustrated Quixote --- http://library.brown.edu/cds/quixote/

    The European Association for Digital Humanities --- http://www.allc.org/

    HERA: Humanities in the European Research Area (research funding and news) ---
    http://www.heranet.info/

    The University of Michigan Digital Humanities Series---
     http://www.digitalculture.org/books/book-series/digital-humanities-series/

    U.S. Army Center of Military History --- http://history.army.mil/

    America in Color from 1939-1943 --- http://extras.denverpost.com/archive/captured.asp

    Texas Fashion Collection --- http://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/collections/TXFC/

    National Park Service: War of 1812 Bicentennial --- http://www.nps.gov/history/1812/

    American Antiquarian Society, 1812-2012: A View at the Bicentennial ---
     http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/View/index.htm

    The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revisit Her Sketches, Self-Portraits, Drawings & Illustrated Letters --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/the_art_of_sylvia_plath_revisit_her_sketches_self-portraits_drawings_illustrated_letters_.html

    On 50th Anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s Death, Hear Her Read ‘Lady Lazarus’ ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2013/02/on_50th_anniversary_of_sylvia_plaths_death_hear_her_read_lady_lazarus.html

    The Short Literary Life of Sylvia Plath --- http://www.sylviaplath.de/

    "Our acknowledged Queen of Sorrows"
    For Sylvia Plath’s 80th Birthday, Hear Her Read ‘A Birthday Present’ --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/10/for_sylvia_plaths_80th_birthday_hear_her_read_a_birthday_present.html

    Paul Laurence Dunbar Digital Collection of Poetry ---  http://www.libraries.wright.edu/special/dunbar/

    Robert Frost Recites ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/03/robert_frost_recites_stopping_by_woods_on_a_snowy_evening.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    17th-19th Century British Religious, Political, and Legal Tracts (1600-1800) ---
    http://digital.library.umsystem.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=pam;cc=pam;tpl=ho

    The Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land --- http://daahl.ucsd.edu/DAAHL/

    Making the Invisible Visible: Conservation and Islamic Art ---
    http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2013/invisible-visible

    Liturgy and Life Artifacts Collection (Roman Catholic faith artifacts and photographs) --- 
    http://dcollections.bc.edu/R/?func=collections-result&collection_id=1128

    The Wabash Center Guide to Internet Resources for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/Internet/front.htm

    Iowa Digital Library: University Communication and Marketing Photographs --- http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/ucmp/

    Historic Images of Wellesley College --- http://insight.wellesley.edu:8180/luna/servlet/WELLESLEYwcm~4~4

    IUPUI Image Collection of Indiana University --- http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/special/collections/uarchives/ua024

    Digital Collections: Amherst College --- https://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/holdings/electexts

    Illinois Wesleyan University: Historic Images ---
    http://collections.carli.illinois.edu/cdm4/index_iwu_histph.php?CISOROOT=/iwu_histph

    Princeton Seminary Digital Library (Religion) --- http://digital.library.ptsem.edu/

    University of North Carolina
    Documenting the American South: The First Century of the First State University --- http://docsouth.unc.edu/unc/

    Centenary of the First World War, 1914-1918 --- http://www.awm.gov.au/1914-1918/

    World War One ( World War I ) Color Photos --- http://www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com/

    World War I Photographic History in a French Village
    Remember Me: The Lost Diggers of Vignacourt --- http://www.awm.gov.au/exhibitions/remember-me/

    World War (I &II) Propaganda Posters --- http://bir.brandeis.edu/handle/10192/23520

    World War II Poster Collection --- http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/wwii-posters/

    Australian War Memorial: This Company of Brave Men: The Gallipoli VCs --- http://www.awm.gov.au/exhibitions/bravemen

    Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
    Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm  


    Language Tutorials

    Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages


    Music Tutorials

    Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music

    Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm


    Writing Tutorials

    Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries


    Updates from WebMD --- http://www.webmd.com/

    May 13, 2013

    May 14, 2013

    May 15, 2013

    May 16, 2013

    May 17, 2013

    May 18, 2013

    May 20, 2013

    May 21, 2013

    May 22, 2013

     


    Lower Back Pain Slide Show --- http://www.webmd.com/back-pain/ss/slideshow-low-back-pain-overview


    Shakespeare asked:  "Soluble and insoluble fiber, that is the question?"
    Fiber on Nutrition Facts Labels --- http://nutritiondiva.quickanddirtytips.com/fiber-on-nutrition-facts-labels.aspx


    "The Incredible Story Of The Man With No Memory," by  Suzanna Corkin, Business Insider, May 11, 2013 ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-story-of-the-man-with-no-memory-2013-5

    Jensen Comment
    The title of this article is a bit misleading. Henry Molaison remembered some things such as the English language. If a patient really had zero memory that patient would be no more than a potted plant.

    This story reminds me of a math professor friend whose mother-in-law in a nursing home had no short-term memory. When they took her on an outing such as a visit to Wal-Mart she would go up and down the same aisle over and over again as if each walk down the same aisle was her first-time walk down the aisle. But she did have memory for her language and some long-term events in her life.

    This begs the question regarding what is a "language?" For example, the words "debit" and "credit" become part of the language of an accountant. If Henry Molaison had been an accountant, would he remember the meanings of "debit" and "credit" as part of his language. My point is that there's a gray zone between remembered vocabulary versus remembered events in life.


     




    A But of Humor

    Voices from the Wild --- http://www.wimp.com/animalvoiceovers/

    ABC News About Catching Baby Ducks ---
    http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=9hnbmml8fOY&hd=1


    13 Jokes That Every Math Geek Will Find Hilarious Walter Hickey ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/13-math-jokes-that-every-mathematician-finds-absolutely-hilarious-2013-5




    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

    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